Four Years In The Making

Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day. Twenty four hours from now I will be sitting in a movie theater at the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia, two hours into my nine hour Batman Trilogy experience. During this marathon I will witness Bruce Wayne’s transformation into the caped crusader, his fall from Gotham’s good graces and his return from seclusion to triumph over a new foe. Or maybe, just maybe, his tragic death. Only time will tell.

The Coug Nook

I apologize for the recent lack of posts. It looks like I’ll be doing about a post a week instead of one every other day. I just don’t seem have the spare time due to my recent employment! Yup, that’s right. I’m a working Coug now. Last Monday I began my career in social media and honestly, I couldn’t be happier. Originally I was frustrated, thinking that my social media manager duties would take a back seat as I learned the ins and outs of the coin business. But seeing that I was basically given free reign over whatever accounts I would run for them, I actually haven’t even had enough time to get everything accomplished. You’d be surprised how much time building community bases and driving engagement takes up out of an 8(+) hour day. In less than two weeks I already have our Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest accounts up and running, with a modest follower base. I even launched our first social media campaign yesterday, trading a free coin submission for a Facebook like, Twitter follow, or Google+ add. And a big thank you to all my friends who have followed our accounts. I can’t give you any rare coins, but I can give you a kick ass high five.

I love the feeling of being productive all day and actually getting paid to do something I love. The idea still blows my mind. I’m getting paid to do this! I’ve already become a regular at the Bedminster Starbucks and Bedminster Pizza and Subs (and foursquare Mayor of course haha). I’ve always wanted to go to a place so often that I can just order “the usual.” Because, you know, I’m a nerd.

I was hoping this post title would have a dual meaning so I could make some awesome link between The Dark Knight Rises being four years in the making since The Dark Knight and my love of social media also being four years in the making, but then I realized that I created my Twitter account in 2009 and not 2008. Oh well. This post is more about Batman anyway. There was only a three year gap between 2005’s Batman Begins and 2008’s The Dark Knight (both of which I saw in theaters multiple times), while The Dark Knight Rises has been four years in the making due to the filming of Inception (seriously though, I don’t think Nolan could make a bad film even if he tried. Insomnia was his worst and even that wasn’t that bad.)

As I give Hans Zimmer’s masterful The Dark Knight Rises Soundtrack a listen while writing this (leading up to another
screening of The Dark Knight later), I get hints of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, as well as a little Sherlock Holmes and even The Rock, which was also scored by Hans Zimmer. My favorite tracks so far are “Mind If I Cut In?”, “The Fire Rises”, “Nothing Out There”, and “No Stone Unturned” from the Bonus Digital Edition…which I….paid…for……. Overall this might be my second favorite of the three Hans Zimmer Batman scores, with Batman Begins being the undisputed masterpiece. I still owe this one a few more listens, but it looks like The Dark Knight will be a close third. The Batman Begins soundtrack was just so much more orchestral. It flowed together like a sweeping symphony that could easily be listened to on its own. TDK and TDKR are very obviously tied to individual scenes. Still Batman. Still Zimmer. Still amazing. No complaints.

So, after learning a bit more about The Dark Knight Rises’ plot since my last post. I think I can safely say that most of my predictions were way off base (though I’m sticking with my R’as & Talia ones). But I caught flak for not even mentioning Joseph Gordon Levitt’s character. The reason for this was that I just don’t think he’s going to be anything mindblowing or some big reveal. I actually thought he’d make a pretty good Riddler when we were all speculating about who the villains would be. After watching the previews over and over, I’m thinking that because Commissioner Gordon is tagged as a “War Time Hero” and “this is peace time,” that JGL’s character, John Blake, might be the choice to supplant Gordon as commish. Also while he does seem like a good fit for Robin, Nolan has said numerous times that there would be no Robin in his Batman films.

But here’s what I’m thinking. On Nolan’s IMDB page, it had previously said he was on board as producer for an untitled Batman reboot project. Do you remember the WB series Batman Beyond? Where an elderly Bruce Wayne mentors the next Batman? Well it was freaking awesome and you should check it out if you’ve never seen it. But either way, I believe Bruce is going to be riddled with injuries through most of this film and probably even more so after he takes down Bane (if he doesn’t die). The possibility is there for Bruce Wayne to hang up his cape and cowl and pass them on to a younger successor, John Blake.

