I've had a weird day (Tik Tok)

So, today was one of the weirdest days of I have ever had. It’s like my life was something out of a music video or something.

I woke up this morning feeling pretty weird. I was definitely hungover, maybe even a little coked out from the night before, ya know, feeling like P. Diddy or something. I don’t remember having a drink last night, and I definitely don’t remember doing hard drugs. Whatever I brushed it off. I tried to start my day off normal next, get out and enjoy the city. So I go in to brush my teeth, and I have NO clue where my damn toothpaste is. I searched everywhere, even in the shower. Nope. All I could find was this bottle whiskey. Sooo I decided to just play it cool and brush my teeth with a little bit of jack. I probably won’t be coming back anytime early tonight as it is, I expect work will keep me late.
I got in the shower, trying to clear my head from the cocaine, and all of the whiskey I accidentally swallowed brushing teeth. Weird thing is, it doesn’t help, because when I look down, I noticed that amazingly, my toes have had what appears to be an entire makeover, like someone just straight up gave me a manicure. All right then. I got out of the shower, walked over to my closet to get dressed, and damn it if I couldn’t find a thing to wear. I swear, I tried on every article of clothing I owned before I finally decided on something I liked. It was short shorts, cowboy boots, and a shirt that REALLY doesn’t fit me, in case you were wondering. I was feeling frisky.
As I’m walking out the door, I realized I forgot my phone, so I turned around to find it. You’ll never guess where I found it either. In my freaking microwave. Crazy right? I decided not to worry about it, because when I looked at it, I found I had about 15 missed calls, and 20 new texts messages, all from guys I didn’t know. What the hell happened last night? Did I go to a rave or something? Ughh, I need to call the cops or something.
I walk out to get in my car, and I see a convertible sitting in my driveway. This is concerning me for many reasons, the least of which being that I definitely had a Lexus last time I checked. Oh right, and I hate convertibles. Who wants that much wind in their hair anyways? God, plus people staring at you everywhere you go? I can’t handle the pressure. Well, I decide to get in the convertible, having to hop over into because someone stupidly jammed the door shut. With the day I’m having, I’ll most likely never find my car ever again anyways, make some lemonade perhaps? Thankfully, the keys are in the ignition, so I start it and realize I will never hear anything again in my life. Why you ask? Because someone left the volume up on a terrible rap/hiphop/techno piece of crap CD, and I’ve now ruptured my eardrums. Thank you, random stranger.
I look around the car after finally turning off the terrible sound coming from my speakers, and notice some mapquest direction on the seat next to me. I figure what the hell, I might as well head on over to this address, maybe one of my friends played a trick on me, and all of my stuff is there. No such luck. I pulled up to a house full of rowdy drunk teenagers, doing things they definitely should not be doing. They are totally getting the cops called on them, especially with them throwing beers at the car, screaming”GET CRUNK!”...whatever that means.
I get out, and try to walk farther into the party, past all of the reckless kids throwing up because they can’t handle their liquor and proceed over to what appears to be a DJ, standing in front of a laptop and speakers that are taller than I am. The said speakers, also seem to be on their last leg. It’s like someone tried to blow them up or something. I ask him whose party this is, and maybe any other details he can tell me, but all I can get out of him is a loud “DON’T STOP, MAKE IT POP”, which is rather annoying when screamed 10,000 times in a row. I turn around to walk back to my car, but I’m stopped by 2 boys who appear to be trying to fight, but in reality are mostly just wrestling loosely on the ground, in a slightly homosexual manner. Someone really needs to tell them to get a room.
Sneaking past the gay men and the gathering crowd, I arrive at my car and jump in, only to realize I lost my keys somewhere in the mass of people. Now what do I do. I start searching harder around the car for possibly a spare set hidden, with no luck. The glove box, under the back seat, under my seat, nothing. I find the switch to open the trunk and go for it. Walking back there, I realize that this was possibly one of the worst decisions of my life, as it was an entire trunk full of cans of beer. Not racks of beer, not in a bag of any sort, just a trunk full of beer. My first instinct upon seeing this is initially joy, because hey, who doesn’t like beer? My next thought, which thinking back, should have been my first, was to shut the trunk so the whole world, and party, does not observe all of the massive amounts of alcohol. Right. Forgot that hordes of drunken teenagers can spot that from a mile away. Within seconds, there’s an entire line of guys at my car, all begging me to let them have some beer. Well, I was flabbergasted and very confused, and decided to do the first thing that came to mind and flip a coin. It’s kind of a nervous habit of mine. I reach into the pocket of my short shorts to find a quarter, but all I found was 2 mentos, 1 paperclip, and a slightly used condom. Well, after retching form the condom, I do the next best thing, and decided I’m not going to give beer to any of them, as that would be distributing alcohol to minors. Except this one kid, who looked remarkably like Mick Jagger. Seriously, the kid had the gigantic lips and open shirt and everything. Uncanny. He got a beer just because of how badass that was.
At this point, the people were getting a little mad, because apparently its “Not cool, bro” to bring beer to a party and not share. My bad. I wasn’t aware of this etiquette. I’ve also heard it’s not very polite to touch my dick if you don’t know me, but you didn’t follow that rule either. So I smacked him. Right across the face. His expression also happened to be the funniest I’ve seen in a long time.
Out of nowhere, about 5 cop cars showed up to stop the ruckus. Boy, were they late.
My heart started pounding as I saw them, because I figure I was going to get arrested like the rest of the people here. Turns out, I was completely correct. Two officers screamed at me to put my hands up, as a third slammed me against the now closed trunk of my car, searching me all over. He handcuffed me and threw me into the cruiser. Sitting in the silence of the car, I realized I still couldn’t hear anything except for this random tik tok going to town in my head. It went on and on, not stopping for anything. I guess that’s another thing I’m going to have to deal with in all the therapy I’m going to need for this day alone.
The cop gets in the car and starts off towards the precinct, not saying a word the entire time. I’m dragged in by the cuffs, and booked by a lackey sitting at a desk. This guy was far nicer to me and asks if I want to be in a cell by myself or group. As I mentioned earlier, I was still feeling a little frisky so I chose group. Walking down the corridor towards it, I start to think, maybe this could be fun. Maybe there’s a little party going on in there…and it just hasn’t started without me. I walk in, and see the DJ sitting in the corner to my left. To my right is one of the kids from the fight. I can hear the tik tok even louder now….and then I partied…

