A swift flight amongst stars unknown.
A swirl of deep red in the most comfortable seat above the clouds.
The solace of Home is one I'd rather miss
than shackle myself to all that has come and passed before.
The sweet sight of continents rising
from barren horizons.
Forgotten so quickly, those universes that stop at the mat of our doors.
Yearning again to step beyond the threshold of my content.
I remain. Forever restless here.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Home from Russia
Finally the wheels of the gargantuan Boeing 767 were back on the runway. The plane was late. The passengers were furious, their faces tinged a sharp red, derived directly from a devilish mix of displeasure and the absence of any sort of circulation for the past 21 hours. A mumbled and ingenuous 'Welcome to Chicago' purred from scratchy speakers above, once in English and then again in Russian. The Captain's monotonous explanation that it was 'not yet safe to remove your seat belt', was ignored completely as the un-clicking and un-buckling in the back cabin rebelled against his somewhat turbulently tainted cockpit authority.
When the plane came to a stop at C14, a scurried frenzy of commotion began. As everyone around him bustled through overhead bins and checked their pockets for phones and wallets, Jeff remained motionless in the sophistication of his business class seat. He stared aimlessly out of his window at the ground staff surrounding the plane. They were moving stiffly through the snow-mixed wind, bundled under layers of heavy coats, hats and over-sized mittens. One man, possibly a woman (it was difficult to tell), was waving flashing orange sticks towards the front of the plane in some rhythmically premeditated pattern. Jeff realized he was staring but thought there was no way the he-she glow stick bearer would ever know. Plus, in his somewhat drunken state, he didn't really care. Jeff was 4 hours late, had undoubtedly missed all of the connections to Minneapolis, and, just 6 days before, had met the most beautiful girl he'd ever know... and left her in Moscow.
When the plane came to a stop at C14, a scurried frenzy of commotion began. As everyone around him bustled through overhead bins and checked their pockets for phones and wallets, Jeff remained motionless in the sophistication of his business class seat. He stared aimlessly out of his window at the ground staff surrounding the plane. They were moving stiffly through the snow-mixed wind, bundled under layers of heavy coats, hats and over-sized mittens. One man, possibly a woman (it was difficult to tell), was waving flashing orange sticks towards the front of the plane in some rhythmically premeditated pattern. Jeff realized he was staring but thought there was no way the he-she glow stick bearer would ever know. Plus, in his somewhat drunken state, he didn't really care. Jeff was 4 hours late, had undoubtedly missed all of the connections to Minneapolis, and, just 6 days before, had met the most beautiful girl he'd ever know... and left her in Moscow.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Pick-Up Games w/ Black Guys
I love playing basketball with black guys. It's so much more entertaining than playing with the whites. When a white guy makes a shot in a pick-up basketball game it's nothing special. He turns, runs back to get on defense, and doesn't say much.
When a black guy makes a shot, it's a show! He'll pound his chest, point to God, and run down the court backwards shouting something that makes little to no sense...
'Don't you eat that broccoli on Thuuuursdays!'
'Don't you eat that broccoli on Thursdays y'all!'
When a black guy makes a shot, it's a show! He'll pound his chest, point to God, and run down the court backwards shouting something that makes little to no sense...
'Don't you eat that broccoli on Thuuuursdays!'
'Don't you eat that broccoli on Thursdays y'all!'
Friday, January 13, 2012
2011
My 2011
2011 started perfectly. Amanda and I celebrated the stroke of midnight at Kenny’s where there was a healthy crowd of good friends. We both got our ‘Rabbit Rabbit’ in at midnight (if you don’t know what that is... google it). The real beauty of new years, however, came on new years day when we joined a small gathering at Brian Crawford’s to watch another epic Northwestern bowl game failure. Luke Aiura and I decided shortly after said loss to intoxicate ourselves off of Brian’s famous Bloody Marys. We accomplished that mission fairly easily. Then, around 4pm something incredible happened that would change a few of our lives forever. Balderdash was discovered. For those who don’t know, Balderdash is a board game of lying, bluffing, absurdity and awesomeness. A few people started playing upstairs and it wasn’t long before Luke, Max, Goose, Marie, Megan, Amanda, Crawford and I were ‘dashing’ into the wee morning hours. We played from 4pm-3am and probably would have kept going if Amanda and I didn’t have to catch a 6am flight back to LA. It was an epic day, though, as you keep reading, you will discover that to be a common theme in 2011
In January of 2011, a passion for entrepreneurship blossomed in my life. I had been encouraged by a venture capitalist that I had met on a golf course to begin developing a business plan for an idea that I had: a website that allowed users to share short video content that they had captured on their mobile devices. Thus, the project, I so lovingly named Zippings, was born.
Later in January, Joe Shields came to LA and invited Amanda and I to a party at Jonathan Elist’s house, a friend of his whose family is from Beverly Hills. It was there that I met Jon and my new friend Rachel Eisenberg who quickly became two of my favorite people. Shortly thereafter, Jon became my business partner for Zippings. He was genuinely excited about the idea and has a great mind for new business ventures so it just kind of made sense that he would get involved. For those people who don’t know Jon, he is a tall, Persian Jew with very afro-potential hair who is currently getting a joint graduate degree at Stanford and Harvard. He is one of the most intriguing and engaging people I have met and it didn’t take me long after meeting him to realize that I had found a life long friend (BFF’s).
I made a conscious decision in January to start doing a lot more of the things that I love. One of those things that had been missing for some time motorcycle riding, so Amanda and I went down to Manhattan Beach and bought a 1976 Honda CB360T Blue motorcycle. I was impressed with how quickly Amanda was willing to ride on the back with me having never been on the back of a motorcycle before. The first day after buying the bike, we took our first big trip across the canyons to Malibu and up onto the Pepperdine campus to watch the sunset. Unfortunately that meant that we had to ride back in the dark and on the way we ran out of fuel. We had to walk it along a pretty deserted canyon road nearly 2 miles before we got gas and got it running again. Overall, it was a solid trip.
I should mention that the motorcycle changed my life while I was in LA. Even though I only had it there for a few short months, some of the drives to Malibu, Pasadena on the 134 and up on Mulholland drive were absolutely breathtaking and I regret not having bought a bike in California earlier. It really made me appreciate what a beautiful place we were living in. Amanda and I went for a ride almost every chance that we got... often to go eat dinner at Chili’s.
It wasn’t long after starting Zippings that I decided that I was going to leave Covidien to pursue that and to pursue stand-up comedy a bit more aggressively. I tried to save up money for an exit date sometime in the spring. Though the Covidien stuff is the least important part of the 2011 story, I did have the opportunity to do some cool things in my closing months. In February, I hosted the country’s first Mobile Single Incision Surgery Tour, where an 18-Wheeler came to one of my accounts and inside had a full lab and lecture room where one of my surgeons was teaching people how to do an entire surgery through the belly button. This was a high visibility event and a huge organizational undertaking so I was glad to have it go off without a hitch.
In February I had laser eye surgery. Awesome decision, as this was a life-changing event. It hurt for the first day and I thought something had gone wrong but I just took the drugs I was given and Amanda babied me. We put on the Big Lebowski and I just kept my eye’s closed and visualized it scene for scene. After a few days, I was seeing 20/20. The weirdest part was getting used to not wearing contacts, which I had been doing since I was in 7th grade (glasses since 5th). Every night before bed for the first few weeks, I would reach for my eyes to pull out contacts that weren’t there. After a while, my brain finally got the point.
In March, I announced that I was leaving Covidien. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done as the company was very good to me. I told my manager that I would be leaving and we decided that April 6th would be a good last day, which was nice because my lease ended April 1st anyway. I sent out a mass email to all my friends in the organization to tell them I was leaving. The second I hit ‘send’ I burst into tears. Almost immediately my inbox was flooded with well wishes from people I will never forget.
In the lame-duck period between when I announced I was leaving and my actual last day, Amanda and I did a few road trips to Vegas. One of the things we both liked about LA was how short of a drive it was to get there. We would often go to do spa days together at the M and visit our close friends the Gulleys who have an 20-month old daughter, Grace. On one of the trips I had the opportunity to meet and play some high-stakes blackjack with Dean Sloan, who was one of the original founders of AutoTrader.com and now was a partner in a venture capital firm. He has been and will continue to be a consultant and potential investor in any startup that Jon and I pursue together.
In March, we did a Vegas trip with another couple, Zack and Jess Lively who had been 2 of our closest friends in LA. One of the nights we were there, we went out to Moon, a club at the Palms and I got a little drunk and did a little crying because I was ‘sad to be leaving the Livelys’. When a large black bouncer came to kick us out, I told him ‘Listen brother....just let us stay and have a drink with out friends’. Luckily he was a softie and let us stay for a minute with the tears still flowing... easily could have gone the other way.
