I write, occasionally

Here's a collection of 651 pieces of nonsense that I've written over the past 24.39 years.

  • Ryan Dunn's Rock Tour

    In my last article I talked about wanting to go to Ryan Dunn's Rock Tour with Kevi. You know, the show that was supposed to have The Alter Boys and Disengage playing, and be hosted by the cast of Viva la Bam (mainly Dunn, Phil, April, Raab, Rake, and di'Camillo). These MTV heads were actually coming to Des Moines, IA. Weird.

    So yesterday I shaved my goatee, threw on my "not bam" shirt and some glasses and went to Kevi's house. We looked up the time of the show on Val Air's site, went to an ATM, and then called a cab and headed down to the Val Air Ballroom.

    When we pulled up (fashionably late), we noticed that there were 2 cars in the lot. wtf. We drove up to the front where I went to get a closer look at the door. That's …

  • Buca, Servers, Ryan Dunn's Show

    Some things are going on. Kari's parents stopped out Friday night before their flight to Phoenix in the morning. We had a good time, went to Buca di Beppo, ate in the kitchen, had too many limoncellos. Her family loves food like no other. It's insane

    Saturday I got a lot done, sometimes it rules to actually stay home on weekends. Wait no. I want to tour the world! Nick and Nicole came over later, we ate those Harry Potter Jelly Belly's - flavors like soap, sardines, spaghetti, dirt, earthworm, booger, ear wax, and vomit. I totally expected vomit to be the worst, but it was definitely earthworm. gross.

    Transferring all my websites to my (kari's dad's) server is really annoying. It seriously takes forever. Create a new site …

  • The Nova Edit

    For those of you that don't know, my first car was a 1963 Chevy II Nova. Here are some pics and a short story to bring you up to speed.

    Anyway, my dad and I completely restored the car, and while doing this we shot a lot of video. I've been meaning to put together a short edit for a long long time - I finally did it, and here it is.

    Just a word of warning, this might be a little boring to some of you. But it's awesome for me. Even though I didn't get to drive it long, it was a great great experience.

  • B-days, Interviews, and Friends, Friends, Friends

    This weekend was supposed to be so chill, but then all of a sudden everything happened. I guess it was still pretty laid back, but a lot of visiting happened. I love visiting.

    Friday it was my cousin Gabe's 11th birthday. We met them at the Cheesecake Factory, which was different and better than I had planned. Gabe's pot pie was not small. After dinner, Nick and Nicole came over to hang out. Plus Ben happened to be in town so he hung out also. I wish I was going to the Psychopathic All-stars show this week. The combination of work with living in Iowa kills my roxtar aspirations.

    Saturday after marriage counseling I started building a new box to grind on (hehehehehehehe). Then Zach showed up to help me finish. It is such a …

  • Des Moines Alive

    Holy Busy. I've been meaning to post this for 3 days now. ...But the big news is: Nick and I's little project is finally done!

    A while ago, I had an idea to make an informational site about all the best places to go in Des Moines. It seemed like there were so many gold mines in the area that not enough people knew about... I wanted to promote the places that deserve it, and not promote the places that don't.

    Thus, I talked to Nick about it, and we made a pretty sick little site. Go Team. We rule. A lot.

    So yeah, check out www.desmoinesalive.com. Please submit content. Mainly reviews/ratings. Locations that we forgot would also be extremely awesome - TO THE EXTREME!!!!

  • Zach, Aaron, and Girlfriends

    Oh man, so I've been really really sick the past few days. This is the 4th time I've sat down to try to write this article. Last night I had a temp of 103, this sucks - I have so much stuff to do.

    Besides my recent sickness, the weekend was a lot of fun. Friday, Zach, Aaron, Amy, and Cassie all came up to hang out. Friday we went to Autograph's to make fun of Cullen, then had another party at my house. The party was a lot of fun, a little out of control, but fun. skating, soaping, hanging out, ping pong, cards, video games, wrestling, craziness, etc.

    Saturday we went to the Ankeny Skatepark. It was sooo cold. It was fun though. They have some nice ledges. Later we went to the mall, PF Chang's and then Aura. Then we ended …

  • My Bumper's Fixed and My Drawers are Dirty

    Today after work I stopped by the body shop to pick up my car. I got a new front bumper, the fender fixed, and both are coated in brand new paint. Now I'm only $1k down, ha. BUT.. It looks really really good. I am so happy with it.

