Meditations on a Life Spent Slacking

From college until pretty much the time that I got married, I was a slacker. Most of my friends were slackers and most of the pop-culture that I absorbed was from a slacker-based perspective*. I don't think that it was entirely wrong to laze about for a good portion of a decade and a half, because that was essentially who I was. But, I'm not sure it was the absolute best choice that I could have made at the time either. I think that the time period that I slacked through life was the perfect era to be a slacker because it was a bit more culturally tolerated.

* I still am very keen on slacker-based pop culture, which is basically stuff from the mid-90s. For some reason, no other decade really tolerated and celebrated the slacker lifestyle as much as the 90s did. The one thing that I understand is the inherent hypocrisy that permeates from this cultural oeuvre. I intend to get more into this as this Blog rolls along.

Another trait that I have is that I am a chronic second-guesser and overly nostalgic*, so it was really no surprise today that I was thinking back on my slacking days with a degree of warmth and also one of wasted opportunity. This stirring of nostalgia was stirred up primarily because I've been rereading Chuck Klosterman's “Fargo Rock City” which is the perfect combination of who I was when he wrote it (20-something, living on my own) and what he wrote about (a kid who liked metal back in the day).

* First off, every other paragraph in this entry is not going to be referenced and explained by a footnote, but I felt like I had to expand a bit on this statement. When I say that I'm overly nostalgic, I don't mean that I wish that I was not living the life I am presently leading. Far from the truth, considering that I can remember romanticizing about the past during the periods that I am currently romanticizing about.

For example, in high school I would fondly remember the feeling of being sheltered in elementary school, especially when a test or major project was due. Not that I wanted to go back there, but there was a certain feeling of warmth and naivety that I didn't (nor could I ) have while I was a teenager. When I was in college, there were times when I waxed about being in high school. And when I got out of college, I thought that it would be awesome to relive those “carefree” days.

Every time I move on to a new place in life, I look back fondly on the one that just took place. And I am completely aware that what I'm doing is complete bullshit, but it's still something that I do. From the time you're born to the day you die, every person is saddled with problems. Looking back on those problems, they don't seem so bad especially when compared to the problems that you have today. But they were still problems that stressed you out.

ANYWAY, when I think back to the early part of the 90s there was a movement in the culture that needed to be rectified. The 80s excesses—symbolized by Michael Douglas' “Greed is good” phrase from the Oliver Stone movie “Wall Street”—had bled into a new decade. However, all was not right with the country and this line wasn't really holding up any more. There was the Persian Gulf War I, the AIDS epidemic and a recession, suddenly watching metal bands and hip-hop acts live the glamor lifestyle seemed sort of stupid, pointless and most of all it pissed people off. No one had the money to buy Dom Perignon, audacious genie pants and have random sex with models. The pendulum was beginning to swing the other way.

That's when musicians grabbed a t-shirt and flannel, rappers dressed down or were clad in black. There was a general feeling of “fuck it” in the air. Artists wanted to express themselves, but didn't want to entertain. The overall mood was, “If you like it, cool. If you don't, whatever.” And that last word, “whatever” was the generation's overall new philosophy.

You notice that I'm only really focusing on the music because that is usually the harbinger of popular culture. Movies and television don't usually arrive on that cultural wave until later and when they do, that particular wave has crested or is on the verge of breaking. And with movies, it's usually the smaller films that understand the day's fads. Cameron Crowe's “Singles” got the whole grunge-Gen X thing way better than “Reality Bites” ever could. “Reality Bites” seemed to be too calculating and too slick to be taken seriously, it desperately wanted to be “Singles” but fell short. Another example is John Singleton's “Boyz in the Hood” which brought home the plight of the urban 20-something to the masses (read white audience) more than any other black film released after that could.

As 1992 took shape, many of us took the obnoxious clothes that we wearing (the Zubaz or Z. Cavarrici pants) and threw them in the back of the closet and found our worn out jeans, flannel shirts and t-shirts. It was fashionable to look like you didn't give a shit. And for the next four or five years, that's how it stayed.

Ultimately people got bored with being depressed.

Once Bill Clinton was elected president and had enough time to turn the country around and people began to prosper again, did young America's mood change. A lot were sick of dressing like slobs, listening to depressing songs and not having sex. Almost over night, the culture seemed to change and excess was back. P. Diddy and Ma$e were waving their Rolexes from side to side, bands like Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit were trying to rekindle the early 80s debauched styles of Motley Crue and Van Halen. In 1998, journalists were trumpeting that Glam rock was making a comeback (though it ultimately never did, except for Marilyn Manson's “Mechanical Animals” which most of his fans didn't like too much—but is the only Manson CD that I own).

