Max-stravaganza

They were the most exciting 16 days of my life. That may sound unnecessarily superlative, but when I look back on them, they warrant the title. Being back in the comforts of my cubicle-sized dorm room, it's good to see that things haven't changed too much. The sun still sets in the west. The Dodgers are still a few games out of the postseason. And Edgar Stiles is still dead. And another fact that remains ever true is that "Dan" from cafeabroad.com (Keep up the boycott, loyal fans) continues to win gold medals at the Special Olympics. In response to my article on caving and skiing (as seen below), he busted out the old compliment sandwich . And I quote: You have a really quirky style that makes for good 1st person narratives. Our travel journalists do a lot more 3rd person stuff and has more of a polished feel. I offered you the representative position because you have talent but it needs work. For example the lede in your story you buried, it's actually:...

Well, in less than twelve hours, I'm heading off to the south island for 16 days of fun and excitement. I'd reveal more details, except that I know that my mother reads this blog and any mention of "danger" or "peril" or "girls with low self esteem" would reinforce her hypochondria. So instead, I'll just say that I look forward to proving that I'm not a chicken during these next two weeks. Sadly, this means that I'll be taking a 16 day break from the 'Stravaganza. Have no fear, I'll be back in no time with plenty more stories to tell. In the meanwhile, I offer you this piece that I just wrote for "Dan" at cafeabroad.com. So back on the Cafe Abroad front, my protestacular has progressed nicely. I wrote the following article in hopes that "Dan" will reconsider hiring me for the position of travel journalist. Well, if I don't get this job, Peter Gammons will look back on "Dan's" decisio...

Say what you will about the Grease Soundtrack, but Olivia Newton-John really sings her heart out in "Hopelessly Devoted to You." Moving on... It's a beautiful day in Auckland. Sunny in the morning, rainy at night. Sky of blue and sea of green. It's such a great city that I'd love to see more of it. And what better way than to run 24 miles around downtown? The Auckland Marathon is coming up on the 28th of October. This gives me 66 days to train. The first guy who ran a marathon passed out and died. That being said, I should probably start practicing. I'm considering using the Barney Stinson guide to running a marathon. Step One: You start running. There is no step two. I come from a family of chronic knee pain. Mom had knee surgery. Dad recently had knee surgery. One more knee surgery and we get a free small drink with any combo meal. So if I wreck mine in the process, at least I know of a capable surgeon that takes our insurance. It's als...

That whole "Study" part of the study abroad experience gets overlooked like the ugly friend at a bachelorette party. I'm taking four classes right now, none of which really match up to what CMC would offer. And for the past few weeks I haven't given that much thought to them...except now I've got three projects due next week. So you know what that means: procrastinate with the blog. First off, we've got the Language of Film. This is one of the largest classes that the university offers...since there are tons of incoming students who have been deluded into believing that they're going to be the next Peter Jackson and win multiple Oscars. I'd make fun of them more if I weren't one of them myself. There are about 350 students in this lecture hall and there are three different rotating lecturers. The first is a skinny American woman, whose only credential (it seems) is that she's American. She gives you your bare bones, definition lectures...

I think there's a woodpecker loose in the dorms. Either that, or the girl who lives next door has a new boyfriend. Whatever the cause, I keep hearing "thud thud thud" when I go to bed. I've found that a lot of people in my dorm have the name "Max." I suppose that twenty some odd years ago, a whole bunch of mothers independently thought that "Max" would be a kick-ass name. Either that, or the people who write baby naming books decided to play a trick on everyone, since it's also the most popular name for dogs in the USA. It's a good, solid name. Short and to the point. And unlike other tough, monosyllabic names like Bruce and Lance, the gay community hasn't corrupted "Max." The name is part of a brotherhood with such prestigious members as Planck, Factor, Hodge, Schmeling, and Payne. And if used correctly, it can get you into exclusive parties at Ed Begley Jr's house. But if people are going to start differentiati...

