It's pretty tough living in a neighborhood where you know nobody, in the middle of Maryland suburbia where the only exciting place is the Target half a mile down the road. I spend a lot of my time sitting in my apartment reading books and practicing guitar and even more so since the power has been cut off. I'm often inspired by authors like Hemingway to go out and explore the world but the only world I see are cookie cutter town homes across the dreary suburban sprawl. There's no Boulevard de Montparnasse where the social and literary elite line up along the cafes along the Left Bank. The closest thing to a cafe would be the Starbucks inside Target where people go on their work breaks for a quick caffeine fix.

Every Sunday I take the bus over to Goucher College in Towson to visit my younger brother. What would typically be a twenty minute drive takes an hour and a half on the bus, if the bus even arrives remotely on time. While waiting for the bus I watch the cars drive by and think to myself how grand it would be if a beautiful wealthy woman fell in love with me on the spot and swept me away to Paris or the countryside of Spain. I could be a resident musician and writer living in her beautiful estate. Instead reality comes and hits me hard and I find myself sitting in between a drunk with whiskey on his breath and a woman wearing a tattered Sheila Dixon campaign sweater with black Crocs.

I always feel a sense of relief when I'm in Towson. Plenty of little shops and restaurants and streets with people who are actually around the same age of me. Goucher itself is a nice school. Small, but nice. There is a myriad of different types of people and cultures but I will say that there's a lot of funny looking people there. I don't know if it's the whole liberal arts scene but it's something I notice every time I'm there.

The big event of the night is always watching my favorite show Curb Your Enthusiasm with my brother but I also enjoy mingling with the residents. One resident in particular who I seem to run into frequently is a girl from France I often find sitting in the halls. She has this preconceived idea that there's this massive culture gap between her people and Americans. It has something to do with the lack of sincerity and sober-mindedness of the way we communicate. I perpetuate this notion liberally as the only way I can seem to communicate with women is by flirting. My flirting involves the heavy use of light hearted insults, sarcasm, and wit. I'm not the best subject for a case study on American communication but I enjoy talking with her. I did the ESP "Think of a number between 1-10" routine on her and her number was 4. The average person will usually pick the number 7. I like a person who picks 4, it shows there's something unique about them, either that or I'm just full of **** People who enjoy flirting are always full of **** I'm not Nathan, I'm Brian Adams and I repair blenders for a living and no I'm not related to singer/songwriter Bryan Adams. I'm Brian with an "i". It's not lying it's flirting.

The roommates of my brother are a strange crowd. You have the uber jew from New Jersey and the flamboyant rich white boy from Hong Kong. The white chinese kid really cracks me up. He once told me jokingly that women never respond to his text messages anymore because whenever they ask what he's doing he tells them exactly what he's doing. Laying naked in bed. This is the truth, the kid just lets it all hang out in the room casually. He's also in theatre and is outspoken about his issues with the lack of seriousness of Goucher's theatre program. At first I thought he was gay but after much study and observation I think otherwise. The jewish kid is really into sports, that's all I have to say about him.

Going to Goucher is sadly the most exciting part of my week even though all I really do is sit around and wait for Curb to come on. Sometimes I'll do something like an open mic night and there was one night where I managed to crash a beer pong party at 3:00am after meeting some drunk girls in the co-ed bathroom. They were very impressed by my ability to put a cigarette out on my tongue. For the most part however it's a place to get some decent food for the only time in the week and hang out with the only family I really have any connection to. At the end of the night I'm trying to fall asleep on the cold floor to wake up and catch a bus back to my apartment and live my **** life. That ride back is depressing. I'm extremely tired and sore from the floor and I have to deal with Maryland's fine transportation service.

So I reboot for another meaningless week and snuggle up with some Hemingway or any other author I have laying around and think about how grand it would be to get away and visit new vibrant locations. To go on adventures and do something exciting in my life. Be it along the Boulevard de Montparnasse in the cafes or getting involved with the freakish sex fueled adventures of Jonathan Ames in New York City. I'm at the time in my life where I'm not ready or willing to just settle down and accept staying in one mundane place for the rest of my life. I want to keep moving and exploring, exploring the crevices of human culture. Not that tourist 5 star hotel Caribbean Cruise bull**** but seeing places for what they really are. Sure there's a chance I won't get any fulfillment by traveling and end up right where I began but right now I feel just getting my foot out the door would be better than my current position. Stuck in the dreary suburban sprawl of Baltimore, Maryland where I feel alienated from everyone around me.

I watched an awful movie tonight that I went into knowing it was going to suck. You see, I enjoy watching over the top bad movies for the unintentional hilarity that ensues through a combination of poor acting, screenwriting, and special effects. Street Fighter: The Rise of Chun Li was a goldmine of truly laugh out loud comedy in what can only be described as a bastardization of one of my favorite video game franchises. In fact, the only thing that really kept me from turning the movie off was watching the train wreck performance of Chris Klein as the detective Charlie Nash.

Imagine if Keanu Reeves, Nicholas Cage, and David Caruso were all bundled up into one glorious package and you have an idea of what Chris Klein was going for. I swear, his research for the role must have been late night reruns of CSI Miami. He's got it all, the deep intense voice accenting every syllable of speech, one liners, and these epic almost slow motion head turns for dramatic effect. It's almost as if is doing some kind of witty satire and just not giving a **** whatsoever. He seems more like a spoof of everything wrong with detective roles than Charlie Nash: Interpol Detective. Whenever he came on screen I couldn't help but laugh at every single mannerism of his amazingly awful performance. Take a peek yourself:http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5401878/14224108

Chris Klein's awful acting being the saving grace for this movie just goes to show you how bad it truly is. The plot is pretty much nonexistent. I had no idea what was going for pretty much the entire movie. All I could gather was Bison(played by the one guy from Band of Brothers who goes crazy) is a very bad man with no morals or conscious. He lost his good will after doing the Bruce Lee 1 inch punch on his wife's pregnant stomach tearing the little girl straight out of the womb (This really happens). He also kidnapped Chun-Li's father and forces him to help acquire the slums of the city so Bison can turn them into expensive waterfront properties. Yes, the epitome of evil.

Chun-Li has to stop Bison and free his father by learning one of her easiest moves in the game, her fireball (charge back, forward+punch). She does a spinning bird kick for like a forgettable second in the movie after an awkward, unnecessary lesbian dance scene. This brings up a point, almost none of the movie has anything to do with Street Fighter. She doesn't even have her costume. Bison looks nothing like Bison. Where's the red dictator outfit? Isn't he meant to be part bionic? I know it's an origin story but c'mon! Balrog(Michael Clarke Duncan) isn't even a boxer, just a big black guy. The worst of all is Vega who kinda looks like a rejected member of Slipknot played by some guy from the crap music group "The Black Eyed Peas" (seriously). At the end of the movie they have the audacity to tease you with the chance of seeing an actual Street Fighter movie with Chun-Li being invited to the World Fighting Championship to meet the legendary Japanese fighter Ryu. Bastards.

Watch this movie for Chris Klein's awful acting. It's sure to please and just phase out during the rest and you should get your money's worth.