Throughout the vast majority of my life, I have had the misfortune of giving off this calm, chill demeanor which communicates to people that if someone were to punch me in the face, in all likelihood, I would respond by complimenting them on the strength and softness of their hands. This makes it all the more entertaining when a particular group of people sees me get angry for the first time, because they react in a similar way as if they had just discovered that one of their friends could sing really well.
"Wow! I didn't know you could do that! When did that start?"
"In high school, really."
"That's incredible! We should get you in front of Simon Cowell, he would love you!"
Monday, January 30, 2017
Friday, January 20, 2017
All Fun and Games
We as a people like to be shocked. There is some part of us that enjoys being in suspense or experiencing a nervous thrill. This is made evident by the popularity of shows like Fear Factor, where we watch as contestants perform daring stunts and consume some of the most grotesque gourmet that I have ever had the misfortune of laying my eyes on (and that is saying a lot coming from a guy who cooks up a meatballs and rice recipe which, given the aesthetic aftermath, the family has come to refer to this particular dish as Vomit).
Each year, horror movies bring millions of dollars into box offices across the globe and these films are also responsible for a spike in Unisom Sleep gels as well as band-aid purchases resulting from nervous girlfriends sinking their nails into the man candy sitting next to them in the movie theater. I have never really understood the point behind horror movies, because if I'm going to fork over some money, I want to laugh or see something explode, but instead people are forking over butt tons of money at the cost of a few nights sleep and developing an irrational fear of blind people
Personally, as I was growing up, I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that kids can begin to weed out this fear by proving themselves to be tough by dominating at dodge-ball in gym class and inflicting as much pain as humanly possible on members of the other team who are not even close to being on their doctor's chart of where they are supposed to be with regards to height and weight at that age. Yet, when these same kids needed help memorizing the parts and functions that make up the Central Nervous System, who do they run to instead of run at? I digress.
Extreme consequences do make things more urgent and thus, make them more interesting. Take a game like Hangman for example, a game where if I can't guess what someone is trying to say, I have the eternal soul of a stick figure on my conscience. Do you have any idea how many innocent, lead limbed lads and lasses have gone to the gallows simply because I didn't pay attention in English class?
In social studies, some friends and I played a game where we would spin a globe and stop the spinning with our finger, whatever country we had landed on was blown up. That was how I first learned that most of the Earth's makeup is in fact water, because the vast majority of the casualties resulting from this game were reefs and fish. Side note, "pointing at a globe to see who dies" is rumored to be the military strategy for the Trump administrations' Secretary of Defense, James Mattis.
However, the game I remember most was one that my family played which I will call Find Your Name In the Credits. In this game, I, along with the other members of my family would fervently search through the credit reel at the end of a movie in search of my name in what can only be described as a post-film Purge, because if I did not find my first name (spelled exactly how I spell it) then the penalty was my hypothetical death. I will admit that having an easy name like Mark certainly has its advantages, my name is quick to write and easy to spell, However, do to the fact there is a similar sounding and much more common name, if I was not careful to articulate upon meeting someone for the first time, I can't tell you how many weeks of my life have been spent with new acquaintances calling me Matt. It's such a shame because names like Mark Mcgwire and Mark Zuckerberg are synonymous with originality and doing what ever it takes to win, whereas names like Matthew McConaughey and Matt LeBlanc make people think "Eh, maybe 10 years ago, but not now."
About a month ago, I was watching a Monday night football game between the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions and much to Jigsaw John Madden's delight, I decided to play a little game. During the player introductions I was going to pick a college and as the players said where they were from, if the college I had selected was said, I lived. Given Alabama's reputation for college football greatness in the past, I figured that they were a safe selection. The good news is, as sure as I am writing this before you today, I did live. The bad news, it was because of one player. One player! That means that despite all of the accolades and achievements at the collegiate level, much like the elementary school English teachers of Alabama, this football program is failing to prepare them for when it be matterin' mos'. So am I to believe that if you are suiting up for Nick Saban, then you will be no different from what they say to anybody else insofar as that they should enjoy college because it will likely be the best years of your life? Football and my little Death Row Intro are games, I get it, but really? Just one guy among two teams-worth of starters? Thumbs down to Alabama for using players as cogs in the machine and failing to prepare them for further greatness. As a little nugget here, Ohio State had three representatives and Washington and the University of Miami each had two. Way to go Alabama! In closing, this lack of representation at the elite level and coming up short and this years' championship have Alabama's new slogan perfectly summarized by a song performed by the band Alabama entitled "Close Enough to Perfect for Me." Way to go 'bama!
Final Flippin' Football Footnote Fun Fact Fact Check: After looking at an article on Bleacher Report, I discovered that the football program outsourcing most of its talent to the NFL is.......Alabama! So, as I sit back and am ferociously force-fed the rest of this rant reducing, practical point puncturing piece of humble pie, let's all be reminded that posting on the internet does not make someone an expert and claims should be verified through multiple credible sources before hitting the "post" button, because otherwise you may just end up divulging some very embarrassing, if not mildly sadistic parts of your past for anyone to read about.