So I've got this roommate. Although technically, we're more like flatmates. We both have single rooms, connected by a kitchenette. For the first time in college, I have my own room. But this isn't to say that His name is Suffain. Or Suffein. Or possibly Snuffleupagus. Whatever his name is, I just call him "Buddy." This may be why he's constantly rolling his eyes and saying "It's pronounced ---" But I just stop listening at this point and start humming the new Keith Urban single to myself (Can't get enough of "I Told You So." Classic Urban). He's a 5'7" Malaysian with a receding hairline and is currently studying English. Not the literature. More like "how to speak it." He's also a Muslim, which scared me at first. Not because I thought he was going to poison me with Anthrax or something like that. I know that not all Muslims are terrorists (just most of them). I was just worried that we...

When I decided to study abroad in an English speaking country, some people looked at it as the cheap way out of the country. It wasn't so much a semester in another country, more like Road Rules: New Zealand. Well, after more than 5 weeks here, I've come to the conclusion that New Zealand is the Bill Paxton to America's Bill Pullman. On the exterior they may look incredibly alike, but when you look closelier, you find that they're as different as Independence Day and U-571. Firstly, New Zealand is a lot more laid back than the hustle (e.g. bustle) of the USA. People walk a little bit slower and take their time to get to work. Classes normally start 5 minutes after the posted time. Downtown Auckland is comparable to Old Town Pasadena. It's the nice, relaxed ambiance you'd find in small town America...or a medicinal marijuana clinic. They drive on the wrong side of the road down here. I really have no idea what the benefit is to having the driver's se...

esIt's been raining a lot in Auckland recently, not that I mind. When I talk to people back home and hear that it's 100 degrees outside and the air conditioner is working harder than the pixilation artist on Girls Gone Wild, it doesn't bother me as much. Winter in the Southern Hemisphere ends mid-September. So I'll have two months of glorious Spring before I come back home to find...Winter. So I suppose I successfully ditched Summer and its god awful, scorching Carrie Underwood-levels of hotness. But then again, I'm still pretty pasty and haven't gotten my classic July farmer's tan. It's actually quite pleasant when you break it down. It rain starts at night, right before I go to bed so the raindrops sing me to sleep. And when I wake up, the world is sunny and dewey, like Malcolm's kid brother. It's the best of both worlds, sleeping through the bad parts. Kind of like falling asleep at a U2 concert when Bono starts sermonizing about Afr...

I left for New Zealand on July 3, and arrived on the 5th. First off, the time difference is slightly strange. I lost an entire day in the flight over the Pacific. This means that I am currently 19 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time. This makes for interesting iChat conversations, since people are always incredibly amused when they find out that I've torn an extra page off of my daily Far Side calendar. My journey into the future has served me well on several occasions. I got the last Harry Potter book before everyone else at home, and was able to spoil the living hell out of it. Dumbledore died again on page 762. Who would have thunk it? I have also been able to warn my friends against unwise action. Oh, if Darren is reading this, don't ask out the Red headed chick at work today. She's going to insist that she's not ready for an office romance and values your friendship too much to ruin it. But I have also learned about the hazards of time travel. No, thi...

Okay, there are plenty of things that women can improve upon. I won't get into a long, rambling list (as I normally would) since I'm cramped for time. Instead, I'll just get to the point: All girls who are going abroad should break up with their boyfriends beforehand. Too many times (8) have I found an attractive and approachable girl, only to be immediatley crushed by a sentence beginning with the words "My boyfriend." Girl A: Wow, it looks like your steak is a little rare. Me: Yeah, real men eat their meat as red as possible, Girl A: My boyfriend once got food poisoning from eating an undercooked burger. Or Girl B: Yeah, Bobby Orr was one hell of a forward. Me: That's really cool that you know so much about hockey. Girl B: My boyfriend is our goalie. Nothing good can ever come from "My boyfriend..." sentences. It's like going up to Superman and saying "I've got this hunk of kryptonite..." Actually, "My boyfriend got tram...

