Antone Henry Hammers

I keep going to McDonald’s for lunch after a long night.  I sit around after I get up and go, “Damn, wouldn’t it be nice to just sit here for a while and stuff my face?”  And yes, it is nice.  I have had a long love/hate relationship with fast food and it just got worse.  For some reason I am using McDonald’s Monopoly to justify going there.  I have been 3 times in the last 7 days.  This is not okay.  So after I woke up today and decided I needed to get some groceries so I stop going there, I went to McDonald’s cause of Monopoly.  I have somehow convinced myself I am going to win something.  If I won $50 bucks, I’m not sure it would pay back how often I have drove through, excuse me, drove-thru, there in the last couple of months.  So I think as of this moment, I am going to stop doing so.  Shit, it’s Saturday night. We’ll see how I feel in the morning.

I moved along on the path through high school.  As previously stated, I never had a group of friends that I spent a significant amount of my time with.  This was becoming very lonely.  I had been playing a bass guitar at home a lot, and an acoustic six-string a little as well.  I mainly learned Blink-182 songs and quietly wrote some of my own.  For a week I played with a couple kids in a band called Two Times Tuesday, named after a Domino’s commercial I saw.  If you know me, you will see the irony in this one already.  My pops was really excited, he came, we played at a church.  He must’ve had a few brewskis in him before he came because all he did was yell, “Play Freebird!”  This was hilarious, yet embarrassing.   I was nervous as hell to play my first show of my life, and here I’ve got this guy yelling shit at me.  Now it’s really funny to think about, but at the time I was pretty annoyed.   A short time later PMDD girl and her friend were buddies with me, and set me up to speak with a guy in my Philosophy class.   In this class I would turn back to this girl and tell her she was beautiful everyday, then I asked her to marry me a few times, she politely declined.  One day, the class took a journey to the library.  I was told the previously mentioned guy played music with another guy.  So I was determined to get in and play as well.  I walked up to him at the end of class, “Hey, I hear you play music.”  After a pause, “Yea, I heard you do too.”  Another pause I purpose, “So, we should play sometime.”  “Yea, that’d be cool.”  We sat in silence watching the clock for the last minute until class ended.  Salutations were exchanged.  Cut to a week or so later, I am trying to get together for our first play date, some awkward situations at home lead me to get angry that I wasn’t allowed to leave to go play with these guys after a few failed attempts.  I ended up moving back to nowhere land with my mom, and went to play with the boys.  We played some bad vocal pop punk.  We ended up self-releasing three things.  Spanish Rice: Live Catcher in the Rice, The Hot Mouth  / Mexico’s Best EP, and A Pessimist’s View of the World.  We opened for two bands that I really liked, The Queers and Dogwood.  With these guys and the two girls who set me up with them, I finally had a close group of friends.  During this time, the band mate I met in Philosophy became closer and closer to the girl that I was calling beautiful in class.  We all hung out, and after a few times I noticed they had something going on.  When I confronted him at band practice for not telling me, he apologized, and the drummer man said, “Well at least he made sure you didn’t have a fighting chance.”  Which is still to this day, one of the funniest things ever said to me.  Also, during this time I was going out to Minneapolis a lot.  I had a friend who was a little older than me and had a bunch of concerts at his house, Camp Firewood, named after the “Wet Hot American Summer” summer camp.  I met tons of people I still know to this day and am delighted to see every time I  do.  I go out to a concert and run into these people and don’t have to say much but just enjoy what we have in common in the music I was growing up with.  I did a little bit of falling in love with the cities, and was determined to do college at the University of Minnesota.  In high school I ended up working about 20-30 hours a week, first at Subway, then a small pizza store delivering pizzas, and then delivering for Domino’s Pizza.  I didn’t have an interest in extra-circular activities, so I didn’t do any.  Nor did I have time.  Gas and insurance were my responsibility, I also paid for all of my entertainment.  So when applying for schools, I had little to show on my application besides a 3.74 GPA, which I didn’t really earn, I just coasted along to that.  