But I was among a group of people that didn't change. I was stuck in my slacker ways and the atrophy was my security blanket. Anything that took an honest-to-God effort was pushed away. At the time I wasn't seriously dating anyone, but I was hooking up when I could. While other, more motivated colleagues were making a killing in the first dot com boom, I was working a 9-5 fund accounting job that I absolutely hated (I spent more time perfecting the art of sleeping at my desk and trying to come up with the layouts of new golf courses than figuring out how to be a better employee). When I did get a job that I liked (reporting) I worked hard, but I wasn't super motivated and the pay sucked.

For recreation, most weekends my friends and I would hit a bar, get shitfaced and come home. Or we'd get a case of beer and watch TV or play Sega Genesis. Even my favorite movies at the time were about unmotivated slackers: “Office Space”, “Swingers”, “Clerks”, “Mallrats”, “Boogie Nights”, “Dazed and Confused” any Tarantino flick. All of these movies were about people who float through life where things happen to them. They're protagonists in the sense that they just happen to be the vessel that encounters the rough seas of life's storm.

And to me, that was a great way to live your life.

I never knew how rudderless my 20s were going to be. When I was younger, I thought that I'd have things all figured out and I would have a pretty good map of where I was heading. I spent a good portion of my 20s half-heartedly trying to find that magical map and I would get frustrated because I never could seem to figure out where it was hidden.

An era of uncertainty is romanticized after much time has passed. When you're young, poor and living this type of life day-to-day, it's not paradise. There were many days I'd bring sandwiches to work that I wouldn't even think about eating now. The cold winter months after I quit my fund accounting job and sat around a quiet apartment with nothing to do but watch “Mannix” reruns and wonder if I'll ever get a job just sucked. But there are times where I look back with fond remembrances of that past.

I shouldn't. I spent an awful lot of time doing nothing and now that I don't have that free time, I wish that I had done things differently.

When I worked at the paper, I was friends with a guy named Tom Abrams who was a few years younger than me. He told me that the summer after he graduated college, he packed up a back pack and bummed around Europe for a few months by himself. I have always wanted to do that, but never had the stones to do so. The summer after I graduated I delivered pizzas and laid around in my parents' swimming pool.

To be honest, it was a great summer as I had a kick-ass tan and had zero responsibilities, but following that summer I wish that I had gone to Europe and had that experience. Even if it was by myself. I wish that I had run with the bulls in Pamplona, seen the Louvre, gone to Amsterdam and Rome and Prague and Athens. It angers me that I spent my time ringing door bells and handing idiots pizzas. I wasted a prime opportunity because I was too lazy or too afraid to do anything.

And I'm not trying to blame the slacker culture for not being a self-starter because that's not my point. There are literally thousands of self-described slackers who have become big stars while it looked like they were sitting around doing nothing. Comedians like David Cross, Patton Oswalt and Brian Posehn or directors like Richard Linklater, Kevin SMith and Quentin Tarantino, writers like Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman make it seem like they spent all day on the couch, but they had to be self-motivators to get to where they are. Constant writing and performing, the ability to move from one city to another to get to the level of where they want to be.

They spent a lot of time and hard work to achieve a position where they could spend a lot of time doing nothing. And that's the paradox that I never understood until later in life.

Note: I have no idea where the image I got for this post came from, I did a Google search for "Slackers" and aside from the incredibly late-90s movie, that picture came up.

Where We Are, Where We Were and Where We Will Be

My wife's grandmother is going to turn 90-years-old sometime next month*. She still lives in Manhattan, (though that is going to change soon), in Little Italy (which is now China Town since most of the Italians fled the city decades ago) roughly two blocks from where she was born. She's an amazing woman who has seen a lot and most importantly, remembers most of it. If I'm as lucid at 60 as she is now, I'll consider myself lucky.

* I am a rotten grandson-in-law because I don't know the exact date, I think that it might be February 2, but I'm not willing to bet my paycheck on it. All I know is that it's not February 29.

This isn't an entry about her necessarily, this is more about what she has seen technology-wise in the last 90 years. One can argue that anyone over 85-years-old has probably seen the greatest technology boom in recorded history. Everything that was invented during the last century was pretty much has been improved upon exponentially and that which was invented before 1920 was improved upon too.

-- The telephone went from being a large box bolted to a wall in your kitchen, where you have to ask a person to connect you to another person to something a bit more portable that you can keep on an end table while losing the person-to-person interface. Then it became a device where you don't need the wire connecting the headset to the body, it was portable. Then it became a device that you can keep in your pocket—and you can watch movies or television shows on them.

