I'm 30 years old, love music, and am about to become the sickest DJ my bedroom has ever seen.

But first, let me give you a a bit of a backstory...

In the late 90s (high school, for me) I found house music. I had mostly been listening to terrible metal and rap at the time… but once I heard those crazy electro sounds, I started to become super interested. I even started going to some under-18 dance clubs in the Quad Cities.

As soon as I heard a DJ mixing these crazy electro tracks on ridiculous house systems I fell in love. I still remember that first club pretty vividly… Not only was I blown away by what I was hearing, I was also blown away by what I was seeing. There was an entire room of people just raging out, crazy raver kids, …

Man, my weeks are getting so busy that it takes til thursday to blog about the past weekend, ha. Or maybe it's because I actually work at Red 5 and can't blog at work like I used to. Either way, it's a good thing. But I do sorta feel bad for not journaling as well.

So anyway, as you may have gathered from photos or tweets, Kari and I visited Mt Vernon last Friday for Cornell Homecoming. And on top of homecoming, it was also my "5 year college reunion." Yeah, we have college reunions at Cornell and yeah that is funny... but - I love visiting that school. Especially when people I know are there. And that, there was.

All the familiar faces basically put me into happy friend mode. Nearly everyone that I recognized from college, …

To my Cornell friends...

Remember Alex Strait? He was a Soccer player, Gamma, had curly hair, and was a couple years below me at school.

Apparently his body was found today at a park in Cedar rapids.

http://www.gazetteonline.com/apps/pbcs...711010024/1006/NEWS

Alex always seemed like a pretty good/happy kid to me. I didn't know him too well, but he sat in front of me in my Spanish 205 class. He one time let me borrow a really good Jazz CD that I copied and still listen to.
Sad. :-(

Well, for the past 2 years Memorial Day weekend has been insane. Each consisted of a two-city party tour. Cornell and Chicago in 2005, Dubuque and Iowa City in 2006. But this year, I think it may have happened a week early with a trip to Iowa City and Cornell.

But before I get into that, let me back track a few days to Wednesday when Zach, Minnis, and I went to the Code Brown show. Gaiden sounded amazing and Luke sounded one of the best I've heard. Either Vaudeville is finally figuring out how to run sound, or he's just getting a lot better - maybe both. The headliners from Deep Thinka records were good as well. I'm pretty sure they freestyled 3/4 of their set.

Ok. Back to the weekend.

Friday, Kari and I busted out to …

Man, Man. I'm having some fun lately. Awesomeness is awesome.

So last week I was sick... which I suppose was not awesome at all. In fact it was really lame. However, I got better in time for the weekend and went to visit some friends in Mount Vernon. We ran around, partied, ran around, etc. At one point we met up with some peeps at Cedar River Brewing in CR. While there I talked everyone into going to club Element, haha. It's a dance club in this old gym in CEDAR RAPIDS. It was sort of funny, but definitely fun. The best (worst) part was when I was dancing with drea and she straight up kicked me off the dance floor. wtf? am I that bad? that white? I bet it's this freakin beard. Once I shave I'm trying again. Don't get …

Friday, Kari's dad and I bottled beer, then Nick and Nicole visited while we cut my hair.

Saturday, Kevi and I drove to the Quad Cities for Ben's Wicked Undergroupd Rap festival. It was a lot of fun. There were some good acts and also some not-so-good acts. Dan Tha Saltine was really good, as was Claas, and the Unidentified Suspects. I may have to go see the Unidentified Suspects again since they are from Des Moines. This metal band from the QC (The Guerrilla Cadets) ruled. They are Christian metal so I'm sure they felt a bit out of place, but they were awesome. After Claas was on, Kevi and I decided to drive to Cornell because people were there for homecoming. We hung out with Lindsey, her friends, Harper, etc. I love …

This weekend was seriously insane. Kari and I got to go to our 2 favorite places in 1 weekend, Cornell and Chicago - Rule.

So, friday night we showed up at Cornell and hung out with lots of friends before they graduate. Wingert even showed up, so needless to say we had to break Mt Vernon. Besides that it was nice to see everyone. Elizabeth's brothers came, Dr Bob and the family were there, and tons of others. For some reason I decided I should buy drinks for everyone. Seriously. One funny thing is the Froehlich family was drunk and playing quarters. You could hear people chanting, "DOC-TOR-BOB! DOC-TOR-BOB!" haha. Other than that, jeff and I were generally destructive. I fell pretty hard tripping in this street. It was …

Ah, what a weekend. Kari and I went to Mount Vernon and Cedar rapids to have a 'going steady celebration' with our parents. Friday was open so I totally planned on breaking Cornell - because I love breaking Cornell. So, I called friends to meet me there - Kevi, and Jeff. Soon, I realized that both friends are really, incredibly lame. Jeff had to hang out with his gf and Kevi had to either sit at home or hang out with his gf, or both. Lamers. But anyway, I ate at Lincoln Cafe - so good (it was in Oprah Magazine once, haha), hung out with lots of girls, saw old friends at the bars, and walked around campus until 3AM or so. I was only mildly destructive without my friends there. Basically I just took pictures and looked pretty. I …

This weekend was homecoming at Cornell, which resulted in a ton of fun. BUT for some reason I didn't take any pictures, wtf. I'm really mad about this.

Friday, Kari had some Theta thing, so I hung out with Mira a lot. I even let Mira drive my car... lots of peeling out and crazy driving was done. She set off this dude's car alarm with my exhaust, haha, AWESOME.

Later I got to hang out with Kevi, Kari, and many many other people. I basically just ran around all night - typical Mt Vernon behavior for me. Getting people all riled up, making new friends, starting fights, talking to old friends, etc. I love Mt Vernon.

