(enter witty title about being star struck here)

I'm always fascinated at the thought of being star-struck. I mean, for crying out loud I get intimidated by my supervisors at work or even the teachers at school whom everybody finds to be below themselves. So me sauntering up to Jennifer Anniston and being all cool, saying, "How YOU doon'?"

Ya. Right.

But that raises the question: what would I say if I met my favorite actor/actress? In this case we'll use the stunningly beautiful and talented Anna Kendrick.



Yes, this is Anna Kendrick.



Here's how I picture it, in my perfectly legitimate and unbiased opinion:

I'm just a-walkin down the street on a mid-December day, mindin' my own, when who should walk out of a Chipotle with an aluminum-foil-covered burrito right in front of me but Anna Kendrick? What're the odds?

On the inside I'm freaking out. I have to say something. She's one of my favorite, most gorgeous actresses, and odds are I'll never get this chance again! But I have to be original. Everyone probably recognizes her all the time, and I don't want to be just another face in the crowd.

Having just walked out of the restaurant on a lovely, care-free day, she's standing there in the middle of the sidewalk, debating on which way to turn and walk. Half of me wants her to walk my way so I can say hi, obviously; the other half is relieved when she doesn't. She moves away from me, but it's chilly outside, and the gloves which she had in her coat pocket have fallen out onto the ground. Show time.

"Excuse me!" Rather than turn around immediately as most would, she simply stops, as though maybe I'd leave her alone if she wasn't moving. "Excuse me?" I stoop and pick up her gloves, walking towards her, and she relents, puts on her smile for the fans, and turns around.

Most people say horrible things about cameras: that Photoshop goes a long way, or some people just look bad on screen plain and simple, but the camera doesn't do Ms. Kendrick anywhere near any kind of justice. I immediately forget that I know who she is and I see her for what's right in front of me: a beautiful brunette girl with a shining smile and eyes at which i could look all day who, for whatever reason, rather than saying the obligatory "thank you" and moving on, is still looking at me, too.

"You dropped these," I say sheepishly, looking down at the soft, white gloves. She looks down too, smiling and brushing a lock of hair back behind her ear.

"Thanks." We look at each other again, and I'm absolutely surprised with myself. I've never been so comfortable around such an attractive girl who I've just met. So I make a decision to stick with this charade that I don't know her, and push this new found comfort to the breaking point.

"I'm Elliott." She bites her lip, knowing she's only in Kansas to see family for a few weeks.

"Anna," she says as she extends her hand, which I take.

"Nice to meet you, Anna." I gesture to her burrito, "Mind if I get one of my own and join you?"

"Oh, no, not at all!" she says, not in a cheesy, flirty way, but more of a why-would-I-care-it's-a-free-country kind of way.

Ten minutes later, we're sitting at the counter in Chipotle talking about everything two strangers might talk about during an impromptu Mexican lunch. I quickly find that she has a sense of humor which makes it that much easier to be comfortable around her.

Eventually, the topic of what she does for a living has to come up, and when she says she's an actress, I play dumb for a few more questions, then it "hits me": "Holy crap! You're Anna Kendrick!"

Boom. Originality achieved.

All fame aside, I ask her how much longer she'll be in town, and she gives me her phone number; something i hope few people have gotten.

And so on,


and so forth,


for several years,


until I get a lead role in a blockbuster movie making of, "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Childcare" with Bruce Willis and Denzel Washington directed by Quentin Terentino... abridged.

And Anna Kendrick and I, of course, eventually get married. That can't NOT happen in this kinda story, I mean really.

Well that's my take. And I can have that near-premonitive opinion, because it's my blog. Take THAT, small audience!

But let's be honest. Here's how such an encounter would really go:

She comes out of Chipotle, debates which way to go, and chooses my direction. My heart pounds, but I still manage a hello and a funny remark or two without embarrassing myself or boring her (I'd at least give myself that much).

I then kick myself for months for not getting a picture with her to prove to my non-believing friends.

So if you're out there, Ms. Kendrick, and you're rolling through Kansas City anytime soon (or ever), drop me a line. Or, you know, have your people call my-...