-- The automobile went from a means of transportation that was only afforded by the rich to something that most people now own two of.

-- Air travel progressed so much that you can fly from New York to San Francisco in less than five hours and it's the preferred travel option of the masses.*

* Put yourself in the shoes of someone who lived in the early part of the 20th Century, the act of flying was completely impossible. There was no way a person could do it, or if they could (like the Wright Brothers) they couldn't sustain themselves enough where it would be a practical mode of transportation. Now people fly all over the place, you probably know someone who goes on enough business trips that he or she is in a plane more than they are in their car.

-- Movies have certainly gone up in price (as has most other things) but now you don't have to walk to the corner to see a film. You can actually have the US Postal Service bring the latest hits to you. And soon you won't even need the mailman. A person can plug a wire into an outlet and get the latest flick instantly.

-- First it was radio then it was television, but the bottom line is being at home no longer meant being cut off from the outside world. With a flip of the dial you could hear a ball game as it occurs or listen to the latest songs buring up the chart. While some people argue that this compartmentalized people, I think that it brought them together, a shared spirit of the American zeitgeist was formed. “Did you hear the new Frank Sinatra record? I did too, it's a gas.”*

And TV blew the game wide open as it tackles the senses and forms opinions. From the early black and white sets to color to today's high-definition sets, watching an event on television is truly like being there. And in some cases, its better.

* Did people back in the 40s say “It's a gas”? I have no idea, I thought it sounded kind of cool and retro.

-- Computers weren't even thought of when she was younger, but here it is less than 100 years later and people have shrunk something that was the size of a SoHo loft and put it in their pockets. And the tiny machines are more powerful than their Brobdingnagian predecessors too. Right now, I can think of at least five different ways of instantly contacting someone with my iPhone (call, text, email, connect through a social media portal or through instant messaging). You're connected to millions of people every day, sharing ideas and thoughts.

-- And perhaps the most inspiring and truly revolutionary technological feat of the past 90 years is that man went to the moon. For thousands upon thousands of years, man has always wondered what it would be like to step foot on the lunar surface. Scores of poems and stories have been written about the moon, but one day back in 1969 we did.

People in my generation take it for granted because for our entire life we have lived with the knowledge that a few years before we were born there was a guy hitting a golf ball on the moon. It didn't really seem like a big deal, but it is. It's a huge deal. The only two things that I can think of that will match this is if an alien landed in Washington DC and made contact with our President or cancer was somehow cured.

Other than that, we're chasing that lead dog in terms of a generation-defining moment.

And there are more things that haven't even listed (improvements in boat or train travel, how a person gets their music, the relative ease of shopping, advances in medicine) that have been completely transformed during the last 90 years. I can't even imagine the technological advances that mankind is going to made in the next 55 years (when I'm 90) or the next 88 years (when my daughter is 90).

The one thing about the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” that always struck me is the reaction old Brooks after the parole board deemed him reformed and released after he had been in prison for (I think) 50 years. In the history books, the years 1910 (when he went in) and 1960 (when he was released) will probably be grouped in the same era. But that's incorrect, the only thing that those years share are the first two numbers and the last.

I'm not talking about the scene where he realizes that he's been institutionalized and figures out that he'll never make it on the outside. I'm talking about the scene where he walks down the street and almost gets plugged by the car. One of the lines that best underscores the difference is when he says that he saw an automobile once when he was a boy. It was implied that back in 1910, a car was something like a blue moon or Haley's Comet, something not seen too often. But when he was released cars were as commonplace as pebbles or mosquitos.

The time when people were amazed by the car passed and that is what will happen with us too. It's a slow and seems to happen by osmosis, but it will occur. I can only hope that when I'm older and reflect back on mankind's achievements made during my life, I look with the original wonder and awe.

A Few Words on Privacy

There is going to come a day where the idea of privacy is going to be a quaint reminder of an era gone by.

During the last decade, the American public has embraced the media as a tool for the public, not just the lucky few who can make news. It began with the rise of reality television and pretty soon the average American was sharing prime time with Hollywood A-listers. Their every foible and whim was captured on tape and was beamed to a growing audience. However, there was still a filter (called editors) that colored perception.

In the mid part of this century, that lens went out the window and even more people wanted to take a piece of the stage. With social interaction sites like Twittter or Facebook, video sites like YouTube and Blogs, everyone in America has a chance to creep back into the consciousness of long-forgotten acquaintances or become minor celebrities.*

* Remember the “Star Wars” kid that was popular a few years back? He was a chubby teen with glasses who posted a video of himself having a lightsaber duel with no one. The dude was everywhere, even “Arrested Development” did a cut-away joke about it. And the latest internet celebrity is a three-year-old boy who memorized the speech that Herb Brooks gave to the 1980 United States Olympic hockey team.