The lease on our apartment ended April 1st so Amanda and I sold all the furniture and packed a minivan (to the brim) with the rest of our stuff and drove to Chicago. It was actually one of the most beautiful and peaceful experiences I’ve ever had. In 2008, when we graduated college, Joe Shields, Kenny McCormick and I had taken a road trip west across the U.S. but Amanda and I took a different route (15 up through Vegas and Utah, 70 across to Denver, 80 home). Driving through Utah looks a lot like what I imagine driving on Mars would look like. There are these big weird, multi-colored rock formations jutting into the sky everywhere you look. In Utah, Amanda definitely got sick of me yelling, ‘Wow! Look at that’. The drive on 70 through the Rockies was a different kind of incredible. I marveled at the train tracks that seemed to just hang on for dear life as they weaved their way through breathtaking snow-capped peaks. Amanda and I stopped along the way at the house I lived in from ages 1-5 in Pine Junction, Colorado. I was surprised how familiar it all was to me.... Amanda was too. Then we drove on home through Nebraska and Iowa. For those who have done that before, I don’t have to tell you how bad it sucks.
April 6th came and even though it represented the beginning of a new life, I was still sad. It certainly was tough sitting with my manager who relieved me of a blackberry, ipad, corporate credit card, computer, and 2011 Subaru Legacy (not to mention the six figure salary and benefits). Nonetheless, 3 hours later I was up in Palo Alto with Jon for a few business meetings. I quickly got over it.
In April, my sister Andrea got married down in Florida so Amanda and I went down there to go to the wedding. First, we spent a day at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure with my Dad because I wanted to show them both the Harry Potter World (Since I had made Amanda watch all 7, now 8 movies... and because my Dad really likes rides). The next day we drove up from Orlando to the wedding, which was in a small town that I can’t remember the name of on a lake that I can’t remember the name of. We stayed at a hotel on said lake and it quickly became one of the worst hotel experiences of my life. The reason: bugs. Apparently it was some sort of mating season for these little tiny bugs in that area and they were everywhere. I am not kidding when I say that there were literally a billion bugs in that hotel complex...My sister was supposed to have her wedding outside at that hotel, but the bugs were so bad that we ended up having the ceremony in the hotel bar. I don’t want to have to keep on the bug theme, but it is necessary to explain the gravity of the situation. Amanda and I had a room that faced the water. When we would get out of our car from having gone somewhere, we would have to hold our breath until we got into the room. The door was always fully covered (picture Robin Williams chest) with these bugs, so when you opened it, you were inevitably going to let in about 1200-2000 at a time... then we had to sleep in there!! The whole situation was fucked (sorry) beyond belief. It was good to see my family though.
In that same Florida trip, I tried to take Amanda snorkeling at this place I had been before in West Palm Beach. To get in the water you have to climb in off of these massive slippery boulders, but once you do, the snorkeling is incredible. It was Amanda’s 1st attempt at snorkeling and I was incredibly happy that she was trying something that I really like to do. The problem was, it was the wrong spot for a beginner. We got in the water successfully, with fins, mask and all but once you are in, you are in: the bottom is not touchable (maybe 20 feet down). There were boats passing by creating some waves, which was difficult since Amanda was just trying to get acclimated to snorkeling for the first time. When she put her head under water, she could not breathe out of her mask so she panicked (naturally) we had to get out of the water about as quickly as we had gotten in. I thought that it was because Amanda was just sucking as a person and got pretty upset but then when I found out that the mask legitimately didn’t work then I realized that I was sucking as a person. Anyway, with one working mask between us, she gave it to me and I did a bit of snorkeling by myself (not fun when you know that your significant other is just sitting on the rocks). After about 5 minutes, I decided to try and persuade Amanda to come in to a more shallow area where I would just hold her and she could put her head in. So I stood up on a boulder in the water while she put on her fins and the working mask on a slightly higher rock.
Then, a boat passed.
A big boat.
I watched as a wave about 15 feet tall began to make it’s way towards us and I got pretty scared. When the wave got closer, I yelled to Amanda to get up further on the rocks, knowing full well what was about to happen. A couple of seconds later, the wave hit and I went flying, straight into the side of a large boulder. I instantly felt pain shoot throughout my entire body. Luckily, I hit the rock with my forearm... if it had been my head, I most certainly would have died. Pulled under water, I had only one thought...Amanda. There was not a doubt in my mind that if she had been hit by that wave and pulled under in the same way that I was, she would not have survived, especially since I would not have been able to get to her. Finally, after several seconds under water, I got my bearings and was just praying that I would see what I ended up seeing when I put my head above the water: Amanda, sitting up high on a rock that the wave had not hit. Thank God. I don’t know what else to say except that I’ve never felt closer to death, not on a motorcycle, not jumping out of a plane, never. We got away with that one.
Life got crazy between April and June. It was time to ‘do’ and I ‘did’. I was flying around the country every other day, visiting friends, meeting with Jon and conducting interviews to try and find a CTO. I had all my stuff in St. Charles at home but I was rarely there.
Since my motorcycle was still in LA, there was the dilemma of how to get it home. For a while I was convinced that I’d like to try and drive it across the country but was talked out of that by my mom who didn’t want her son on the open road with just a back pack and a motorcycle that was 35 years old. Understandable. I did, however, fly back to LA and drive the bike to Vegas. It was a tough drive that took over 6 hours with over 6 stops for fuel. The wind itself almost got me killed a few times, so I am certainly glad I didn’t attempt the cross-country trip. We just ended up shipping the bike home.
In May, I took a trip to with two of my best friends, Josh Gulley and Courtney Goodwin. We flew out on my mom’s passes to Madrid on Aer Lingus, rented a car and drove to Portugal. We stayed in Lisbon for two nights, which was a crazy party city and found ourselves out at the clubs each night. This is where we met Simon, an arms dealer who must have thought we looked like we wanted to buy weapons because he wouldn’t leave us alone. He would routinely ask, ‘How much does a 9mm cost in the United States?’ and then would proceed to tell us that he could get us one for a lot cheaper. At one of the clubs, we made Portuguese natives feel guilty for not letting us cut the line by saying,
‘Hey, do you speak German?’
When they would say ‘no’ we would say ‘You’re welcome’.
I’m not sure how I feel about this in retrospect, but at the time we thought it was a pretty good argument and funny.
After Lisbon, we drove south and stayed in a couple of the more quiet beach towns on the southern coast of Portugal. We continued on and drove through southern Spain. I had really wanted to show Josh and Courtney the small city of Ronda as it still to this day remains the most beautiful place I have ever traveled to. The city is built up on these massive cliffs and looks like something straight out of Lord of the Rings. When we got there, we took a lot of pictures (and short mobile video!) and had dinner at a restaurant on the edge of a giant cliff. We only stayed for a few hours and then made the short drive down to Malaga, which is a beautiful city on the southern coast of Spain. In Malaga, we went to a nude beach where I decided to do a little skinny-dipping in the Mediterranean. It was very refreshing and peaceful until another naked gentlemen in his 70’s came out to me and got very close. I actually would have been okay with the interaction if I hadn’t felt a little bit like he was gay and if it had been easier to understand his Spanish. After Malaga we drove to Madrid and spent one incredible evening there where we partied until 6, slept for a half hour and then caught a flight home in the morning. We all got to sit in 1st class, which was really awesome after such a whirlwind trip.
Sometime in May, I decided that I needed to break up with Amanda as it was too much not having her around and doing all of the traveling that I was. It was not an easy decision, but the time apart really helped me realize what a blessing she is and as of December, we are back together in a relationship that is stronger than ever.
In May, I also bought a new motorcycle: A 1973 Honda CB350 Scrambler. It was a beautiful red motorcycle and I really loved it. It died beyond repair later in the summer so I sold it to a dad who wanted to rebuild the engine with his son. For the couple months that I did have it, I had a great time riding that bike into the city at night. I remember specifically one warm summer night, I was on the highway during a lightening storm. There was no rain, just me, open road, and brilliant flashes above the Chicago skyline. The other bike I sold to my mom, so by the end of the summer I had gone from having 2 motorcycles to no motorcycles. Sad.
On June 2nd, Andy and I hosted a stand-up comedy show called ‘Kirk Sells & Andy Hobaugh, Live at the United Center... Just kidding, it’s at Nevin’s’ It was my first real show after having left Covidien and I think people really enjoyed it. I felt comfortable and could tell that my delivery was getting a lot better. I told a couple of jokes about living at home with my mom (coming home to her crying to Undercover Boss episodes & her 3-minute long voicemails about nothing) and a few jokes about my penis... pretty typical stuff. Andy performed very well and so did Nigel Ng who opened for us. It was a really wonderful night and I was thankful for all the support of the people who came out.