http://www.elyricsworld.com/tik_tok_lyrics_ke$ha.html

Day 5: I Mingle With Royalty

As I entered the doorway to the gymnasium of the CIA, I gasped in wonderment. I had been there before, seen what it looked like set up as a career fair, or set up simply as the basketball court, but I had never seen it look anything like this before. There were carpeted floors, there were grandstands set up, and there were cameras everywhere I looked. As I stepped further into the competition space I looked to my left, where i was greeted with an enormous table, with the names of 12 of the most famous chef's in the world sitting on it. there were 4 cooking booths, each of them equipped with anything you could ever need or want. There were State of the Art ovens, stove top ranges, even Sous Vide cookers right in front. There was nothing I could do but stand with my best friend, and try to take in all the glory of food that I was surrounded with. I turned around one more time, about to go sit down, when i was greeted by a well dressed lady with a cup of what I found out to be sparkling water. I found this out because when I placed the cup to my lips and started drinking, I was immediately introduced to a barrage of bubbles. This was surprising.

After my encounter with the unnecessarily bubbly water, my friend and I found a seat. We then spent the next 3 hours watching cooking demo after cooking demo. We were both mesmerized, not able to look away from the magic that appeared to be happening before our eyes. I saw techniques that i had never even heard of, witnessed food being prepared right before my eyes that I could never even dream of making at this stage in my training, and I saw the most experienced chef's in the world make this magic look like it was nothing.

