Pete Dodd Dot Com (.us)

This is the mostly videogame based podcast I do with my friend Bill Haberman. We’ve been at it for a while now, obviously, being that it’s episode 53 (and we have atleast 5 unreleased episodes).

He’s a 360 guy, I’m a ps3 guy… he’s a droid guy, I’m an iPhone guy. We bicker. It’s fun.

The first bit of the podcast is about the honeymoon and whatnot, if you don’t give a fuck about videogames… well after the iPhone 4 launch talk.

Give it a shot!

http://psnerds.com/2010/07/02/psnerds-episode-54-the-return-of-dodd/

Here is a short video, one of probably a million showing the iphone4′s complete failure of a design. I love the phone otherwise but this is bullshit.

Also, have a good 4th. If you are wondering where the wedding pictures are… well, I dunno. But when we get them I post them up here. I may also write about videogames soon and most certainly will make more stupid videos… but most likely this is peace out till after the holiday weekend.

Wanna see our neighborhood and apartment?  Are you sure?  You will never get these 7 minutes back.

Getting married is really weird in how normal it feels.   I was expecting it to feel very surreal, to be like a dream I was floating through.   I guess there was a bit of float to it, but mostly it was very, very real and quite grounded.  I was in a church, the woman I loved was walking towards me, I was extremely happy and I couldn’t stop smiling.  It all made sense.  There wasn’t anything surreal about it.

There’s a lot to getting married that I never thought much about.  In fact, I never really thought about most of it other than being up at the altar and saying ‘I do’ (which you don’t actually say – silly TV/movies) and going to a reception afterwards.   The planning, of course, is absurd in its complexity.  It never ends.  It started last summer, and we had weeks off here or there, but it feels like for the last year we constantly had a to do list that was at an almost hectic level the last few weeks.  It all becomes very overwhelming if you let it… which I did my best to not.  I feel like I succeeded.   There may have been a couple times where I huffed “I don’t care honey just pick whatever!!!!” and there was definitely a steady case of nerves from 4 days before until the rehearsal.   But otherwise I kept my head level about it.   It was Arnee’s wedding.  I knew that.  I wanted that.

There were a few touches that I wanted and I got them.  Orange was my pick for one of the colors (it was Arnee’s also but I like to think this was my doing), I really wanted us to enter the reception to The Infanta by The Decemberists. After repeated listens Arnee finally decided it was ok.  She isn’t a fan of The Decemberists, which should be a marriage deal breaker, but I decided to try this tryst out anyway.    I also suggested we do our first dance to I and Love and You by The Avett Brothers.  The first time Arnee heard it she agreed.   I suggested my parent’s church as a way to placate family, plus it’s pretty, and she saw it and loved it.  Otherwise everything was her and her family.

I know it was designed for this but I was amazed by how much the rehearsal relaxed me.   Father Bob, who was amazing through the whole process, was very diligent in walking us through each part and explaining why each piece exists and what it signifies.  This pleased the geek inside me even though it was sorta weird…  i mean at one point during the ceremony Arnee’s father gives Arnee to the church and then the church gives her to me.  I think Arnee is a hot piece of ass but that’s treating her a bit like a piece of meat, no?  Well, in any case, my feminism aside, it was cool learning why each part of the ceremony exists and after doing them a few times I stopped being nervous and it never came back.

The whole day before the wedding as me, Steve and Joe and Davin played video games I didn’t feel any nerves at all.  And whenever I was close to getting overwhelmed they were amazing.   Like at one point I was trying to pack something up and couldn’t bend over in my tux and dudes were jumping out of nowhere like “LET ME DO THAT FOR YOU!!!”   Every single time I felt like my plate was getting even a tiny bit filled both Steve and Joe just instinctively took whatever was there and dealt with it themselves.   It was amazing.  AMAZING!  I’ve always known I had great friends but it takes a situation like that to be able to physically see it in front of you.   Steve and Joe, I can’t thank you enough, and without you guys the whole experience would have been much worse.  You guys held everything together so I could have the greatest day of my life.  Thank you.

Once we got to the church, Steve and I went to the side/back to hide and wait for Arnee to show up.  My nerves were still fine, I was just excited for it to start.  Random folks came by because we were camped out in front of the bathroom, which was awkward and funny.   They must have been like “oh hey Pete, cool wedding, im gonna go excrete waste in either liquid or solid form in that room 5 feet away.  See ya again in a few minutes!”   Father Bob came out and chatted with Steve and I.  It was very chill, as the kids say.  And, for reasons that are unexplained by science or jesus, the usual OMG MY STOMACH OH FUCK that happens to me was transferred to Steve.  Thanks for taking that bullet, friend.

