Open "Mike" Night

My pal Mike Fortino has decided to take up a career in stand-up comedy. Vinnie Brand's Stress Factory in New Brunswick offers aspiring stand-up acts the opportunity to show what they've got like Seth Rogen in the movie Funny People on select Wednesdays throughout their calendar, so he has decided to go on 1/6.


He debuted around the time of Halloween a couple of months ago at my other friend Bernie's father's 50th birthday roast where he had the crowd going with ethnic jokes (looks like MTV's Jersey Shore will provide a blowout of new material with this one), towns in NJ where people are from and why they turn out the way they do as a result, his own struggles with alcoholism, and the dick & fart jokes inspired brilliantly by his heroes Jay & Silent Bob - New Jersey's Finest. At the roast, he pushed the envelope but couldn't go much beyond that because there were children and grandparents present (the same grandparents I chugged Sambuca in front of during Bernie's high school graduation party...class, class, class). At the Stress Factory, however, there will be no holds barred.


The stakes are high during Open Mic Night. Careers can be launched if the comics steal the show and the laughs flow like wine and beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. Or dreams can shatter in five uncomfortable minutes of jeers and comments from a tough crowd (they don't call it the "Stress" Factory for nothing). New Brunswick is located on Route 1, by I-287 and is very close to Rutgers - chicks bro, chicks - and according to Marilyn Monroe, "If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything," - anything, eh?? However, if the roast was any sort of a preview for Mike's performance this coming Wednesday, it should make for a good show. Doors open at 7, $5 cover, and there's a two-drink minimum per person (except for the recovering alcoholic on stage). Come through, it should be a good time, and I won't be job-searching.

Picking it back up...

When we last left off, our fair protagonistic hero was taking a few months off from this whole blog thing in order to find full-time, gainful employment in the marketing/advertising/PR fields conducive to the fact that dropping over a hundred G's on college tuition seemed like a good idea at the time. I got some inspiration from a good friend named Kristopher to get a second-wind with this whole blog thing.

I have decided that I would like to become a marketing copywriter. I had a short temp-job in that field at an IT company in Edison that I got through my friend Mike's father. It was good experience. They presented the concept to me about what they wanted to market and I would put it in words, creating and editing content for the website presentation materials. I got a good recommendation but the temp period ended, so where's the next meal coming from???

I've had a few interviews, and I guess I'm not really good at them (must be due in large part to the fact that I average an interview once every six months, so I get rusty). I am still "Fear and Loathing After College." I just hit the 19-month plateau (on 12/18/09) since I graduated from Quinnipiac. No job yet.

But it's a new year -- 2010. A new decade at that. So with this change brings a renewed sense of optimism. But how optimistic can I actually be? Will I go a full two years (three years...five years...ten years...) since graduating college, theoretically increasing my chances at finding gainful employment? Should I dig myself deeper into a financial hole by investing in grad school as the noose of debt tightens more and more every day? All these questions have kept me up at night, the vast majority of nights as time drifts away on my 20s, the hourglass of my very youth is running out while I'm still unemployed and living at my parents' house.

Optimism is my only choice. But as my mind numbs daily on these countless job search engines, it's very easy to lose sight of the big picture. How many resumes do I need to amend? How many different cover letters do I need to draft until I reach my goal, and will I reach it? This story has had the same ending for a while now but I must carry on. Until next time, be good.

Don't Call it a Comeback YET - First Impressions on the Job Search

Hi everybody, I have went away for a while, I apologize. I have dedicated my entire life these past few months from the beginning to the end of the hiatus to get that job. You know, those many futile attempts I've made with the goal to make something of myself like I've always dreamed of--and have always been "qualified" for--but the almighty powers that be have decided that I would serve this world better by sitting in front of my computer diluting the playing field among the many other hopeful candidates as the hiring managers decide on the boss's daughter's Fave Five.

