Pete Dodd Dot Com (.us)

Anyone working in the field that I do has to do a fair amount of training on how to protect yourself and the person you are taking care of in the case of things getting a bit, um, hectic. It makes sense. A lot of the people I’ve worked with in my life have been prone to get pissed off and try to beat the shit out of me. So we get trained in how to defend ourselves in a way that makes sure that neither party is hurt in the process. One of the cool things about the place I work at now (and come September will be 8 motherfuckin’ years) is that during the very class that we learn the physical abilities to deal with this the instructor also spends equal if not more time on the mental part… specifically trying to set up everything so it never gets to that point in the first place.

During this training one of the things he always says is “sarcasm is a tool of the weak.” When I first heard him say that I was a bit taken back. I mean that sorta crushed my whole world. I love being sarcastic! I’m a sarcastic asshole. It’s my bread and butter combo. It’s how I get laughs. It’s how I start conversations with strangers. It’s how I deal with this terrifying world.

But the thing I couldn’t dispute is that he is right. He is absolutely 100% right, in fact.

Sarcasm as it’s defined by random house is:

1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
2. a sharply ironical taunt; sneering or cutting remark: a review full of sarcasms.

Now as much as I want to get sarcastic about #2 using the word in the definition, it would be hard to argue that either of those things are good traits to have as a human. Good defense mechanisms, sure, but defense mechanisms are used only to keep people away… there is nothing good about that. It’s used for things you fear or loathe. This is not a good thing!

But as you probably have noticed, there are many, many, many things on this planet that are deserving of sarcasm. Our political process, for instance. I’m talking more about the actual people in it, the divisiveness of the whole thing, the news media joining in the there are only 2 sides to the argument philosophy. The whole thing is really shitty and when someone is sarcastic towards that it’s hard to argue that they don’t deserve to be. But what’s really being accomplished by being sarcastic about it? I guess there is a bit of catharsis in the whole thing, but otherwise you are just adding to the chorus of bitching. And the last thing that chorus needs is more members.

I view the world largely through the prism of the internet. It’s my primary means of interacting with humans that aren’t my wife. On the internet everything is so fractioned off that it’s a bit absurd. Do you like the Playstation 3? Well I like the Xbox 360 so I hate you. Do you like the Android? Well I’m an iPhone guy so you suck. You are quoting Fox News? Well I’m a liberal and you are a fucking nazi for even thinking anything that place says is true. Do you like Twilight? Well I belong to a vampire fetish website and we kill and fuck the skulls of fake vampire lovers like you!

I don’t worry too much about humans or the planet. I just have the overriding feeling that everything is gonna be alright. Are humans polluting the earth? Yeah, but eventually we’ll kill ourselves and the earth will correct itself. Are kids total assholes? Yeah, but we were probably assholes too but in hindsight we think we were totally respectful. ETC ETC.. you get my point. When it comes to things I usually think it will work itself out in the end.

But it seems with this fractioning off that people are doing, filled with sarcastic rage against whoever opposes their tastes in pop culture and what fucking phone they use, is heading down a path that I don’t quite like. Eventually you are going to find a forum on the internet that has the rules “To post on this site you must like PS3, iPhone, be a liberal, hate dogs, prefer oral sex porn and enjoy a good pizza. If you don’t fit all of these requirements you will be BANNED!”

I guess even with this I think it will work itself out, but it’s annoying to go through. And I say this as someone who participates in it. I get really annoyed when people talk shit about iPhones. Why the fuck do I care about that?!?!?!? It drives me nuts that I even give a shit. I also am quite free with sharing my political views with people, like they actually give a shit about them. And even worse than that, i’m sarcastic about the things I don’t like or agree with. I take a huge shit on the things that other people believe or like because I don’t believe or like it.

That makes me an asshole (and it probably makes you an asshole too). But I realize this and it’s something that I’m actively working on. When it comes down to it none of this shit really matters. I don’t know why I spend time caring about it. It’s time I could spend working on something more productive, something that actually makes me feel good. I feel like I’m finally not afraid to be earnest with love and I can actually care about things, instead of pretending to hate and brushing everything off with sarcasm.

Award winning documentarianist Pete Dodd chronicles his and his wife’s voyage to Gamestop and to Duane Reade. This is bleeding edge material here, folks.

|1| Republicans are concerned about individual rights and fiscal responsibility. Democrats are concerned about social justice and keeping the environment clean. Both work together to make it all happen.

|II| Sports/TV/Movies/Music/etc aren’t businesses and instead are done solely for the love of the experience.

|C| Baseball has a salary cap.

|four| Wages are equal to the importance and quality of the work you do, not the amount of money you create for your boss.

|V| The US uses the metric system.

|eff| Fox News, MSNBC and CNN all went out of business.

|7| There is nudity on Mad Men.

|VIII| Steam and Skype are on all major consoles.

|NEIN!| Kurt Cobain didn’t kill himself, he made 3 more albums after In Utero and then he retired to the woods/mountains of Washington state. Courtney Love died in a freak plastic surgery tactical nuclear strike.

|X| Jetpacks. And robots.

Just wanted to update that I haven’t given up on this quite yet… It’s been hotter than a mofo, Arnee and I have been visiting all sorts of family and generally I’ve been doing stuff and not sitting in my apartment with a camera, a mario toy and a handful of vaseline.

I will be back soon though. After working this weekend im headed back to brooklyn for several days. Mario will make a comeback next week and I have a few other ideas brewing as well.

Happy 4th.

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.