YouTube Videos I Love

Okay so if you haven't noticed yet, I am kind of a deep and hearty guy. It is just who I am. So yeah, most of these videos are on the emotional side, but I love them all! Enjoy!

I Am A Champion Speech - I get goosebumps every time I watch this video. How does this not get you absolutely pumped up?!

J Mac ESPN Story - I am pretty sure I started crying after first seeing this story air on SportsCenter back in 2006. I don't think I have ever seen anything more amazing.

2005 Illinois Basketball: The Comeback - So I am not as big of a fan as I used to be, but I have always loved Illinois basketball. They had an amazing run in the 2005-2006 season and this comeback in the Elite Eight of the tournament says it all.

Saturday Night Live's Lazy Sunday - Finally, not a sports-related video! So this one basically doesn't exist on YouTube anymore, so this version is just some guy videotaping it from another website. This video was a classic for my friends and I back in middle school. I remember watching this on my iPod Video over and over again.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Amazing Knife Kill - So I have definitely had my days of being absolutely addicted to playing Call of Duty, as a lot of guys (and some girls) will also admit to. Viewing this video for the first time made my jaw drop and made me downright jealous.

Volleyball Kick Assist - So I have played a lot of volleyball in my days, so I had to include at least one sick volleyball video. This one is unbelievable.

Ben Breedlove: This is My Story Parts 1 & 2 - So this video hit the news pretty heavily this past week because of Ben Breedlove's death on Christmas night of 2011. He posted this video just a week before his passing; outlining his life and previous flirts with death and how God revealed Himself to him. He was an 18 year old high school senior.

What Inspires Me

The other day my family and I were driving up to Door County, Wisconsin for a little Christmas weekend getaway trip. During the slightly long car ride, I slipped my Nook out of my backpack and picked up where I had left off in All The President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. For those of you born in the 1990s like me, All The President's Men is the story of how two Washington Post reporters basically unfolded the entire Watergate scandal which led to Richard Nixon's resignation.

I love this story. I love everything from the names of the two reporters to how resilient they were to make their stories fair and accurate.

I am only through four chapters of the book so far, but I saw the movie in my Journalism class in high school. Honestly, this movie and story inspires me. 

Determination!

What is inspiring is the lengths Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein went to get their information. They co-wrote most of their articles and as soon as they met their 7:30 pm deadline for next day's paper, they went right back out to the field, driving to different homes of people related to the Watergate scandal, trying to get their story for the next day. I have been reading many of their stories of how they wouldn't use notepads during their interviews because the notepads would make their interviewers uncomfortable and how after their interviews were done for the night, Woodward and Bernstein would meet up at one of their apartments and would just start writing. The amount of time they took out of their lives to get their stories and the way they did it shows how passionate they were about their work. That passion is what inspires me.

I have been learning more and more in my life to go for what you are passionate about. In high school, I thought I wanted to be an engineer. However, I was fortunate enough to have taken Journalism as a second English class my senior year and taking that class helped me realize that writing and journalism is truly what I am passionate about.

Yeah sure, an engineering degree probably would have guaranteed me a great job right out of college and a six-figure salary at some point in my life, but why the heck would I want to have that job when it really isn't something I love?

I wouldn't.

I'd say the goal would to never have to "work" a day in my life. And the only way to do that would be to do something I love.

I just hope I can have nights off like an engineer would.

Eric Decker, You Don't Say?

You know what a blogger does when he's hard up on ideas to blog about: he posts something he's already had written in the past.


Okay I have to admit, I have a few blog post ideas stored up in the old noggin, but I thought, hey, why not share something that you wrote in high school?


I wrote this piece in my senior year Creative Writing class. For the assignment, we had to write a piece about our own name. I definitely had a lot of fun writing this, so enjoy!


Titled: Eric Robert Decker by uh... Eric... Robert... Decker

You know those cool sounding names you see that famous people have? Tom Cruise, Kiefer Sutherland, Meryl Steep! These people having these names… It’s almost like they were meant to be famous! Okay yeah, we all know that the three of these guys at some point in their lives weren’t famous. At first, they meant as much to the world as Joe the Plumber did, but then they all had their big breakthroughs and now anyone who even knows even a little bit about pop culture would be able to recognize these names. Well for me, my name right now, Eric Robert Decker, barely means anything to even this high school.

            My name means something to me though. I love my name. I wouldn’t want it any other way. It’s not too long, not too short, it fits just right. I think even Goldilocks would agree and hey, she’s famous, right? Over the years, I have asked my parents numerous times why they named me they way they did in probably the same fashion Uma Thurman asked her parents how she got her name. So apparently, my middle name actually was almost my first name. Weird, right? Reminds me of that kind of weird sensation I got when I saw Kiefer Sutherland in Stand by Me for the first time after watching three straight seasons of 24. But really, imagine my face, my personality, anything about me, with the first name Robert slapped across my chest. My parents eventually did make up their minds and Robert became my middle name. My parents steered clear of Robert because my parents didn’t like that the name Robert had so many nicknames; Robby, Rob, Bobby, Bob, etc. If I had been named Robert, Robby would have been my top choice of nickname to go by. RAH-BE. Robert was ultimately put into my name in honor of my maternal grandfather. He was somewhat famous, so I guess I’ve got that going for me!

