jamie r. belyea loves you

Yelp: Top of the Hub

jamieintherough — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:54:00 -0400

“A few minutes later our server came back, clearly just elected Mayor of Excuses Mountain..”

The Post-Undergraduate Nightmare

jamieintherough — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 04:42:00 -0500

I’ve lived a life filled with independence, spontanateity, and messiness for the past four years or so. So, you can imagine the almost culture shock I am facing now as I find myself moving back in with my parents. Such is the reality of my life, a pain that I share with many other post-undergrads.

The nights of coming home gin-soaked and rambunctious will be put on hold, instead replaced with curfews & nightly check-ups. I was certainly not out of control during my years at uni, but I was known to participate in some unseamly behavior from time to time.

Just a week back now, it certainly does feel as if I’ve stepped into a time machine. With my laundry and cooking being down for me, and incessant screams for me to clean my room (with the appropriate ‘why are you even in MY ROOM anyway?’ retort). Lord knows over the past few years the only thing I’ve learned to clean properly was the inside of a vodka bottle. Where did all that growth go the past four years?

In the fantasy land I had dreamt up, my post undergraduate career was suppose to start like a bad WB tv show pilot. I was due to have my dream job, on the fast track to success with the love of my life (whom I met my first year in college), moving in to a small, but nice apartment in the city. Alas all of this was hard to achieve while not knowing what my dream job is, and now wanting to be anywhere near a relationship. Alas my show will have to be picked up in another season.

With only a small paying blogging job in tow, I shall spend the next few weeks purusing craigslist for some sort of 9-5 workday. Who wouldn’t want to hire a lost 23 year old, with no immediate goals, who can type 91 words per minute?

Especially during this holiday time, this song is clearly a...

jamieintherough — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:16:45 -0500

Especially during this holiday time, this song is clearly a theme song of mine.

Our Trivia Dreams Came True

jamieintherough — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 02:30:00 -0500

My trivia prayers were answered Tuesday night when my rag tag trivia team managed to snatch 3rd at Tavern in the Square (Central Square in Cambridge) Stump! Trivia night. It was a night that was completely impromptu, but completely worth it.

It wasn’t easy to form a team at the last minute. Lynn and I had been drinking at Not Your Average Joe’s in Methuen starting at 4:30 PM, so we knew we had the two of us, and I prefer not to attempt a trivia feat with less then 4 players. My typical partner in crime is my dear friend Kristen, but she was working when I first came up with my plan, so we had to wait until she was out before we could get confirmation. She of course agreed to my genious plan, and we were in motion to Camrbridge.

That was until Kristen told me that she might not be able to make it to trivia, because she had planned on making a batch of fudge. I quickly convinced her she was a meance in the kitchen and it was a ridiculous plan, and she decided that she’d be able to meet us around 9-ish right when trivia started.

So around 8:45 PM Lynn & I arrived at the restaurant, and after a bit of mulling around were sat at a table of 6, right in the front table. As someone who has worked in restaraunts before, I hate seating an incomplete party, and hated being ‘that guy’. I quickly hoped for my friends to arrive, and they of course were going to be just a little bit late. Luckily, a pitcher of Sangria was ordered and the calmed my nerves.

Also making me uncomfortable was the large party directly behind us. They were clearly work pals, all mid-30s to early 40s all having a jovial holiday time. There was loud, small Indian man who seemed to be the life of a party. When Lynn and I first sat we heard him say ‘I’m going to take a shot!’, and he promptly did cheering himself on as he choked it down.

The next time I turned around he was passed out on the table. Face down, his friend patting his back, but he was gone. It was a flash in a pan, something that I don’t even see very often at the debauchery of a UMass party. Yet here he was, in his white collar suit and tie, passed out at a bar at 8:45 PM.

At some point he threw up everywhere, and his co-workers’ valiant attempts to cover with napkins only did so much.

Meanwhile, we were in the zone at trivia. After nailing a question on Kwanzaa, and guessing a question about Elvis, my friends arrived to tell me what ocean Christmas Island was on. Kristen, having studied in Australia, knew the answer.

We were off to a flying start. Then Christmas Math came about, the a category about Astronauts? Before we knew it team Rollin’ with the Homies (R.I.P. Brittany Murphy) was sinking fast.