In June, I also went to visit Brent in Vegas. For a few months, he had been teaching me a bit more about playing poker successfully (a goal of mine) and so I played in two of the smaller events in the World Series of Poker. I actually played very well in the first tournament, with an impressive amount of patience and by utilizing a lot of the things Brent had taught me but I had a couple of bad beats and didn’t end up being as conservative as I needed to be when I had a good amount of chips in front of me. I didn’t end up making day 2 in either event but I really enjoyed the experience and wouldn’t trade it for anything.
For my birthday (6/27), I coordinated a golf outing with my close friends at my favorite golf course, Oak Grove out in Harvard, IL. My mom made this event really special as she helped organize prizes and goodie bags for everyone and did a great job running around the golf course making sure everyone had enough Beer. It was a really incredible way to celebrate a birthday, even though I didn’t play that well. Joe Shields had flown out for the event and when we got back to Chicago that night, Jon Elist was waiting for us. We went to Kingston Mines, per the usual, and continued the party... all in all, an epic way to turn 25.
Early July was a weird time. Monica came back to Chicago and we hung out a few times. It was the first time we had seen one another in 2 years and I think it was a little emotionally confusing for both of us since we were such an important part of one another’s lives for so long. It was really great to reconnect with her and her family while she was home and I genuinely enjoyed the time we spent together taking a few motorcycle trips and hanging out in the city. I definitely felt like it gave me a lot of the closure that I had never felt I got when we broke up in 2008.
On July 3rd, ‘I got hamboned at a Matt Bogusz 4th of July party’. I’d tell you more about that experience, but some of my close friends seem to think that description suffices.
It might seem silly, but an important part of my life these past 10-12 years had been Harry Potter. I found the whole story to be very magical (duh) and it inspired some sort of incredible joy within me that I couldn’t really explain. I only read 3 of the books because I wanted to keep being surprised during the films and I was very anxious to see the final movie that came out in July. I went to the midnight show with Monica (fitting because we both loved the series together). Then a few days later, I flew out to Connecticut to see it again with Amanda (also fitting because we both love the series together). I thought the movie was perfect in every way and I got pretty emotional knowing that the story was over, almost like a chapter of my life was closing along with it.
In July, I started waiting tables at Chili’s again (I had done this in college for 3 years). This time I worked at the location in Skokie, IL, which is the 2nd busiest Chili’s in the country. I had forgotten how much I really did enjoy that job and had a great time doing it over the summer, though the commute from St. Charles was awful. I made a couple of new friends working at that Chili’s, one of which was Rudy, a 40-year old Colombian ex-cokehead with a very transcendentalist view on the world and religion. I very much enjoyed meeting him and we had some pretty awesome conversations. A few other friends I made were, Pahroul, an Indian/something-else girl who was like the Pam to my Jim, minus the sexual tension and Jess, a bartender/stoner/die-hard PHISH fan who had an incredibly positive influence on me and made a hell of a virgin Bloody Mary.
I did end up transferring to the downtown Chili’s in November, which was a big mistake. The clientele sucked balls and a $0 tip on a $70 dollar check was a very common occurrence that you just had to get used to. I once waited on a group of black girls who each had 3 or 4 of our $8 margaritas and then when one girl saw that gratuity had been added to their check, exclaimed,
‘how am I supposed to go home and feed my baby if I have to pay you this much?’ (Not an exaggeration, misquotation, or joke). I felt bad that the $4 she had to pay for my service caused her infant to starve.
I did have to quit this job in December in order to retain any hope of ever being psychologically normal in my adult life. My heart goes out to everyone who still works there... Especially Anthony, Courtney & Spencer.
Sometime in July, I got a text message from Ryan Cabrera, (who had been a 30%friend70%acquaintance of mine in L.A) that invited me to a show he was playing in Schaumburg. Having been to a few of the shows, I was pretty excited to go as I actually do really enjoy his music and he always has us backstage to do some drinking before and after I brought Monica, Kinga & Ryan with me and I think at first they we’re probably a little like ‘how did we possibly find ourselves transported back to 2003: backstage at a Ryan Cabrera concert?’ But by the end of the night, they were like ‘I’m really glad we got to go back stage at a Ryan Cabrera concert’. It was a fun night with a ton of drinking, a lot of dancing and it ended with Monica passing out on Kinga’s couch at like 5am while Ryan, Kinga & I all sat out on the porch and sang the acoustic versions of ‘Oregon, Trail Bitch’ and some song we made up about vaginas.
In July, I did write a children’s book with the hope of collaborating with my friend Mike Swanson who does incredible drawings. The book is called ‘Jeffrey and the Mustachioed Pistachio’. I think the concept is great, but to be fair... it is a long story, I don’t know what age group to target it towards, and Mike didn’t end up drawing anything, so it was kind of a bust. I was proud, however, to have finished it.
In the middle of July, I went to go visit Max, Goose, Dave Marshall, & Meg in Buenos Aires for 72 hours. They had been traveling quite a bit in South America and this was their last stop before returning home to the States. Since I love that flight (767 First Class) and that country, it was a no-brainer. We had a great time, though I had no idea that I would be the one making suggestions for what we did and where we would go (based on my brief cumulative experience of having been there once for a few days with Slava and again for 12 hours to watch Argentina play Germany in the 2010 World Cup) We did a bit of malbec drinking, searched desperately for the Sabor 5 (a burger king burger that has 5 patties of beef, with cheese between each patty and bacon on top) and I smoked my first cigarette.... well, my first pack of cigarettes (go big or go home) with a rambunctious group of Argentines after watching ‘Tevez!’ blow the penalty shootout in Argentina’s COPA America match.
In the middle of July, I moved from home to live in the Evans Scholars house at Northwestern for 6 weeks. I was doing it illegally and had to usually sneak in and out as only 6 or 7 people knew that I was there. It was a pretty peaceful and quiet time in my life where I was able to get a lot of writing done. In my time at the Evans house, I grew closer to my friend Andrew Hobaugh who was going to be a senior Evans Scholar that fall and Hannah Keith who is just a pretty awesome person in general. I moved back home to St. Charles at the beginning of September before everyone moved back in for the school year.
In early August, I did one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Produced and starred in a music video. In 2010, I had written a song called, ‘Oregon Trail, Bitch’, a parody rap about the popular video game that we all played in the 90’s. It took a while, but in April 2011, I finally got together with Jerred Roggensack (a 2011 NU Evans Scholar) and with my lyrics and his recording ability, created the song. In July, I found Jason Chui who had been a film student at Northwestern and we teamed up with Justin Smith, Peter Aiura, my Mom and a little girl named Elizabeth to record the music video. It was a really great experience, and even though it was cost intensive and exhausting, I was incredibly proud of the finished product. In September, I released the song on iTunes and then Justin & I hosted a launch party to celebrate the release of the video. I don’t think I will ever forget the moment when everyone huddled together in Justin’s living room to watch the video for the first time. I tried to just soak that in as much as possible... The video is now up and has nearly 5,000 views (though I was shooting for 50 million) on my YouTube channel.
There are a couple of experiences that either happened in July or August, I’m not really sure. I was invited to a celebrity golf outing (The Audi Quattro Cup) in Los Angeles by my friend Zack Lively. I flew out, we partied the night before and we played absolutely terrible golf. We were pretty much out of contention after the first 5 holes so our decision was to get bombastically drunk for the next 13...and we did. It made the event a lot of fun and I have to say that I think the organizers of the event really loved the two of us. There was a luncheon after the outing and Zack and I had everyone laughing the whole time. I couldn’t have asked for a better reunion with my LA besty. Oh wait, maybe I could have...See October*.
Also in Jul-August, I got an impromptu text message from my friend Goose who told me he had an extra ticket to the Death Cab for Cutie concert. I had been and still am a huge fan of one of their albums, which has some of my favorite music to listen to when flying at night or when I feel like I’m doing something grand and important. I gladly accepted the ticket and went down to UIC pavilion to see the show with Katie Turk, Goose and some Australian kid whose name I can’t remember. It was awesome, even though I didn’t know probably 60% of the songs they played. I think what made the concert so special is that you could tell that their music really meant something different to each person that were there. At the end of the show, as an encore, they came back up and played Trans-atlanticism and I can honestly say I felt like I was floating above the world in some sort of out of body experience for those 9+ minutes.
