Woes of a Catholic Man

I love being Catholic, I really do. The traditions, the scripture, the Sacraments, the secret meetings held on Thursday nights where we get informed on the progress we're making on taking over the world, and so on and so forth. If we being honest, being a Catholic is one of the things I enjoy most about myself. It makes me interesting.

But we Catholics have our very own set of problems nobody else would even think twice about. For instance, old Catholics. The number of elderly people within a congregation will determine if your parish is 'hip' or 'needs a hip'.

Elderly Catholics, specific old women, like to be thorough with their reconciliation and they also like to go in flocks. Seeing these groups of old women in line at confession make me think that the old lady Catholics are all in some sort of Irish/Mexican/Italian Mafia who's Bingo games on Thursday afternoons are actually a front for illegal knitting needle trades and dealings. Each of these 20+ ladies take 15 minutes for confession. 20 x 15 = "I'm sorry, AwkwardBlock. I've been in confession for 8 hours and I need to sleep". I understand, father. I completely understand.

One thing that I find frustrating as of late is one particular part of the Mass that was changed last December that we still haven't quite figured out. "For our good and the good of all his HOLY Church." HOLY church. Not just his church, people, but his 'HOLY church'. 8 months after we've made the changes to the Mass and you can't remember to include this one word? Really? That's just a lack of effort.

But today, Mass was different. People forgot that God's Church was Holy, again. That's not going anywhere anytime soon. But, I found myself utterly amused at the fact that the priest's microphone malfunction and my ear infection have rendered me totally incapable of understanding a single word the priest said today and it sounded like the muffled mumblings of those cheap speakers at the drive-thru.

     PRIEST: alskldfnauiuehfasnkasjdfkjh
     ME: Yeah, I'll have the number 5.
     CONGREGATION: And with your spirit
     ME: Oh, and that too.

The best part of Mass today? Communion. The next best part of Mass today? When in total confusion as to what was happening during the Mass from an inability to hear the readings, I figured out that the words to the Gloria, the Alleluia, Amen, the Mystery of Faith, and the Lamb of God ALL happen to fit the tune of the Halo video game soundtrack. Thus, while the rest of the congregation of Catholics who had the capacity to hear were paying attention to the homily (which based on people's laughter I'm assuming was quite enjoyable), I was sitting there in my own little world singing the Halo themes with religious words in my head. I can only imagine the size of the stupid grin on my face. I can only imagine... (cue MercyMe).

Will you be my girlfriend? Breathe for yes. Lick your elbow for no.

Possible outcomes for touching MC Hammer:

1) WWIII

2) Obama pulls a Michael Jackson and becomes white.

3) The producers of Lost reveal a secret episode years later that only adds more questions.

4) Chuck Testa retires

5) This photo

 

6) Michelle Obama actually admits to stealing her arms off a man and having them surgically attached.

7) Herman Cain is that man.

8)  Rihanna "Chris Browns" Chris Brown.

9) One simply walks into Mordor

10) Chad invades my computer and screws up my posslktal;;sldfak;sudh;liawef;ljahs;dlifj;asdihk;aut;a;oisdfliahso;ihl;dsfa;uhfiauesiuhf

Fun Facts with the AwkwardBlock

My life, lately, has been ridiculously boring.* To those of you who REALLY know me, I am a citizen of the interwebz, meaning that I pledge my allegiance to a pixelated US flag. Other than that (and my rediculous** awkwardness), I am just like everyone else in the United States who doesn't get out much.

I am starting to bum myself out a little bit because without YouTube or Skyrim, my day falls apart. The most exciting thing that's happened to me since the summer started is that Toby Turner's "Tobuscus" channel is now the 25th most subscribed YouTube Channel. The only thing that comes close to the giddy, fanboy excitement this provides me is that Ray William Johnson's channel "RayWilliamJohnson" (an original channel name, if I do say so myself) may be rereplaced by Ryan Higa's NigaHiga channel. Ryan is gaining a lot of subscribers right now, probably because of the collaborations he's going to be doing soon on his YouTube reality show "Internet Icon".