The point as my two-year-old daughter grows up, the idea of privacy is going to be change so much that within 20 years, people of my generation aren't going to recognize it. I'm 35-years-old and most of my peers have adapted to the idea of posting pictures of themselves on Facebook or writing their thoughts in a public Blog, but there is always some level of trepidation; what if the wrong person sees/reads this? Do I really want scores of people knowing that I enjoy Steelheart's awesome power ballad,“Never Let You Go”?

The second-thoughts come from a still burgeoning technology. We're still on the forefront of social interaction and the fear of the unknown is going to dissipate by the time my daughter gets into Junior High School and my warnings will probably fall on deaf ears; “Yeah, ok Dad. Like someone is really going to care that I posted that my teacher a stupid whore ... it's the Internet!”

The point I'm trying to make is that with the very idea of privacy quickly dying, Americans are becoming increasingly interested in what goes on behind closed doors. Does the public persona of an athlete or a movie star match their every day actions? Case in point, Tiger Woods.

A day after Thanksgiving Tiger Woods was involved in a one-car automobile accident outside his home in Florida. While police were called to the scene, there were no injuries and the matter should have been dropped. However, the Internet media (gossip sites like TMZ) were on the case. As details were being leaked—Tiger and his wife were fighting, turns out he has a harem of women, his wife tried to slug him with a nine iron—the American people's appetites only grew and the mainstream media jumped into the frenzy.

Not only did we know that Tiger Woods had a bevy of beauties; but we knew the names of some of them, occupations of others, and we heard voice messages of a confused, befuddled Tiger telling one of them to change her phone number because his wife, Elin, had gotten wise to the whole deal. As the reports slowed to a trickle, the public's uproar grew louder and louder. Why would Tiger Woods cheat on his wife, he's a family man? Tiger Woods is a sex addict, he doesn't look like one? Who is Tiger Woods?

And this is the problem, who is Tiger Woods. A few years ago, Nike tried a marketing campaign that centered around the phrase, “I Am Tiger Woods”. In one of the memorable TV comericials, there was a minute of people repeating “I am Tiger Woods” over and over as if it was a mantra, finally ending with Woods himself saying, “I am Tiger Woods”. The point was, Woods is an every man and that if anyone works hard enough they can be as good as Tiger Woods.

And that's what his entire public persona is: he's everything, but he's nothing. The Tiger Woods brand stands for excellence, but that stance means nothing. Woods has always been the ultimate cypher, you couldn't even pin him down on something as simple as his ethnicity; he created his own that was some combination of Asian-Caucasian-Afro-American. Even on his web site FAQ, he listed his favorite music as “Soundtracks from the 80s and 90s”.*

* I picked this tidbit up from Joe Posnanski's excellent blog post and share the same befuddlement. The soundtrack to “Amadeus” was released in this time frame as well as the soundtrack to “Judgement Night”. The former soundtrack is filled with concertos and movements from Mozart, while the latter is nothing but rock/rap colaborations from people like Biohazzard and Onyx. I'm not saying that a person can like one style of music, but not the other, but this is a bit extreme. And again, is an example of Tiger trying his best to appeal to everyone.

So for people to get pious and upset over Woods' actions left me a bit confused. We never knew Tiger Woods, even at the apex of his popularity—his privacy was so guarded that anyone who showed even a brief glimpse into Woods' “real life” personality was fired from Team Tiger. This got me thinking about what was the American public so upset about.

I think that many people feel that his carefully sculpted image was his true personality. He was the man who had at all: a great job, a gorgeous wife, two kids, a dump truck full of money but in reality his image was just a mirage*.

* It's kind of cool how the word mirage is just image with an extra “r”. Am I right, or am I overthinking this?

Privately, Tiger Woods was just as fucked up as everyone else. He cheated on his wife, she got angry with him, smashed up his car, took her kids and went back to Sweden. He is everyman, but he's not the everyman that everyone wants to be. And this is where the subject of privacy comes in, when the curtain was peeled back and Woods was revealed to be as flawed as anyone else, the nation went bezerk. Companies dropped him as a sponsor, he became the butt of every hacky email you received in December, outraged writers called for him to be dropped from the PGA.

And for what? He cheated on his wife. While that doesn't put him on the short list for husband of the year, who did it really hurt (aside from his wife and children)? I didn't give a damn about Tiger's personal life before Thanksgiving 2009 and I don't care about it now. The only reason why I like Tiger Woods is because he can consistently drive a golf ball 300+ yards and that he can make a putt with the pressure of the Master's on his back. I never looked at Tiger Woods, or any celebrity, as a template for my behavior. And the reason is this: we never know what's really going on.