    So I was driving home from the shop, I went around a corner, punched the gas, the turbo kicked in, and the tires broke loose to the max. It felt good, I missed it. Then I heard a *CLUNK*, my car about died, and I couldn't go above 25 mph. (Queue my dirty drawers.) I started to pull over, but I was less than a mile from home and the car still ran. So I drove home and walked straight into the house. I did NOT want to see what blew up. Finally I got the balls and opened it up. The upper intercooler …

  • Kevi, Jeff, Will, and Ninja's Balls

    So this was a pretty unplanned weekend... Originally we were supposed to go to Mt Vernon to hang out with our friends. But since we're poor and have a ton of stuff to catch up on, we decided to stay here. Luckily it turned out to be a fun weekend anyway...

    Friday Ninja got surgery. He had his balls cut out and dew claws removed - for some reason it didn't slow him down a bit though. Just to be safe we got him a cone head so he wouldn't chew stitches out. Plus I thought it would be funny.

    Kevi came over friday so that he could find an apartment (w00t!). Since he was in town we decided to have a few people over to grill out. We made steaks, chicken, salmon, and Chuck brought pheasant, haha. It was a fun time. We mostly hung out, played video …

  • I Hate Body Kits

    I hate bodykits, badly. To recap, a few months after installing my original fiberglass body kit, I backed into a truck in a dark alley. Obviously cracked the fiberglass. Then last winter I didn't see this snow covered curb and clipped my bumper on it. Last fall, my old mechanic at Grimes Automotive hit a curb and broke my front bumper. Then a couple weeks later I got hit in a parking lot, breaking my fiberglass blitz bumper some more. I ordered a new urethane bumper from areo_designs on ebay. It came in broken so I called areo_designs and complained, they barely spoke english and laughed at me when I told them the bumper was busted. So I sent them pics and they just told me to collect insurance from DHL - which I did. Later I …

  • Dear Whitney Westerkamp

    Blogs rule... sometimes they rule in weird ways. And blogs that link to blogs that link to other blogs rule even more. It's pretty funny how small the world gets sometimes. Check out this AIM conversation between Harper and Megan (who I met in Chicago on NYE)

    (22:24:04) Megan Westerkamp: So the other day I was in the the car with my sister. we saw these 2 kids go by and she says "look they have soap shoes!" I looked at her and said "what? How do you know about soap shoes?" She laughed and said she reads this kid Derek Brooks's Blog. I just cracked up. She said "it's kinda sad I'm obbessed with it" She knows more about him than I do. She know's that he is ingaged and thinks Kari is so cute and even knows their dogs name and the …

  • GT4, Videos, TVs, Motorcycles

    Many of you probably know that Gran Turismo 4 came out last week. I've been telling myself for a couple years that when GT4 came out I'd buy a ps2... so I did. I got the new tiny tiny one and the game. It rules. So much. The graphics are amazing, there are like 700 cars, etc. I found an 86 Celica in a used car lot on the game. Since it's almost exactly like my last car (87 Celica GT-S) I had to buy it. I also found a 95 eclipse (just like my 95 Talon Tsi). I'll probably buy all my friends' cars too, ha. Check out more screenshots.

    Last week I also added more videos to the videos section of the site. Mainly Supergrub 2 and the Saint Louis Soap Shoes Demo I did.

    This weekend Kari's parents came up. Saturday her dad picked …

  • Nick is 26

    So the week of watching my cousins is finally over. I've learned that I will not be ready for kids in a long long time. I think I'll just stick with pets. At least the only thing that got broken was my basement handrail.

    Saturday we had a party for Nick at my house where we tied lots of knots, played poker, hung out, etc. There wasnt as many people as I planned, but it was still fun. Kevi and Stacy drove up for the night. Nicole's brother and his friend came - cool guys. Cedric, Nehru, MH, Chuck, Nathan, and Jared also stopped by.

    Besides that, Kevi decorated, Ninja slept, we hung teddy bears, and Nicole stayed sober. It was a low-key, fun night.

    Sunday, Kevi and I decided to film Eternal Apprehension 2. It is so so gay - …

  • v1, v2, and v3

    My blog has gone through 4 different designs so far and since I still had all the old designs saved, I decided to upload them. I don't really know why you would ever want to see them... but if you want to see the last 3 blog designs, check out: v1, v2, and v3.

    Note that some of the old designs had different sections, i.e. forum, cars, dj, and portfolio. Plus they all had different random pictures that load. Check them out.

  • I Need Aids

    So ealier this week I started having these pretty bad pains in my lower abdomen. By midweek they got really bad... Like it hurt to sit down/get up, etc. My friends and I were starting to think it was something serious with my bladder, appendix, or something. So I said that if it wasn't better by friday then I'd go to the Dr.