I was running an event in which some other classmates and I rented out a space every month and threw a concert called Antone’s Few Hours of Fun.  We raked in a bunch of cash, but were constantly running into road blocks on how to make it more successful.  With five people having an equal say in how this event was run, we ended up running into a lot of conflicts.  Also with the owner of the space we were renting out seeing that we were bringing in money, he wanted to make sure he got a good share.  This all eventually led to us giving up on it, but it was a good year and half of experience that set me up to want to run my own business in the future.   I applied to the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, and St. Cloud State University.  St. Cloud accepted me right away, and I ended up being put on the waiting list for the U of M.   I didn’t hear from the U for a long time, so I signed a lease with my cousin to go to St. Cloud.  The next day, I got accepted to the liberal arts college at the U, and had to pay to get out of my lease.  I really wonder how life would’ve been different if I didn’t do that, but moving on.  I decided to get a single room at the U, and made a mistake in doing so.  My freshman year I probably only made a total of four friends.  Of course, I wasn’t drinking at this time and would elect not to go out to parties because I wasn’t interested in people’s main motivation of the night of getting drunk.  I spent a lot of time hanging out with this dude I knew through a friend, we skateboarded around campus really late a night, and explored the hospital and all it’s creepy back halls.  By the end of the year, I was moving in with that dude into a house in Saint Paul, and dating a nice girl whom I would spend lots of good and bad times with in a blink of an eye.  I was hanging out with this girl and our mutual friend constantly, we went to a bunch of concerts together and separately.  I wish I kept a running list of them all.  The relationship here would define how badly I could mess things up with one slip of the tongue, and also show how disgustingly needy I could become.   I kept a livejournal of all my depressing self-loathing thoughts, and eventually turned very bitter toward most things.  A very wise person sniffed out my lack of direction at the time and straight-up told me that I had nothing to be passionate about.  I gave up on studying business, my band was done with, I was investing my happiness into only other people, it was kind of rock bottom.  I talked to a good friend about dropping out of school and opening our own pizza place, I wasn’t going anywhere with school at the time.  After a bunch of conversations with this guy, I really found out I had some sort of future to look forward to.  I think a lot of people go through that mid-college crisis.  Things change so much.  I realized at this time too that I had been ignoring one of the things I love to do most, video.  I started this website, got a camera, and tried to start making stupid videos for fun.  There were a few funny ones, and I regret not making more recently.  I should start toting that camera around with me everywhere again.  So I ended up changing my major to art, the U doesn’t have a film school, and started writing and creating a couple of my own pieces.  You can still find them on this website.  Around this time too, I started dating a new person and that would suck up two years of my life.  I didn’t want to be involved for about 90% of the time, and felt more like a parent to this person.  It was very unhealthy, and not really that interesting.  I learned lots of lessons on how to have self-respect and not let someone else’s problems put your life on complete hold.  I wouldn’t take it back though, it was an important lesson and led me to the best relationship I’ve ever had and am lucky enough to be currently in.  After I graduated, I quickly landed a job with September Films, shooting a pilot for TLC,  Mall Cops: Mall of America.  I was a production assistant who was lucky enough to get a little bit of footage that I was asked to shoot put on the small screen.  Working on a TV show had been my goal for the last few years, and I just accomplished it.  But I would like to continue to work in this field, and will continue to try to.  At this very moment I am waiting to hear back from the show runner if we are going to be shooting this for a season or not.  Oh yea, I also stopped working at Domino’s finally.  Five years I spent most of my Friday nights until 4am at that place.  I won’t miss that one bit.  Payed my bills, but I wouldn’t recommend working for that company ever.  I serve at Sawatdee, and hope for more work.  I don’t know how to end this thing.

