Graduation is a couple days away, and I can’t wait. We all have been in Holbrook High School too long. It’s time to venture out in the world and do your own thing. No more do I have to hear people telling me to pull my pants up! You can’t possibly comprehend how irritating that is. I hear it three or four times a day. I’ll be able to wear tank tops whenever even though it’s summer time and I’ll probably be wearing no shirt at all majority of the time. I don’t have to wake up so early until I get a job. One thing I’m going to miss about high school though is those mashed potatoes and gravy almost every Thursday. That might be the only good thing about high school.  I’m sure Kory will agree with me on that. I’m going to probably miss some of my classmates… then again probably not. I’ve seen ya’ll too much time to see some new people. Haha I’m just kidding I’ll miss a few of you J I’ll miss a couple teachers too, like Madden. Homeboy will probably go down as my favorite teacher ever. Mrs. Caffey, I’m going to miss you too. Your class was fun and very interesting. I’m excited to be done with high school. They say these high school years are the best four years of your life… I hope that isn’t true. That would suck.

Guide to staying out of iss

Well this year by no means has been a great year for me. I have been in trouble countless occasions, and served many a day in ISS. So me being the great person that I am, I am going to teach you, my fellow English students, how to stay out of ISS.

            First off, this is a big one. When you walk into class and there happens to be no teachers present just go sit down at a desk, or chair, whichever the class requires. Don’t talk to your friends to loud or say anything stupid, just wait for the instructor. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say that this substitute teacher happens to be looking pretty good that day. DON’T COMMENT ON HER APPEARANCE. Especially if she is almost 50, happily married, and has about 15 kids…  That will land you almost a week in ISS, almost kicked out of school, and sexual harassment charges might be brought up. Thank goodness in this hypothetical story that didn’t happen. Long story short don’t flirt with a substitute, or any teacher for that matter.

            Secondly, once again let’s say that hypothetically you don’t want to be at school and you want to go hang out with some friends instead. Well, when you ditch school, the people in the front office call your mom to ask her where you are at. If she doesn’t know that you aren’t at school you get in some trouble for that, both at school and at home. So if you’re going to ditch school or class make sure your mom knows so that you both can come up with a good lie together or something. What’s funny about this story is that I was the only one out of my group of friends that ditched that day to get in trouble. Their mom’s all covered for them. This same incident has landed me in ISS twice this year. Haha some people never learn.

            Lastly, it is not okay to text in class. It doesn’t matter who you are texting or why you are texting that person, it’s just not okay. You can be an aide doing absolutely nothing and decide to text your mom trying to get something for lunch… NO! That is not acceptable here at HHS. You have to walk all the way to the office, wait in line, dial on their phone and hope someone answers. When a simple text could have done the same thing in five seconds. That has landed me this two day stint in ISS right now.

            If you do find yourself in ISS though, make the most of it. They let you go clean the cafeteria in the morning, and if you are nice and do a good job you get a little breakfast from the lunch ladies. What could be more rewarding for doing dishes, cleaning, taking out the trash, and various other jobs for two and a half hours. One chocolate chip muffin for working my pretty little hands to the bone, that was my reward. Oh well I got my points I needed to attend prom. So I guess it all works out.

Just stay out of ISS.

           

Well with prom right around the corner, i just wanted to share an anecdote with you all. Hopefully it will give you some great advice on who you should take to prom and not end up like me. First off, Go with a girl that likes you. That should be pretty obvious, but i guess f or some people like me it's not. Now to share with you all the story of heartbreak and how it all happened haha jk.

It all started in weights class last year while i was getting swoll up. Kylie Koerperich just so happened to be in that class with me... I coulda sworn i thought she was fallin in love wit me because she would always stare at me while i was breaking a sweat and doing my curls for the girls haha. So i was just messin' around one day and was like do you wanna go to prom with me? she was trying to play hard to get, which i like that. I'm all about the chase. but anyway her reply was, "If you win state, I'll go with you." So i thought good there is some extra motivation. well to make a long story short, we won state. We went on the radio at Hope's mommas place and i officially asked her to prom. She said yes of course. (I don't get rejected often).

So I put my tux on and go take pictures at Gage's and Dylan's house and i'm feeling good. I'm pretty excited. Dylan and I then proceed to go pick up Kylie. We get to her house and we go to eat. I had reservations at the mesa... She forgot her camera so we had to go back to her house. Missed out on our reservations so we had to go eat at that nasty chinese place.

We arrive at the dance and me and dylan make a grand entrance of course by looking so stunning. Me and Kylie went and took some pictures like your supposed to do. Then after that.... well i aint going to gripe about anything because most of ya'll have been hearing me complain about it for a year. but i never seen kylie again that night haha. I was so burnt. but oh well. This year i'm bringing my girlfriend. so i'm sure the whole prom will be so much better :)

two rules.
1) go with somebody who likes you.
2) if you're iffy about your date, take a best friend with you.