In September, Joe Shields came to town for the half-marathon where he helps assemble a team to run in the remembrance of Trisha Apte, his girlfriend and a close friend of ours who died in a car accident in 2009. Jon Elist and Rachel Eisenberg also made the trip, which brought me a lot of joy. There was a dinner the night before at the Hotel Orrington in Evanston that was very nice. We had a bomb-ass table too, with the always entertaining Jonathan Elist and my mom, leading us in a hilarious conversation, of which I can remember almost nothing. I do remember that my Mom was ripping on Kenny pretty bad because she thinks that he doesn’t like me as a person, since he is always saying ‘I don’t like you as a person’. When they called the names of the people who would be running in the marathon the next day, everyone would clap, but when Kenny’s name was called, my mom just started booing him. Awesome. Later that night at the hotel, Jon and I were sleeping in beds across from one another and literally laughed uncontrollably for 30 minutes about this in the dark. Poor Rachel & Joe were trying to rest for the marathon and we couldn’t keep it together. It was by far the hardest I laughed in 2011.
I had not intended on running the half marathon, due to fatness but Joe’s mom, Carol, could not participate because she had hurt her leg so the night before I decided that I would fill in. I had to piece together a running outfit, since I only had dress clothes with me, so with Joe’s shorts, Joe’s shirt, no underwear, Joe’s socks and Kenny’s shoes and a marathon tag that said ‘Carol’ I ran. It was incredibly difficult, since I had done no preparation. I ran the first 3 miles and then walked about the next 6 or 7 and ran the rest of the way. I was pretty pleased to have finished in 2:45 and will probably do it again in the future, hopefully in better shape. As a side note, I worked a shift at Chili’s later that night... luckily the extreme muscle soreness didn’t kick in until the day after.
Late September came and it was time for one of my favorite events, ‘The Big Balls Classic’. This is an annual golf outing that I go on with 7 other Evans Scholars in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. The trip usually involves a lot of golf, gluttony, poker, drinking, pool football, sleeping, and something borderline gay happening between 2 or more of the guys (then repeat for 2 more days). This year was really no different. I was heavily favored to win the tournament but I think I finished in 2nd to last. As awesome of a year as 2011 was, I sure played some shitty golf. Probably the best part of the trip this time around was when Matt and I convinced Kenny that I had been promoted to manager at Chili’s and was making more money than him. It apparently really bothered him, so... mission accomplished.
In October, I went to Denver for one night, because my friend, Zack Lively, had been invited to host this sorority party at a club there (since he was on ABC Family’s Greek). The girls who had organized this event were gorgeous and had gotten us (me, Zack and Zack’s friend Ty) a hotel suite, in what had to have been one of the nicest hotels in Denver. They took us out to this incredible restaurant and footed the bill for what was probably an $800 dinner and then took us to the club where we had a table, and bottle service. Needless to say, drunkenness occurred. Then one of the guys at this party started acting like an idiot and got in a drunken fight with Zack over who was better at basketball... which is fine, but he wanted to throw punches. It ended up being one of those guy scuffles where nothing really happened at first and all the girls are yelling ‘stop’ like that is going to make a difference. But then, the guy tackled some random dude down a staircase and Zack, Ty & I rushed down to help. Punches were thrown, including one by Zack square into the back of the head of the guy we were trying to help. I’m a lover, not a fighter so I just stood tall and didn’t hit anyone. To make a long story short, the girls wanted us out of there and I told one of them she was ‘not a classy lady’ and blah blah blah, we didn’t really care, we just left the next morning and felt like we had taken Denver by storm.
Speaking of Denver, one of the personal victories of 2011 for me, was calling Tebow madness before it actually happened. I’ve always been a huge believer in Tebow, ever since he cried after that one regular season loss in college. He wants to win more than anyone else and in my opinion, the combination of that desire and a bit of skill beats out all intangibles. It was nice to see him do well and it’s always a good feeling to tell people ‘I told you so’ (cough, cough...Zack Lively, Solomon Yi). Mark Aiura and I went to watch a game together and got nice and drunk on a Sunday morning at Messner’s when the Broncos beat the Vikings. It was pretty awesome.
In October, it was time to fly the nest. I had been living at home way longer than I had wanted to so I found an apartment in the city. The place is a nice little studio right on the border or Wrigleyville and Boystown. If you walk left out of the front door, you’ll find yourself in a neighborhood where people are vomiting and getting tazed in the streets and if you walk right, you’ll get hit on by a super gay guy wearing devil horns and covered head to toe with glitter The place is cheap, I love the location and it’s the perfect living space for my circumstances. I am really happy to have found it.
Amanda and I had been talking and hanging out quite a bit between September and December because I was really starting to realize that she was pretty much the perfect girl for me. I used my flying privileges to go and see her and her family, to the point where I was probably doing that 1.5 times a week on average. We had a pretty solid routine in Connecticut of going out for all you can eat sushi, going to chili’s to watch Monday Night Football or going to a movie before going back to her house and hanging out with her mom, Angela and her dog, Tobey. I went out there for Thanksgiving since my mom was flying and had a really nice time with her and her family. I think it was pretty much decided by that point that we were back together.
Unfortunately, shortly after Thanksgiving, Amanda’s close family friend, Anna, passed away unexpectedly. That has been very hard on their family since Anna was a really incredible person and even though we had only seen one another a handful of times, I really loved her too. She was a very energetic, outspoken, loving individual who will be missed greatly.
In November, I was working at the devil Chili’s and was feeling a bit depressed about making 10x less than I was with Covidien and still feeling kind of like I wasn’t doing much with my life (we had pretty much stopped working on the start-up a few months before because we hadn’t found the right personnel and the market place was just going to be a difficult one to enter). I had a momentary lapse in judge and actually applied for a job with Covidien again in Manhattan. The manager out there was my friend Nicole and the guy leaving the territory was my friend Courtney so it made a lot of sense. I went out for interviews and did incredibly well, to the point where Nicole said she had made up her mind that I was the person she was going to hire. That all changed though when she got in touch with some people on the west coast who I used to work with that did not agree that I should be coming back to the company, so a few days before Christmas I ended up getting a call to say that I wasn’t actually going to be hired. I was upset for about 45 minutes and then got a call from Josh Gulley who really inspired me and reminded me that there was a reason that I wasn’t working for them in the first place. It was kind of a kick in the butt from a good friend and I was incredibly appreciative of that.
In the middle of December, Matt Bogusz, (NU Evans Scholar ’09) hosted a holiday party at his house in Des Plaines. He, and his girlfriend, Kate Pascale, did a really wonderful job organizing a small get together with good food, drink and friends. At the party, I enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with Sarah Mihalov, a friend of mine from Northwestern who is now in Medical School. I hadn’t seen her in a while. We also did a white elephant gift exchange and I got what is basically a car wash for your feet: a perfect gift, because I notoriously have stinky feet. When the party cleared out, my mom came by and we had a good time showing her some popular YouTube videos that she hadn’t seen, including ‘NOPE! It’s just Chuck Testa!’. It was a perfect winter evening with friends and I hope to do it again, year after year.
The next day after the holiday party, Amanda and I flew to Hawaii to celebrate her birthday on December 15th. We flew to Honolulu, and rented a Jeep Wrangler so we could take the roof off and drive around the island. We had set a budget for the trip and probably exceeded it by triple but had an amazing time together. The first night, we were there we ate at this beautiful restaurant that was right on the water. I forget the name of the restaurant but you purchase a big steak and then they give you a whole bunch of seasonings to choose from and you take it up to this massive grill to cook it yourself. One of my favorite things about Amanda (and there are many) is that she likes her meat cooked rare like I do, so I cooked our steaks just to the point where they were safe to eat and we demolished them. It was a wonderful night at a good way to start the trip.
The next day, we got up early because of the time difference, went out to buy snorkeling gear and then started driving around the island looking for spots to snorkel. We found a really secluded inlet in Lani Kai that was picture perfect (white sand and clear water) and hung out there for a bit. It looked like a beach from a movie. As we continued the drive around the island, it started raining off and on so we put the top up. We stopped a few times, to eat shrimp, to lay out on the beach, to eat Italian ice and then at the DOLE plantation to buy some sugar cane sticks. Then it started to poor rain so we made our way back to the hotel.