You know what, just have them call me. I'm the only Elliott Brest on Facebook, so I'm pretty easy to get ahold of.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream (within a dream (within a dream))

This blog is about dreams, and this movie is about dreams.
Unfortunately, that's about as far as the similarities go.

Generally speaking, Sigmund Freud would tell you that dreams pointed to your inner-most desires, which usually ended up meaning you were in love with your mother to some degree. All throughout history, mankind has put meaning to dreams, insisting that they all mean something. Even today, people are eager to convey that, for example, a figurative dove that dive-bombs a clay pot of Kool-Aid means that soon they will take an unexpected trip to Saudi Arabia and then drown when their plane suddenly crashes in the Red Sea!

Please.

Modern psychology, on the other hand, has come to the simple realization that dreams are merely a projection of our subconscious’s tendency to continue to work while we sleep. Well, yes there are exceptions! Thank you for asking! Really only one that I can think of: divine intervention. For example, a friend of mine was at a loss as far as what to do with his life, and he had been fervently praying about it. A few weeks into it, he dreamed he was on a stage, pounding a podium with one fist, holding a Bible in his other hand, and repeating the words, “Isaiah 40:3” over and over again. Now, he’s on track to becoming a pastor. There is no doubt in his mind that that was a message from the Lord, and certainly God has spoken in dreams before. As I said, this is the only exception I can think of. Otherwise, another friend of mine, a good, solid Christian, would have some serious family problems and internal rage brewing. He dreamed his mom kidnapped him, threw him in a helicopter, and flew like a madwoman around New York City while he yelled and cussed her out, but in no way does any of that stem from his day-to-day life or make him a bad person at all.

See my point?

That being said, the euphoria or terror that follows the grogginess of sleep after a good, vivid dream amazes me every time. What? What’s that, small blog audience? You want examples? Oh, alright!

Just the other night, I dreamed I had Clark Kent’s powers from season 9 of Smallville. I was hanging out with my best friend, Chloe Sullivan (also from Smallville) at a grocery store. She knew of my abilities and we had fallen madly in love with each other. She did not want to become romantically involved, however, because she didn’t want to endanger my secret. I came up with a great idea, and took her to the aisle that sold Kryptonite. Being the Man of Steel himself, Kryptonite is supposed to be able to kill me, but it didn’t bother me at all. Hey, I don’t control what happens, I’m just along for the ride.

Anyway, I assured her that dating would be a lot of fun, but she looked at me in disbelief. So naturally, I picked her up under her arms and pinned her to the wall several feet off the ground. “See? Isn’t this fun?” She looked back at me and said, “Yeah, I guess it is!” So I set her down, turned around, grabbed a funny-looking vial of Kryptonite, and gave it to her. She drank it immediately, gaining the powers that I had.

Now, does this mean I secretly wish I was Superman and that I have a celebrity crush on Allison Mack?

……

Personally, I don’t see how that’s relevant, and obviously, it’s not a secret. The point is, when I woke up, I felt seven inches taller and like I had the most beautiful supporting actress of a small-time network’s biggest hit on my arm.

Ejemplo numero dos:

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a nightmare, and I never like talking about them. Not because I don’t like to relive the experience, but rather because once you wake up and all the cobwebs of sleep are gone, they seem stupid and make you feel ridiculous in the retelling. Besides, I never remember much of them. This one was a few years ago, and all I remember is that alien from “E.T.” killing that boy who took him in, multiplying himself, unleashing a zombie virus while also giving all the zombies handheld cannons (genius if I ever saw it), and taking over the world. This dream was particularly terrifying because I have never seen “E.T.”, so that alien creeps the snot out of me, and apparently, the boy’s name is Eliot.

What can I say? Some people are scared of snakes; I’m scared of 1980s Hollywood aliens… and snakes.

I don’t know why, but I just love this topic and the infinite possibilities that could accompany it. Skyscrapers 

made of Peeps, bungee jumping off of the Sun into a black hole, and saving the world from an all-evil version of the Matrix cast with the ability to spew lava are just a few of the amazing potential plots of dreams. If you haven’t tried it, I highly suggest it.