Each year, horror movies bring millions of dollars into box offices across the globe and these films are also responsible for a spike in Unisom Sleep gels as well as band-aid purchases resulting from nervous girlfriends sinking their nails into the man candy sitting next to them in the movie theater. I have never really understood the point behind horror movies, because if I'm going to fork over some money, I want to laugh or see something explode, but instead people are forking over butt tons of money at the cost of a few nights sleep and developing an irrational fear of blind people
Personally, as I was growing up, I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that kids can begin to weed out this fear by proving themselves to be tough by dominating at dodge-ball in gym class and inflicting as much pain as humanly possible on members of the other team who are not even close to being on their doctor's chart of where they are supposed to be with regards to height and weight at that age. Yet, when these same kids needed help memorizing the parts and functions that make up the Central Nervous System, who do they run to instead of run at? I digress.
Extreme consequences do make things more urgent and thus, make them more interesting. Take a game like Hangman for example, a game where if I can't guess what someone is trying to say, I have the eternal soul of a stick figure on my conscience. Do you have any idea how many innocent, lead limbed lads and lasses have gone to the gallows simply because I didn't pay attention in English class?
In social studies, some friends and I played a game where we would spin a globe and stop the spinning with our finger, whatever country we had landed on was blown up. That was how I first learned that most of the Earth's makeup is in fact water, because the vast majority of the casualties resulting from this game were reefs and fish. Side note, "pointing at a globe to see who dies" is rumored to be the military strategy for the Trump administrations' Secretary of Defense, James Mattis.
However, the game I remember most was one that my family played which I will call Find Your Name In the Credits. In this game, I, along with the other members of my family would fervently search through the credit reel at the end of a movie in search of my name in what can only be described as a post-film Purge, because if I did not find my first name (spelled exactly how I spell it) then the penalty was my hypothetical death. I will admit that having an easy name like Mark certainly has its advantages, my name is quick to write and easy to spell, However, do to the fact there is a similar sounding and much more common name, if I was not careful to articulate upon meeting someone for the first time, I can't tell you how many weeks of my life have been spent with new acquaintances calling me Matt. It's such a shame because names like Mark Mcgwire and Mark Zuckerberg are synonymous with originality and doing what ever it takes to win, whereas names like Matthew McConaughey and Matt LeBlanc make people think "Eh, maybe 10 years ago, but not now."
About a month ago, I was watching a Monday night football game between the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions and much to Jigsaw John Madden's delight, I decided to play a little game. During the player introductions I was going to pick a college and as the players said where they were from, if the college I had selected was said, I lived. Given Alabama's reputation for college football greatness in the past, I figured that they were a safe selection. The good news is, as sure as I am writing this before you today, I did live. The bad news, it was because of one player. One player! That means that despite all of the accolades and achievements at the collegiate level, much like the elementary school English teachers of Alabama, this football program is failing to prepare them for when it be matterin' mos'. So am I to believe that if you are suiting up for Nick Saban, then you will be no different from what they say to anybody else insofar as that they should enjoy college because it will likely be the best years of your life? Football and my little Death Row Intro are games, I get it, but really? Just one guy among two teams-worth of starters? Thumbs down to Alabama for using players as cogs in the machine and failing to prepare them for further greatness. As a little nugget here, Ohio State had three representatives and Washington and the University of Miami each had two. Way to go Alabama! In closing, this lack of representation at the elite level and coming up short and this years' championship have Alabama's new slogan perfectly summarized by a song performed by the band Alabama entitled "Close Enough to Perfect for Me." Way to go 'bama!
Final Flippin' Football Footnote Fun Fact Fact Check: After looking at an article on Bleacher Report, I discovered that the football program outsourcing most of its talent to the NFL is.......Alabama! So, as I sit back and am ferociously force-fed the rest of this rant reducing, practical point puncturing piece of humble pie, let's all be reminded that posting on the internet does not make someone an expert and claims should be verified through multiple credible sources before hitting the "post" button, because otherwise you may just end up divulging some very embarrassing, if not mildly sadistic parts of your past for anyone to read about.
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Clueless
The frequency with which I lose things in my house has basically turned my life into a live action game of Clue, except I'm always the one that did it.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Misquote
Hi, I'm Mark Woonton and these are top ten quotes and people who definitely didn't say them:
- "You miss every shot you don't take." - John Wilkes Booth
- "A penny saved is a penny earned." - Jeffrey Skilling
- "You had me at hello." - Simon Konecki
- "Be yourself, everyone else is already taken." - Bruce Jenner
- "So many books, so little time." - Captain Beatty
- "You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough." - Drake
- "I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying." - Kanye West
- "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present." - Santa Claus
- "If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything." - Caroline Marcil
- "Fairy tales are more than true! Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." - Michael Vick
Sunday, January 8, 2017
An Inspiration
There's nothing like watching a good inspiring sports movie. The speeches in Remember the Titans, the amazing on-ice action in Miracle. My favorite, however, is Rocky. Sitting through the disastrous dialogue in those movies makes me look at multi-million dollar actors and believe "Yeah, I could do that."