You can pull a Facebook version of a James Bond/CIA photo-interrogation on me all you want, but it won't compare to that of her "sluts" and her "besties" on a Saturday night (especially around Halloween,) sorry, Your Majesty. But go ahead and do what you usually do, because God forbid! It's your chance to root out the degenerates like myself, because it's such a liability to give the likes of me and the other neglected candidates that elusive chance to prove what we're capable of.

I came across this article and it caught my attention. Great! 10 preventative ways to avoid rubbing the "right" people the "wrong" way. How exactly, can you please the polytheistic interview panel in order to become the professional ass-kisser they've always wanted to hire, simply because all the power is theirs in this down economy???

Disclaimer: This post was written back in September, and is published now.

Quinnipiac Graduation 2008: Reflections One Year Later

"Congratulations to the Quinnipiac University Class of 2008!"


That's what we heard a year ago today, and that was just about the same thing said to this year's graduating class yesterday (Congrats to the '09-ers that I know - but I can't wish you luck in your job searches until I get one myself being out a full year).

May 18th of xxx8 has traditionally been a good day for me. I hit my first Little League home run over the fence on May 18, 1998 (I still have my home run balls from that season marked up in pen!) and I graduated college 10 years later to the day (I probably beat Super Mario Bros. for the first time on May 18, 1988 and I'm buying a shit-ton of Powerball and Mega Millions tickets on May 18, 2018).

I'm sure most of my fellow classmates from that graduating class find it hard to believe that it has been a whole year since that day. In the 365 days following that fateful day, many of you have embarked on the next stage of your lives, hitting the ground running on your exciting new career paths, settling into your postgraduate apartments without looking back.

Well take a second to look back. Remember that day there were people sprawled out on the quad in front of the library as far as the eye could see? Our families, friends and faculty gathered en masse to witness the commencement of us fine, deserving young men and women, a symbolic coronation of academic achievement transitioning us from campus party-animals to esteemed and eligible candidates of the prospective proletariat.

We had just had the last of "the best times of our lives" while all still together as a class, and it was great a senior week, culminating one hell of a four-year period. I remember just being with everyone was awesome, and when Hodgdon, Oakey and me snuck off campus at 4 or 5 in the morning to climb Sleeping Giant across the street, we all talked about how much we'd miss this place looking with a breathtaking view descending upon the layout of the campus. So many great times were had there on the weekends (and weekdays with couches outside of Village during the spring of junior year with hundreds of solo cups). Never a dull moment.

Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -Matthew Broderick, aka Ferris Bueller

The McGangBang

Ok, this is going to be a short post, but one that I feel is necessary to bring up. My brother is 17 and is a junior in high school. We were talking about a possible trip to McDonalds and he said he wanted a "McGangBang." Out of breath from laughter at what I had just heard, I asked him what it was. He said it was a double cheeseburger and a McChicken Sandwich, with the chicken taken from that and put in the middle of the two all-beef patties.... What will they think of next???

The Two Weeks That Did Not Suck, Part II

So we were up and at 'em early the next morning because it's about 15-16 hours from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Pensacola, Florida, give or take. We had breakfast and were on the road by about 9:30 in the morning for a good planned stretch of driving on the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System (I like Ike!)

We took U.S. Highway 58 west passing by Norfolk and a lot of the other Hampton Roads cities in the area. It's a nice harbor complete with shipyards and a Naval Base... reminds me of old industrial America. A little further down the road is a city called Suffolk. We hit a lot of traffic there (never a good sign in the early-goings of a long haul) but we were stopped long enough to see a police car that had pulled over another car. Moving passed it we saw a cop on the ground struggling with a guy with long hair, trying to cuff him, and another officer running toward the scene. It was a scene straight out of the TV show "COPS" (and this was a Monday morning just after 10 a.m., mind you....drugs???) Moving along we saw two more police cruisers rushing toward the action.