I was really happy during the ceremony.  I’m guessing this was probably apparent to anyone that was there.  Arnee looked so absolutely stunning that I couldn’t stop staring at her.  In fact at one point I was just staring at her and spacing out about how awesome she was when I was supposed to say something…  but I was in some other world.  Then I noticed everyone was looking at me and I tried to replay in my head what I just heard and didn’t pay attention to and I was able to and I repeated whatever it was that Father Bob wanted me to.  I guess that’s one of the interesting things about the ceremony…  i don’t really remember any of the words.   I don’t remember what either reading was about.  I kinda remember Father Bob comparing marriage to tending roses, which was fitting (which is probably why it stuck), but otherwise all of my memories are of thoughts, of sights, of emotions.   I can see Arnee in my head bright as day, wearing that dress, with her hair looking amazing.  I can still feel the flush of my cheeks every time I looked at her and though “holy crap I love this girl.”   I still remember looking out at my parents who looked genuinely happy and proud.   Looking at a sea of faces that were there to celebrate the love Arnee and I feel.   The words though, they are gone.  In fact Father Bob could have said something about smoking meth and it’s just lost on me now.  The words were irrelevant.  And I mean that as no slight to him, from what I remember it was all wonderful, it’s just the way i processed it.   There was so much going on that I lost the words.  Kinda weird for a writer.

Now that I sit back and think about it, just about everything everyone told me ended up being wrong.   I was told the day was going to fly by… it didn’t, in fact it felt amazingly perfect in length.  The second I felt like the service was going on too long it ended.  The second I felt exhausted from the reception it was over.  By the time Arnee and I went to bed at 3:30am it felt like one of the longer days of my life.

We were also told that we wouldn’t get to eat a bite of food at the reception.  That couldn’t have been more wrong.   We were definitely busy and talking to a ton of people and making our way around the room saying hello, but there was so much food at the reception that it bordered on the absurd.  When we arrived at the reception we had a private room in back with our family and wedding party as they got everything ready for our entrance.  The food started then… just plate after plate after plate.   It never stopped!  When they served dinner Arnee got a slab of prime rib bigger than a fucking xbox 360.   Twenty years from now when people who were there think back about our wedding I am certain the first thing they will think is “holy crap there was a lot of food.”   Because, seriously, THERE WAS SO MUCH FOOD!

Our dance was fun though I did feel a little self-conscious.  I knew all eyes were going to be on me all day and had made peace with that as a concept, but when those eyes were watching me dance, something I have no ability to do, it was stressful.   But that melted away pretty quickly because I just kept staring at Arnee and smiling.  I was so in love.  All I had to do was look in her eyes and everything was fine.  I think I whispered to her that I loved her like 5 times throughout the song.

The rest of the night was special in that we were surrounded by people who cared deeply about us.  There’s not many times in your life when you are going to have that many people in a room that you love that are there and really happy for you.  It’s an amazing feeling and pretty much the reason why all of the planning and stress is worth it.   It’s not just about the ego boost, it’s about being reminded that people really do give a fuck about you.  Sometimes I think we all need that.  Our lives become so narrowly focused that we stop looking at big picture concepts like that.  And maybe things like that are bullshit, and corny, and sentimental…  but they feel really good.

As I said above my wedding was the greatest day of my life.   This is a no-brainer of a statement but it doesn’t make it any less true.   Just like I can predict that if/when I have a kid that will then be the next great day in my life…  that won’t make having a kid any less amazing because I know that beforehand.   But anyway, yeah, it couldn’t have been more perfect.  I couldn’t have picked a more perfect girl.  I couldn’t have better people close to me.

I feel extremely lucky.

Three people will giggle.  You probably aren’t one of them.

Mario is serious about many things.

This heatwave is relentless.  It’s making sitting in front of these monitors more painful than it really should be.   But once I get focused onto something I can’t walk away from it.  It’s a problem, really.   Like yesterday, I got 2 hours of sleep at work.  It was around 11pm last night that I decided to make this site and I was so exhausted but I couldn’t go to bed until it was at a certain level of functionality.   I become obsessive with stuff like this, even when it’s really, really small things.   Like that little piece of text in the upper right corner that says “A website on the internet about assorted things.”    That sentence went through many rewrites… different locations in the header…  etc.  And in the end no one gives a shit about that sentence or where it’s located, in fact, there may be some that look at it and go “that’s dumb.”   And that’s fine, it’s the process of doing this stuff that I find so enjoyable.  Even if no one else gives a shit about my little sentence, I had fun spending 30+ minutes on getting it to the point where I was ok with it.