Biker Boys

Yesterday in class we were brainstorming, coming up with ideas for our next blog. Mrs. Caffey said it’d be good to write about something embarrassing that has happened in your life. Now I’m not going to write about something embarrassing about me, but I’ll write about an incident with a good friend of mine.

                My partner in crime (Gage) and I are youngsters riding bikes up on the hill. We constructed a very little ramp and we were trying to get some hang time off of that. We had been riding for what felt like all day when all of a sudden our good friend Kory comes riding his bike from his house right down the street. We instantly started smiling because hanging out with Kory is always a good time! There are 3 kids, 3 bikes, and 1 ramp; so you know how we boys are, we want to have a competition to see who can jump the highest and farthest.  We are having this competition for a good 15 minutes and I am clearly beating the other two competitors when all of a sudden Kory wants to raise the bar. Now if you know Kory he isn’t the type to do anything dangerous… or fun for that matter ;) (hehe just kidding kory) but he goes and gets like three more bricks and decides he wants to jump higher. So we are jumping this new and improved ramp for a little bit, things are going well until Kory starts complaining saying his bike is broken and not in a stable condition to be jumping right now. Gage and I start to badger him calling him names for being a chicken and just being scared because I was winning. Kory being the competitor decides to give it one more go…

                Kory is looking marvelous, his wonderful locks flowing in the wind as he approaches the ramp at a breakneck speed. He reminds me of superman when he takes flight, like that is how good he looks. (not really, just trying to build up the suspense) Then he hits the ramp and soars through the air, you can tell things are about to get bad by the expression he makes. His bike lands awkwardly on the pavement and he crashes to the ground. Now I’m not an expert biker, but it wasn’t that bad of a crash, but the way Kory reacted you would have thought it was horrible. He starts crying… and cussing!!! We all know Kory is an angel child, and has never spoken a bad word in his life. The 20 minutes after that crash                      he had the worst potty mouth I have ever witnessed. He was lying on the pavement rolling around shouting expletives, but when he decided to get up Gage and I discovered he only had a little scratch on his pinky! It was the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life. Kory left and went home and we didn’t see him again for at least two weeks.

                Kory, I know you are going to read this and you are going to try to explain what really happened. There is no point in doing that because Gage was there too. We know what we saw. :)

Rap Vs. Country

This post might end up being my all-time favorite. I’m going to be discussing a very controversial topic, the difference between rap/hip-hop and country. Country music fans always seem to have a problem with rap music and rap fans don’t care too much for country, I know I don’t. Really though, what’s the difference between the two? Other than the beat and background music the lyrics are quite similar. Well sure they use different words, but the words are synonyms. Both genres of music talk about the same topics: drugs, lovin, and having a good time. I took health my freshman year, and the teacher taught me that alcohol is a drug.

Think about all the country songs that talk about people getting a little drunk. I would name some but I can’t think of any at the top of my head. Then you got the classic hip/hop song… Tipsy. See they talk about all the same things. So why can’t country and rap get a long? The only country song I have ever listened to by choice would have to be “Honky Tonk Badonk a Donk” I don’t know if that’s the correct spelling of the title, but I think you are able to understand which song I’m getting at. Isn’t that song all about booty? Most rap songs have at least one booty reference throughout the course of the song. 

There are some rap songs that talk about shooting guns at people. While Country talks about shooting guns at animal, tying them to the grill of their car, driving it home, and eating it. Shooting people is bad I know, but I would much rather hear about that than the picture that came up in my head from reading the previous sentence.

I’m not trying to convert any country music listener into an avid rap fan. I’m just trying to get a few points across. So that the next time a country fan says that rap music is horrible they can read this and be like “wow” he makes a good point. It’s all about what you like to listen to, and what your musical preference is.  You won’t see me blasting any country through my system speakers, and I don’t expect everybody to be bobbing their heads to that new Tyga mixtape. But if you don’t like someone else’s music then just keep your comments to yourself, because we really don’t care, it’s not going to change our opinion on the subject matter.

P.S. I can’t believe there is a song out there called Honky Tonk Badonk a Donk.

Feb. 14

With Valentine’s Day approaching quickly, I’ve decided I’m going to talk on it. You probably think that I hate this holiday, but that is not true. I look forward to it ever year! Except for getting girl’s a gift. That part is hard because with all the jewelry store commercials that come on TV around this time of year, you know you are not going to live up to the expectations. I’m young still, so I’m not really trying to get that fancy of a gift for anybody. (Haha you’re lucky if you get a bag of candy from me ;)) some of the reasons I like Valentine’s Day are that everybody is usually nice and in a cheerful mood. Except for the lonely bitter people, but that’s beside the point. Another reason I like Valentine’s Day is because it is my best friend in the whole wide world’s birthday… Gage Alley. Mr. Joseph and I have been tight since kindergarten.