The next day was the 14th and it was action-packed. First, we went to Hanauma Bay, which is a huge tourist snorkeling spot. I really enjoyed it, though Amanda was pretty wary of swimming near the coral since I had made the mistake of telling her that some of it was sharp. She did well for a while and then decided to pack it in so I went off by myself and found a massive sea turtle chilling in the reef. That’s the type of thing you hope to see when diving so I just hung out with him for a bit and then went in. That night, Amanda and I went on a sunset catamaran ride that was pretty legit. The boat has an open bar and they take you far out into the ocean to watch the sunset while blasting top 40. I made Amanda sit with me on the net that was way at the bow, even though she was a bit nervous since it was the only thing between us and the Pacific Ocean. I don’t know what was more beautiful, the actual sunset or coming back towards the entire city of Honolulu at night with the girl I love asking me,
‘Baby...how’m I doin’ on this net?’... I guess I don’t have to decide. We were sufficiently intoxicate when the catamaran ride was over but I wanted to take Amanda out to dinner for her birthday so we went and ate at Ruth’s Chris. We had a meal that straight up knocked me off of my feet and the one glass of wine that we had put me over the edge. I made a ½ sloppy, ½ emotional, ½ cute birthday toast of which I don’t remember most of the content and then we went back to our hotel and passed out so that we could wake up somewhat early and leave the next day on our HNL-LAX-ASE-DEN-ORD (with Amanda’s -HPN) trip home.
Christmas was uneventful.
That brings us back to New Years Eve, which started in somewhat similar fashion to how the year began: a party (at Sarah Malin’s) with good friends from all over and a lot of Balderdash. Somewhere between the hours of 3am-5am, an impromptu marshmallow fight broke out, which quickly turned into a sticky mess. As marshmallows flew by my head at break-neck speeds and I scanned the room to see some of my closest friends all together joyously celebrating the New Year, time slowed and I reflected back on the year that was 2011. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect 365 days. I had some wonderful adventures with some incredible people, made some big decisions and did everything I wanted to do. My hope is that 2011 serves as a catalyst to a life that is equally as exciting as the year itself.
2011 started perfectly. Amanda and I celebrated the stroke of midnight at Kenny’s where there was a healthy crowd of good friends. We both got our ‘Rabbit Rabbit’ in at midnight (if you don’t know what that is... google it). The real beauty of new years, however, came on new years day when we joined a small gathering at Brian Crawford’s to watch another epic Northwestern bowl game failure. Luke Aiura and I decided shortly after said loss to intoxicate ourselves off of Brian’s famous Bloody Marys. We accomplished that mission fairly easily. Then, around 4pm something incredible happened that would change a few of our lives forever. Balderdash was discovered. For those who don’t know, Balderdash is a board game of lying, bluffing, absurdity and awesomeness. A few people started playing upstairs and it wasn’t long before Luke, Max, Goose, Marie, Megan, Amanda, Crawford and I were ‘dashing’ into the wee morning hours. We played from 4pm-3am and probably would have kept going if Amanda and I didn’t have to catch a 6am flight back to LA. It was an epic day, though, as you keep reading, you will discover that to be a common theme in 2011
In January of 2011, a passion for entrepreneurship blossomed in my life. I had been encouraged by a venture capitalist that I had met on a golf course to begin developing a business plan for an idea that I had: a website that allowed users to share short video content that they had captured on their mobile devices. Thus, the project, I so lovingly named Zippings, was born.
Later in January, Joe Shields came to LA and invited Amanda and I to a party at Jonathan Elist’s house, a friend of his whose family is from Beverly Hills. It was there that I met Jon and my new friend Rachel Eisenberg who quickly became two of my favorite people. Shortly thereafter, Jon became my business partner for Zippings. He was genuinely excited about the idea and has a great mind for new business ventures so it just kind of made sense that he would get involved. For those people who don’t know Jon, he is a tall, Persian Jew with very afro-potential hair who is currently getting a joint graduate degree at Stanford and Harvard. He is one of the most intriguing and engaging people I have met and it didn’t take me long after meeting him to realize that I had found a life long friend (BFF’s).
I made a conscious decision in January to start doing a lot more of the things that I love. One of those things that had been missing for some time motorcycle riding, so Amanda and I went down to Manhattan Beach and bought a 1976 Honda CB360T Blue motorcycle. I was impressed with how quickly Amanda was willing to ride on the back with me having never been on the back of a motorcycle before. The first day after buying the bike, we took our first big trip across the canyons to Malibu and up onto the Pepperdine campus to watch the sunset. Unfortunately that meant that we had to ride back in the dark and on the way we ran out of fuel. We had to walk it along a pretty deserted canyon road nearly 2 miles before we got gas and got it running again. Overall, it was a solid trip.
I should mention that the motorcycle changed my life while I was in LA. Even though I only had it there for a few short months, some of the drives to Malibu, Pasadena on the 134 and up on Mulholland drive were absolutely breathtaking and I regret not having bought a bike in California earlier. It really made me appreciate what a beautiful place we were living in. Amanda and I went for a ride almost every chance that we got... often to go eat dinner at Chili’s.
It wasn’t long after starting Zippings that I decided that I was going to leave Covidien to pursue that and to pursue stand-up comedy a bit more aggressively. I tried to save up money for an exit date sometime in the spring. Though the Covidien stuff is the least important part of the 2011 story, I did have the opportunity to do some cool things in my closing months. In February, I hosted the country’s first Mobile Single Incision Surgery Tour, where an 18-Wheeler came to one of my accounts and inside had a full lab and lecture room where one of my surgeons was teaching people how to do an entire surgery through the belly button. This was a high visibility event and a huge organizational undertaking so I was glad to have it go off without a hitch.
In February I had laser eye surgery. Awesome decision, as this was a life-changing event. It hurt for the first day and I thought something had gone wrong but I just took the drugs I was given and Amanda babied me. We put on the Big Lebowski and I just kept my eye’s closed and visualized it scene for scene. After a few days, I was seeing 20/20. The weirdest part was getting used to not wearing contacts, which I had been doing since I was in 7th grade (glasses since 5th). Every night before bed for the first few weeks, I would reach for my eyes to pull out contacts that weren’t there. After a while, my brain finally got the point.
In March, I announced that I was leaving Covidien. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done as the company was very good to me. I told my manager that I would be leaving and we decided that April 6th would be a good last day, which was nice because my lease ended April 1st anyway. I sent out a mass email to all my friends in the organization to tell them I was leaving. The second I hit ‘send’ I burst into tears. Almost immediately my inbox was flooded with well wishes from people I will never forget.
In the lame-duck period between when I announced I was leaving and my actual last day, Amanda and I did a few road trips to Vegas. One of the things we both liked about LA was how short of a drive it was to get there. We would often go to do spa days together at the M and visit our close friends the Gulleys who have an 20-month old daughter, Grace. On one of the trips I had the opportunity to meet and play some high-stakes blackjack with Dean Sloan, who was one of the original founders of AutoTrader.com and now was a partner in a venture capital firm. He has been and will continue to be a consultant and potential investor in any startup that Jon and I pursue together.
In March, we did a Vegas trip with another couple, Zack and Jess Lively who had been 2 of our closest friends in LA. One of the nights we were there, we went out to Moon, a club at the Palms and I got a little drunk and did a little crying because I was ‘sad to be leaving the Livelys’. When a large black bouncer came to kick us out, I told him ‘Listen brother....just let us stay and have a drink with out friends’. Luckily he was a softie and let us stay for a minute with the tears still flowing... easily could have gone the other way.
The lease on our apartment ended April 1st so Amanda and I sold all the furniture and packed a minivan (to the brim) with the rest of our stuff and drove to Chicago. It was actually one of the most beautiful and peaceful experiences I’ve ever had. In 2008, when we graduated college, Joe Shields, Kenny McCormick and I had taken a road trip west across the U.S. but Amanda and I took a different route (15 up through Vegas and Utah, 70 across to Denver, 80 home). Driving through Utah looks a lot like what I imagine driving on Mars would look like. There are these big weird, multi-colored rock formations jutting into the sky everywhere you look. In Utah, Amanda definitely got sick of me yelling, ‘Wow! Look at that’. The drive on 70 through the Rockies was a different kind of incredible. I marveled at the train tracks that seemed to just hang on for dear life as they weaved their way through breathtaking snow-capped peaks. Amanda and I stopped along the way at the house I lived in from ages 1-5 in Pine Junction, Colorado. I was surprised how familiar it all was to me.... Amanda was too. Then we drove on home through Nebraska and Iowa. For those who have done that before, I don’t have to tell you how bad it sucks.
April 6th came and even though it represented the beginning of a new life, I was still sad. It certainly was tough sitting with my manager who relieved me of a blackberry, ipad, corporate credit card, computer, and 2011 Subaru Legacy (not to mention the six figure salary and benefits). Nonetheless, 3 hours later I was up in Palo Alto with Jon for a few business meetings. I quickly got over it.