When we got to the final round we pretty much gave up hope. I forget what the opening question was, but we nailed it for a perfect 10, and kept our hopes alive. The final question was, How many presents were given total in the song the 12 Days of Christmas, after arguing for awhile whether it was a partridge in a pear tree or a partrige and a pear tree, and whether that was one gift or two, we finally counted them all and submitted our score. It wasn’t until I arrived that I realized our critical error, we had only counted the number of gifts given on the 12th day of Christmas, not counting the huge total from the 11 other days.

So, we got that one wrong, we were toast. When she finally announced the scores, somehow we placed third! Perhaps other teams were drunker then we, perhaps more Indian men threw up, I don’t know, but I was so giddy! It was the first time I ever placed at trivia.

So, there we have it. A $15 gift certificate to slip 6 ways. AKA perfection.

Tyra Banks is Ruining My Life

jamieintherough — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:38:04 -0400

Indirectly of course. I, like the majority of America never watched America’s Next Top Model, or really any program on the WB, until the dreaded VH1 marathons infested my life with their fierce goodness. There they were hour after hour of a ridiculous supermodel, with ridiculous emaciated fame whores, and the ridiculous (wo)men that always appeared to teach these misguided ladies how to strut, or swirl, or some other vaguely familiar sounding made up word.

Then I became hooked, and now it has truly interfered with my life, more specifically interfered with my tagged photos on Facebook. As soon as I hear a camera turn on, I get ready for my fiercest high fashion pose, which has lead to some sad days in the recent. I can’t just stand there and smile, oh no, I need to arch my back, elongate my neck, hunch myself over, smile with my eyes, or something of the like to make that photo shine. As I am not a tall slender woman, these techniques don’t always work out so well for me. So, you’ll see picture after picture of me holding the same pseudo-angry, ‘fierce’ look.

It has it’s good moments though, as I found out on Thursday evening. On the way home from the bar, my new favorite Justine and I decided to utilize her camera in a photoshoot of epic proportions. It started with us posing aside black cutouts of famous poets I believe, and we took it off from there. Be it trees, stairs, church steeples, dorms, bridges, it didn’t matter, we posed. It was fantastic.

It was a perfect cap to a wonderful meeting where I met two fantastic people. It was a bit awkward at first thought, as one of the people I met, had an admirer/best friend whom had me facebook stalk him the week before. So, before our first real meeting I had felt like I had seen him plenty. That’s the weirdest thing about facebook. You can graze someone’s profile enough, that when you actually meet them in life, it’s a bit awkward. It worked out fine in this instant though.

Senior Citizen Tackles Bank Robber. Wowza! Look at that man go....

jamieintherough — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:35:13 -0400

Senior Citizen Tackles Bank Robber.

Wowza! Look at that man go. I used to work for a bank as a teller, and if you tried to physically restrain someone from robbing you, or really do anything to impede them from getting their money (besides pushing the alarm button), you would be fired.

Albeit this situation worked out okay, but you really put everyone in the bank in danger when you do this. What if this man was unable to restrain this guy, and he goes crazy, and starts attacking people, shooting people, anything like that?

While we can celebrate his actions, because they were successful, it really is too big a risk for so little reward. It’s just money.

Although how fantastic is it that the robber’s first name was Sinister?

Avril Lavigne's Spring 2010 Show: Abbey Dawn, New York Fashion Week

jamieintherough — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 07:31:37 -0400

Avril Lavigne's Spring 2010 Show: Abbey Dawn, New York Fashion Week:

God save us all.

Thankfully I would never set foot into a Kohl’s so I won’t have to look at this monstrosity in person.

Steph & I during our epic Friday night.

jamieintherough — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:12:25 -0400

Steph & I during our epic Friday night.

22 Episodes of Glee ! Glee has been picked up for a full season

jamieintherough — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:01:44 -0400

22 Episodes of Glee ! Glee has been picked up for a full season:

Glee has become the first new show of the Fall season to be picked up for a full season. That means we will be getting 22 episodes this season of this show.

While I think it’s funny, and as a former musical theater person, I of course have fallen in love with this show. Although, it’s characters are a bit cartoony, and based on a lot of sterotypes, hopefully with this order they can level out the characters and make them more real.

They have a big opportunity to really push the t.v. genre this season, and hopefully they can do it.

The Worst Way to end a Friday

jamieintherough — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:38:07 -0400

Three Olives Root Beer can do crazy things to a person, as I found out on Friday night. The night itself was pretty standard UMass Amherst fare, a bunch of random people I have never met all congregated inside one small apartment (with a select few spilling out into the backyard), whom in some form or another became my best friends at the end of the night. I had gone with Steph & John, perhaps the cutest couple known to man, and two of my favorites. John had left early, he had diving practice in the morning, and we had already dominated the Ruit table by winning 6 games in a row (perhaps helped in part, by John chugging down H20 all night, and not any other undesirable substance).