PIANO! So I played at that wedding recently and here is a truly fun fact; when I can't fit my piano into the space you've provided for me, I can't play my piano. Wedding music 101, really. Elementary, my dear Watson. Elementary.

HARRY POTTER! Snape kills Dumbledore. ***

WEIGHT LOSS! Not happening. Since the summer started I've been taking a huge step backwards, but I want to get back into it. I even meant to bring my running clothes home so I could go running, but I forgot so...

BACON! Still delicious.

_________________________________________________________________________________
* Fun fact; I just screwed up the spelling of the word 'ridiculous' because I always spell it 'rediculous' as if something was at one time diculous and it is now diculous again.

** Dangit.

*** WARNING: Spoiler alert. I also failed to mention that the Titanic sinks, Bruce Willis was a ghost the whole time, and Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader. ****

****WARNING: Mega spoilers

Oh, a trophy? For me?

These next few weeks are gonna be busy for me. Actually, it started getting busy yesterday. I have been preparing a few different things lately.

First off, I had a piano recital yesterday. It wasn't a huge deal and I didn't really sweat it too much. In fact, I hadn't even played the piece I was to perform for a couple of days before the recital because I'm an idiot. True story. But, it turned out okay. I wasn't even nervous, until I saw the camera. That's when I began to realize that I do not have a fear of playing in front of people. Nope. I have a fear of cameras. True story. So what I'm going to do is start posting more stuff to YouTube. I need to practice in front of a camera to get over this unexpected issue. Could be fun. Probably won't be, but it'll be something to do.

Second, I am playing for Church on Sunday! I'll be playing a couple of songs with my old choir to help out some, and it's all easy stuff that I've played before, but it should be a nice change of pace to be able to play and not be in charge of anything. Being a choir director kind of sucks the fun out of the ministry sometimes, and it'll be good to get back to just having to show up and play. :D

Third, I have a wedding on Monday. Yep. Monday. The most awkward day of the week to have a wedding. At 1:00 PM, which is the most time of the day to play for a wedding. Kind of fitting that the most awkward piano player in existence should be the pianist, no?

P.S. I think when I get famous I'm going to go by "The Awkward Block". No reason. I just want to highlight my awkwardness. I'm hoping I can get by in the world off of it.

P.P.S. I wish I knew how to tune a piano.

Oh, you're crying...dID i SoUND ThaT Bad?!?!?!

Something happened the other day that has literally never happened to me before... I made a woman cry. Okay, left at just that statement alone I sound like a horrible guy. Especially for putting it in a blog, but let me start at the beginning.

Since the summer started I've not really done much with myself. My first week of the break I didn't really leave the couch or my bed. In fact, I watched all the episodes of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix, which is 6 seasons long. To be honest, I didn't really want to do much with myself but come the second week of summer I actually had something to look forward to... my piano lesson.

My piano teacher is excited about teaching, which is awesome. That's actually her JOB! Not a side thing that she does to get extra money, but teaching is how she gets by and she's really good at it. To be honest, I was a little surprised at how good she was at it when I showed up. After a fiasco with three of her other students trying to figure out parking, I finally arrived. I started by playing a single scale for her (my best friend, the C major scale) and she quickly noted several ways to improve my playing and we got to work. Those first two lessons were brutal. Playing scale after scale at painfully slow speeds to make sure my posture and technique were just right, and after the scales we moved on to other tedious exercises. But by the third lesson I had made the corrections she was looking for and we began to actually work on music. I was excited about something again for my summer.


The difference between that first and second week of summer were significant. For instance, the first thing I did when I woke up this morning was pull out the MIDI Controller (still working on a name for her and she's really upset it's taking this long) and started writing music for my upcoming wedding gig in two weeks. I'm practicing my old audition pieces, but I'm also writing my own arrangements of music for performances. Staying up every morning till 3:00 am writing music and trying to make something that's worth listening to has been awesome!