In April, my sister Andrea got married down in Florida so Amanda and I went down there to go to the wedding. First, we spent a day at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure with my Dad because I wanted to show them both the Harry Potter World (Since I had made Amanda watch all 7, now 8 movies... and because my Dad really likes rides). The next day we drove up from Orlando to the wedding, which was in a small town that I can’t remember the name of on a lake that I can’t remember the name of. We stayed at a hotel on said lake and it quickly became one of the worst hotel experiences of my life. The reason: bugs. Apparently it was some sort of mating season for these little tiny bugs in that area and they were everywhere. I am not kidding when I say that there were literally a billion bugs in that hotel complex...My sister was supposed to have her wedding outside at that hotel, but the bugs were so bad that we ended up having the ceremony in the hotel bar. I don’t want to have to keep on the bug theme, but it is necessary to explain the gravity of the situation. Amanda and I had a room that faced the water. When we would get out of our car from having gone somewhere, we would have to hold our breath until we got into the room. The door was always fully covered (picture Robin Williams chest) with these bugs, so when you opened it, you were inevitably going to let in about 1200-2000 at a time... then we had to sleep in there!! The whole situation was fucked (sorry) beyond belief. It was good to see my family though.
In that same Florida trip, I tried to take Amanda snorkeling at this place I had been before in West Palm Beach. To get in the water you have to climb in off of these massive slippery boulders, but once you do, the snorkeling is incredible. It was Amanda’s 1st attempt at snorkeling and I was incredibly happy that she was trying something that I really like to do. The problem was, it was the wrong spot for a beginner. We got in the water successfully, with fins, mask and all but once you are in, you are in: the bottom is not touchable (maybe 20 feet down). There were boats passing by creating some waves, which was difficult since Amanda was just trying to get acclimated to snorkeling for the first time. When she put her head under water, she could not breathe out of her mask so she panicked (naturally) we had to get out of the water about as quickly as we had gotten in. I thought that it was because Amanda was just sucking as a person and got pretty upset but then when I found out that the mask legitimately didn’t work then I realized that I was sucking as a person. Anyway, with one working mask between us, she gave it to me and I did a bit of snorkeling by myself (not fun when you know that your significant other is just sitting on the rocks). After about 5 minutes, I decided to try and persuade Amanda to come in to a more shallow area where I would just hold her and she could put her head in. So I stood up on a boulder in the water while she put on her fins and the working mask on a slightly higher rock.
Then, a boat passed.
A big boat.
I watched as a wave about 15 feet tall began to make it’s way towards us and I got pretty scared. When the wave got closer, I yelled to Amanda to get up further on the rocks, knowing full well what was about to happen. A couple of seconds later, the wave hit and I went flying, straight into the side of a large boulder. I instantly felt pain shoot throughout my entire body. Luckily, I hit the rock with my forearm... if it had been my head, I most certainly would have died. Pulled under water, I had only one thought...Amanda. There was not a doubt in my mind that if she had been hit by that wave and pulled under in the same way that I was, she would not have survived, especially since I would not have been able to get to her. Finally, after several seconds under water, I got my bearings and was just praying that I would see what I ended up seeing when I put my head above the water: Amanda, sitting up high on a rock that the wave had not hit. Thank God. I don’t know what else to say except that I’ve never felt closer to death, not on a motorcycle, not jumping out of a plane, never. We got away with that one.
Life got crazy between April and June. It was time to ‘do’ and I ‘did’. I was flying around the country every other day, visiting friends, meeting with Jon and conducting interviews to try and find a CTO. I had all my stuff in St. Charles at home but I was rarely there.
Since my motorcycle was still in LA, there was the dilemma of how to get it home. For a while I was convinced that I’d like to try and drive it across the country but was talked out of that by my mom who didn’t want her son on the open road with just a back pack and a motorcycle that was 35 years old. Understandable. I did, however, fly back to LA and drive the bike to Vegas. It was a tough drive that took over 6 hours with over 6 stops for fuel. The wind itself almost got me killed a few times, so I am certainly glad I didn’t attempt the cross-country trip. We just ended up shipping the bike home.
In May, I took a trip to with two of my best friends, Josh Gulley and Courtney Goodwin. We flew out on my mom’s passes to Madrid on Aer Lingus, rented a car and drove to Portugal. We stayed in Lisbon for two nights, which was a crazy party city and found ourselves out at the clubs each night. This is where we met Simon, an arms dealer who must have thought we looked like we wanted to buy weapons because he wouldn’t leave us alone. He would routinely ask, ‘How much does a 9mm cost in the United States?’ and then would proceed to tell us that he could get us one for a lot cheaper. At one of the clubs, we made Portuguese natives feel guilty for not letting us cut the line by saying,
‘Hey, do you speak German?’
When they would say ‘no’ we would say ‘You’re welcome’.
I’m not sure how I feel about this in retrospect, but at the time we thought it was a pretty good argument and funny.
After Lisbon, we drove south and stayed in a couple of the more quiet beach towns on the southern coast of Portugal. We continued on and drove through southern Spain. I had really wanted to show Josh and Courtney the small city of Ronda as it still to this day remains the most beautiful place I have ever traveled to. The city is built up on these massive cliffs and looks like something straight out of Lord of the Rings. When we got there, we took a lot of pictures (and short mobile video!) and had dinner at a restaurant on the edge of a giant cliff. We only stayed for a few hours and then made the short drive down to Malaga, which is a beautiful city on the southern coast of Spain. In Malaga, we went to a nude beach where I decided to do a little skinny-dipping in the Mediterranean. It was very refreshing and peaceful until another naked gentlemen in his 70’s came out to me and got very close. I actually would have been okay with the interaction if I hadn’t felt a little bit like he was gay and if it had been easier to understand his Spanish. After Malaga we drove to Madrid and spent one incredible evening there where we partied until 6, slept for a half hour and then caught a flight home in the morning. We all got to sit in 1st class, which was really awesome after such a whirlwind trip.
Sometime in May, I decided that I needed to break up with Amanda as it was too much not having her around and doing all of the traveling that I was. It was not an easy decision, but the time apart really helped me realize what a blessing she is and as of December, we are back together in a relationship that is stronger than ever.
In May, I also bought a new motorcycle: A 1973 Honda CB350 Scrambler. It was a beautiful red motorcycle and I really loved it. It died beyond repair later in the summer so I sold it to a dad who wanted to rebuild the engine with his son. For the couple months that I did have it, I had a great time riding that bike into the city at night. I remember specifically one warm summer night, I was on the highway during a lightening storm. There was no rain, just me, open road, and brilliant flashes above the Chicago skyline. The other bike I sold to my mom, so by the end of the summer I had gone from having 2 motorcycles to no motorcycles. Sad.
On June 2nd, Andy and I hosted a stand-up comedy show called ‘Kirk Sells & Andy Hobaugh, Live at the United Center... Just kidding, it’s at Nevin’s’ It was my first real show after having left Covidien and I think people really enjoyed it. I felt comfortable and could tell that my delivery was getting a lot better. I told a couple of jokes about living at home with my mom (coming home to her crying to Undercover Boss episodes & her 3-minute long voicemails about nothing) and a few jokes about my penis... pretty typical stuff. Andy performed very well and so did Nigel Ng who opened for us. It was a really wonderful night and I was thankful for all the support of the people who came out.
In June, I also went to visit Brent in Vegas. For a few months, he had been teaching me a bit more about playing poker successfully (a goal of mine) and so I played in two of the smaller events in the World Series of Poker. I actually played very well in the first tournament, with an impressive amount of patience and by utilizing a lot of the things Brent had taught me but I had a couple of bad beats and didn’t end up being as conservative as I needed to be when I had a good amount of chips in front of me. I didn’t end up making day 2 in either event but I really enjoyed the experience and wouldn’t trade it for anything.
For my birthday (6/27), I coordinated a golf outing with my close friends at my favorite golf course, Oak Grove out in Harvard, IL. My mom made this event really special as she helped organize prizes and goodie bags for everyone and did a great job running around the golf course making sure everyone had enough Beer. It was a really incredible way to celebrate a birthday, even though I didn’t play that well. Joe Shields had flown out for the event and when we got back to Chicago that night, Jon Elist was waiting for us. We went to Kingston Mines, per the usual, and continued the party... all in all, an epic way to turn 25.
Early July was a weird time. Monica came back to Chicago and we hung out a few times. It was the first time we had seen one another in 2 years and I think it was a little emotionally confusing for both of us since we were such an important part of one another’s lives for so long. It was really great to reconnect with her and her family while she was home and I genuinely enjoyed the time we spent together taking a few motorcycle trips and hanging out in the city. I definitely felt like it gave me a lot of the closure that I had never felt I got when we broke up in 2008.