Stumbling out at the end of the night is where the real action happened. As we stepped outside the apartment in attempt to find our way home, we saw him. The man who was going to ruin/make me evening. He was a large hispanic man, a bit over 200 lbs, perhaps even closer to 300, who we later found out was named Rick. He was completely incapacitated, and struggling. Leaning against a black Honda Accord, he stood, eyes closed, ever so frequently checking his balance.

A crowd outside had gathered to gawk at this poor, struggling man. He had clearly had gotten himself a little over his head, and without a buddy in sight, it was a wonder how he would make it home. Then the inevitable happened. As you probably can guess, the overconsumption of alcohol for the evening did not sit well in Rick’s stomach, so it came back up. I couldn’t quite tell, but it seemed to miss the Accord, and scattered all over the pavement.

Typically one might feel quite a bit better after purging these toxins out of the body, but Rick was beyond help. In a blink of an eye, Rick who had found himself a good lean action on the sedan, fell to the ground. There he lay in a pool of his own sick, but he was more peaceful then ever, finding slumber on the pavement outside a random apartment on a cold Fall evening.

The crowd really got into it at this point the laughing, and taunting heat an all-time high. Camera phones were taken out, and an impromptu photoshoot was occurring. My dear friend Stephanie has a heart too big for her own good, and decided she was going to play good samaritan for the evening. I have the cold heart of a New Englander, and was ready to walk on by. Sure, I felt bad for the guy, but he was not my responsibility, and if you are going to drink yourself to that point, I think you deserve what you get.

I was sobered up by this point anyway, and when Steph decided that she absolutely HAD to make this man found his way home, I agreed to chauffeur. I was probably the only one at the time that could walk straight, and there was no way Steph would be able to carry this large man on his own.

So, we finally got him to his suite in Sylvan. For those of you unfamiliar with the UMass Amherst campus, Sylvan is almost everyone’s least favorite place to call home. It is far away from campus, features small rooms, and has a reputation of featuring some of campus’s strangest folk. I had worked for years as a tour guide and an orientation counselor, and dismissed these rumors as sterotypes, but this suite was something else.

As Rick climbed into the shower he lost his balance, and began to lay on the shower floor with the water pouring over him. We attempted to get him to get out, and that’s when Old Man River popped out. When I say this man was pushing 60, I am no exaggerating, he had all of four teeth, and a bald head. Well he was bald on top, but did have a dandy ponytail on the bottom. A Sylvan Suite nightmare was about to unfold.

He, in what he described as ‘politely’ sssh!ed us, and we both took offense to this. Here we were trying to get this large stranger off of the bathroom floor, so we could leave with the sense of security that he would be okay, were being yelled at by a nightmarish version of David Crosby. The other suitemate, another man who loved a good ponytail, who only had one hand, more tactfully asked us to take the party into the lounge. PARTY? I don’t know how they do things in the 1880s, but our generation certainly did not find partying in the form of waking someone up from their alcoholism coma.

Eventually the RA was called in, a man in his 40s, which added to what felt like a parallel universe to us, and thanked us for trying to make sure Rick was okay. Eventually Steph had to climb under the shower stall, where Rick lay naked, to shut off the water and coax the man out of the bathroom. This was after each of us got into an individual screaming match with Old Man River, over the noise. Rather then attempt to help us get this suite mate better, he found solace into complaining and yelling at us. While I understand his frustration (it was past 2 a.m. at the time), to harp on us for simply trying to help, was mind boggling.

Rick finally made it back to his room, where his helpful roommate Leslie was. Although it was a bit strange as apparently the 25 year old Rick was in the process of moving out, and had no sheets, blankets, or pillows in his room.

In the end Steph and I left exhausted, but happy that we didn’t just leave the poor man there. Although I’m not sure being a good samaritan was exactly worth all the drama we endured through the evening.

Take it all in ladies and gentlemen. Feast your eyes on the...

jamieintherough — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:35:41 -0400

Take it all in ladies and gentlemen. Feast your eyes on the lovely view I had on my PVTA ride home today.

HER sideburns go down to her chin. That’s hot! It makes living out in the boonies so worth it.