Obviously this is all speculation, but I think it’d be pretty damn cool. But for those of you seeing The Dark Knight Rises tomorrow at midnight, you and your friends better batten down the hatches, because there’s a storm coming Mr. Wayne.

Stranger In a Strange Land

First off, Merry Half-Christmas to all you Workaholics fans! I hope the egg nog is flowing and your sweater is nice and festive.

Three weeks ago I had to move back to my parents house for the first time in over two years. I had been a full time grad student with off and on employment in the planning & economic development field, but none of those jobs materialized into something full time. Unfortunately, my apartment lease was up at the end of May (Pro tip: be sure to read through your entire lease just in case your complex throws in some clause like you have to give them 60 days notice that you’re moving out. Otherwise, you’ll probably lose your entire security deposit…Not that it happened to me or anything.) and I’ve been unable to find a full time job in either social media or planning. Not for lack of trying though, since I’ve sent out over 70 applications since the end of April. Out of those seventy I’ve gotten seven phone or in-person interviews (ironically all in social media related positions, none in planning). That works out to a .100 batting average, so if I were playing baseball I’d probably be optioned to AAA, unless I was Adam Dunn. So like the Dunnkey, the idea is for one of those seven hits to be a home run. Maybe I just can’t fake enthusiasm for a planning job, since the prospect of landing a job in a field I’ve grown to dislike depresses me. Plus, I don’t have to fake anything in my social media cover letters or interviews since I’m sincerely passionate about it.

Honestly, I’m very confident in my ability to land a job soon (maybe delusionally so), and I guess you could say that I’m too proud to take any part time job in the mean time (especially if it meant crawling back to TD Bank). Needless to say money is tight. Anyway, being back home I sort of feel like a stranger. Being an only child, but never really spoiled, I have to say that my parents and I don’t always get along. The fact that our house is very small probably doesn’t help either. In addition, the majority of my friends no longer live at home. Most have moved to New York or other far off locations, and the ones that are home I don’t end up seeing all that often. Because of this I spend a lot of my time trying to stay out of my house and keep sane. It’s not easy. For instance, my mom has been teaching art classes out of our house for about ten years now. Normally she teaches several one hour classes a week, which means on any given day there are kids coming in and out of my house. Over the summer it’s even worse, since she teaches week long art camps for 3-4 hours a day. So during these camps, my house is overrun by children. It’s like Lord of the Flies up in here. I’m considering organizing some sort of Hunger Games to weed out the weak ones. To make matters worse, a couple years ago my father found out he could basically work from home, despite our house not having any sort of office. I don’t think he’s been to his actual office in over a year, and instead has taken over our dining room. Because of how small our house is, it has pretty much been monopolized by my mother’s art classes and my father and his conference calls for the majority of the day, driving me into my room or out of the house for some sort of sanctuary. Luckily my friend is letting me use his roommate’s MLB.tv, plus Wimbledon just started (Novak repeat!), so I can fill a lot of the void with sports.

On days I can’t fill with sports, I’ve been shacking up at the local coffee shop (try the Iced Matcha Green Tea) and pretending I’m writing the great American screenplay. Today I’m trying to stay out of the house until at least 4 PM. So until then I’ve been managing my social media, turntabling in the Coug Lounge and following up on some job applications. I actually followed up with some on Friday at around 4:30 PM, as if anyone would be checking their e-mail on a Friday at 4:30 PM. I’m pretty excited to finally be seeing The Avengers tonight, since I haven’t really had anyone to see it with. I might try to watch Thor, Captain America, or both before I go as a refresher. Both of which were much better than I had expected, but I went into both with pretty low expectations.

Banana & Almond Butter Stuffed French Toast

My friend Kenny and I had a delightful, totally hetero, non-bougie brunch at The Garden Gourmet in Clinton. It’s a pretty new breakfast spot/cafe that I’ve been meaning to try out, plus it’s right along the river and you can eat outside. It’s pretty much the most Brooklyn thing we have in Clinton. I ordered french toast stuffed with bananas and almond butter, which obviously I spotted on Foodspotting. It was pretty delicious, minus the fact that the french toast was a little chewier than french toast should probably be, but that might have been the bread they used. Also, the service was pretty slow for only having us and one other table. That wouldn’t have been a problem, other than the fact that my friend only had 45 minutes for his lunch. I’ll definitely be stopping by again though. The menu looked delicious.

That’ll be all for now. I guess I’ll try to get some real work done before my Avengers marathon. Have to pick up a Mike & Gian sticker from Sub Base too.