Hospital Hill

 A (Painful) True Tale of One Man's (Peer-Pressure-Inspired) Journey

(That's me, over there by the tall white guy in running clothes.)

There are two kinds of peer pressure:  good and bad. Simple enough, right?

Good peer pressure gets one to ask a beautiful girl to dinner, and eventually they fall in love and get married. These are good things.

Bad peer pressure is the kind that gets young children to enroll in terrorist training camps for Al-Qaeda on a dare. That is a bad thing.

Obviously, these are not the only circumstances under which peer pressure comes along. It could also happen when, just off the top of my head for a random example, two sisters take up jogging. After a few races, they’ll build up their confidence enough to run a half marathon. Which is fantastic! The two of them probably convinced the other to accomplish a feat few can claim as their own. Then they do it a second time! It’s very impressive by any and all standards! This is another example of good peer pressure.

Of course to every silver lining, there’s a dark cloud. Or something like that. After one or two of these 13.1-mile adventures, the sisters then say to themselves, “Hey, let’s get every single one of our siblings to run one with us!”

As you may have realized by now, these are my sisters Amy and Katie. I’m very proud of the both of them and I support them all the way to and through the finish line. That’s where I drew the line. I ran in high school, but I was never very good and didn’t feel much like revisiting these memories. So when these two running maniacs decided to drag the rest of us into it, I was one of the first Amy approached. “Hey, dude! Katie and I are trying to get all of us kids to do a half marathon in June! You should do it with us!”

I have a hard time telling people “no” when they get this excited, because then I’m afraid I’m disappointing them. If I had to guess, I would have to say that this fear stemmed from an early failure to realize that my dad’s face is just stuck like that, and that he is not always disappointed. However, I stuck to my guns and replied with a reluctant, “Yeah maybe. I think I have to watch the news that day, but we’ll see.”

No peer pressure was needed for the rest of our siblings. Ben, Corey, and Chris were all successful runners in high school, and they grew up together so they’ve always been competitive with one another, as well as everyone else around them. I was never all that competitive because I'm the youngest in my family by six years at the closest sibling. So one mention of the race and all of a sudden five Brest-born children were signed up.

Enter peer pressure, stage left.

Suddenly, said five older brothers and sisters seemed to want nothing more in the world than for me to run thirteen miles with them. Great. I declined as long as I could, resorting to screening calls and casually not replying to texts. However, they went over my head, taking the home-field advantage for their own. During dinner one fine evening, Mom casually mentioned, “Oh so Elliott. Amy mentioned you’re running a half marathon with your siblings?” NO!!! They got Mom in on it! Dad, too! I quickly found myself drowning in pressure to run this race! The pressure built and built until I couldn’t take it anymore! Fine! I’ll run the race! I give up!

This is bad peer pressure.

So it began. By the time I was serious about training for this event, we were seven weeks away. Amy pointed me to a website for marathon rookies where I copy-and-pasted a training schedule. As it turns out, training schedules don’t do you much good unless you stick to them wholeheartedly, so by the time I was really serious about training for this event, we were five weeks out.

Three weeks of dedicated training and two weeks of not-so-dedicated training later, it was racing day. Not picture-tracing or doily-lacing day, but racing day. I had already received my race packet which included my bib number and a ticket for some free fancy flip flops, and I had been carb-loading for several days. 

After a fortunately great night of sleep, I arose from my slumber at 4:00 AM and rode with Amy to the race.

Hospital Hill is one of Kansas City’s largest races, if not THE largest. We somehow found the rest of the family among the almost 4,000 other runners that had signed up this year, and as everyone went through their final stretches, Ben, Liz, and I had to visit the conveniently-placed port-a-pottys one last time.

Had I been a 6-year-old boy at the very moment that I stepped out of that stall, I probably would have broken down and demanded that someone deliver my mother to me. Not a single person around me was one I recognized. We had each been assigned to certain corrals according to our estimated finishing times, however, so I knew the general area where they would be.

As I journeyed toward my designated corral, I made it a point to look for my brothers and sisters who had abandoned me, much like Joseph’s brothers did in the Bible. Only, instead of slavery and imprisonment, I could have been murdered, mugged, or stolen (thanks again, Amy!). Unfortunately, the corrals, while fairly large, were small enough that people were literally packed shoulder to shoulder. Any attempt to make it to my corral or to find the others was quickly decided as pointless.