Holy crap, it's been forever since I've updated this thing! But I've finally decided to follow in the footsteps of my literary heroes, Creed Bratton , Katherine Spada , and Bob Loblaw , and go back to my blogging ways. My last post was back during finals week and apparently I was overwhelmed by stress since I was trying to find patterns in Ace of Base songs. Well, May 2007 was a long time ago. I was still living in the United States. The Dodgers were in first place. And Lindsay Lohan was simply just a party girl slut...not a felon. So why have I decided to start blogging again? I realized that I'm depriving the masses of all of my assorted witicisms and Simpsons references that only myself and Noah will get. Also, a big change has occurred recently. I'm studying abroad in Auckland, New Zealand. To many, New Zealand only represents Hobbits and those crappy purple countries in "Risk" that only get you 2 extra armies at the beginning of each turn. ...

This is another post dedicated to all of the supressed memories that "Party Shuffle" brings back. I believe in Romantic literature this is called "Return of the repressed," but I could (and probably) am mistaken. "I Saw the Sign" came up today while I tried to finish up a paragraph connecting James Joyce and Modernism (which is kind of like connecting Barry Bonds and steroids or Def Leppard and Rocking). Ace of Base was kicking it old school, so I decided to put on the rest of their hits as well, e.g. Don't Turn Around, Cruel Summer, All That She Wants. And then I came to the horrifying realization...it's the same beat on all of their songs. Ace of Base only has one base line, albeit a great one, that was repeated far too often. They were the Nickelback of their day. The exact same beat. If you play the White Album backwards, you hear Paul McCartney telling you to do drugs and then he gives you the recipe for a kicking lentil stew. if you p...

Well, since last we spoke I got through hell week relatively unscathed. However, at the end of the first annual Max-stravaganza, I ended up with sinuses (sinuses? sinii? Sinai?) that were more congested than the 405 during rush hour and didn't feel much like celebrating anymore. So that left me with a week of nothing to do, and without the energy to even get out of bed. So as for finals week, I've got two take homes. The first, administered by the saintly Prof. Nick Warner (*swoons*), is very managable and does a good job of demonstrating our knowledge of Neoclassic and victorian writers. The second, given to me by the exiting Prof. Richard Samuelson consists of 15 pages of mindless Civil War nonsense. Needless to say, Warner's final is pretty much my way of procrastinating and not taking care of "the thought of John C. Calhoun vs. John Quincy Adams." As I'm sure many of you are wondering, I do, in fact, have a pretty good iTunes playlist that keeps m...

Recently, Men's Health Magazine (aka the Gospel According to Whey Protein) came out with an article about proportionality in your workout. They insist that if weighed on a scale, your biceps would only amount to about 3% of your total body weight. And in the world according to MH, only about 3% of your workout should be dedicated to said muscles. Now, I'm a firm believer in Men's Health. It's my homepage. It's my spiritual text. It's what I read on the elliptical. Actually, it told me that men are allowed to run on the elliptical to begin with (no longer the Title IX version of the treadmill). Hell, I even have a copy signed by one of the male models who posed for the special abdominal issue (BTW, I know what you're thinking and no, this does not make me gay). The periodical has taught me how to eat right, how to exercise, AND it taught me all about what women want . That's an ability that only Mel Gibson has. But this new article has gone too ...

We were waiting in line for Bill Clinton tickets last Monday, and since there was a moritorium on Assassins, boredom set it. So we did the only thing that bored college students with pens and paper could....we played MASH . I know what you're thinking: Isn't that game meant for 6th graders on 2 hour bus rides to the aquarium for a field trip? I like to think that MASH fits well for any line in which FastPass is not an option. A lot of people have postulated as to my future. Some have predicted that I'll end up rich, famous and alone. Others have predicted that I'll end up in a ditch after offending the wrong minority. So allow me to stop the guessing game and give you my MASHIP'd future: I'll be living in an igloo, married to Emmy Rossum and we'll have 2.5 kids. I'll be working as a Naval Aviator and I'll drive a Diet Pepsi Truck to work everyday. Yup. Future's not going to be too bad. Only problem is that these results confuse me a tad...