I remember the first time I ever went to his house; his parents said I had way too much energy so I wasn’t invited back for awhile. Now that I look back on it, I can’t recall a day where I haven’t been at his house. I like being able open up the garage and walk in. When he is asleep I’ll pop the lock on his door and go wake him up, I don’t know if he likes that at all, but it happens. When he is at work I’ll go up to his house, make some food, play some video games, and sleep on his couch until he gets back so we can go do something stupid together. This is how spontaneous our relationship is, it’s Christmas Eve and we are just cruising around because we are bored. My favorite song is playing so you know I’m showing off my talented vocals. All of a sudden Gage turns the music down, I got kind of frustrated because I was about to hit them high notes. He looks at me and says, “Man, let’s go get a kindle fire.” I responded, “Dude, it’s 11 o’clock on Christmas Eve, Santa is coming soon.” But we go anyway, and to our dismay Wal-Mart is closed. I’m pretty sure on the sign outside of Wal-Mart it says open 24 hours, but I guess not that night. So of course since we are in Winslow we have to stop and see Halle for a little while. I don’t think we got home until about 2 in the morning. You know time flies when you’re hanging out with your best friend.

Gage and I have been through it all. We been through all the break-ups together, for him it has been A LOT; for me, not so much. Gage can’t cook too well, but I know if I was sick and needed soup he would try and cook some for me. That’s when you know that you have a great best friend. I most likely wouldn’t try and cook but I would definitely go out and buy him some if he really needed it. Awww so much I could talk about with me and my buddy, but I’m going to leave it at that before these tears start flowing.

You know me just giving a little shout out to my bro for his birthday. Girlfriends come and go but best friends are forever… ayyye ;)

The First Attempt

You know when you see something that makes you jump out of your comfy seat? (there was supposed to be a picture of Blake Griffin's violent dunk on Kendrick Perkins right here. but i couldn't figure out how to get it to work... ah well, look it up.)

After seeing that on TV the other night, I knew I needed to blog about it. Not really much you can say about it, right? Just looking at the picture above I’m still in shock wondering why Kendrick Perkins even tried to jump with Blake Griffin. Kendrick Perkins has been in the league for a while; he played with the Boston Celtics up until last season. He has a championship ring, and has enough experience to go around. Enough experience to know that if you rotate to help side late against the clippers this is what is going to happen. When other player’s in the NBA see Blake Griffin jump they stand, watch, and get out the way because this is always a possibility. This is a career ending play for Mr. Perkins. No one will remember his great play with the Celtics, but they’ll remember this moment forever. It kind of reminds me of my first attempted dunk during a game. “Dang this kid has done it all! Walk-off Homeruns, Dunks, Dates, the list goes on and on.” That has to be what just crossed your mind. And for the most part it’s true. I have pretty much done it all in the short 18 years I have lived. Well back to my dunk. It’s my sophomore Basketball season at Holbrook High School we are playing against a weak Ganado team at home. I Get a steal right around the half court circle, put my head down and run as fast as I can. (When you put your head down you can’t really see in front of you… remember that. It’s a good life lesson.) I couldn’t really see where I was at until I jumped. I took off like Blake Griffin did in this picture; actually I would have gotten more air than him. You see I put my head down and didn’t take off at the free throw line like I intended. ;) I actually jumped right under the backboard, it was the weirdest thing. The ball hit the bottom of the rim flew out of my hands and bounced out of bounds. It must not have been meant to be, because I was going to bring the entire hoop down with me Shaq Style. So I’m glad it didn’t happen the way I wanted it to. Because we would have had no hoop to play on anymore and we all know the school wouldn’t have gotten a new one for at least three years.

There are actually 2 life lessons you can learn from my blog this week. The first, Always keep your head up. Otherwise you don’t know where you are jumping from. I promise you I would have had the best dunk you have ever witnessed. The dunk pictured above was bone-rattling. Mine would have been bone-breaking. Hahahahahahaha. The 2^nd life lesson is; if you can’t jump with the big boys then go ahead, stand there and watch. After all Kendrick Perkins would have had the best seats in the house to see that dunk. But now he’s on posters all around the world. 

Pet Peeves

I’m going to be discussing a pet peeve.  I know what you’re thinking, “oh my goodness I hope I don’t do anything that bothers him.” Unless you are sneezing on the back of my luscious waves then chances are you don’t bother me too much. This is “A Blog All About Jalen” they will be things that bother me, not things that bother you. I’m sure most of you out there reading this will agree with what I have to say, but as always there will be a few who don’t. If you don’t agree with me then most likely you’ve never been in this type of situation, and I respect that.