So much for a round of Kumbayah and good luck wishing before the so-called festivities began. The rules were explained as well as the starting process, and before long, the time came for me to begin the journey. So I did.

Before I knew it, three street-side rock bands, four water stations, and six and a half miles had gone by without a sweat. Well, in truth, there was a lot of sweat, but regardless, I felt good. I was running slightly better than I thought I would, and I hadn’t stopped to walk yet. I wasn’t completely tuckered out, but I stopped for the next water station anyway as a kind of reward to myself: mistake number one.

Before I got to the station though, Amy had suggested a Five Hour Energy shot halfway through the race. So, I took one of those: mistake number two. If you’ve ever had one of those, you know just how disgusting they are. But we’ll get to that a little later.

Any runner that I’ve talked to agrees that water always seems to weigh their limbs down exponentially, and the fact that I wasn’t even half way done with the longest race of my life didn’t help morale either. Nevertheless, I gulped half of the water, threw the cup away, and immediately started back into my pace: mistake number three.

While water adds twenty pounds of lead to my arms after I drink it either way, it seems lesser when I sip the water instead of gulping. Besides, you know that stitch you get in your side sometimes when you run? Well, there isn’t any hard evidence as to the cause, but Amy found somewhere that it’s believed to happen after drinking large amounts of water quickly. For example, half of a Gatorade cup of water a little less than half way through a thirteen mile journey.

Enter pain, stage right.

I alternated between walking and jogging for the next two and a half miles with little relief, and to add to it, I had tied my shoes just a little too tight before the race started: mistake number four. The friction in my shoes built up and soon, the bottom of my feet felt raw. Luckily, the friction only started at mile nine. The pain associated with it didn’t fully manifest itself until mile 12.

These began to fade slowly by mile 11. There, two kinds of new evil reared their ugly faces. I was running up Broadway, starting to regain some confidence, and out of nowhere, my legs started to hurt. Immediately after this, they started to cramp; the entirety of both legs from the knee down. I’ve had a Charlie-horse before, everybody has. But these were so bad I couldn’t walk. Couldn’t even move my legs. One might say that instead of Charlie-horses, these were Charles-Clydesdales.

I bent over to rub my calves, hoping they would help, and as I did so, the Five Hour Energy shot made a comeback in the worst way possible: the kind of heartburn you can taste. At that moment a race pacer ran by and saw that I was having some problems. She stopped and, while running in place, said with a surprisingly confident Southern drawl, “Ya doin’ awll right there sah-weetie?”

“Ya I guess so. My legs are just cramping up really bad.”

“Well, by golly we can’t be havin’ that now can we? Here, take some mustard packets.” She dug into her fanny pack and pulled out a packet of Sonic mustard and one of Wendy’s mustard and handed them to me. I was dumbfounded, and she could tell. “If you eat ‘em, they sure help with cramped legs!”

And with a smile and what I can only imagine was a cheesy wink behind her sunglasses, she was gone. Mustard? I like mustard on ham sandwiches and potato salad. That’s where the list stops. I have long hated mustard, and for that I would have to blame my brother Ben. When I was little, he took his careful time and had me completely convinced that mustard was in fact cow manure straight from the bowels of a cow, which is why it’s yellow, not brown.

So there I stood in the 85 degree weather, near the end of my first half marathon, with mustard in my hand. Besides, I don’t care who you are, if you’re in the middle of any kind of race, no kind of food is anywhere on your list of priorities, let alone mustard; I don’t care if you do like it. However, if you have two miles left to go and you can’t move your legs, you’re willing to give anything a try.

After a few gags and another few minutes form forcing the mustard down and waiting for the pain to subside, I was back to hobbling, and I’m sad to say that that was the best I could do for the rest of the race.

The last two hundred yards, my family met me and cheered me in. I was embarrassed because every time I tried to run my legs would seize. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t let myself be the guy who walks across the finish line on front of a sea of spectators.