The last seminar was a table discussion about the cooking world, the competition, and what it takes to succeed as a chef. 12 of the finest chefs in the world sat down in front of us, answering questions from the Dean of Students of the CIA, answering questions from the audience, and just generally talking about their experiences. The only thing that I could do during this entire hour and half was soak up every bit of knowledge that came out of their mouths. When the discussion was over, we got to goo up and meet with the chefs, talk with them for a little while. I am going to sound like an excited boy for all of about 2 seconds here, but I want to say this. I got to meet Chef Thomas Keller in person, and I got to shake his hand. I'm so excited!!!!!!!!! The best part about this, is that this was all only on the first day. The competition had not even begun. So, accordingly, I went home and collapsed on my bed to fall asleep immediately.

As I am going to do right now. You are going to have to wait to hear about the competition, just as I did. But don't worry, it will all be on here tomorrow! I hope you enjoyed reading about the first day as much as I had attending it. See you tomorrow.

Day 4: I Have Exciting Happenings

Well hey there again! It's been a short while since I have posted anything, and I'm starting to feel guilty about it. This is not good. So here I am, with some news! But, not only do I have news, this news is also related to the Culinary. I know, you thought I'd forgotten about that....nope.

A couple of days ago, I got my acceptance packet from the CIA. This makes me extremely happy, and it made me even more giddy to start my attendance there. Now, some of you may have noticed that I said the word "packet" in reference to my acceptance things. I meant to do that. Sadly, that is not even an appropriate term for what i received in the mail. No, i think the best word from what I got, is really a mini book. This thing arrives in a very large envelope, in the U.S. Mail service. It takes me about 30 seconds to open the thing, partly because, according to my....boss, I have hands like feet. And partly because this thing is bound so tight it's like they don't want you to open it. Finally, when upon some miracle you finally do open the package, out slides a tri-fold booklet of sorts, filled to the brim with an assortment of brightly colored papers, all saying something about food. It was a wonderful thing for me, as I am a geek. The first thing i see as well, is a paper that is now adorning my fridge, announcing that I have been accepted to the CIA as a student in the Culinary Arts, BPS program. That alone, even though I already knew it, literally made my day. And then I looked at the rest of the papers in the packet and realized how much work I am going to have to do just to keep up with the rest of the class, let alone excel above them.

I also have some other news that I would absolutely love to share with all of you. Being held at the Culinary on the 5th and 6th of this month, or Friday and Saturday for all of the callendrially (it's a word, don't question it) challenged people, is the Bocuse D'or Culinary Competition. The Bocuse D'or Culinary Competition is pretty much the Iron Chef of real life, with less publicity, better food, and higher stakes. The best chefs from around the world will be descending upon our humble town of Hyde Park, NY to compete for glory. The best part about this, is that I will have the pleasure of attending this event, to witness everything that is happening. On the 5th, there will be a number of seminars and talks about food, including demonstrations from the American Lamb Board (and a tasting...yum), demonstrations from various chefs known to be experts in their fields, and book signings from certain authors as well. The big show is on Saturday the 6th, when 12 teams will start cooking at 6 in the morning, until 6 in the evening. There will be presentation of food by each of these teams throughout the day, all to be tasted and judged by the luckiest people in the world, the Bocuse D'or Culinary Council.

I will be there for all of this, and I will be writing everything I can down, and sharing it on here with you. I cannot wait for this wonderful experience, and I sincerely hope that you will enjoy all of what I will be writing about it, as it's all that will be on my mind for a couple days. Thanks again for reading, I'll be back soon from the CIA.

Day 3: I Have Problems With Spacing

Hello once again to all of you! Currently, I am at my best friend's (I just totally imagined that song from The Hangover) house, hanging out. Well, I was hanging out, because he has gone to bed, and I can only seem to get anything accomplished with no one around. Such is life, I guess.

I think I should start out this blog by telling any of you that don't know, that I have ADHD. I am not going to explain what it means, as you HAVE to know what it means from all of the millions of jokes rolling around the streets these days, all of which are true. I am actually happy to admit that a good majority of them are true, mostly because I find all of them hilarious.

As a result of my ADHD, when I was younger, I was pretty much the outcast of the school. This is not because the other children found out that I had ADHD and decided that this made me a crazy person, but because at that point in my life, I could not control myself enough to show people who I really am. This led to me being a little socially awkward, and a lot self-conscious. I really felt that only a couple people, mostly my family, were the only people I could trust in this world.

