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How I Made the Geekiest (and Most Romantic) Proposal Video Ever


We’d talked about getting married what felt like pretty early. Like less than a month after we said our first “I love you”s. However, it never seemed like the right time to propose because we either had no money or I just felt like I wasn’t in a great place in life to get engaged. As time dragged on and Karen grew understandably impatient, I realized I couldn’t wait. But what to do for the proposal?

I couldn’t do anything normal because I have this horrible psychological affliction that doesn’t let me do anything normal, but Karen did want the proposal to still be surprising and romantic. I couldn’t just propose at a special place, because all of the places important to us are fairly public and that squigs me out. We didn’t have any money, so I couldn’t do anything elaborate. Or could I?

In September of 2016, I made a list of every TV show and movie Karen and I had watched that was even vaguely important to us. I started collecting clips from that assorted media and tagging them with keywords like “Kiss,” “Flight,” or “Dance.” Months went by and the clips accumulated. It was slow going as I could only work on it when Karen was asleep or wasn’t home. I narrowed down the list further and further, skimming through hundreds of minutes of footage. I had to hide the fact I was rewatching all of our shows/movies, constantly watching myself to make sure I didn’t make too many Steven Universe references or remember too many details about the plot of Heathers.

Several months later, in early April, I’d finally crossed that last title off of that ultimate heavily revised list. I checked my hard-drive and there was over 1000 clips in there. I was amazed, annoyed, and confused. How had I so blindly accumulated all this material? No wonder it took me so long, I thought I’d just been slow. How was I going to take these 1000 clips and turn any of it into a cohesive video, let alone an appropriate proposal? Well it wasn’t easy and it took about a month and dozens of drafts to complete. Maybe at some point I’ll make a post on what I learned while doing it.

On May 4th, the night in question, I rearranged the furniture in the apartment, set up a projector and screen, and heavily decorated with candles and lights. After we’d called our friends and family, I published the video on facebook, expecting people to think it was cute, but ultimately shrug it off. It is a video very specifically tailored to 1-2 people after all. Instead, the response was massively positive. A few close friends and family members messaged me that it’d made them cry. I was struck with this response, but obviously happy (it gave me the confidence to even label this article romantic in the first place).

It’s not perfect. Far from it. Yet somewhere in that mess of clips, in that tsunami of tones and genres, is our relationship. It’s funny yet dark, romantic yet cynical, classic yet quirky, childish yet mature. It’s impressive yet flawed. We’re all of those things and not quite them at the same time. And that’s what makes it the best proposal I could ever make. That’s what makes it perfect.

She said yes, so who cares anyway?

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A Note on Death

It’s 2:03 am and I have tears in my eyes. 10 minutes ago I didn’t and in 15 minutes I probably won’t, but right now… I’ve been in tears at 2 am far more times than I’d like to admit, mostly due to staying up all night to finish a show, but this time my reason is slightly more valid. I read an article, one I’ve been meaning to get to all day. It was supposed to be a quick read before I go to bed. So much for that. “When I’m Gone” is about the relationship between a boy and his deceased father, who continues to teach him life lessons through letters. From his first kiss all the way to his deathbed.

Death has followed me around for as long as I can remember. If it wasn’t pets I loved, it was the people I loved. If it wasn’t actual death, it was the threat of losing someone. Or it was merely present in my thoughts. Out of all my fears, most boil down to an ultimate fear of death. More specifically, it’s the finality of death. When I mourn someone or something, I don’t mourn that they’re dead per say, I mourn the loss of all future opportunities. I mourn the things they’ll no longer get to do, especially with me. In much the same way, I’m constantly concerned with the way I’ll leave my loved ones when that day comes. I wrote my first will in middle school. I haven’t been able to write one sense, because I always break into tears before finishing it.