Had I remained on pace with my time at 8 miles, I would have finished in 2:11.00. As it happened, I finished at 2:51.37.

In my division (males 19 and under), I took 48/48.

In my gender (yes, males), I took 1654/1697.

And overall, I took 3202/3351.

So, in summary, I got smoked in my division, but I held true to my cross country goal: don’t be last overall... Oh, and I beat Amy and Katie.

This is my first post on this blog since I started it a long time ago. This is a short story that's only partially true. The true parts are in green, and the fiction is in black.

The Maid of Honor

It was hot. And, of course, they’d decided to have the wedding outside. So there we were: sitting under the Sun with no cloud cover or any hope of a breeze. Fantastic. However, the ceremony itself was blessedly short, so the mass sweat party was short lived. Afterward, the wedding party went to a shaded area outside for pictures while everyone else went inside. I knew the majority of the groomsmen and hadn’t had a decent talk with any of them in a while, so I stayed outside in the shade.

After the usual small talk and a little tomfoolery, the maid of honor joined the circle. She was pretty; the subtle kind of pretty you don’t notice at first, like that girl from The Chronicles of Riddick, which made it all the better. After a little more of just talking, still in the context of the circle, the groomsmen and others who made up the circle just started leaving; eventually, only she and I remained.

We exchanged a few comments about things around us and I managed to make her giggle; not laugh, giggle. This giggle boosted my confidence, and consequently, a line popped into my head I had always wanted to use. Every time the opportunity arose to use said line, however, I either chickened out or it didn’t apply at that time. I even saw the scene playing out in my head:

Me: I’m sorry, what’s your name?

Her: Amanda.

Me: Amanda? Hi, Amanda, I’m single—I mean I’m Elliott! My name’s Elliott. Sorry.

And she’d laugh and we’d talk the rest of the night and I’d eventually get her number and we’d maybe try a date or two. At the thought of this possibility, my heart began to pound. I looked over at her, she smiled back at me pleasantly, and I said:

Me: I’m sorry, what’s your name?

Her: I’m Amanda.

Me: Amanda? Hi, Amanda, I’m Elliott.

Now, understand, small Blog audience, I’m no Hollywood cliché of the too-cool-for-school ladies’ man who gets all the girls, but I’m also not that guy who can’t talk to anyone prettier than his mother. I have my moments on both sides of this fence, and I don’t like to brag, but that day? That day, I was feeling pret-ty  good about myself. Within seconds of our official meeting, I had established that she was a friend of the bride’s and the maid of honor (which meant she was most likely a devout Christian). On top of this information, I got her laughing. Jackpot.

Soon thereafter, it was her turn to take pictures with the newlyweds, so I stepped over to speak with two of the groomsmen again. After some poking about my subtle flirting, the three of us set about thinking of clever, cheesy ways to get her number. Both of them finally decided that the best course of action would be to convince her I was a part of some charity organization. I didn't say it out loud, but in my head I quickly resigned that idea to the "bad" section.

Pictures took some time, as they often do at weddings, so I went to settle in at the reception. After the bride had gotten all the pictures taken that she wanted, the wedding party lined up to be announced into the reception, and shortly after, the guests began to line up for food. So there I stood; in the food line that passed in front of the wedding party table, talking to some friends that had also come to the wedding, and making small talk with those behind the wedding table.

As the line progressed forward slowly, I reached the best man and the groom, followed by the bride, and then, although I knew it was coming, I still didn’t have anything clever to say to the maid of honor. She looked at me, waiting for me to talk and vice versa. Finally, after a slightly uncomfortable silence, I said the only thing I could think of. “So… You, uh, come here often?” She gave me a look like I had just said the weirdest thing in the world, and I returned with a look like I had no idea who said that or from where it came. That got a small laugh.

Nevertheless, the line pushed on, and by the time I had received my roast beef sandwich, I had convinced myself that she, like most pretty girls, was out of my league. So, I became content with talking with friends at my table.

By the time I had finished eating, the serving tables had been cleared, the DJ had started the music, and I was alone at the table. At least, I didn’t know anybody else at the table. Another thing one may or may not know about me is that I am not a dancer. I wish I was, but I’m far too self conscious to get up there and, as they say, get down.