The next few hours were inconsequential. Rural Virginia toward I-95, which turns into one of the most boring drives through the Carolinas. The original plan was to take 95 to 10 in Jacksonville. I kind of wanted to head further west because I've done the 95 drive down there on several occasions and wanted to try something new. After passing South of the Border (fireworks, hotels, amusement park, food...random. They must do well because they were in business back when my family and I drove to Disneyworld back in 1998) we got off the highway and grabbed a bite to eat and decided to head west on I-20 toward Columbia. I-95 in NC/SC is billboards and truck stops, 20 is more scenic with hills.

We bypassed Atlanta at around 7 p.m. that night and the Braves were playing against the Cardinals there at Turner Field. The game was on the radio but you get each station for only around two hours or so as you cover more and more ground. I kind of had rekindled thoughts of my classic fantasy to make a road trip around the country, stopping at every Major League ballpark, and sort of wanted to see the game, but it made absolutely no sense money/timewise.

We ended up that night staying at the Travelodge in Opelika, Alabama, across the Chattahoochie River and into the Central Time Zone (kinda near Auburn University.... Bo Jackson, anyone??) The next morning, both of us wearing Yankees caps, we discovered it was Confederate Memorial Day in Alabama, so people were naturally giving us strange looks, the people in the hotel started talking about Jair Jurrjens and the Braves. We made a stop for breakfast in Montgomery, the capital, before trekking the rest of the way south towards Pensacola... a good 21-22 hours from Clinton, New Jersey. This blog will continue in Part III.

The Two Weeks That Did Not Suck, Part I

kris oakey: Update your blog so i have something to read

I took a two-week sanity break from this job search to go on that road trip down south with my uncle Don... it finally took place! Back by popular demand, I will use this blog post to talk about it.

So I left the Northeast on Sunday, April 26th kind of hungover after a night of drinkin' with my friend Aversa and others. Now I never enjoy driving any considerable amount of distance when I'm hungover because I feel as if I'm autopiloting in an inattentive daze of simply existing.

This drive, however, wasn't that bad because the adrenaline of excitement kept me pumped throughout the entire 325-mile, six-hour trip to my uncle's house in Virginia Beach. I encountered a few hairy parts of the drive in and around Philadelphia. The tire of the minivan in the left lane in front of me blew out on 95 and the driver had to amble over the close left shoulder. I narrowly escaped. Then, by the airport, I passed a cop which I discovered way too late to make a valid attempt at slowing. I was probably going 80, slowed down to about 75 in the 55-MPH zone in which I was cruising. I dodged a major fine when he didn't pull out to pursue me. Gotta love city cops--too busy with homocides, robberies and gangs (real crimes) to dwell on the misdemeanors that small-town cops get off to prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law.

So I went down the Delmarva Peninsula going through Delaware, Maryland, and [that strange eastern part of] Virginia [which probably should still be considered Maryland] (hence the name of the peninsula with the three states). I stopped at a McDonalds in Maryland to get a Big Mac meal with a Coke and resumed the trip after that. Not long after that, Don called and told me he was going to start the grill with burgers and hot dogs (I jumped the damn gun as usual). While on the phone with him, I crossed into Virginia and the sign on the side of the road read, "Welcome to the South" and was decorated with a couple Confederate flags (still had my Yankees cap on!)

I was making pretty good timing but I had another problem. My 2004 Chrysler Sebring's engine shut off at a stop light about halfway between the Virgina border and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, and the oil light came on. I had no problem starting the engine again but it shut off again closer to the bridge after that. I was getting worried because this whole structure is over 17 miles long (much longer than the Verrazano, George Washington and Tappan-Zee bridges and both the Holland and Lincoln tunnels combined). I really hoped my car wouldn't die on me on the bridge, or worse, in one of the tunnels.


Fortunately, the next time the engine shut off was at an intersection passed the bridge in Va. Beach, and it started right up again (I should really take this issue up with Chrysler...oh, wait). I got to my uncle's house and relaxed with him and his girlfriend and had some BBQ and unwound with a couple of beers. What a trip getting down there, and it wasn't even halfway over....