Saturday I hung out with Kevi most of the day. We're working on a rap for his new CD, it's pretty good so …

I love finding out that cornellians are doing cool things. Especially when they're making bio-diesel fuel. This rules, haha, Damon is making gas for his diesel vw golf. Hopefully it's not new, or else he probably voided the warranty.

So yeah, apparently Damon is begging for some interview attention. Kevi heard this on the news and sent me the article today. Then Scott Ruttencutter found some other links. Check these out:

http://kcrg.com/article.aspx?art_id=83632&cat_id=123

http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,63635,00.html

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/01/1729255

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040610-122511-7509r.htm

http://us.terra.wired.com/wired/tecnologia/0,1157,26083,00.html - in spanish, if you can't …

3 day weekends for life, yo. So Saturday was Cornell graduation. It was alright... the speaker was insanely boring. I didn't see any of my old CSC professors, which was sad. But I saw Lane Dunlop, Savody Phe, and a few others that I haven't seen in a long time. After graduation Kari's dad took us (my family, their family, and a couple friends) all out to eat at Vino's. We had a special menu that he and the chef picked out, awesome food.

Yesterday Kari and I went to the renaissance festival with my cousins. We saw Chris Meulners there, haha. (Owner of Hilltop Bar and Grill). There are a lot of weirdos at those fairs. But also a lot of funny people, good food, and good shows. I sort of want a samurai sword now.

Last night …

Well this was the last weekend of the school year for Cornell College. Everyone will be done Wednesday and moving out except for seniors - who have to stay until graduation on Saturday. So I guess Friday night will be the last night of 'going out' in Mount Vernon... but it'll be lame because only senior's will be there as will a lot of family.

So the weekend was decent. I bought Kari some K2 Fatty's so she can skate with me. I also bought her the Tiffany's mesh ring for graduation. Stupid graduation is so expensive.

Friday, Kari and I saw these young skaters in Marion. I walked in and the kids about pissed their pants, haha. "dude you look exactly like bam margera. that scared the crap out of me, i really thought you were …

Theta Semi Formal: Lame
Food: Worse
Music: wtf
Cool: Grant, Grant's friend, Kevin Keller, Justin, Seth, Cory, Jamie, Sean, Becca, Tara, D-wiz, Paul, Nate, Jamie's date, ...and maybe Kari (I guess)
Owls: Love Pacific Sunwear

So, a long time ago I wrote this article to get a few things off my chest. My friend Zay really liked it and suggested that I should submit it to the school newspaper (The Cornellian). So I did, and it made a lot of people mad, especially a kid named Jonathan Levine. So he wrote an article in the Cornellian about my article... trying to bash me. It was funny cause he didn't really say much and really backed down when I approached him.
So... now that I'm out of school he decides to start talking about me again?

Mira824: dude
Mira824: youre in the cornellien
Mira824: did you hear?
Derek R Brooks: i am?
Mira824: jonathan levine says"there was no derek brooks insulting what it means to be an undergradute student at a four year …

I just got a good slap to the face as a reminder that November marks the 6 month anniversary of my graduation from Cornell. This isn't sad because I think I'm getting old, because I don't... It is sad because I got a friendly letter from the Iowa Student Loan Liquidity Corporation which is conveniently located 9 blocks from my apartment.

My debt to Cornell starts today... And the scariest part about this billing statement is that nowhere on it is the total amount that I owe or how many months/years this is supposed to take. I will probably pay forever...

Stupid, stupid Liberal Arts education. Why didn't I go to a state school??? Maybe I should make double or triple payments or something and put less money in the bank. Or I could …

As many of you know, I'm just starting my 4th and final year of college. Which has given me quite a good amount of time to draw some conclusions about the people here.

First of all, I had a block off for an internship... so I started school a month later than everyone else. While my fellow classmates were going to class, writing papers, and taking hard exams, I was doing work that I loved, got some great experience, made a lot of money, got class credit, and expanded my resume.

Since I've been back at school (nearly 2 weeks), I'm really starting to come to terms with the fact that 95% of college students are made up of sheer B.S. I mean, seriously, look at the social science majors. What do they do? Philosophers... They're just people …

So I just got a job for the summer... finally. It turns out I'll be living in Mount Vernon for the summer and working on the Cornell Website. I've also probably got a job rebuilding a website for another company in the Quad Cities, and possibly a job at Subway (for a few extra bucks)? Who knows, but things are looking up for me.

So, classes start at Cornell today, yes on labor day. I have a pretty cool class too, Writing for Television. It doesn't start until 1:00 pm... which means, I have all morning to work on websites (if i wake up early). Anyway, my full time job got cut back to like 1.5 hours a day because of classes, which is very cool. Hopefully there will be lots of progress on all my sites now.

Ok, broox.com is now officially online! I know that some of you had seen the site as I've been building it on my school server... but then you probably noticed that it got shut down. That's because I got into a little trouble for having an anonymous email system on Cornell's server. Anyway, they took away my php rights on the campus server, so I couldn't do anything more to my site. I then uploaded the site to my new host (nata2.com).

Ok, I have added more, edited more, and imported the databases... so now everything is up and running at it's permanent location, broox.com. I wasn't able to recover all the comments, but I got some of them... sorry if your comment got deleted during the switch. Anyway, the site is not complete... but …

Ok, yesterday I saw the coolest thing I've ever seen before (and kevin was a witness). I live in a building where the windows are sunken in about 3 feet, and when the wind blows it sort of creates a little wind tunnel in the little nook. Anyway, it was storming REALLY bad here the other day and kevin and I were watching out my window. As we're watching, tons of rain drops right in front of my window just stop in mid air. The drops just stayed in one position for a good 10 seconds. They did not go up, down, left, or right. They just stayed still... 40 feet above the ground...