On July 3rd, ‘I got hamboned at a Matt Bogusz 4th of July party’. I’d tell you more about that experience, but some of my close friends seem to think that description suffices.
It might seem silly, but an important part of my life these past 10-12 years had been Harry Potter. I found the whole story to be very magical (duh) and it inspired some sort of incredible joy within me that I couldn’t really explain. I only read 3 of the books because I wanted to keep being surprised during the films and I was very anxious to see the final movie that came out in July. I went to the midnight show with Monica (fitting because we both loved the series together). Then a few days later, I flew out to Connecticut to see it again with Amanda (also fitting because we both love the series together). I thought the movie was perfect in every way and I got pretty emotional knowing that the story was over, almost like a chapter of my life was closing along with it.
In July, I started waiting tables at Chili’s again (I had done this in college for 3 years). This time I worked at the location in Skokie, IL, which is the 2nd busiest Chili’s in the country. I had forgotten how much I really did enjoy that job and had a great time doing it over the summer, though the commute from St. Charles was awful. I made a couple of new friends working at that Chili’s, one of which was Rudy, a 40-year old Colombian ex-cokehead with a very transcendentalist view on the world and religion. I very much enjoyed meeting him and we had some pretty awesome conversations. A few other friends I made were, Pahroul, an Indian/something-else girl who was like the Pam to my Jim, minus the sexual tension and Jess, a bartender/stoner/die-hard PHISH fan who had an incredibly positive influence on me and made a hell of a virgin Bloody Mary.
I did end up transferring to the downtown Chili’s in November, which was a big mistake. The clientele sucked balls and a $0 tip on a $70 dollar check was a very common occurrence that you just had to get used to. I once waited on a group of black girls who each had 3 or 4 of our $8 margaritas and then when one girl saw that gratuity had been added to their check, exclaimed,
‘how am I supposed to go home and feed my baby if I have to pay you this much?’ (Not an exaggeration, misquotation, or joke). I felt bad that the $4 she had to pay for my service caused her infant to starve.
I did have to quit this job in December in order to retain any hope of ever being psychologically normal in my adult life. My heart goes out to everyone who still works there... Especially Anthony, Courtney & Spencer.
Sometime in July, I got a text message from Ryan Cabrera, (who had been a 30%friend70%acquaintance of mine in L.A) that invited me to a show he was playing in Schaumburg. Having been to a few of the shows, I was pretty excited to go as I actually do really enjoy his music and he always has us backstage to do some drinking before and after I brought Monica, Kinga & Ryan with me and I think at first they we’re probably a little like ‘how did we possibly find ourselves transported back to 2003: backstage at a Ryan Cabrera concert?’ But by the end of the night, they were like ‘I’m really glad we got to go back stage at a Ryan Cabrera concert’. It was a fun night with a ton of drinking, a lot of dancing and it ended with Monica passing out on Kinga’s couch at like 5am while Ryan, Kinga & I all sat out on the porch and sang the acoustic versions of ‘Oregon, Trail Bitch’ and some song we made up about vaginas.
In July, I did write a children’s book with the hope of collaborating with my friend Mike Swanson who does incredible drawings. The book is called ‘Jeffrey and the Mustachioed Pistachio’. I think the concept is great, but to be fair... it is a long story, I don’t know what age group to target it towards, and Mike didn’t end up drawing anything, so it was kind of a bust. I was proud, however, to have finished it.
In the middle of July, I went to go visit Max, Goose, Dave Marshall, & Meg in Buenos Aires for 72 hours. They had been traveling quite a bit in South America and this was their last stop before returning home to the States. Since I love that flight (767 First Class) and that country, it was a no-brainer. We had a great time, though I had no idea that I would be the one making suggestions for what we did and where we would go (based on my brief cumulative experience of having been there once for a few days with Slava and again for 12 hours to watch Argentina play Germany in the 2010 World Cup) We did a bit of malbec drinking, searched desperately for the Sabor 5 (a burger king burger that has 5 patties of beef, with cheese between each patty and bacon on top) and I smoked my first cigarette.... well, my first pack of cigarettes (go big or go home) with a rambunctious group of Argentines after watching ‘Tevez!’ blow the penalty shootout in Argentina’s COPA America match.
In the middle of July, I moved from home to live in the Evans Scholars house at Northwestern for 6 weeks. I was doing it illegally and had to usually sneak in and out as only 6 or 7 people knew that I was there. It was a pretty peaceful and quiet time in my life where I was able to get a lot of writing done. In my time at the Evans house, I grew closer to my friend Andrew Hobaugh who was going to be a senior Evans Scholar that fall and Hannah Keith who is just a pretty awesome person in general. I moved back home to St. Charles at the beginning of September before everyone moved back in for the school year.
In early August, I did one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Produced and starred in a music video. In 2010, I had written a song called, ‘Oregon Trail, Bitch’, a parody rap about the popular video game that we all played in the 90’s. It took a while, but in April 2011, I finally got together with Jerred Roggensack (a 2011 NU Evans Scholar) and with my lyrics and his recording ability, created the song. In July, I found Jason Chui who had been a film student at Northwestern and we teamed up with Justin Smith, Peter Aiura, my Mom and a little girl named Elizabeth to record the music video. It was a really great experience, and even though it was cost intensive and exhausting, I was incredibly proud of the finished product. In September, I released the song on iTunes and then Justin & I hosted a launch party to celebrate the release of the video. I don’t think I will ever forget the moment when everyone huddled together in Justin’s living room to watch the video for the first time. I tried to just soak that in as much as possible... The video is now up and has nearly 5,000 views (though I was shooting for 50 million) on my YouTube channel.
There are a couple of experiences that either happened in July or August, I’m not really sure. I was invited to a celebrity golf outing (The Audi Quattro Cup) in Los Angeles by my friend Zack Lively. I flew out, we partied the night before and we played absolutely terrible golf. We were pretty much out of contention after the first 5 holes so our decision was to get bombastically drunk for the next 13...and we did. It made the event a lot of fun and I have to say that I think the organizers of the event really loved the two of us. There was a luncheon after the outing and Zack and I had everyone laughing the whole time. I couldn’t have asked for a better reunion with my LA besty. Oh wait, maybe I could have...See October*.
Also in Jul-August, I got an impromptu text message from my friend Goose who told me he had an extra ticket to the Death Cab for Cutie concert. I had been and still am a huge fan of one of their albums, which has some of my favorite music to listen to when flying at night or when I feel like I’m doing something grand and important. I gladly accepted the ticket and went down to UIC pavilion to see the show with Katie Turk, Goose and some Australian kid whose name I can’t remember. It was awesome, even though I didn’t know probably 60% of the songs they played. I think what made the concert so special is that you could tell that their music really meant something different to each person that were there. At the end of the show, as an encore, they came back up and played Trans-atlanticism and I can honestly say I felt like I was floating above the world in some sort of out of body experience for those 9+ minutes.
In September, Joe Shields came to town for the half-marathon where he helps assemble a team to run in the remembrance of Trisha Apte, his girlfriend and a close friend of ours who died in a car accident in 2009. Jon Elist and Rachel Eisenberg also made the trip, which brought me a lot of joy. There was a dinner the night before at the Hotel Orrington in Evanston that was very nice. We had a bomb-ass table too, with the always entertaining Jonathan Elist and my mom, leading us in a hilarious conversation, of which I can remember almost nothing. I do remember that my Mom was ripping on Kenny pretty bad because she thinks that he doesn’t like me as a person, since he is always saying ‘I don’t like you as a person’. When they called the names of the people who would be running in the marathon the next day, everyone would clap, but when Kenny’s name was called, my mom just started booing him. Awesome. Later that night at the hotel, Jon and I were sleeping in beds across from one another and literally laughed uncontrollably for 30 minutes about this in the dark. Poor Rachel & Joe were trying to rest for the marathon and we couldn’t keep it together. It was by far the hardest I laughed in 2011.
I had not intended on running the half marathon, due to fatness but Joe’s mom, Carol, could not participate because she had hurt her leg so the night before I decided that I would fill in. I had to piece together a running outfit, since I only had dress clothes with me, so with Joe’s shorts, Joe’s shirt, no underwear, Joe’s socks and Kenny’s shoes and a marathon tag that said ‘Carol’ I ran. It was incredibly difficult, since I had done no preparation. I ran the first 3 miles and then walked about the next 6 or 7 and ran the rest of the way. I was pretty pleased to have finished in 2:45 and will probably do it again in the future, hopefully in better shape. As a side note, I worked a shift at Chili’s later that night... luckily the extreme muscle soreness didn’t kick in until the day after.