My Pet Peeve is dating in general. My main frustration might be something that hits a little closer to home with my male audience rather than the females reading this. To the guys out there, I have a question for you. “Have you ever worked hard and saved up money to take a nice lady out on a date?” I’m hoping you have, so that we can share this pain together. Anyway, saving all that money to take a girl out and they want to be on the phone the whole time! That’s the worst. Ladies, here’s some advice: us gentlemen don’t save up the money to take you on a date for you to be on the phone the entire time. WE WANT YOUR ATTENTION!!!!! So if that’s what you intend to do, here is a solution. Save your own money, take the guy out, and then you can be on the phone the whole time and we won’t even mind because we aren’t paying for things. It’d be nice to get a compliment once in a while too. Just saying. 

Going on a movie/dinner date with your lady is always a fun time. But WOW doesn’t it cost so much? I remember the last time me and a date went to flag to watch a movie and eat; it took all my Christmas money. No shoes for meL. (Feb 4^th I’m getting a new pair though)It was a fun time though. As a guy we go in to the date expecting to pay for everything. Ladies, from what I’ve been told you all actually do have a heart so you know maybe step up and offer to buy some overpriced drink at the theater. That could possibly determine if we have enough gas in the tank to make it home. If we run out of gas; I’m sorry, but you are going to be walking home. That’s just some food for thought girls. We know you aren’t going to pay for the 38 dollar dinner ticket when you ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, but make an offer on the drinks. Just an offer. Kindness goes a long way, like all those miles back to your house. Because I do not mind leaving you stranded in Flagstaff. Moral of this blog: Either get a job and be able to afford to take your girl out, or go without shoes for another month. It’s a tough choice I know. 

P.S. I wouldn’t leave anybody stranded in flag. Those comments were made only for humorous blogging purposes. Deep inside I’m sure I have feelings somewhere

Walk-Away J

                I pondered for days on end trying to come up with a good title and subject for my blog. I thought about writing about some enjoyable things in life, for instance: shoes, hats, clothes, sports and people. But I was still stuck because none of those sounded substantial enough to me.  So after talking to my good friend Kory about this blogging situation one night, he gave me some good advice and told me, “Why don’t you just write about your favorite subject?” It took me two seconds to decide on a topic after that. I’m sure you’ve read the title, so you know the blog is all about me. What can possibly get better than that? (I know that is what all of you that are reading this is thinking at this very moment.)You will get to take a journey into my mind each week, and learn the ins and outs of Jalen and how Jalen’s mind works. I will be referring to myself in the third person every now and then. My government teacher does that quite frequently and I think it’s pretty awkward when he does it, but when I do it… it makes sense. I’m going to start off by giving you a personal, but very true anecdote about when I was younger. Just to help you get a sense of what my life has been like.

 The story begins when I was just a young lad, maybe 11 or 12 years old. The Holbrook All-Stars little league team was playing a tough St. Johns team; it was an elimination game, so the urgency was there. It was a battle throughout the first 6 innings, and then we finally made it to the 7^th inning. We held St. Johns from scoring, so it’s a tie 5-5 with my team up to bat. I remember this all like it just barely happened, so I’m not exaggerating at all or anything, keep that in mind. All of a sudden I am up to bat with 2 outs and Ilacian on 3^rd base. The winning run is on 3^rd, all I have to do is get a single and we win the game. But you know me I have to go above and beyond that. So I tell myself, “I think it’d be pretty cool if you hit a homerun right now.” I step into that batter’s box with so much confidence. I know I’m going to hit a homerun, but it’s all about the dramatics. I take the first strike right down the middle, I see it coming and decide in a split second that it would be too easy and wouldn’t make for any fun or excitement. The second pitch comes my direction and in my opinion it was too low but the ump called a strike. I’m down 0-2 in the count and when the 3^rd pitch comes I swing the bat as hard as I could. The ball jumps from the bat; it soars at least 500 yards maybe even more but we all lost sight of it after it went over the playground. I touched home plate and the whole team jumped on me, we were all ecstatic. It was a walk-off homerun, and ever since then when you talk about little league baseball you have to bring up the legend of “Walk-Away J”. After that nail-biter of a game we went to a pizza joint and I remember I ate good that night. I felt bad for whoever was paying. I think I knocked off a good 3-4 pizzas by myself and at the minimum 25 wings. The moral of the story is: if you believe it, you can achieve it.

                That was the first of many stories from my youth. I won’t blame you or get upset if you run up to me after class asking for my autograph once you’ve read this; it happens. Just make sure you have your own pen because we all know I do not come to school prepared.