During the course of several years my father has taken both myself and my uncle camping in a little place in northern Nevada called Black Rock, a dried lake bed with a surface of cracked, salted dirt and absolutely nothing for several miles in all directions. It was always a great place to allow my imagination to create characters and stories with out any outside influences, while watching my father and uncle continue their life long dream of being astronauts through their amateur model rocket club (which was always the reason we were up there). I have lots of memories connected to these trips, like the time I meet team Jupiter and their accurate, almost to scale model of the Saturn 5 rocket; complete with capsule (with parachute system), a GI Joe astronaut, and a series of cameras on the hull and the interior of the capsule to capture the glorious reenactment of one of America's greatest achievements. However, as much as I like celebrating model scale versions of historic events, the most memorable events that happened in Black Rock nevada have always been the hilariously violent crashes (some of which coming from my silly Uncle). You cant truly appreciate the achievements of the rocket science without seeing a model tomahawk missile impale a poor guy's Winnebago.
I am not much of a guy who goes out partying or has a designated hang out spot where my friends and I talk about current events or philosophy or whose dating who or pretty much anything else I don't give a crap about. But what I have always liked to do with friends, which is also something I like doing with the friends I have meet, is go to the movies. Over the course of both last year and this year, I might have purchased a little over a hundred dollars worth of movie tickets at the palace theater in the Kansas city plaza. A lot of my favorite memories of my first year in college are attached to this place, most of which involve my friends making it a monumental achievement when I finally see a good movie that they have all watched. I guess the best movies I have ever seen in this theater are Kick-Ass, Inception and Scott Pilgrim vs the World; oddly enough, those were also the best I have ever seen in my life. I can only hope to continue seeing great movies there.