I had this thought the other day while working at this beautiful Thai restaurant with amazing food.  We carry chopsticks, barely involved in Thailand’s culture.  Why?  Pretentious assholes that think they’re somehow enlightened by being able to use a useless tool.  A quick wikipedia study shows that chopsticks are super ancient.  The earliest record of the eating utensil dates back to 1200BC.  Though a citation is needed on this wikipedia article, chopsticks were originally made for cutting food, not some sort  of tweezers extending from your fingers to awkwardly pick up pieces of food.  Just because ancient Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and whatever other Asian cultures used to use these things, doesn’t mean that any time you go to some local Asian food place that you need to ask for a pair so that you can show you know what’s going on.

I am not sure if anyone really knows about this exciting new technology, but I am very happy to share it with you all.  It’s called a fucking fork.  Not only can you act like a civilized person and not eat by scooping piles of food into your mouth with your bare hands, you can pick it up without having to train your fingers to try and pinch a tiny fragment of whatever the hell is on your plate and drop it in your mouth.  Honestly, besides the  sheer fun of trying out something different to us ignoramuses in this place, I don’t know why you would ever try to use this difficult tool.  If you go over the Pacific to an Asian culture that uses primarily the chopstick, by all means, try to fit in.  Otherwise, if you’re here, be proud to say that you are living beyond the negative 13th century and will be happy to show how you evolved into a smarter mammal that can develop better and more efficient ways to perform the most basic action of the world’s animate creatures.  We should probably all just be hooked up to IV’s at this point in order to regulate our obesity problems and probably stabilize the world’s food supply.  To avoid further tangents I will sum this up, just because you are an American using chopsticks when you eat your sushi or random American-Asian chicken, does not mean you are more cultured than the person next to you using a fork.  It really just means you’re insecure.

So yesterday was my birthday.  I had some random folks get together at Stub & Herb’s in Minneapolis then voyage to the 90’s downtown after.  I love Stub’s.  Good beer and decent food.  So I was content on going to sit there.   I invited a good fifty people or so, knowing that at least half would never even reply, and I think about 15 came to Stub’s.   No one ever really shows up to events I try to plan, not sure why.  I suppose sitting at the bar on Sunday night isn’t all that much fun, and it’s a bad day to go out for people.  Yea, it makes sense why people don’t show.  I get that.

What is so weird to me though, is that I have little pockets of groups of friends, so getting some randoms from those pockets together makes for a really weird time.  You’ve got couples that kinda just hang out with themselves, groups that hang out with themselves,  loners that you feel the need to keep company.  I do appreciate every single person that came in my honor, it’s just either my idea of a good time is pretty bland, or throw a weird mix of people into a room makes for a bunch of feelings of awkwardness.

Hi, I’m AntoneHenry dot com. You might want to know lots of things about me. This will eventually all be under the “Pages” section.

