For you newbie’s who skipped part alpha and went straight here to part deaux (whatever the hell that means) the following are my vitals. I’m a 17 year old Christian white guy born on July 1. I’ve been dating my girlfriend for about two years. She is a freshman in college and a dancer. I am an Eagle Boy Scout (the highest honor they give out). I’ve had my license since February 3rd, which means I’m not allowed to transport any persons younger than 25 without a 25 year old licensed in’duh’vidual* in the vehicle until I turn 18 this summer. Oh well. I am a senior at Orange County High School of the Arts, a charter school in Santa Ana. I am a musical theatre major which means that I sing songs, act…um…actions, and dance dances. I’m glad that made sense.

Another fun fact is that last August I paid a doctor to cut out the crack of my ass and sew it back up. Not that I had a choice in the matter, for you see I was afflicted by a rare genetic disease that formed these “pits” in my crack and growth of hair in my crack would be forced into the “pits” and cause infection, so I had to have it removed. That was certainly fun. If you really want any other juicy tidbits, you’ll have to read part alpha.

I love comic books. I’m also surprised that I never mentioned my love of comic books before. See, it all started when I walked into a Sav-on in Yosemite and picked up FLASH #138, the conclusion of the 3-part story Human Race. Ever since then I have slowly but surely increased my comic wares, expanding my sights to such lovely titles as GREEN LANTERN (GO KYLE!), GREEN ARROW (Yea, Kevin Smith!), AQUAMAN (post-Obsidian Age), SPECTRE (the fate of Hal Jordan, former Green Lantern), DEADMAN (he’s a dead guy that can posses others, what’s not to love), JLA (Obsidian Age Crisis and beyond), BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHTS (just to find out if Bane is Bruce Wayne’s illegitimate brother), and BATMAN (just for the HUSH storyline by Jim Lee and Jeph Loeb). However, my favorite comic is FLASH, with GREEN LANTERN my 2nd favorite and JLA my 3rd. FLASH is the story of Wally West who, as a teenager, was accidentally bathed in electrified chemicals and granted the power of super speed. He has since gone to “heaven” and back in the TERMINAL VELOCITY storyline (by Mark Waid the ultimate comic book writer) and all for love. That’s what’s great about this series…it’s a love story between Wally West and his now wife (the marriage took almost 12 episodes because she was pulled out of the time-stream and erased from everyone’s memories by one of the Flash’s many enemies, nicknamed ROGUES) Linda Park.

Besides comics, I also love the Game Boy Advance game series (there be two of them now) Golden Sun. This innovative RPG tells the fantastical story of a wayward world called Weyward (yes I planned the irony of that sentence) where Alchemy is a golden power that has been locked away and is now destroying the world. In the first game, you battle against those trying to unlock alchemy, and you fail. Then in the second game you learn the imminent threat of destruction and strive to unlock alchemy. It is incredibly well orchestrated and played. Buy it now. Just kidding.

The other thing I do besides play video games and read comic books is read books. Series I enjoy include Left Behind by LaHaye and Jenkins; Animorphs by K.A. Applegate; Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling; Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer; Chuck Palahniuk (who wrote Fight Club, which gets a 10 out of 10 on my Book-to-Movie transfer scale, which includes flops [relatively speaking] like Dreamcatcher [ooh, I’ll explain that one in a minute] and home runs like Lord of the Rings), and anything by Tom Clancy, John Grisham or Michael Crichton.

Here’s my thing with Dreamcatcher. I had yet to even think of Stephen King as an interesting author for he only wrote horror books, which can’t scare you like horror films where things go . . . . PAGH***! You know? Well then I saw the trailer for the movie version of Dreamcatcher and was instantly intrigued. So I asked my dad to pick up the book for me. I absorbed the book the way plants absorb sunlight. It was fantastic. After finishing the book, there was a letter from the author that said that book was therapeutic for King because he wrote it while he was recovering from his accident (you know, the one where a drunk driver hit him in plain daylight [or something of that nature]). The book, coupled with this note, made me feel great. Every word conveyed to me the healing energies that flowed through King. With this in mind I eagerly attended a viewing of the movie . . . and was eagerly turned off. It was a straight horror flick, complete with jumps, and completely without any of the therapeutic energies. This Pissed me OFF!! It did have some great actors, including one of my favs, Timothy Olyphant****, along with wonderful Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore. Nifty special efx, but again, that wasn’t what I was there for.

Getting back to books, I also read any random authors I become enticed by. These have included: Gregory Maguire’s “Wicked”, David Klass’s “You Don’t Know Me”, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and Cat’s Cradle (this one actually brought about by Al Pacino and “The Recruit” with Colin Farrell [I loved “Phone Booth”, yea for an old Hitchcock plot]). I also order from those silly Scholastic Book Order forms that your elementary teachers handed out, but not very often. This got me even more books to read. I read at a frightening pace and you should be very scared. Just kidding! Well, I think that this just about wraps up this chapter’s insanity. Stay tuned for the next one . . . in a couple of years! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Sorry.

*Hallelujah for Scott Adams, DNRC**, and Dilbert.

**Dogbert’s New Ruling Class – No Idiots Allowed

*** That’s a Klingon curse word. I don’t know what it means. I don’t speak Klingon.

****Catch Timmy as Hollywood Jack in Vin Diesel’s cop drama “A Man Apart”