    On friday I made an appt. When I got there they took a urine sample which all came back negative. Then the Dr had me lay down and started pushing around on my belly to find where it hurts. All of a sudden he was like, "oh wow" - which made me kinda nervous. Then he's like, "well you've got a LOT of really hard stool in here. You need to have some bowel movements and get that all out." Wtf. I just went …

  • The Poker Juice is Coming

    What the flip! I need to write!

    Umm, last week we went to Kari's grandma's services, they were sad :( BUT I got to meet Ron Livingston's (from Office Space) mom, haha. Also, last week we finally released my project at work - it's so nice to have that friggin ball of stress out of my life for a while. I also learned about some new projects that will be interesting. One project is to write a proposal to not do the project, haha.

    Kevi came up this weekend and told me to revise my articles so he doesn't get in trouble. We hung out mostly. But friday, we organized a last minute poker tournament with Nick, Nehru, Mike Kock, and MH. It was fun - I won the first game and Nick won the second.

    Saturday, Kevi and I shot video for …

  • Zach is 22

    Oh man, what a weekend. I love going to visit buddies - especially Zach on his 22nd birthday. Thursday after work I drove down to WIU (Macomb) to hang out with Zach for the weekend. As soon as I got there Aaron showed up on his way to see his girlfriend, which was a nice surprise. We all went out for a beer and then Turbo continued to Cassie's. After that, Zach and I went back out to the Pace and then played an awesome awesome trick Aaron. He was real mad, but it ruled.

    Friday was Zach's birthday. It started out by Kevi calling and saying he was gonna come over - rule. While we waited for him to show up we watched Napoleon Dynamite. Then we decided that Napoleon's advice on girls was pretty legit. So before the night started …

  • Poor Harper

    My plate is so full right now it's retarded. I mean, the only other person I can think of that has this much stuff going on is Harper. He's always working on too much and I'm starting to get a taste of it. I mean, once you get any kind of skill, everyone wants to use you. And once you acquire every skill (like me, hahaha) then everyone wants even more. Then, you offer them all this stuff and they want more, and then they get mad when you can't give it to them. I like to help people but seriously... people need to appreciate. I really need to clear my plate and work on my own stuff for a while. I'm getting burnt out and I'm only 23, wtf, haha.

    So yeah, lately I've been working on 3 big videos, 7+ websites, trying to get my …

  • Sun Prairie's Snowboard DJ Took an Oil Leak

    This weekend I was at home again... Friday was a little weird because we found out that someone had broken into Kari's apartment garage and put a different padlock on it. After a ton of calling around, yelling, being lied to, calling the cops, finding bolt cutters, etc - it turned out that Sun Prairie rented out her garage without telling her. This is awesome because Kari still has stuff in there - stuff that we needed this weekend. Sun Prairie Apartments in West Des Moines suck so so bad. Kari and I both have had really bad experiences there. Soon I'm going to buy sunprairiesucks.com or something and let everyone know how they do business. Then I will link to it from everywhere, the people will know, and I will win. I've already …

  • Supergrub 2

    I don't know if anyone here knows about Supergrub... but when I was 15 we had to make a superhero movie for a class in High School. It turned out awesome and we all got good grades. The original cast was Me, Jeremy Ludin (Grub), Scarlet Brooks, Jeff Ballard, and Andy Mead. Well, a year or so later, in 1998, Me and Jeremy Ludin (Grub) teamed up with Boone Ebel and started to film the sequal. Supergrub 2: Intense Supergrub Action.

    We never finished the movie, probably because it was insanely retarded and basically just a big goof off... but last night I got out the raw version and edited what we had so far. So click here for (what was going to be) the best movie ever. omg.

    P.S. The time you spend watching this masterpiece is …

  • Steppin into 2005: Chicago Style

    It's 2005, so I guess I shuold write about New Years in Chicago to party with Harper.

    Friday night, Kari and I went to this pretty cool little bar/kitchen called Viand to hang out and have a martini. Then we met Harper, Saresh, Megan, John, and Mike (who is a deron miller look alike) at Rezas. The food was soooo good - persian food or something. We got lots of pitas, hummus, soup, dill rice, etc. After dinner we welcomed the new year with Scottv and AbeFroman at this dive bar called Gold Star. We made lots and lots of noise and did a fake countdown to piss people off, haha. Next we went to Kill Hannah's practice loft for the big afterparty. The place was so so packed. I met a lot of people including a couple guys from kill hannah, …