I submitted this last week for the Writing Center's little literary journal competition. I never heard back, so I'm assuming that the first prize e-mail got lost somewhere in the interweb, or that I'm probably not getting published. But isn't that what these blogs are for? So, in its entirety, is my entry. It started out as an epic poem, turned into a power ballad, and is now just some sort of Seussian work. I would also like to add that none of this is based on my own personal experiences. I may have a thorough knowledge of people's lives, but I would never resort to what follows. Facebook Stalker By Max Davison Hey there, do you also think this party’s lame? I can’t stand watching the same old Beirut game. I really wish there was something more to do Maybe if they had a tournament for Taboo? No fooling! It’s my favorite board game, too! I suppose The toughest word I ever got was “Axl Rose” Luckily my teammate’s favorite song is “Paradis...

I had to go to Pitzer last week to get my final study abroad course form signed. I timed myself and it takes me only 8 minutes 42 seconds of brisk walking to traverse two campuses and get there. I only had to cross Mills and I was already in another world. You would think that 8 minutes wouldn't change your surroundings too much, but it was like I walked through a magical wardrobe or got swept up in a tornado or started tripping on LSD. But this time I didn't see fauns or munchkins or Jim Morrison telling me to shoot everybody (although I did find a dealer within my first two minutes on Pitzer). No, rather I got a lot of weird looks from people dressed like John Lennon before he got shot (read: Urban Outfitters). It's as though Pitzer students have a seventh sense about people like me. Their spidey sense starts tingling and immediately they all think "Voted for Bush! Kill! Kill! Kill!" But the mere fact that this campus is so different from every other o...

I never thought that I would remotely see the day when people actually asked me to update this shrine to my own ego that some call "a blog." But the impossible happened, and I'm back in blogging business. The other reason that I've decided to do it is that from now until April 26th, I'm going to have over 60 pages of papers due. (Pause so that all men reading this will say "Wow. What a man!" and so that all women will take pity on me and offer to cuddle). So for the next 4 weeks while I'm twitching due to sleep deprivation and Red Bull overdoses, I'll find more time to get away from James Joyce and Tennyson and start aimlessly ranting about nothing at all. Kind of like the resurgence of the high five. Recently, Man Law has determined that the high five is going out of style and is overplayed. Jerome Bettis testified that he gave his teammates a high five after the Super Bowl...but he also gave a stranger on the street a high five after he f...

Although it's undeniably great to be back home, I was somewhat apprehensive about my first week of vacation. The spectre of Jury Duty was haunting my life. I was originally called back in October but got it postponed until the week before Christmas. Apparently "full time student" doesn't qualify as a decent excuse anymore. What's next, the army will start drafting paraplegics? That's not to say that the disabled can't serve in the military. No, I'm not going to discriminate against someone just because they're missing their legs and part of their right deltoid after a freak cornballer-related accident. Even though we may be able bodied, the folk in wheelchairs may be more able minded...as is the case with Professor Charles Xavier, who with one thought can make you strip off all your clothes, smother yourself in bacon fat and hide in your dirty clothes hamper. But I digress. The good people at the Los Angeles County Superior Court (hencefort...

Last minute gift ideas for that special lady... Not only does Justin Timberlake continue to shame all Chris Kirkpatrick fans by proving that he was the brains behind *NSYNC, but he successfully makes SNL funny. I'm thinking that Time has a new candidate for Man of the Year. Oh, and if there are any attractive and single women in the LA area who think this is a good Christmas/Channukah/Kwanzaa/Festivus present, please leave me a message with your name and favorite color of ribbon and we'll talk.