While I watched my friends make fools of themselves and wished I had the courage to do so, Amanda came over and sat down just out of my peripheral vision at the adjacent table. “Are those your friends?” She didn’t shout it, but she didn’t exactly whisper it either. So yes, you guessed it. It scared me. Well, actually, scared is a strong word; closer along the lines of startled. It was enough of a start to make me drop my phone which I had in my hand, but not enough to make me wet my pants.

Not only the fact that her comment made me drop my phone in heart-attack-style panic, but also the fact that I tried to play it cool as though nothing had happened gained me another laugh. I was getting to the point to where I understood consciously what made her laugh and could do so with relative ease now, and as I have learned these past few years in life, the more you can make someone laugh, the more they will want to be around you (depending on the person of course).

We went back and forth from there. I learned that she wants to be a nurse, but doesn’t want to get caught up in student loans, so she plans on staying where she is at Macy’s and eventually work her way through med school. I shared with her that it’s always been my dream to act, but the success to fail ratio was way too high and I wasn’t good enough to meet that standard, so I turned to teaching. Little, but important things like this filled the next two hours.

At one point, my father called my name, and when I looked over, he gave me the USAF sign for, “We’re leaving.” I couldn’t leave just yet, the night was going so well. So, after some discussing with said father, I arranged a ride home with the friends that had come. Perfect. This meant more time.

The night went on with more laughs and smiles than before, and that feeling that’s cheesy to talk about anywhere outside of your own head began to brew up inside of me. Then, like a Hollywood moment, a slow song came over the speakers.

We laughed about the cheesy idea surrounding the thought of a dance floor and a slow song for a moment. Nevertheless, when she looked, I followed her glance over my shoulder to the dance floor. I swallow, turn around to ask her to dance, and she’s gone. I only had half of a second before I realized what had happened, but in that time, I was surprised, confused, and defeated.

Before I completely resigned my state of mind to one of depression, however, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned, and there she stood. “Dance with me?”

Of course, I couldn’t say yes right away; I wouldn’t want her to like me TOO much. So I gave a sarcastic, “Weeeeeell I suppose…” As we walked to the front, the back of my mind mentioned the fact that the song was already more than half over, and I wept. On the inside of course. So we danced. Barely.  The song was over before we had really started.

Now, I’m no DJ expert, but I do know that at every high school dance, never once did the DJ play two slow songs back to back. Today was not the case. “Alright, everybody, y’all seem to be enjoying yourselves, so how about one more slow one? Then we’ll speed things up again.” We both smiled at each other and gave the questioning look that wondered whether or not the other one wanted to stay for the second song.

I pulled her a little closer, and she didn’t refuse the offer. The thought crossed my mind several times that she was that perfect height that allowed her to perfectly rest her head on my shoulder, but I didn’t want to act on it. I barely knew her. We didn’t say much, really. It took me a while to collect a thought that didn’t have to do with whether or not I thought she liked me.

This time, before the song even ended, my friend with whom I was getting a ride tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, man, we’re leaving.” The song then ended like the night: too soon.

We looked at each other and I pretty unsuccessfully swallowed back the tremble in my voice,” So listen, um, I’m not sure where this is going, but, um, how about we start with a number?” She took my phone, put her number in, and gave it back to me. “Oh, and do you text?” I asked.

“Yep. Unlimited mobile to mobile!” she confirmed.

“You sound like a commercial,” I laughed while I took my phone back and texted her the message, “Dinner tomorrow night?”

“I can’t,” she said. And after a pause that led me to believe that this was the end of the road, she added, “But I’m free the next night?”

We made our dinner plans at a restaurant on Mass Street in Lawrence, and agreed on the details, and before we left, Amanda helped us find the bride and groom for a final congratulations. A little small talk about the exciting details surrounding the wedding and the honeymoon and some reassuring remarks about the married life from my friend, and we left.

Behind us, Amanda let the bride and groom ahead of her into the reception building. As she followed, she turned and looked over her shoulder at me. As my ride and I were strolling to the far end of the gravel parking lot, I slowed down and looked over my shoulder at her. And our eyes met one last time.