Sure, we have hints: Charlie Sheen seems like an asshole, Gilbert Areanas is probably a moron and George Clooney seems like a cool guy, but do we really know? The answer to this can be summed up in two letters and a last name: OJ Simpson.

If you are old enough to remember what happened in 1994, a celebrity doing something stupid should never be a “shocker”. On June 12, 1994, the entire notion of a public persona was hacked to death by a charismatic and “family-friendly” former All-Pro running back. Simpson was considered such a nice guy that James Cameron turned him down to star in “Terminator” because he felt that no one would believe that OJ Simpson could kill anyone.

So while our own personal privacy is going out the window by one of our own hands, the other is trying to rip down the privacy of others. At the very least, America has always been a land of interesting dichotomies.

Gut Punch Time

See this guy? A few months ago, I wrote this blog post:

This Man Could Be Your Father

Today I was watching the local news and came across this story:

Adopted Son Traced Biological Parent to be Charles Manson

I tried to put myself in this person's shoes.

It wasn't the best day in the world when you found out from your kid sister that you were adopted. And while you have accepted this information as fact, not a day goes by when you don't wonder who your real parents are. Eventually, curiosity gets the better of you and through a lot of hard work you are able to track down your birth mother and are able to get her contact information. One day you finally get the nerve up to reach out to the woman that put you up for adoption. It's awkward as hell at first but you strike gold, she wants to have some sort of relationship.

Nice.

You exchange letters, emails ... finally your life is beginning to make a bit of sense. Reasons for why you act a certain way come into focus. You get pictures of family members and the face staring at you in the mirror every day starts becoming less of a stranger; I have grandpa's eyes, that cleft chin is from Uncle Tommy. The puzzle of you is coming together, however it's only half-way completed.

After finding out about your mother, you want to know a bit about your father. Mom knows who the guy is, but she isn't telling. You keep pressing to know, begging to know, demanding to know until she finally relents and tells you that you were conceived during a drug-fueled orgy/rape by none other than Charles Manson.

“The Charles Manson,” you ask.

“Yes. That Charles Manson,” your mother answers.

Rockford, IL resident Matthew Roberts, who is the spitting image of his infamous father, has predictably slipped into a depression about who has daddy is. And while he isn't the Zezozoze Zadfrack that I referred to in my original Blog post, it still must suck.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Easy for me to say, I know who my parents are.

The Return of Aquaman

Every few days I get an email from the Underwater King of the Deep Aquaman begging for a chance to write for 19 Thoughts again. If you're a new reader to 19 Thouhts, Aquaman used to write for the Blog at a pretty regular clip. You can see some of his examples in some of the earlier posts, beginning with August of 2004. He was a pretty good writer, but a tad bit caustic. I've decided to give him another shot and without any further adieu, here is Aquaman:

Thanks, asshole. It's me, it's the A to the Q to the U to the A to the man and I'm back where I began. Kickin' it old school with a rhyme, that's just how the AM rolls.

First off, I have no idea what Byron is talking about. Caustic? What does that word even mean? If you're saying that I write in the nude, you're wrong. Dead wrong. I always write with my pants on. Always. Or at least most of the times I do. Anyway, I'm not here to talk about that mouthbreather Magrane, I'm here to drop a little Seven Seas knowledge on your asses.

The other day I was swimming close to the shore and looking at some of the finest bathing-suited ladies when I stopped cold in my tracks by a familiar sound that was coming from the beach.

“Argh matey! Tis a fine ale you brought me and reminds me of me favorite kind of socks ... arggggh-yle!”

Then there was a gale of laughter. But to me, this was no fucking joke. There were pirates on the beach and only one person could stop them from their raping and pillaging, Aquaman!

I quickly pulled up my pants, got out of the ocean and ran up the beach. There was the foul-mouthed pirate himself taunting his victims with cruel jokes about “Aargh-rated movies” and how his favorite TV show is “Aargh-rested Development”. I thought that was strange because I am a gigantic AD fan and I had no idea that they had a show. Have you ever heard that song “Tennessee”? That song kicks fucking ass, shit where was I? Oh yeah, the pirate.

I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and said, “Listen here, you barnacle-balled dog, I'm in charge of the ocean and I won't have it befouled by you or any of your rapscallion bunch!”

A quick aside: you have to talk like that to a pirate because those motherfuckers don't understand nothin about the street, which only makes sense because they don't have streets in the ocean. They have straits, but not streets ... gigantic difference there, my friends.

