Author Archives: RastrikerWP

Ralf Machenback – Click Clack

If Europe can put together something like the Junior Eurovision Song Contest (JESC) wouldnt it be great if the U.S. could somehow do the same?

Instead of 50 countries we have 50 states. So there would be no issues with travel or needing Visas to go from country to country. The U.S. is already naturally broken down into five different sections making it easy to figure out which state goes to what regional: North East; South East; Mid West; Pacific North West; and South Western.

Then each year you move around the regional host city along with the National Championship city. You wouldnt have to worry about having to find a huge arena since you could probably use any NBA Basketball arena or NHL Hockey, or even Minor League Hockey arena. I havent been to any locally here, but I have been to the Spiderweb in San Francisco, CA and that seemed like it would be big enough.

I just think its time for something different than American Idol or Americas Got Talent.

My Brother Shawn

Since I do talk about him alot, people have asked me to do a little biography post about him to get to know him a bit. So here it goes.

Shawn and I have birthdays that are just a few days away from each other on the calendar, though we were born 13 years apart from each other. We were both unexpected children of our parents. I came along when they were 19, and Shawn when they were 32.

To get a baby brother when you are 13 years old is a bit of a shocker. Anyone who knows even a little of my story knows that I had a lot going on at that time. I still loved him though, and never thought of him as competition, or how he was just going to pull my life down.

I never did have to do much babysitting. There were the rare times of course when I had to pull my duty, but for the most part Mom and Dad usually got one of the older neighborhood teens who wanted to make some easy cash watch over him, while I was either up in my room doing homework, or out causing a rucus with my friends.

After I moved out when I was 18, and he was 5, I really didn’t play a big part in his life again until he was 10. It wasnt because I didn’t want to, it was just because he was so much younger. Id get to see him when Id go over and visit Mom and Dad, and then we would roughhouse together until Mom was worried we were going to break something.

It was at that time when my parents wanted me talk to him about sex. Not that they didnt want to (they didnt) but because they wanted me to explain to him that I was gay and what that means. I guess he had started to ask the simple questions like if I had a girlfriend, and figured Id be the best one to answer that question.

He is an outdoorsie kid just as I am. You will not find him glued to his phone, taking pictures of his food, and tweeting that he just sneezed. If society didnt almost make us all have smart phones these days, I think he would be just as happy with a flip phone in his pocket for emergencies.

He loves me taking him to the baseball games down in Anaheim, and even to the AAA San Bernardino Quakes. Neither one of us are big football fans, but he is wanting to go up north to watch the 49ers. Like me, he is a 49ers fan since Dad is a die hard Rams fan.

Shawn is also a bit of baseball player as well. He started off in Little League when he was 9, and has been on two teams that got bounced in the first round of the Regional playoffs. His position of choice is Catcher, and the kid has a gun. He put out all but two potential second base stealers this past season. Of couse it helped that I taught him how to have a secret code with the pitcher, so the pitcher knew to step off and go to second with the ball rather than pitch. The baserunners thought they were being ignored, and then were blindsided.

Hopefully he will be able to make at least the JV team at school. Otherwise we will have to find a league since Little League only goes up to 14 years old.

He is a bit of a hobbiest too. He likes to spend and hour or so every other night or so building model cars. He puts a sign on his door when he is building so Mom and Dad dont accidently disturb his concentration. He has a nice collection of about 30 at the moment, all meticulously painted, each in its own case.

The weirdest collection he has, which really isn’t weird at all when you think of it, is his book collection. Why is it weird: Because he has never read any of them. All the physical books he has he also has on audio. He likes to listen to the books while he is walking to school, driving into the city with Mom and Dad, or just laying in bed for the final hour of his day. I guess it helps that his friends can see what kind of reading he likes when they visit rather than having to scroll through his Audible account. Im just the opposite. Ive read all the books I have. I dont like listening to them.

He is the one that got me into wearing more trendy clothing. I wore all the trendy stuff when I was in high school, but after I graduated, and before I had made my millions, I was a starving student just like everyone else and decided to go the cheap WalMart route. After one particular afternoon at Mom and Dads when Mom called him Rodeo Drive and me Euclid Street (where WalMart is) we set out to redo my wardrobe.

Since Covid-19 started in early 2020, he has started to be quite the little TikTok dancer as well, with a few different accounts. He has one that he shuffle dances to while wearing a mask that hides his whole face, not just his nose and mouth (which I dont understand), one that he does a lot of dancing to with no hiding what so ever, and this past summer he started a new one with me where go out and do short dance videos all over the place. Its actually pretty fun, but damn it takes some practice to get the choriography right. We dont have quite enough followers there yet to go live, but at last check we were only about 150 short.

I dont know if he has any firm career thoughts yet, but I know he has an interest in the law, and the environment. He and I can have some pretty good law arguements, even though on like 99% we are on the same side, slamming those who are on the opposite. And like me, it sickens him when we go to the beach and we have to step over peoples trash, or we see bottles or other crap floating in the water. We usually bring a couple trash bags with us to collect stuff while we are wading in the water. It is just so sad that people dont want to help to protect the planet. I bet Global Warming is Mother Earths way of saying “Fuck you, humans. Your time is nearly over.”