So then there’s my first name; not quite up to the awesomeness of Kiefer or Uma, but I’d say it’s pretty solid. I’m not sure why my parents chose the name Eric, but I think my parents mentioned once or twice that they just liked the simplicity of it. I remember when I was little I told my Mom once or twice that Eric should be spelled with Air in the front, instead of Er. I’m not sure how she reacted to that, but I think it’s funny that I took the time to think of that. I wonder what Willow Smith is thinking about her name right now? The Fresh Prince of Narcissism, anyone?

I’m not sure when it first happened or why it happened, but however it happened, calling me by my last name, rather than my first name, has stuck. I wonder if anyone called Tom Cruise by his real last name… “Hey, Mapother! What’s going on, man?”

Nah… doesn’t work for me either. I’m a senior in high school and it has gotten to the point now where almost all of the guys (and a handful of girls) at Lake Forest High School call me by my last name. My volleyball coaches here at the high school even call me Decker! Decker has caught on so much that a good amount of my friend’s parents call me Decker. Apparently, Decker, DEHK-ERR, is catchy.

The greatest thing that happens with my name is when people can’t decide whether or not to call me Eric or Decker. I wonder if Vince Vaughn ever had any trouble with this. It happens probably about once a week or so… The person desires to get my attention, but instead of calling me Eric or Decker, they have a little brain-fart and both names come out at once and they call me Deric, or Derek; however you want to spell it. They all realize their blunder the second after it comes out of their mouths and I laugh almost every single time. Maybe this is what happened to Meryl Streep. After all, her real name is Mary Louise Streep. Maybe she got sick and tired of people mixing them up, so she just decided to combine her first and middle names. But really, how hard is it to pronounce the name Eric Decker correctly? It’s only four syllables, it’s a relatively common name, c’mon people! Take a look at these names of some of my friends: Tasos Stavropoulos, Lukasz Sobieraj, or even Reyna Zascirinskis. Try consistently pronouncing those correctly! I’m friends with all three of these people and I don’t even know how to!

Overall, names are so unique and are ever-evolving; just take a look at those names I listed above or even some of the famous people I mentioned. The great thing about names is that if you were completely unaware that anyone was famous in this world, each and every name you came across would have no greater significance than the name before it. It’s when you finally get to know someone, or in the case with famous people, read about someone, do their names finally start to stick out to you. The only thing my name means to this world right now is the fact that Eric Decker is a rookie wide receiver for the Denver Broncos in the NFL. I want to be an engineer. Engineers don’t really get the attention from the media that football players get, but maybe someday it’ll get to the point where the world mixes the football playing Eric Decker up with the world-saving environmental engineer that I want to be. I’d still be pretty honored even if someone were to mistake me for being a football player. I play volleyball right now, about the exact opposite sport when you compare it to football, but it could happen. Leonardo DiCaprio sure thought people would mistake him for being way more important than he actually was in Catch Me If You Can. I’m by no means a con-artist, but it’s still not too late to change career paths, if that’s what you want to call it.  It has potential though. We’ll see. 

So as you might have noticed, I'm not really into engineering anymore. I applied into the engineering departments of every college I applied to my senior year. However, just a couple of months before I graduated, I realized just how much I love to write and my passion for journalism, so I decided to switch majors. 

Let's just say life is a lot less stressful being a Communications student at Marquette than it is to be an Engineering major.

You also might have noticed that that rookie wide receiver on the Denver Broncos is slowly becoming a household name now. Spike Lee once told Michael Jordan that is must be the sneakers that makes him so good, but for Eric Decker's case, it must be the name, right?

Unwrapping the Gift-Giving Debate

So Christmas/holiday shopping is pretty much in full swing now. Black Friday was about a couple of weeks ago and as I am typing this post, the television commercials I am watching are filled with Christmas-related jingles and other symbolism referencing the need for us to buy gifts for everyone because it's the holiday season. As we all know, our society has marked the way for buying and giving tons and tons of Christmas gifts to be the normal thing we all take part in. Personally, I remember overly-coveting all of the Christmas gifts I received when I was a kid, but now I think as I've matured, my perception of the gifts has changed. I see the love from the people I receive the gifts from now a lot more. I definitely still appreciate gifts, but I just enjoy them in a new way.

Recently though, I ran into this video when I went back home to Lake Bluff for Thanksgiving break. This video was a part of a sermon that my former youth pastor, Syler Thomas (you can check out his blog here), gave at the church services that weekend at Christ Church Lake Forest.

I want to mention that this video does not necessarily reflect my opinion about the matter. I am just posting it to put it because I think it is interesting and could possibly be a good platform for discussion.

My first reaction to this video was "wow." Whether you buy into everything the video is saying or not, it is eye-opening. You can't deny that. The video brings up a valid argument that we can be doing more good with the money we use to buy gifts for our loved ones for the holidays. The thing is though, would our society, as a majority, ever be willing to place a lesser importance on spending money on gifts (as in, material gifts)?

What do you think? Leave a comment below with your thoughts!