I was born in a small town in Minnesota called Shakopee. I was raised by my parents and don’t really know where I lived until I was about three. The parents had to part, and I remember living in a trailer in Chaska for a while. Around age five I started preschool at a Catholic elementary school named Guardian Angels. I remember a large playhouse in our classroom. I then moved on to kindergarten from which I remember nothing. I think it was about this time in my life I was being babysat before and after school by some troll of woman I remember was named “Holly.” She had to be pushing two hundred pounds and ran a daycare center in her home. She had me change diapers of the babies, washed my mouth out with soap, spanked many children, kept some kid sitting at the table for five hours cause he wouldn’t eat applesauce (his dad was pretty pissed, I recall,) and kicked me back outside after I peeled my tongue off the swingset in the winter and was bleeding everywhere. There’s probably a lot more that trickles in and out of my memory about this period of my life, but that’s probably the most interesting parts. I continued on in elementary school and was pretty smart I guess. I was offered to skip the third grade, but declined because I didn’t want to leave my friends. All in all, that was a bad life decision. The next year I ballooned up to about 90lbs in third grade, and I don’t think I talk to any of those kids anymore. It probably also didn’t help that I moved, for probably the eighth time in four years or something, to a ranch place where no one I knew was around for miles. I played baseball, and was one of the the husky kids on the team. I played pretty well at that time, and my team was always winning first place in our league. That was fun. Continuing on, I made friends with mostly girls at that time. For some reason I enjoyed gabbing a bunch, and tried to have girlfriends at the age of 10. I recall buying a girl a golden locket from target or something and giving it to her on Valentine’s day, she kept it for a couple of hours and sent it back with a note saying she couldn’t accept it. I went on to junior high, still at the same Catholic school and learned the history of the bible and Jesus. This is coming in handy today, since I don’t remember a crazy amount. But I started playing basketball for school, we were terrible. I think we won 2 games in three years. I scored 17 points once for a consolation championship, and remember the other teams coach yelling, “Cover that guy!” That’s still a proud feeling for me. It was about this time too, I started realizing busting my ass in school was getting me nothing. So I created my own, do the least amount I can to just get by and still got A’s. I had a teacher in junior high named Mrs. Peroutka, she seemed to think I was a problem child. I was a good kid, just loud and obnoxious, so she kept her eye on me. A little too closely at times, I still feel. She was actually pretty funny, but not very bright. I swear to this day I could have taught better than her. We read a story in our english books about falcons, she then gave us a worksheet related directly to that story. The worksheet must have been confusing, because a lot of us had to ask her questions. She then got up in front of the class and announced, “This whole worksheet is about falcons!” I very sarcastically replied, “Nooo, it’s about cheeese.” I was asked to sit in the hall, I deserved that one. Though another time I had my head down on my desk and she stopped class to yell, “Antone! Cut it out.” I replied, “I wasn’t even looking at anyone!” She then said, “No, but you were thinking…” I didn’t deserve that one. I was elected school president in eighth grade. I hung campaign ads with pictures of Blink-182 and WWF wrestlers. Two taglines that come to mind are, “Vote for Antone, Cause Stone Cold Said So!” and “Voting for Antone Makes Cents” and I had a picture of a piggy bank. Not sure how voting for me would raise money, but I thought I was pretty clever. No one would have ever thought of that play on words before me. I did get OJ and Strawberry Milk for lunch. I also organized a school dance. This was very exciting, it took place after school hours. We were just about done setting up, when someone got the idea to go to the coffee shop on the corner. Since we were all mature adults I said it would probably be okay that we went. We walked out the door, and got called back halfway through the playground. We were in big trouble for leaving. Well, I was. Since I was somehow the “ringleader” I was sent home before the dance started. Mrs. Olsen sympathized with me, but Mrs. Peroutka really thought I was behind the whole thing. I don’t even think I went outside with the other kids, come to think of it. So anyway, about this time I started dating a girl. She was really into Jesus. Her whole family was. I ended up attending youth groups and going to Jesus Camp that summer after eighth grade. (Eighth is a weird word now that I have typed it twelve times.) Somehow I became certain that this man, Jesus, was born unto a virgin, Mary, and died because I sinned. He was the perfect man, son of God even. Then at Jesus Camp I questioned this. Some speaker scared me shitless. While I was trying to be a good christian, he was telling me that God was perfect and there was no way to go to heaven and kick it with God because I am a sinner. I freaked out. I had to get a counselor to tell me that Jesus bridged the gap between perfect, he took all of my sins so I could be chillin with the man upstairs. I was content again. So I blindly went on my way, telling off friends who didn’t believe in God that they were blind and needed Jesus. I attended more church camp and sang and put my hands in the air and cried about God’s love while everyone else around me did the same thing. Very gay. So anyway I started high school and had the choice to be friends with whoever I wanted. I started public school and I was new, everyone was like “who’s that dude?” It was me, and I was awesome. I gelled my hair up in front, which kinda looked like one of those garden tillers or whatever. Looked like a tidal wave of teeth on the front of my forehead. But my sister convinced me that this was cool. I wore lots of button up plaid shirts, and started to only wear cargo pants. I wouldn’t wear jeans again til after high school. My first year of public school had a lot of memories I suppose. There was this girl in my homeroom that tried to befriend me by writing love notes to red neck dudes in one of our classes and signing my name at the bottom. I remember coming out of class after that day with one girl telling another “He’s gay.” The other, “No way! Are you serious?” They stopped talking when they noticed me nearby. This is funny now, but I was pretty pissed. I wouldn’t talk to the girl who wrote the notes, I would literally just ignore her when she talked to me, so she told me and everyone around that I had PMDD. Oh man! I befriended this dude who scared the shit out of me for the last few years. Us catholic school kids would bus to the public school for home ec and shop and that kinda stuff, and there was this dude with a big mohawk. Our introduction was me listening to the rock remix of “All About the Benjamins” on my cd player (as I did everyday) and asked, “What are you listening to?” I said, “Puff Daddy.” “Puff Daddy sucks!” His friend chimed in, “Pantera!” and stuck out his tounge and made devil horns. It was scary. But I actually talked to this mohawk kid on the bus to public school and we took walks after we got home everyday. He and another guy turned me on to Christian Pop Punk, so I was super into that. I ended up never picking a group of friends, I kinda just drifted around and talked to everyone who gave a poo. I started dating another girl at the end of that year, we banged. Almost a year went by, and she broke my heart. It’s okay now, I’m over it, thanks for your worries. But I was certain that I was going to hell for banging and scared to death of how intense things could get when you were banging. I avoided that for another couple years, and if it came up, I ran away. Like a real man. It was about this time I had to quit playing baseball because kids were throwing curveballs and I had no idea how to hit that shit. I struck out all the time. So that was a big bummer.

More to come. I’m done writing for now.