I am not in any way trying to make this into a sob story, I just figured I should give you a little background on myself, and where I am going with this. I digress. Eventually, however, I evened out, and I learned that kicking people in the face is really only funny the first time. As I grew as a person, and my self-awareness grew as well, I began to get less and less paranoid, and let people into my life. Upon this, I have now noticed a couple of things.

There is no one on this entire world that is a complete loner. We all need human interaction of some kind, whether it be in person, over the internet, on the TV, what have you. We have all heard of the occasional person who believes that they are a sociopath, or a doctor says they are, that they don't need to be around people. I don't believe this is true at all. In fact, I believe the exact opposite of that. It makes sense to me, that as a young child, (I'm going Freudian on your asses now), this person experienced something that made them this way. Maybe they were beaten as a child, felt like they were not loved. Maybe they were in foster care, and they never had anyone to call parents, to give them what they needed, to tell them they cared about them. As a result of this, these people have grown up believing that they don't need anyone, that everyone is going to betray them, and that they don't know what love is. If this is the case, I would have to say that human interaction is just what this person needs. They need to know that not everyone out in the world is going to pick on them, or turn they're back on them and leave them in the dark.

I truly believe that without human interaction we would go insane. In fact, this has been proven many times, with many people. There are people who are put in prison, they do something bad, and they get put into solitary confinement. After a month, these so called hardened criminals are let out, to go back to their peers in the jail. These criminals come out different though, and it is not different in a good way. They may come out, and act quiet for a couple of months, not cause any trouble or anything. But you can tell, underneath it all, that something has changed. They are not sane in any way. They have been locked in a room by themselves for a month. In that month, they can think about anything they want to. They think about life, they think about people. They may start to think that maybe they don't need other people, and maybe other people don't need. They dwell on this for hours at a time, until finally; it becomes a reality in their mind. They come out, start looking around. They don't like people. People put him in that hell hole. People should pay for it.

One last thing I wanted to say about human interaction, is that I love it. I can honestly say that being with other people is one of the greatest joys in my life, and one of the most important. I grow from it, and I have a good time. To any of my friends reading this, thank you.

Side Note: sorry if the spacing and crap is a little off, its 1 am, and im having issues with this. clearly. ughh.

Day 2: My Job Is Weird

I skate through life. Ask any of my former teachers, my friends, my parents, anyone who knows me. They can tell you with no doubt in their mind, that I am a slacker. I've had most of life handed to me on a silver platter, I've gotten through on luck, a little bit of skill, and smooth talking. Lately though, I have begun to realize that there is more out there than I've been living. While there stands a lot to be gained from fooling everyone around you into getting what you want, there is also a lot to earn from straight up hard work.

About 2 weeks ago, I started working at this restaurant down the street, a restaurant that shall remain unnamed, you stalkers you. In these few short weeks, I have realized real fast that good looks and charm, whatever little I have, will not get me through this. I am going to have to work my ass off to achieve what I want to do. So far, I have been insulted more times than I can count, put down on everything I have done, and generally been informed that I have no right to be in a kitchen, let alone try and cook anything. Just today, I was informed that none of my goals are going to come true, that all I am doing is a waste of time. I am not motivated enough, I am not smart enough, I am not strong enough. I was laughed at for wanting to achieve something that this man thought I could not do.

The worst part about all of this, is that it is all simply a teaching technique. While, yes, I am fairly certain that the man I am working for is certifiably insane, he is still trying to help. I guess that's how it goes in real life. You have to go through an initiation process, however strange it may be. You can't simply jump into anything with no hassle; you have to be taught by the crazy.

So far, in my humble job as a prep chef in the restaurant business, I have done absolutely nothing but garnish food, or perhaps prepare a side dish or two. I have stood next to a ranting and raving chef, of a good 6 foot 5 stature, ranting and raving, going from position to position for 6 hours. This man went from hating the Culinary, to praising it, and back again 4 times in one conversation. He told me that it is useless 30 times, and then told me I would never survive because it is so intense 29 times. He informed me that I need to take initiative 10 times, then when doing so, I was pushed out of the way 11 times. This man, is nuts.

