Gordaen’s Blog

Sorry, nothing too exciting to report. My girlfriend and I watched Man of the Year Friday night. It started out hilarious, hitting on a lot of political points with classic Robin Williams humor. If the entire movie was as funny as the first 30-45 minutes, it would have been the funniest movie I have ever seen. Instead, it took a turn toward the serious, sprinkling fewer and fewer jokes. Though the movie was still great, I didn’t expect it to try to completely turn into a serious film. A lot of movies go from funny to semi-funny with a semi-serious overtone, but this movie changed entirely. If you like movies (and especially if you like Robin Williams or hate the way politics are now), this is still worth watching. Just be aware that it is not 100% comedy.

When we returned from the movie, it was a little past midnight. Shortly after that, we decided to go to bed. Unfortunately our apartment neighbor decided that bass-y surround sound is great after midnight. I waited a little while and then decided to go give the polite “Oh hey, how’s it going? Maybe you didn’t realize, but it’s going to be one in the morning soon and I’d prefer if my bed wasn’t vibrating from your speakers” speech. I knocked on the door. A dog started barking. I waited. I waited. Nothing… Mysteriously, the sound was turned to a reasonable level when I came back to my apartment, despite no one being responsible enough to answer the door. I decided that, in the future, I might just resort to either banging on the wall really loudly or hooking up my guitar amp with max volume and playing some base cords against the wall…

Saturday night we decided to go to bed a bit after one in the morning. Again, loud bass and a vibrating bedroom… I thought it was a bit strange that we didn’t notice it out in the living room, so I listened against the wall and determined it was not from the same person/people as last time. I opened the slider and looked out. Some kids were having a party down at the other end of the apartment building on the first floor (I’m on the third floor). It was loud enough that I could feel slight vibrations from the concrete balcony of my apartment. I must be getting old because I think that when it is past one in the morning I shouldn’t be listening to music from 100 yards away…

I debated just yelling at them, but I didn’t want to risk waking up anyone who somehow managed to sleep through it. Instead I called police dispatch and talked to Frank. Well, his name wasn’t frank, his speech was.

Frank: “Dispatch”
Me: “Hi, I’d like to register a noise complaint.”
Frank: “Where?”
Me: “X apartment complex”
Frank: “What apartment?”
Me: “I don’t know which number. It’s at the end of building X”
Frank: “How many people are there.”
Me: “I don’t know. There have been people coming and going quite a bit.”
Frank: “Can you guess?”
Me: “Maybe fifteen”

After giving him the rest of the information, he said he would have someone check it out. Before the police arrived, I saw a dozen people leave, a few people puke, and possibly someone lie in one of the vomit piles. The music was turned down before the police arrived, but they were wandering around when the partying kids decided to turn it up a bunch. The police talked to them and gave the usual speech about keeping it down. I didn’t expect anyone to get into trouble, but I figured either this would convince them to not be totally inconsiderate next time or, if they decided to be stupid again, would mean next time would be another complaint against the same people and possibly result in the police doing something more serious.

I wonder if people like that realize that not only are they being rude and making everyone around them grumpier because of less sleep, but they are wasting police officers on a noise complaint when they could be looking for car prowlers or something more serious. Nah, I’m sure they think: “Man, that party was so cool. X was soooo wasted! Man, we almost got busted! That’s awesome! Let’s do it again next weekend at your place!” I just hope those people have something else to live for…