Video games fill the same void in my brain.  I become very obsessive about finishing them and collecting these silly trophies in the game that aren’t real.   But it’s not so much for my list of trophies, it’s more the voyage getting there.  Having a goal and completing it.   I know, it’s just a game, and this sounds insane…  but that’s why I like them.  I am a goal oriented person and video games are tailor made for folks like me.

That is neither here nor there, however.  I just wanted to introduce ya’ll to some new features on this blog not on the other one.   In the video a few posts down I go over what to expect content-wise, but there are some other cool things, like:

Ratings: Every post has a rating.  You can rate any post I make out of 5 stars.  You do not have to sign up and I cannot see who voted for what.   So if you are my wife (hi Arnee!) and you want to rate a post a 1, you can, and i’ll never know it was you.   Likewise everyone’s comments can be rated using a simple thumbs up/thumbs down system.  Again, those ratings don’t tell you who made them so you can be a jerk without a care in the world.

And, like before, you DO NOT have to sign up for anything to leave a comment.  You have to fill out like three fields and I think one asks for your email address, but it doesn’t even have to be a real address, you can type in Petesucks@lol.com and it will still post your comment.  Sometimes, however, the spam filter will suck up a legit comment so if your comment doesn’t post right away that’s just the robot running this site being a jerk.  I’ll fix it eventually.

Twitter feed: On the right side is my twitter feed.  My twitter username is Pete_Dodd if you are on there and want to add me (and I’ll follow you back, of course).   If you don’t know what twitter is you probably live under a rock, but it’s basically a weird combo of text messages and facebook.  You have 140 characters to get your thoughts out.   I enjoy it.  Some hate it.  In any case, my seven most recent tweets are in the upper right.   Most of the time they will make no sense as I’m probably responding to someone else.

VodPod: On the right, below my twittererer, is VodPod.   I am not a huge fan of the layout of the site, nor do I like the way that the widget looks on the page…  but it’s a cool idea and I’m going to see if I use it or not.   Basically what I do is point it at videos around the interwebs that I like and it will post my 5 most recent ones over there.   So if I see a youtube video of a cat playing with an iPad while licking his anus, I can put it there and then you can watch it and wonder why I like videos like that.   Thus far I’ve just used it to point at a few random videos I’ve made from my youtube channel…  but eventually if I come across funny stuff it may end up over there.   Or it might not.

Subscribe via email: This may have existed before and I just didn’t notice it.  But, anyway, if you want email updates for when I post something new on the site (actual posts, new tweets/vodpod stuff won’t trigger it) just go to the bottom right and click the link and put your email address in.   I highly doubt anyone will do this… it’s not the type of thing I would even do at some site I loved…  but the option is there if you want it.

And that’s it so far.  I hope to roll out some more neat little side things over time as I get better at the more technical side of things, but for now this is the feature set for PeteDoddDotCom(.us).

I have made no secret of my love for Barack Obama. The man really can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned. He was one of the most liberal senators according to his voting record? Great, I love liberals! He is totally moving to the center as president? Great, I love centrists! I think you get the point.

The thing that I love about him is how he makes me feel moreso than what he does. When it really comes down to it, I think these fucking assholes who drove their businesses and banks into the ground or bought a house they never had a fucking chance to pay for should all just eat a shit sandwich and declare bankruptcy like the rest of us have always had to (or, we were just smart enough not to do stupid shit like that). On paper I think this “bailout” is complete bullshit. But Obama sells me on it. He explains how things go together. If Detroit fails then plants in Tennessee (and all over the country) fail that make parts for the plants in Detroit, and also the diner across the street from both of those places fail because their whole clientele were those workers. And then I remember that as a kid my dad’s company made circuit boards I think for Ford. So, if this happened then, it could potentially put my dad out of a job. Ok, ok, you fucking got me Obama, bail these motherfuckers out, lets just get it over with. Same thing with the banks. I get it, we don’t want to reward banks for making horrible decisions, but if we don’t get the credit markets moving again every mom and pop that needs credit to do their payroll is going to lay off every worker ever. FUCK! OK, make it happen Obama.