I seem to have missed the boat on the proper wall post protocol...

jamieintherough — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:09:18 -0400

I seem to have missed the boat on the proper wall post protocol on Facebook. Instead of directly replying to someone’s wall post by posting on their wall, you have to write a comment off the post the initially left you? I used to be such a pro when it came to Facebook, and now I feel completely out of touch.

I long for the older days of Facebook. For those of you ancient monsters like me (you know 22+) try to remember the heyday of Facebook, the days when it was a safe place to network, reconnect with friends, and of course mindlessly stalk anyone you found even the slightest attractive. Or a time when your only random friend request was that smelly kid that sat across from you during your lab class, and not a distant aunt, uncle, mother, or your 10-year old little cousin who is in a relationship with her juice box loving boyfriend. Remember those days?

I was skeptical at first, a lot of us were, I was always apprehensive of joining Myspace, because I thought it was a place for whores. That wasn’t me, I didn’t want to search out potential dates to meet up at the movies so we could sit next to each other, and not talk. The rigors of my social life were extended enough through traditional high school. Yet, sometime in the first or second month of my freshman year at UMass Amherst, I decided why the heck not, why not join this social networking revolution? This was a time when you needed a college e-mail address to get on Facebook, and since everyone was doing it, I succumbed to the peer pressure.

Little did I know that Facebook stalking was a natural gift I possessed, and pursued. There was no security, no blocked profiles, nothing like that, so trying to stalk anyone was so much easier.

This was before high school was added, before any random person could get on, before applications, fan pages, all of this stuff that we are so saturated with now. It was so much simpler. I guess I’m just an old fart.

How hot is Megan Fox? The laser background just may have won me...

jamieintherough — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:00:05 -0400

How hot is Megan Fox? The laser background just may have won me over, even if her teeth clearly developed before her breasts did.

How I’ve managed to have this much laudry in one week is...

jamieintherough — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:25:12 -0400

How I’ve managed to have this much laudry in one week is mind boggling.

Duggars Expecting 19th Child!!!

jamieintherough — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:33:06 -0400

Duggars Expecting 19th Child!!!:

19 Children? I can barely feed and bathe myself.

Nordstom = Free Clinic?

jamieintherough — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 01:06:32 -0400

I remember a time, a beautiful time in my life, when Nordstom was an amazing department store tucked away in New York City. It was an adventure or a vacation just to walk through those halls, looking through the designer merchandise, the well dressed sales people, the even better dressed shoppers, toting their new Louis Vuittons and the like. This was a beautiful thing, as I’ve been shopping nearly exclusively at high end department stores & boutiques by this point.

Having never set foot at a suburban Nordstom, I finally did so today at the North Shore Mall. Perhaps it was nice for Danvers, perhaps it’s classed up the North Shore, but to me it was too icky for words to see my beloved department store depreciated in this way. I felt as though there were more teen pregnancies throughout the store then actual designer items.

I almost vomited. I don’t think anyone would’ve noticed.

OMG, Trannysaurus Rex went on court today, and not Jamie :( Srurpsied I didn’t break my racket...

jamieintherough — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 11:43:49 -0400

OMG, Trannysaurus Rex went on court today, and not Jamie :( Srurpsied I didn’t break my racket after that double bagel error fest. Have the back draw to contend, so we’ll see if I can make life a little better.

I honestly should not think this is funny.

jamieintherough — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:51:00 -0400

I honestly should not think this is funny.:

I am terrible.

What Women Want? Dmitri the Stud. Please read the description...

jamieintherough — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:03:00 -0400

What Women Want? Dmitri the Stud. Please read the description below before listening! Read this over at melodymaker & I just had to repost!

This is the classiest man I have ever encountered. If only I could get picked up in this manner, I’d have the confidence to take over the world.

Here’s the story, from melodymaker’s posterous:

“The story is this: a girl was out with friends having drinks on King St (in Toronto ). This guy approaches her and won’t leave her alone -saying how cute she is. She finally gives in and hands the guy her business card to get rid of him.
The attached is an MP3 file of not one, but TWO voicemails this guy left. This goes down in the history books - especially the second voice mail.
After hearing them you can clearly see why she didn’t call him back - instead she called in to the Z103.5 morning show & had them play this on the air. “

So, if you’re single and ready to mingle… head out to King St. and if you’re elegant enough, Dmitri just might approach you too.

Wife Shames Cheating Husband During Rush Hour

jamieintherough — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:15:00 -0400

Wife Shames Cheating Husband During Rush Hour:

I bet that’s a mistake he’ll only make once. Being caught that is.