JJ Bersch

May 14

Jurassic Park

Haha.

Hey you guys.

How are you?

I am good, yes. Just been busy updating this blog like every damn day. Sometimes I am so busy maintaining this blog that I literally have no time to do anything else! I have bills to pay, taxes to collect, kids to feed, and 401k’s to something but I never do any of it because of this blog I am charged with constantly updating. So, yeah, like I said, I am good, but really, this blog is wearing me out and I think I’m going to have to slow my roll a bit. I just can’t keep writing posts once every six months. It was always inevitable that such a quick pace would eventually burn me out.

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I wrote something on a blog that you and I presumed dead.

May 09

I don’t know exactly why I’m not asleep right now, but I think it has something to do with the parody of a parody twitter account I just created being the most satisfying writing I’ve done in a very long time.

May 05

Pretty interesting exchange of ideas occurring on the YouTube video for the new Vampire Weekend single.

Apr 29

We’re all just having some fun on the Internet tonight.

Apr 01

“Comedy is denying something that is blatantly, obviously true. Tragedy is embracing something blatantly, obviously false.” — Steven Soderbergh

Feb 21

A Fun Exercise!

Here are the IMDB ratings for this year’s Best Picture nominees:

Django Unchained, 8.6/10 from 215,436 users, Top 250: #41
Life of Pi, 8.2/10 from 108,930 users, Top 250: #188
Argo, 8.0/10 from 117,692 users
Silver Linings Playbook, 8.0/10 from 96,916 users
Amour, 8.0/10 from 20,210 users
Les Misérables, 7.9/10 from 81,747 users
Lincoln, 7.7/10 from 60,874 users
Zero Dark Thirty, 7.6/10 from 56,890 users
Beasts of the Southern Wild, 7.4/10 from 28,889 users

So, yeah, I don’t know. Movies! We know them. We love them.

Feb 14

As I walked up the ramp leading towards Northwestern’s student center earlier today, I felt a rush of blood to my head and nearly passed out. I was between midterms, this having been the busiest and most stressful midterm week of my undergraduate career, and it seemed like a nightly dosage of four or five hours of sleep and a diet consisting entirely of Cheetos and tacos was no longer enough fuel to function at even a below-average level. I sat down at a table on the center’s lower level and stared at Lake Michigan, its composition not unlike my own, cold, immobile, and brimming with chemicals and garbage.

There was a time when this was not an uncommon occurrence in my life. My freshman year of college was defined by sleepless nights of tossing and turning and crying. I fell asleep during every single algebra class my sophomore year of high school, and often sang incoherently during the time our teacher allotted for working on homework. I almost quit my job a couple of years ago after I slept through an alarm for the third consecutive day. I once wrote an AP English essay at four in the morning after watching The Big Lebowski, only to have the teacher use my introductory paragraph (without my name attached, thankfully) as an example of how not to write an essay. I would have been more embarrassed had I been able to keep my eyes open. My average night in high school involved watching Late Night With Conan O’Brien, attempting sleep, failing, repetition of the last two steps, and finally turning the TV back on and hoping to fall asleep some time before five o’clock thanks to the white noise of ESPNews.

But that is in the past and today was an anomaly. I sleep easy now, for the most part, except for when I step on nails or get sucked into internet rabbit holes. Life is good, and I am happy.

I drank a Red Bull while my eyes consumed the lake earlier, and I just made myself a coffee, my second of the day. I am hoping the caffeine assuages my haziness, as I have to drive home in an hour or so. Home is Milwaukee right now. It is the city that I have lived in for the majority of my life, but that is not what makes it home. It is home because she is there.

Feb 11

The key to college, especially in an essay-heavy major, is to remember that you are being judged by people who are fundamentally no better (or worse, usually!) than you.

Feb 06

I took the girl I liked’s best friend to the homecoming dance my sophomore year. I did not know her much at all. I purposefully pricked my finger with the flower she had attached to my shirt pocket earlier that night and stood by a fan for the entirety of the dance. At one point a few of my friends and I rapped along to “Stronger.” The injury was serious enough to sideline me, I’m sorry, I told her afterwards, and showed her a slightly bloodied paper towel. She elected not to hang out with me after the dance, so I regrouped with the girl I liked, her date, one of her friends, and that friend’s date. The former two and I went to a grocery store and picked up a few bottles of Gatorade. I grabbed a bottle of G2. When they noticed my mistake, I told them I liked G2. I actually wanted Gatorade Rain. We met back up with the friend and the friend’s date at the friend’s date’s house. We sat in a hot tub for a bit. My swim trunks remained perpetually inflated. I do not think I moved more than three inches in total. The night sky and the water kept my chest covered. I put my shirt back on and sat down in a chair a few yards away from the hot tub while the girl I liked used the bathroom. She eventually reemerged from the bathroom and hopped back into the hot tub. I clung to my chair, alone, but safe, with my shirt on. The girl I liked’s date drove me home after maybe an hour of this. He started dating her a week or two after.

I feel like I felt in that story right now as I stare at my Twitter feed, surrounded by people, some of whom I like, yet alone and motionless, talking up G2 and its carcinogens as I slyly attempt to deflate my swim trunks, as the people I like carry on as if everything’s fine, because everything is fine, and I have always had a flair for the dramatic. But maybe everything is not fine, and they are sad right now, too. That’s a nice thought.

Jan 28

An E-Mail I Received From A Son Of Tom Hanks On The Fifth Of December, 2011, At 4:09 AM, Eight Hours Before The Paper In Question Was Due

What Up Everybody,

My names Chester Hanks, I’m a junior theater major, but some of you may know me better as “Chet Haze.” Or maybe you dont, which would be embarrassing for me…..Anyway, if the sound of receiving this email on your phone woke you up at this hour, I sincerely apologize. Hopefully, there may be a few of you (like me) who for some reason just need to wait until literally the LAST MINUTE to get any work done—this final paper being no exception. I was wondering if anyone had notes from after November 1st to the end of the course on their computer that they would be willing to send my way. It would be much appreciated, and we could possibly work something out as a reward for the generosity. I’m really crossing my fingers on this one. Thanks! Happy studies.

-Chet