Now, Im not going to go into my rant about how this isn’t socialism, because those of you that were unlucky enough to catch that (drunk) one before I nuked it off here don’t really need to see that again. And, really, I decided to make this post today because I felt good.

I got out of work at 9am this morning, after working 34 hours in two days (I point this fact out to everyone who will listen every week, what i neglect to mention is that I BEGGED for this schedule…. feeel baaaddd forrrr meeeee!). It was what could modestly be described as a SHITTY weekend. Holiday traffic on the way out turned a 2 hour drive into a 6 hour one. There was barfing in vast amounts, all over one’s self, at work (sorry, legally I can’t really get into specifics here, but I was not the barfer, suffice it to say). Both nights required tylenol PM to fall asleep, which gives me worse hangovers than vodka does. Oh, friday night while at work I had the most intense stomach pain ever, which was followed by me pooping alot (obviously) and incorrectly thinking I shit a ton of blood (this is a more amusing story, but somehow I have a huge gash near my ass. How did it get there? Why was it squirting blood as I pooped? This will all be on an unsolved mysteries someday).

So yeah, the weekend sucked. But I got out at 9 and I’m driving home and Im kinda breaking down my dreams from the night before (a ritual I tend to do within the first hour of being awake… if I happen to remember my dreams). I had one dream in particular where Sean Hannity was hanging out in branford and was looking for liberals to argue with and I walked up to him and was like “dude Ill totally fucking destroy you” and he was like “Why do you think that?” and I was like “Because, number one, you are a fucking idiot who has no sense of what is opinion and what is fact, and number two, I come from a very conservative family who are all smarter than you are, so I know your responses better than you could ever hope to make them.”

Now, yes… evidently I am totally fucking awesome in my dreams. I don’t think I always am, I have the dreams where im a dipshit that’s naked in class tripping over a banana peel while simultaneously being in a fist fight where I can’t punch. But in this dream, I was really smart, and it was cool.

So I guess this got me thinking of politics. Put politics on my brain, if you will. But as I driving down I-95 out of New Haven to New York I am billboard gazing as I tend to do (fucking drive is boring as piss until you hit nyc) and I couldn’t help but notice how many of them where just completely fucking positive. Here are a couple off the top of my brain, where Im not even sure what the fuck they were advertising:

America is:
A. Freedom of Speech
B. Freedom
C. Free Bird
D. All of the above.

(and d was circled… obviously)

And then another one that said:

Interesting fact about recessions: They end.

And then I saw one for Honda’s new hybrid car. And more for green energy shit. Then one for the UNCF who is still rocking the “The mind is a terrible thing to waste” slogan, which is a great slogan, but it always makes me think of that mid 90s ministry album “The mind is a terrible thing to taste” which is actually quite fucking stupid, because the mind isn’t a tangible thing. It’s not like you have the left brain, the right brain, the amudula alambagagada and the mind. No, the mind is a non tangible thing we use to describe what’s making our thoughts. Whenever I see that album cover I just hear Ralph Wiggum going “My sense of humor tastes like cat shit!”

Anyway, it was just all this positive shit. And I felt good. I was like ok, life isn’t so bad after all. I know a lot of folks of my political persuasion felt like the world was going to fucking implode while Dubya was president. Everything just felt so fucking *BAD*. The man never made us feel good about anything. Even if he was to present “The Pete Dodd legislation on giving totally awesome people free money” he would do it in a way that I would want to vote against that bill. He made everything suck. And in return, art followed. And believe you-me, advertising is art. It may be the complete fucking WHORING of art and it may make real artists sick to their fucking cores, but it is art, and it is made by artists.

So Ive been listening to records from the last couple years, especially shit like Cursive and Bright Eyes and other shit that gets political from time to time and the general feeling of these records is that the world is fucked. And if you look at advertising it was all wannabe cowboys driving trucks through exploding fields and just crazy ass redneck bullshit that made my northeast elitist brains shutter. But it’s all changing now. People are fucking happy. Advertising is about saving our planet (it’s like the corporations finally figured out “hey, fuck, we can make some money off this ‘going green’ bullshit!”). When our president talks, even if you don’t agree with him, atleast he isn’t THE STUPIDEST MOTHERFUCKER THAT EVER EXISTED.

I dunno, not much has changed, Im still consuming the same bullshit prepackaged whateveritscalled and sucking on the teet of technology and really my life isn’t all that different than it was during the dubya era… except for the fact that I just feel a lot more fucking positive about the world.