Late September came and it was time for one of my favorite events, ‘The Big Balls Classic’. This is an annual golf outing that I go on with 7 other Evans Scholars in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. The trip usually involves a lot of golf, gluttony, poker, drinking, pool football, sleeping, and something borderline gay happening between 2 or more of the guys (then repeat for 2 more days). This year was really no different. I was heavily favored to win the tournament but I think I finished in 2nd to last. As awesome of a year as 2011 was, I sure played some shitty golf. Probably the best part of the trip this time around was when Matt and I convinced Kenny that I had been promoted to manager at Chili’s and was making more money than him. It apparently really bothered him, so... mission accomplished.
In October, I went to Denver for one night, because my friend, Zack Lively, had been invited to host this sorority party at a club there (since he was on ABC Family’s Greek). The girls who had organized this event were gorgeous and had gotten us (me, Zack and Zack’s friend Ty) a hotel suite, in what had to have been one of the nicest hotels in Denver. They took us out to this incredible restaurant and footed the bill for what was probably an $800 dinner and then took us to the club where we had a table, and bottle service. Needless to say, drunkenness occurred. Then one of the guys at this party started acting like an idiot and got in a drunken fight with Zack over who was better at basketball... which is fine, but he wanted to throw punches. It ended up being one of those guy scuffles where nothing really happened at first and all the girls are yelling ‘stop’ like that is going to make a difference. But then, the guy tackled some random dude down a staircase and Zack, Ty & I rushed down to help. Punches were thrown, including one by Zack square into the back of the head of the guy we were trying to help. I’m a lover, not a fighter so I just stood tall and didn’t hit anyone. To make a long story short, the girls wanted us out of there and I told one of them she was ‘not a classy lady’ and blah blah blah, we didn’t really care, we just left the next morning and felt like we had taken Denver by storm.
Speaking of Denver, one of the personal victories of 2011 for me, was calling Tebow madness before it actually happened. I’ve always been a huge believer in Tebow, ever since he cried after that one regular season loss in college. He wants to win more than anyone else and in my opinion, the combination of that desire and a bit of skill beats out all intangibles. It was nice to see him do well and it’s always a good feeling to tell people ‘I told you so’ (cough, cough...Zack Lively, Solomon Yi). Mark Aiura and I went to watch a game together and got nice and drunk on a Sunday morning at Messner’s when the Broncos beat the Vikings. It was pretty awesome.
In October, it was time to fly the nest. I had been living at home way longer than I had wanted to so I found an apartment in the city. The place is a nice little studio right on the border or Wrigleyville and Boystown. If you walk left out of the front door, you’ll find yourself in a neighborhood where people are vomiting and getting tazed in the streets and if you walk right, you’ll get hit on by a super gay guy wearing devil horns and covered head to toe with glitter The place is cheap, I love the location and it’s the perfect living space for my circumstances. I am really happy to have found it.
Amanda and I had been talking and hanging out quite a bit between September and December because I was really starting to realize that she was pretty much the perfect girl for me. I used my flying privileges to go and see her and her family, to the point where I was probably doing that 1.5 times a week on average. We had a pretty solid routine in Connecticut of going out for all you can eat sushi, going to chili’s to watch Monday Night Football or going to a movie before going back to her house and hanging out with her mom, Angela and her dog, Tobey. I went out there for Thanksgiving since my mom was flying and had a really nice time with her and her family. I think it was pretty much decided by that point that we were back together.
Unfortunately, shortly after Thanksgiving, Amanda’s close family friend, Anna, passed away unexpectedly. That has been very hard on their family since Anna was a really incredible person and even though we had only seen one another a handful of times, I really loved her too. She was a very energetic, outspoken, loving individual who will be missed greatly.
In November, I was working at the devil Chili’s and was feeling a bit depressed about making 10x less than I was with Covidien and still feeling kind of like I wasn’t doing much with my life (we had pretty much stopped working on the start-up a few months before because we hadn’t found the right personnel and the market place was just going to be a difficult one to enter). I had a momentary lapse in judge and actually applied for a job with Covidien again in Manhattan. The manager out there was my friend Nicole and the guy leaving the territory was my friend Courtney so it made a lot of sense. I went out for interviews and did incredibly well, to the point where Nicole said she had made up her mind that I was the person she was going to hire. That all changed though when she got in touch with some people on the west coast who I used to work with that did not agree that I should be coming back to the company, so a few days before Christmas I ended up getting a call to say that I wasn’t actually going to be hired. I was upset for about 45 minutes and then got a call from Josh Gulley who really inspired me and reminded me that there was a reason that I wasn’t working for them in the first place. It was kind of a kick in the butt from a good friend and I was incredibly appreciative of that.
In the middle of December, Matt Bogusz, (NU Evans Scholar ’09) hosted a holiday party at his house in Des Plaines. He, and his girlfriend, Kate Pascale, did a really wonderful job organizing a small get together with good food, drink and friends. At the party, I enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with Sarah Mihalov, a friend of mine from Northwestern who is now in Medical School. I hadn’t seen her in a while. We also did a white elephant gift exchange and I got what is basically a car wash for your feet: a perfect gift, because I notoriously have stinky feet. When the party cleared out, my mom came by and we had a good time showing her some popular YouTube videos that she hadn’t seen, including ‘NOPE! It’s just Chuck Testa!’. It was a perfect winter evening with friends and I hope to do it again, year after year.
The next day after the holiday party, Amanda and I flew to Hawaii to celebrate her birthday on December 15th. We flew to Honolulu, and rented a Jeep Wrangler so we could take the roof off and drive around the island. We had set a budget for the trip and probably exceeded it by triple but had an amazing time together. The first night, we were there we ate at this beautiful restaurant that was right on the water. I forget the name of the restaurant but you purchase a big steak and then they give you a whole bunch of seasonings to choose from and you take it up to this massive grill to cook it yourself. One of my favorite things about Amanda (and there are many) is that she likes her meat cooked rare like I do, so I cooked our steaks just to the point where they were safe to eat and we demolished them. It was a wonderful night at a good way to start the trip.
The next day, we got up early because of the time difference, went out to buy snorkeling gear and then started driving around the island looking for spots to snorkel. We found a really secluded inlet in Lani Kai that was picture perfect (white sand and clear water) and hung out there for a bit. It looked like a beach from a movie. As we continued the drive around the island, it started raining off and on so we put the top up. We stopped a few times, to eat shrimp, to lay out on the beach, to eat Italian ice and then at the DOLE plantation to buy some sugar cane sticks. Then it started to poor rain so we made our way back to the hotel.
The next day was the 14th and it was action-packed. First, we went to Hanauma Bay, which is a huge tourist snorkeling spot. I really enjoyed it, though Amanda was pretty wary of swimming near the coral since I had made the mistake of telling her that some of it was sharp. She did well for a while and then decided to pack it in so I went off by myself and found a massive sea turtle chilling in the reef. That’s the type of thing you hope to see when diving so I just hung out with him for a bit and then went in. That night, Amanda and I went on a sunset catamaran ride that was pretty legit. The boat has an open bar and they take you far out into the ocean to watch the sunset while blasting top 40. I made Amanda sit with me on the net that was way at the bow, even though she was a bit nervous since it was the only thing between us and the Pacific Ocean. I don’t know what was more beautiful, the actual sunset or coming back towards the entire city of Honolulu at night with the girl I love asking me,
‘Baby...how’m I doin’ on this net?’... I guess I don’t have to decide. We were sufficiently intoxicate when the catamaran ride was over but I wanted to take Amanda out to dinner for her birthday so we went and ate at Ruth’s Chris. We had a meal that straight up knocked me off of my feet and the one glass of wine that we had put me over the edge. I made a ½ sloppy, ½ emotional, ½ cute birthday toast of which I don’t remember most of the content and then we went back to our hotel and passed out so that we could wake up somewhat early and leave the next day on our HNL-LAX-ASE-DEN-ORD (with Amanda’s -HPN) trip home.
Christmas was uneventful.
That brings us back to New Years Eve, which started in somewhat similar fashion to how the year began: a party (at Sarah Malin’s) with good friends from all over and a lot of Balderdash. Somewhere between the hours of 3am-5am, an impromptu marshmallow fight broke out, which quickly turned into a sticky mess. As marshmallows flew by my head at break-neck speeds and I scanned the room to see some of my closest friends all together joyously celebrating the New Year, time slowed and I reflected back on the year that was 2011. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect 365 days. I had some wonderful adventures with some incredible people, made some big decisions and did everything I wanted to do. My hope is that 2011 serves as a catalyst to a life that is equally as exciting as the year itself.
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