Ryan j Budke

I just finished watching Undeclared again on DVD from Netflix. For those that missed it, and considering it barely lasted half a season on Fox back in 2001/02 I’m going to assume that’s everyone, it was Judd Apatow’s television series that followed up his equally brilliant Freaks & Geeks, and followed a group of friends through their freshmen year of college. I find myself laughing at the experiences and situations, but definitely from a with them instead of at them mentality. Everyone knew someone with the girlfriend or boyfriend that they had in high school that didn’t last two weeks in college. Or the slacker who never went to classes. Or the mysterious roommate that you didn’t even realize you had.

I’m happy I watched both Undeclared and Freaks & Geeks for the first time AFTER I had become a fan of Jason Segel from How I Met Your Mother, because I don’t think I would have been able to look at him the same on that show. He’s very good at playing the slightly creepy, and too needy boyfriend on both. Hopefully that should make him a natural in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the new film by Apatow’s crew where he plays *drumroll* a slightly obsessive ex-boyfriend. See? Full circle.

So after a lot of traveling and being under the weather, which meant a whole lot of not doing anything, our apartment is probably the messiest it’s ever been. That’s saying something too. I’ve been spending most of the day trying to get my room in order, and it’s just about there. I plan on buying a new bed in a few weeks, and I need the room, so I decided to throw out a bunch of random clutter that I had.

I guess to this wasn’t a tedious enough task so I decided to watch American Gangster and Gone Baby Gone to help lighten the mood. A well thought out plan.

Marvel Comics big summer crossover event, Secret Invasion, started today. Wow. Brian Michael Bendis is the writer and has had the benefit of being on contract with Marvel for the past few years. This allowed him to plant the seeds of this story throughout the tapestry of the Marvel universe, and boy did it pay off today.

The basic premise is that after many years of being cosmically and karmically shat on, the alien race of the Skrulls have decided that they’re more or less owed Earth. Since they’re able to not only shapeshift, but also mimic superpowers, they’ve replace many of Marvel’s most prominent and powerful beings, sowing distrust and setting themselves up in places of influence. Leaving Earth ripe for the pickin’.

I don’t want to talk about specifics, but it had more than a couple “what the f*$%!!!” moments and left the landscape radically change after only this first issue. Again, this was only the first of eight main issues, with many more spinoffs, one-shots and crossunders to follow. I can’t wait. It felt very much like a season finale for a great TV show, but luckily we only have to wait a few weeks to get the next issue, not three months. I love comic books.

I’ve been reading a few books by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Buddhist monk, and I came across a passage today in Peace Is Every Step that really struck a chord with me.

One day, I offered a number of children a basket filled with tangerines. The basket was passed around, and each child took one tangerine and put it in his or her palm. We each looked at our tangerine, and the children were invited to meditate on its origins. With some guidance, they began to visualize the blossoms in the sunshine and in the rain. Then they saw petals falling down and the tiny green fruit appear. The sunshine and the rain continued and the tiny tangerine grew. Now someone has picked it and the tangerine is here. After seeing this, each child was invited to peel the tangerine slowly, noticing the mist and the fragrance of the tangerine, and then bring it up to his or her mouth and have a mindful bite, in full awareness of the texture and taste of the fruit and the juice coming out. We ate slowly like that.

This story reminded me of when I was younger and would watch Mr. Rogers, or Sesame Street when they would take a visit to some big factory or show you the behind the scenes of how something worked and how cool those episodes were. I specifically remember Mr. Rogers visiting a crayon factory (which was particularly awesome because of all the bright colors and mess) and then later that day looking at my crayons and thinking how awesome it was knowing how they got there. I don’t know what I did after that because I can’t draw for shit, but it was cool knowing how the crayon had come to be.

Granted, it’s much easier to get into the state of amazement as a child, but I’ve been slowing down and trying to appreciate everything a little bit more today. I wish I could have found the crayon video, but most of the Mr. Rogers videos on YouTube are all prank call vids, so here’s a random episode that I found.

Mr. Rogers