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Flexible Hours
Last night Amanda Nunes knocked out Ronda Rousey in 48 Seconds. When I have been at work in the kitchen for 48 seconds I haven't even gotten a single ticket for the breakfast orders. Then again, no one is trying to run around and punch me in the face (yet).
Sunday, December 18, 2016
How's My Driving?
I try my best not to compare myself to others. I've come to terms with the fact that while my brother was good at playing lacrosse and football, my skills were much more enhanced in areas such as handing people water or recalling the names and primary functions of the three branches of the United States government. It has dawned on me that if all the people on this planet were similar, then life would be boring and each day would be of a cookie-cutter variety with the same people doing the same thing at the same time.
Comparison can be lethal as we begin to focus on others instead of ourselves. I can't help but recall that picture of Olympic champion Michael Phelps cutting through the water with powerful strokes and the guy behind him looking directly at him. The caption reads "Winners focus on winning. Losers focus on winners." Let's all agree that it's a bit harsh to call the guy who took silver at the Olympics a loser. If I took home a silver medal, I would brag about that to everyone I knew, everyday for the rest of my life knowing that there's only one guy in the world who's going to top that story when the family gets together at Christmas and that guy is a whole continent away. Sadly, we seem to credit this guys' swimming prowess as much as we care about Bill Buckner's on base percentage or John Wilkes Booths' actor career.
So in that regard, it is important to focus on bettering yourself and looking straight ahead in your own lane. Another popular quote that I feel obligated to lob in here is "build your own dream or someone will hire you to build theirs. Unless you're Cobb from Inception, in which case you build a dream that causes your wife to lose touch with reality and jump off of a ledge, but cases such as that are few and far between." The point being this, until we master the ability to clone people, there only is or ever will be one of you to do the things that only you have been put in a position to do.
Now, I am going to dispense with all of this motivational sentimental crap and let my guard down for a moment and open the door for an intimate interaction between you and I as I share an area in my life where I can't help but shift my focus from self-improvement to crippling comparison.
When I'm driving down the road during a rainstorm, I can't help but notice how fast other people have their wipers going in comparison to mine. Sadly, pretty much the second that Mother Nature puts a single teardrop on my windshield, I have this nasty tendency to crank the wipers up to rotations per second akin to that of Usain Bolt's arms in the 100 meter sprint. Meanwhile, everyone around me seems to have more of a lighters during a power ballad kind of speed going on and I think to myself "I need to calm down." Unfortunately, while others see a minor inconvenience. I see the end of the world as we know it.
In closing, we all have our shortcomings. Maybe you don't exercise as much as you should. Maybe you are a Chicago Blackhawks fan. Maybe a pinch of precipitation causes you to send your windshield wipers into cycle rivaled only by that of the luggage in an overhead compartment on a turbulent flight. Again, I just ask that people remember "Winners focus on winning. Losers focus on memorizing the content of the 1935 fifteen hour filibuster by the appropriately named, Huey Long, on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Thank you very much.
Comparison can be lethal as we begin to focus on others instead of ourselves. I can't help but recall that picture of Olympic champion Michael Phelps cutting through the water with powerful strokes and the guy behind him looking directly at him. The caption reads "Winners focus on winning. Losers focus on winners." Let's all agree that it's a bit harsh to call the guy who took silver at the Olympics a loser. If I took home a silver medal, I would brag about that to everyone I knew, everyday for the rest of my life knowing that there's only one guy in the world who's going to top that story when the family gets together at Christmas and that guy is a whole continent away. Sadly, we seem to credit this guys' swimming prowess as much as we care about Bill Buckner's on base percentage or John Wilkes Booths' actor career.
So in that regard, it is important to focus on bettering yourself and looking straight ahead in your own lane. Another popular quote that I feel obligated to lob in here is "build your own dream or someone will hire you to build theirs. Unless you're Cobb from Inception, in which case you build a dream that causes your wife to lose touch with reality and jump off of a ledge, but cases such as that are few and far between." The point being this, until we master the ability to clone people, there only is or ever will be one of you to do the things that only you have been put in a position to do.
Now, I am going to dispense with all of this motivational sentimental crap and let my guard down for a moment and open the door for an intimate interaction between you and I as I share an area in my life where I can't help but shift my focus from self-improvement to crippling comparison.
When I'm driving down the road during a rainstorm, I can't help but notice how fast other people have their wipers going in comparison to mine. Sadly, pretty much the second that Mother Nature puts a single teardrop on my windshield, I have this nasty tendency to crank the wipers up to rotations per second akin to that of Usain Bolt's arms in the 100 meter sprint. Meanwhile, everyone around me seems to have more of a lighters during a power ballad kind of speed going on and I think to myself "I need to calm down." Unfortunately, while others see a minor inconvenience. I see the end of the world as we know it.
In closing, we all have our shortcomings. Maybe you don't exercise as much as you should. Maybe you are a Chicago Blackhawks fan. Maybe a pinch of precipitation causes you to send your windshield wipers into cycle rivaled only by that of the luggage in an overhead compartment on a turbulent flight. Again, I just ask that people remember "Winners focus on winning. Losers focus on memorizing the content of the 1935 fifteen hour filibuster by the appropriately named, Huey Long, on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Thank you very much.
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