He is not only crazy though, as my complaints seem to indicate. He is also trying to teach me in everything he is doing. We had a conversation about how he started his business, about where he started, how old he was, what he had done with his life. I got a little peek into this man's psyche, where I started to understand where the crazy comes from. He's been through a lot, seen a lot, and done a lot. I can learn from this. True, I may not get the lessons that he intended, which he means to be about cooking. But I will be getting a lesson in life, in work ethic, in how a good business is truly run.

I am going to stick this out as long as possible; hopefully for the entire 6 months leading up to the CIA, as it is required that I have experience for the school. I also have more motivation that that to stick it out though. For one, the happenings at this place give me great blog material, as you've only heard a tip of the iceberg on this eccentric man, but of course for the learning value as well. I will keep you posted on the job, and life as it comes.

And So It Begins.

Have you ever been sitting alone at home, doing nothing except watching TV, thinking about life, and eating unhealthy food...when all of a sudden you realize you aren't doing anything at all. Sure, you're enjoying some of the finer things in life, laziness, slothfulness, that unhealthy food again. But in reality, you aren't doing anything. You may have a job you sort of like, a wife who is all right, and a dog who's greatest feature is that he no longer poo's on the bathroom rug, but has now graduated to the front doorstep. As a sidenote, the dog feels this is a greater accomplishment for him, as he now gets to see you walk in the door and immediately squish into a giant lump of digested dog food and the taco from last night.

Now, you may have all of this, but then you realize your life is not fulfilled. You look at the TV, you see all these people. With fun-filled lives, busy all the time, never a dull moment. You think to yourself, why the hell can't my life be like that? I'm just as handsome as that guy...he isn't that good looking anyways, the smug bastard. And I can do what she's doing, or at least I could learn to in a week or two. I want to live this life.

Then you think back, and you say "Maybe I should have gone to school for that. In fact, I can still go back now! That's it, I'm quitting my job, and I'm not looking back. Advanced physics degree, here I come!" You plan it all out in your mind, the greatest part, of course, being when you walk up to your boss, with a cake in hand that says "Excuse me sir, but you are a gigantic douche. I quit"(You of course got an extra large cake for this purpose). The entire office cheers and you get carried out on the shoulders of 300 of your closest co-workers you never knew. In the car you go, straight to the nearest University.

BAM. You're back in your comfy armchair, dog pooing 3 feet away from you. Looking up, you realize your back home, safe and sound. You've had your fun for the day, back to the relaxing monotony of yelling at the dog and eating stale popcorn. Life goes back to normal, and you're back in the office the next day. Such is life.

The purpose of this whole story was to tell you that I'm tired of having no direction in life. I have decided to do this exact thing. No, I will not be pursuing a career in advanced physics, as I HATE physics with a passion. I got a 32 in the class, last time I looked. However, I do have a plan.

As a young child, I was brought up in the ways of cooking. My mother baked all the time and my father ate all the time. Whenever my mother went into the kitchen to start a new creation, I would follow her in there, usually in the hopes of getting something wonderful and delicious, as I happened to eat just as much as my father. After a while though, it became less about eating food, and became more about creating food. Shortly thereafter, our family moved in with my grandmother, who just so happened to be graduating from the CIA, or the Culinary Institute of America, which I hold in extremely high regard to the cooking community. It was from this lady, Gigi as I called her, that I learned to really love food.

As the years progressed however, my young desire to go out and do something exciting and dangerous took over. I completely forgot about cooking, and went into the field of Criminal Justice. After a year and a half of this, I was exactly where my example was, sitting on my couch, doing nothing. I was not satisfied with my life. So I did something drastic, and changed it.

As of 3 days ago, I was accepted to the Culinary Institute of America, for the BPS, or Bachelor's degree program. I figured that this would be a big step in my life, and I wanted to chronicle it in some way. So, I bring to you, Goodyear...my journey to the CIA.

As part of the requirements to get into the CIA, I had to get 6 months of experience in a commercial kitchen, so I will be filling you in about that, which is going....well, interesting to say the least. I will also be filling you in about everything that transpires leading up to the day that I move in, and most likely throughout my adventures at the greatest culinary school in the world...the CIA.