I take some solace that I have more artifacts of me lying around the internet or my possessions than most. I have this entire website filled with my thoughts. I’ve got a channel with videos, a handful of journals with my dreams and worries in them, and an audio recorder with a few random late night rants on them. If somebody really tried they could get a pretty complete picture of who I was. But that’s not enough. Those bits and pieces are me talking about movies, or me complaining about my problem of the week. No, I think the real pieces that matter are those that someone can learn something from.

Every year for the past four or five years, I’ve written a letter to myself on New Years. I started this because I was lonely and wanted to make sure I followed up on my resolutions. However, in the following years it became more about remembering who I was. From year to year my priorities and even my attitude changed, but some things remained constant. The person who reads those letters will learn something about me, the same way I do every year.

But enough about me, what about all the other important things? How will I help my sister through college? How will I teach my future niece/nephew about the unexplained events that proliferate our world? How will I impart those accidentally helpful bits of advice onto my friends? How will I convince the woman I love that she’s the most amazing person on the planet, who can and should do anything she sets her mind to? How will I show my parents that for every bit of pride they’ve shown of me, I’ve feel towards them ten-fold? How will I make sure that everybody remembers who I was, what I thought, and how I felt about them?

By asking these questions, I’ve inadvertently answered some, but I don’t think I’ll stop there. I’ve got a lot of writing to do. I encourage everyone to do the same. Leave your mark. Not on the world, but on the people you care about. You don’t need everybody to remember you, as long as somebody never stops.

I should really go to bed.

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Revisions and Updates

Hello there cinephiles!
Reviews have been slow as of late, but in an attempt to keep content flowing I’ll be uploading a few essays I’ve written for class. They’re formal and not exactly fun to read, but I’m sure someone out there will be intrigued.

In other news, I just can’t stand half the reviews on my site, most of them being poorly written. So in order to make the site a touch more professional, I’ll be going back and fixing grammar, spelling, and sentence structure. In some cases I might adjust the content of the review itself. With this in mind, I’ll be re-uploading these reviews in order to keep the originals intact. The new versions will be the ones accessible on the Movies, Television & Editorials, and The Review List pages. However, searching and the review archive will lead you to the old versions as well.

Thanks so much to everyone who’s stuck with me thus far and stay tune to these posts to see which reviews I’ve updated!

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Learn some manners

To the person sitting in the room next to me: Learn some fucking manners. It is monumentally fucking rude to come home without letting your roommates know. I don’t care if it’s a last minute thing, you fucking tell them. So that she and her boyfriend aren’t woken up at 10am, ruining the much needed sleep they should be getting since they were up at 4am. So that the privacy of her own home that she temporarily had isn’t taken away from her suddenly and cruelly by your noisy fucking ass.
Fuck you.
Learn to actually think of others. Get your head out of your fucking ass and learn some fucking manners.
Of course angrily blogging about it isn’t courteous, but fuck it.

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I’m probably going to get shit for this but…

In the wake of the Bill Nye/whats-his-face debate I wrote this angry rant and I have the weird indescribable need to publish it so here it goes:
If I’m raised on Cat in the Hat as a religious text that doesn’t mean that my belief that cats can talk is a fact. So don’t try to tell me that your beliefs are facts either. Don’t try to tell me that something must exist because I can’t prove it doesn’t exist. Don’t tell me not to teach evolution because it’s false and tell me to teach creationism instead. Evolution may have it’s faults, but at least it’s based in observational science. It may branch into theoretical science and therefore have potential falsehood, but at least its not a belief based on a book. The only “evidence” used to support creationism are arguments against evolution. But if we assume evolution is wrong, that doesn’t prove that creationism is right. Science can be as much of a religion as religion, but at least it’s based on observations, not parables. And lets assume we teach creationism in schools because it’s as viable a theory as creationism, well in that case we have to every version of creationism. Native American, Norse, Chinese, Japanese, Egyptian. If we tell kids that god created the earth in 7 days then we also have to tell them that it rests on the back of a giant turtle. So pardon me if I choose to teach a scientific THEORY in a science class and leave creationism to the religious leaders.