Anyway, this guy turns around and says, “What the fuck are you talking about? Who the hell are you? Why aren't you wearing any pants?” I told him that I'd ask the questions in this little play and he was to tell me who he is now or risk a beat-down that would humble Poseidon himself.

The pirate's prisoners sat agape and then began chuckling. “I know who you are,” one said. “You're Aquaman.” And the chuckle turned into a deafening laugh. It's always a plus when your legend proceeds you and people are aware of the good times you bring. I was glad to have found a group of sympathetic souls but there was to be no Zima to be chugged until after I saved them from this merciless pirate.

I saw the pirate say something to one of the captors who then said to me, “Aquaman, it's a good thing that you're here! The pirate Mike Nessmith was about to dig a sand pit and bury us up to our necks! He said that the seagulls would have a fine time feasting on our eyes!”

I told them not to worry and that I was there to save them. “Since you were going to bury these poor people, I think that you should be the one to be buried! An eye for an eye, that's how we do on the seas. That's why seamen say 'Aye-aye', that's a nice piece of trivia for all of you.”

And with that, I began digging like I've never dug before. After about three hours, I had dug a hole deep enough to fit this Mike Nessmith up to his bastard pirate head. Gentle reader, I have heard of Stockholm Syndrome but I had never actually seen it before. The pirate and his prisoners were playing volleyball, when I announced to them that I was through with the hole.

Nessmith and walked over to the pit and said, “Tis a fine pit, Aquaman, but I don't think it will hold me.”

He and I were about the same height, so to assuage his fears I jumped in to show him that the pit was indeed deep enough. Just then his prisoners started scrambling like mad and began to bury me—their hero!—in the very pit that I created for their captor! I was so angry I couldn't move as the shovels of dirt fell on top of me.

“Aquaman, you're a chump,” Nessmith said. “I'm not a real pirate. I'm just a guy who likes to make shitty jokes and wear a bandanna. I don't even have a ship.”

He was right, I neglected to look for a vessel. God damn it, this always happens to me , which is probably why Hawkgirl won't return my phone calls. Fuck her though, she's a bitch and so are her stupid wings and pointy nose.

“But you're a moron. Good luck trying to use your ocean telepathy to get you out of this one, dick squeeze. Oops, looks like the tide is coming in! Let's go guys ... back to the streets.”

Fuck! It's one thing to be fooled by a person who was pretending to be a pirate, it's another thing not to recognize someone from the streets. I've spent my entire life on the streets, how could I not recognize that this guy was from the streets? Cocks and starfish!

As they sped off the water began inching closer and closer to my face. I can breath under water, but the salt water ravages my beautiful skin. This is a fate worse than the time Apache Chief decided to become Jewish and tried to perform a circumcision on himself. Though, I will admit that I managed to stay a lot drier this time.

I summoned forth all of strength and was able to break out of my own pit and not a moment too soon as the waves came trickling in! The bad news was that I was fooled and humbled by a bunch of punk kids, the good news is that there are no pirates raping and pillaging on this beach (because that's my job, mofos!) so I jumped back in the water and went to tell my wife Mera, Aqualad and my walrus buddy Tusky about how I saved the world from pirates.

Don't tell anyone the truth, ok?

A Dabbling of David Cross

Last Monday night my friend Jamie and I journey to Wilbur Theater in Boston to do something that I've been wanting to do since 2002: see my favorite comedian David Cross live. Cross has been in two of my favorite shows of all time, as himself in the greatest sketch show of all time: “Mr. Show” and as never nude psychiatrist Dr. Tobias Funke.

I have both of his comedy CDs: “Shut Up You Fucking Baby” and “It's Not Funny” and I pretty much have memorized each of them—especially SUYFB. His take on America post 9/11 was as acerbic and spot-on funny as any that I've heard. Not only has his views on the world entertained me, but it's also helped me look at our planet with a different perspective. This tour was to promote his new book of essays, “I Drink for a Reason”, which I am going to purchase very soon.

Like I said, I've been wanting to see Cross ever since I listened to SUYFB for the first time and I've scanned Pollstar and the Boston Phoenix at least once a week to see if he was playing a show in the Boston area. It wasn't until a few months ago that I found out that he was going to be in Boston. Needless to say, I grabbed those tickets quickly.

The Wilbur Theater is a pretty cool place to see a comedy show as it's an old theater with a palpable sense of history behind it. The seats are old-school straight backed ones that aren't very comfortable, but that's ok it makes the listener all that more alert to check out the act. Also there are two over hanging balconies and two private hanging boxes. Jamie and I were in the third to last row in the second balcony, so we were far away, but it didn't matter the old theater has great acoustics.