So Ill wrap up Shawns little biography here. As I post more, Im sure you will get to know him better, as you will me. But feel free to ask anything you want, and Ill do my best to get them answered either by what I know, or by going to the source.

As a person who was born in 1994, I think one of the biggest television tragidies we suffered was being born late enough that we didn’t get to enjoy MTV when it played music videos.

I’m guessing that this video would have been one of the first to be shown on the channel since it doesn’t look like like it took to much to create.

I would love it if there was a channel, website, or app that MTV did for music in the 80s. I like Pandora to find new music, but you have to start with a few artists that you already know.

It’s the same for YouTube. Once you start playing a video you know, then it will start giving you suggestions. But the into has to be good enough that you want to click the play button.

Thankfully I know my dad’s YouTube channel address and have copied a lot of what he likes into my own playlists. But I still wish I could hit play and be introduced to new music to me, which may be old to others.

My brother is going to have the largest YouTube music collection of the three of us since I know he had both of our addresses.

Stupidly Close

Now if this isn’t the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of concerning international borders, I don’t know what is.

No flights from TJ, Mexico to San Diego? Come on, they are right next to each other. But just because they are in two seperate countries, somehow there is no way for the U.S. and Mexico to work together to make this easier.

He doesn’t say why the Express isn’t completely open, but I’m guessing it has something to do with Covid-19, like everything else. Maybe when C19 gets better the Express will open up completely. Then travel will be much easier.

Until I saw this video it never occured to me that leaving from TJ would be a lot cheaper to get to Cancun and other Mexican travel destinations rather than leaving from LAX. I’ll have to try that on my next trip to Cancun.

SF v LA – End of 3rd

I just checked in on the game and my 49ers are still within shot. The score is tied at the end of three: 17 – 17.

I’m more of a baseball fan than football, but it is still cool that the team you root for still has a chance to get to the playoffs. Hopefully they can eek it out in the 4th.

I was planning on taking my brother up Levi Stadium in Santa Clara this year until I started having my knee issues. Hopefully, Covid will be more under control and we can get up there sometime in 2022.

Until then, Go 49ers!

Find a Penny?

This is just a petty of an employer doing something that is totally uncalled for. The story doesn’t say whether the former employee was fired or if he just left, but either way, this is not how you handle a final paycheck.

Fired or not, you still need to pay people for the work they did while they were employeed. And though 91,500 pennies are still legal currency, this was just a sad way to handle the situation.

I remember one store that I used to go to a lot pissed me off so I weng to the bank and bought a box pennies that I think was a total of about $50. I didn’t unrap them and oil them down though. I just plopped the box on the counter and smiled since I knew they weren’t going to like dealing with the weight. But that’s as far as I took it.

Had I been the former employee, I would have turned around and sued the employer for the time it took, at minimum wage, to deal with the pile.

It is fun, and sometimes gratifying to pull a petty thing like this from time to time. But one does have to realize when the pettyness goes a little to far.

One Day a Year

When I first started watching this video I thought “how sad would it be if you could only see the person you loved for only one night a year?” But then I thought that a lot of families DO have situations like that.

What if they have family members that are away serving in the military? What if they have children that have moved out to go to college? Or what if life just took family members in different directions and now life thousands of miles apart from each other? It is sad to think that there are so many families that are separated and don’t get to see each other as much as they’ed like to.

Even my little family is about to have something like that, but not to the thousands of miles extreme. I’ll be moving about an hour away from where my parents and younger brother live, and wont be visiting them quite as much anymore. But I do still see myself getting over there once a week or so. And at my new house my brother will have a room of his own to use while he’s here.

It’s a weird thing I think. Parents want their children to go out and have a successful life on their own, yet deep in their hearts they don’t want their children to wonder off to far.

Same with us kids. I remember so wanting to get out of the house and be able to live under my own roof, and be able to make my own rules. But now I do miss them being around telling me to take my shoes off, don’t drink from the carton, and be nice to your brother.

It is nice though that my parents have learned how to use Skype to video call, and my brother isn’t so connected to online that he will grab his bike and just ride down to my apartment to crash in unannounced.

So if you do have someone you love that you tend to only see once a year or so, I hope that in 2022 you’ll make an effort to connect with them a little more than usual.

Spin the Bottle

This was a great little gay oriented short film. Though everyone at my high school knew I was gay, it was still hard at parties to know if others were too. Were they straight, or gay but just in the closet yet. And what to do with that feeling if you could tell that both of you had it?

I remember playing plenty of games of Spin the Bottle, though I don’t remember the bottles we used ever spinning for quite this long. Dramatic effect I suppose.

Bram was an adorable cutie, and for just a bit I didn’t think he was going to get his chance. Then I just shouted at the screen: “Oh heaven’s just go up and kiss him.” And then he did.