But that brings me back to where I started; the crying lady. I met with a singer that I perform with a lot and we chose music for a wedding we are playing in two weeks and then a couple of days later we met with the couple that's to be married and we showed them what it is that we would like to play for them. We finally worked out what they'd like to have played during the wedding and then we started discussing pre-ceremony music to set the mood. I played two pieces for them; Holy Holy Holy arranged by Jim Brickman, and Hymne written by Vangelus. I've played Holy Holy Holy literally dozens of times and I've played Hymne a bunch as well so they were easy for me, but something odd happened. While I was playing the second piece I got the feeling that the couple didn't like what I was playing. Enough so, actually, that they wanted me to stop. I'm not sure where this came from, but I decided that it would be best if I kept playing anyways and tried to play the piece better than I ever have before. When I finished playing I looked up and the bride-to-be was in tears. She said it was beautiful and that it was the one piece she most looked forward to hearing on her big wedding day. WELL HOT DANG! I didn't see that one coming.


I guess it just goes to show how far just a little bit of effort can get you. I got tears out of the deal. Maybe with just a little bit more effort I can get into a music program?!?! Who knows...

"You're too blessed to be stressed." "YOU'RE TOO FEMININE TO BE OUT OF THE KITCHEN!"

Today, I sign up for classes. I realize now how close I am, exactly, to graduating and I have to say that I'm remarkably unmoved. This is how little I care about my major. If someone were to take my comm studies diploma from my hand, throw it on the ground, and pee on it, I probably wouldn't care. I don't even know what I'd DO with this freaking degree.

People are so freaking stressed about classes and people have been sharing some very specific sentiments. First of all, when we discover that a fellow classmate is registering for classes the appropriate response is now "may the odds be ever in your favor". Second, I think we all agree that if we are going to spend so much money going to school, we should change the name of our college to Hogwarts and make our Quidditch team the central focus of our sports teams, not football. Also, we should import British people to sit in our classes and speak every so often so we start to really feel like we are at Hogwarts.

What breaks your bones is not the weight you're carrying but all in how you carry it

I came to the conclusion that I suck at writing. Seriously. This blog is three sentences long and I'll bet you anything that if a college English professor were to read this he would flip out and pee on whatever device it is that he's reading this blog from. You may say it's crazy, but I've seen it done many a time before with my essays and papers I've turned in.

I'm not very good at speaking either. Relationships are not my forte, if I'm going to be completely honest. I have some great people in my life right now, don't get me wrong, but when things go wrong in a friendship they seem to go REALLY wrong. I'm really more of a listener than a speaker. It's when I try to talk that things blow up. Strange how I haven't learned my lesson yet, no?

I suck at math.

Physics is the devil.

Why the heck does physics end with an 's' if it's not plural?

Would Physic sound weird in regular conversation?

Why were the first two guys who thought Superman was a bird and a plane so freaking excited to see a bird and a plane?

I am not exactly the most athletic (although I REALLY want to play soccer).

I love music. If you've read my blog, you'd know this to be true. If you've ever met me, you'd know this to be true. So why haven't I auditioned for the school of music before? I am almost convinced that if being a music major was what God meant to happen, things are happening right as he intended them. These past three years have not been a waste of time. In fact, I'm quite certain that God has been putting me in situations to help me in the school of music. To help me grow as a musician. I've accompanied so many different people, had to rely on myself to learn theory, played in so many different sorts of situations, and been given the opportunity to play my instrument for Him. If I started out my college career as a music major, I don't think I would have this desire to give back to God whatever it is that I learn from a music degree. Regardless of whether or not I get into the school of music, I know that God's had a hand in my college career and I'm slowly learning to trust Him. This year has been rough, but this year has taught me to give it all to Him.

Why WERE those two guys so excited to see a plane and a bird?