Last year, my friend Steve and I saw Stella at the Wilbur Theater (Michael Showalater, Michael Ian Black and David Wain) with Eugen Mirman opening for them. Since Steve grew up with Wain, we got awesome seats. Needless to say, that was amazing experience too.

After a warm-up comedian, Cross came on at 7:25 and performed for about two hours. I would have been happy with an hour of material, but this was a solid set of new bits that stretched on for double my expectations. Was ever joke a hit? Of course not, there were some bombs here and there, but for the most part it was really an awesome show.*

* He also showed a five-minute clip of his show that's going to be aired on the BBC called “The Increasing Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret”. It looks awesome and it sucks that it won't be played in the United States for awhile. The show also had a cameo from Cross' TV brother-in-law GOB Bluth, Will Arnett, which made it even better. **

** What also made the show pretty awesome is that he was taping it for either a DVD release or a Comedy Central or HBO special. I'm not why I find this so great and why I can't wait to buy the DVD, I mean I've already seen about 99% of what I'm going to see again, but for some reason I'm pumped for this to come out.

The one thing that I noticed about Cross is that his fans definitely have a look. Most of them are the true hipsters of the city: black, square rimmed glasses, ironic t-shirts, messed up bed head. And the women are similar too. I'm not saying that it's bad, but I guess that if you were to ask these people why they dress and act the way they do, they'd argue that they do so because they're trying to be different. The one problem is that when gathered together like they were last Monday, their actions of dressing different and being unique turns out to be so similar to each other that it's as if they all went to the same store and bought the exact uniform.

Looking over what I've written so far, it occurs to me that there isn't too much to write about a comedy show except to say whether it was good or not, and that's subjective to a bunch of outside influences: such like I listed above: venue, length of fandom, etc. It's occurred to me it's harder to write a comedy review than it is to write a concert review. A writer can convey the concert experience by listing the songs that were played and how the band sounds, but one can't do that with the comedian. It's hard to describe jokes, and unless the comedian was completely bored (like the time I saw David Spade while in college) there's not really too much to tell.

I'm not going to get the jokes correct and even if I did, Cross doesn't tell jokes per se. They're more wry observations on daily life punctuated with vocal inflections. The humor would get lost in my retelling and will not do any justice to the story. Just take my word for it that he was awesomely funny.

About a week after I saw Cross live I ran across this article. In a few words of summary: basically David Cross told the audience in DC that he and his girlfriend Amber Tamblyn were invited to the White House Correspondent's Dinner. While there, Cross said that he snorted a line of coke within yards of President Obama. He explained that he did this to show his friend that he could be “more outrageous”.

I'm not sure if this story is true, though I'd bet that it is, but if it is I thought that it was pretty lame. It's not the snorting of coke or even doing it in front of Obama, I think what I find most lame about it is that seems like something that Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O would do. And they're morons. “Yeah, I snorted coke right near Obama! Beat that, brah!”

One of the things that appealed to me about Cross is that he isn't an idiot, or if he is, he keeps it private.

The bottom line is this: I'm not going to stop laughing at Cross. But sometimes, I suppose that there is just too much information being passed around.*

* You know what, I don't really know what the point of this last story is. It seems to me that it's about being let down by a celebrity or someone that you admire. The thing is, I don't feel all that let down; Cross has made no secret of his drug use and, really why should I give a shit if he jams heroin needles into his eyeballs. I guess I feel more let down comedy-wise than anything else, the guy has built his standup on subtlety and well-crafted, well-thought out jokes. He shouldn't have to succumb to stupid shock jock crap like this. That's basically what my point is.

Defending the Doors

Chuck Klosterman, recently released a new book of essays on pop culture. This isn't much of a surprise because, aside from one novel, the only books or magazine articles that Klosterman writes are ones about pop culture. Since he is one of my favorite authors, when I saw that he had an interview with the Onion's AV Club, I was happy to read it. You can read it here too.

One of the questions lead to a Klosterman musing about classic rock radio and how the scope is getting larger when it should be getting smaller. This lead the interviewer to ask which bands should be dumped, and Klosterman suggested the Doors. Here's a bit of the interview:

AVC: Are you scared of a world in which Weezer is viewed as part of the classic-rock canon? You write about them in the new book.
CK: I would like that, although I would have to concede that if that happened, the rock canon would have to be a lot bigger. I’m a fan of Weezer, but if they’re looked at as one of the greatest bands of all time, we must have expanded the definition of greatness. Which is always happening a little bit. The rock canon is bigger now than it was in the ’70s, and it’ll always get a little bigger. We add people more often than we kick people out.
AVC: I can’t think of any that have been kicked out recently.
CK: I feel like The Doors are on the cusp of being kicked out.
AVC: I would kick The Doors out. Would you?
CK: I would be one of the people advocating their removal from the canon. [Laughs.] As if I have any say in it!

It's not just Klosterman, during the last couple of years the backlash against the Doors has grown and I'm not exactly sure why. Are they the greatest group that ever walked the planet? No. Their lyrics are a bit pretentious, Jim Morrison really can't sing very well, keyboardist Ray Manzarek seems like a humorless prick who's way too impressed with himself, you can't really dance to their tunes and their songs are not fun for parties—except for “Peace Frog”.

Having said all that, they're really not a bad band. The drumming and guitar work by John Densmore and Robbie Krieger are excellent. Their sound is unique—it's hard to confuse the Doors with anyone else and that has a lot to do with Mazarek's organ playing—and their lyrics reflect a time in the United States where a lot of people were pretentious. Morrison may not be able to sing very well, but if you look up the definition of a rock star, his picture would be next to it. The man was a larger-than-life counter-culture figure who could be infuriating, but that's rock and roll.

When I was younger, I went through a phase where the Doors were my absolute favorite band in the world. I had a few Doors posters plastered on my walls at home and at school, I played their CDs constantly, I thought that it was awesome to get absolutely plastered like Morrison and I must have watched the Oliver Stone movie at least once a weekend. I bought into the whole image of what I thought that a Doors fan should be.

Yes, there were some embarrassing moments—walking down the freshman girls hall acting like Jim Morrison is not one of my fondest college memories—but for the most part, my infatuation with the band was harmless*.

* Though, I suppose that if you ask my roommates the same question, they'd give you a different answer. Much like they would say that their infatuation with Phish was harmless, though I'd say that listening to “Junta” or “Hoist” 50 times in a row almost drove me mad.

I look back on that portion of my life with fondness (even the embarrassing incidents) as it was a big part of the soundtrack to a great chunk of my life and it made me who I am today. Jim Morrison is probably not the best role model for a young teenager or a father, but for a college kid who just lost the parental shackles, he's one that many have had. And while he lived on excess and being uncontrollable, acting like Morrison wasn't my thing and that's an important discovery to make. Finding out what you like is easy, finding out what you don't like is a bit more difficult and just as important.

To be honest, the reason why I started liking the was band because I wanted to impress a girl. I had never even heard of the Doors until early 1991, and this was after Stone's movie was a hit in the theaters. As luck would have it, the hottest girl in our school had a last name that began with the letter M, which is the same letter that begins mine. We were in the same home room and our lockers were right next to each other. One day she began talking about the Doors and how much she loved them, especially Jim Morrison. She asked me if I had heard of them before and of course, I said yes.

For some reason, my younger brother had the Doors movie soundtrack on CD, so I swiped it that night and listened to it over and over and over until I felt like I was able to talk to that girl about the band. The plan sorta worked, the next day I spoke to her about songs and the band and Morrison and I think that she may have been impressed. However, it never went any farther than that—though the songs wormed into my head and I began to really like them. I kept buying more and more albums, read more books, watched as many documentaries as I could—by the time I went to college, I knew as much about the Doors as I did about anything else.

It seems that every music fan goes through certain phases as they try to figure out what type of music fant they're going to be: there's the Beatles phase (hardly anyone loses that), there's the Led Zeppelin phase (ditto), there's the KISS phase (that peters out by the end of junior high school), there's the rap and hip hop phase (take that, mom and dad!--especially if you're a white kid in the suburbs.). Somewhere there's a phase for “adult rock” like the Doors or Pink Floyd or Rush. These are bands that to a high school or college-aged kid sounds a bit more sophisticated (both musically and lyrically) than the stuff that they listened to before.

Most of the discussions tend to be about how “deep” and “meaningful” the lyrics are and how Jim Morrison really “could be the last great, American poet”. These conversations between teenage fans seem to be mature because the topics being discussed are high-brow stuff like poetry and the symbolism of lyrics, but most people get past this and move on to other things. And while I did get past these sort of discussions, I never got past the music—so I suppose I'm stuck in this phase, but that's not the worst thing in the world.

Like I said before, the Doors' songs are interwoven into my life and memories, so it's too hard to simply pick that thread out and throw it away. The fact is, no matter how hip a person claims to be and how “into music” that they say they are, there's always going to be a band that a person loves, though many people actively despise. Klosterman is unapologetic about being stuck in his KISS phase, so I'm not even sure why I should be expected to dump the Doors.