The Final Year

My friends and I went to El Pollo Loco the other night and were informed by the speaker at the drive thru that we could order anything on the menu, but to be advised that they had run out of chicken.

I am a shy person by nature. I attribute this to my sheltered, only-child upbringing in the wild mountains of Altadena. I am therefore not usually inclined to conversations with random strangers, no matter how hot they are. However, the other night I had occasion to chat with two of these in succession, out of the blue and a bit less akwardly than you might expect. I was stationed at the Burbank airport anticipating my father’s imminent arrival on Alaska Airlines flight 395. It was an hour and a half late due to a faulty lavitory door which, understandibly, had to be replaced prior to takeoff. Don’t want the embarrassing situation of the door flying off in turbulence, exposing Jim the plumber’s hairy naked corpus mid-dump to the entire planelength of soon to be horribly scarred human sardines. Anyway, back in the baggage claim area I stood waiting in the almost empty, slightly cramped space. There was one other person there, a girl by the name of Hslneagb (I’m bad at remembering these things), who was also waiting patiently for her father’s arrival. We got to talking, and quickly discovered that we were the same person, but of different genders. Similar upbringing, similar interests, similar skills, similar beliefs, similar professions, similar ideas, etc. It was actually a little eerie, like she was stalking me Single White Female-ish, except that she made sure I knew she had a boyfriend within just a few minutes of the conversation. We talked for the whole hour and a half about all kinds of random things, beyond just isn’t-the-weather-a-thing and can-you-believe-that-traffic-place that usually populates stranger-speak.
Anyway, long story short the plane finally arrived and we went to greet our respective fathers (it was, by coincedence, Father’s Day). My dad came over to me, beaming, a small asian girl in tow. “Chris, I want you to meet someone!” Oh crap. She looked sheepish and akward, but smiled at me expectantly. “This is Grsbson (perhaps it was something else, now that I think about it). She and I sat next to each other on the plane. She graduated from UCLA the same year you did!”
In a brilliant attempt at humor, I said, “Wow. It’s surprising that I’ve never seen you before.” See, there are about 9000 people in each graduating class, there were 800 people in my major, and I usually had 400 people in each classroom with me. I thought it would be a funny joke. Her smile fell like a toddler on stilts. I recovered quickly. “Oh, is that a dog?” I pointed at her dog. The smile returned somewhat, and she nodded at the tiny thing in her arms as my dad explained that the two of them had spent the last three or so hours talking about, well, me.
“I feel like I know all about you,” she said, hiding her slight embarrassment with a laugh. Just as I was about to say something cool, clever, and stylish, her sister ran up and hugged her, careful not to squish the little quivering animal, which looked positively horror-struck at the sudden intrusion.
“Well, uh, gee,” I proclaimed magnificently. She realized the power and beauty of my statement and we all launched headlong into a pointed four-way silence that buckled the walls and sent the dog into a urinary fit. With full mouth-breathing smiles we stared stupidly at each other until I managed to break the force field with another profundity. “Ok, well, it was nice to meet you. Happy Father’s Day!” Huuuuuuuuh.
My dad went to pick up his bags and she moved off with her sister, looking back at me as if to say, “you are much more retarded than I was led to believe.”
When my cargo returned, bags in hand, he asked excitedly, “so, did you get her number?”
Sigh.

Last night I got really frustrated with Audible.com and accidentally ripped the UIOP and { keyes off my laptop keyboard in a moment of fury. Just broke the crap out of them, sending little delicate plastic brackets flying across my dining room floor. It was a combination of me feeling angry at paying for files I couldn’t download, having to deal with a site whose primary functions didn’t work, and flimsy computer design. All I did was wipe my hand across my keyboard with a little more pressure and speed than usual, and suddenly I was staring down at a gaping wound, the tinkling of computer guts raining down like artillery shells in the Matrix. I almost fainted, as my laptop is brand spanking new and I had to go into a large chunk of debt to buy it. For the next hour or so I cannibalized plastic keyboard key mounting brackets from other, more useless keys (like the tilda and the “menu” key next to the space bar, who the hell uses that?) to get myself up and running again. I’m still really mad at Audible, though, because this is (obviously) all their fault. They should be called Audiful.com. Oooh.
I just wanted to give this cautionary tale to all those out there who are mad at their machines. Don’t take it out on the poor defenseless keyboard. It’s not doing anything to you. Blame Audible.

On Thursday I turn old. In my mind I’m still just a kid. For the first time in my life I understand the cosmetics industry. It always stymied me, I couldn’t understand why people would do such horrible things to themselves just to artificially look younger. But I finally get it. It’s not about looking younger, its about trying to get the image in the mirror to match the image in their head. No one ever feels as old as they really are. This is something I’ve been aware of for a while, but only now as I face my 26th year of consciousness do I understand its true importance.
When I turned ten that extra digit made me nervous. I realized then that some subtle shift had occurred, that I had gained a decimal place that would stick with me for the rest of my life. Most likely, I now had all the digits that I would ever have, the finality of the thought putting my life until that point into an odd perspective, like I had joined an exclusive club that was made up primarily of people I did not yet identify with. I could only look back at my childhood and know that it was mostly over, and certainly I would never be able to go back to having just one number.
When I turned thirteen I lamented the addition of such a weighty suffix to my age. In my mind, I was still getting over being a double-digiter, and all of a sudden I had to face the tidal wave of stigma associated with teenagerness. I spent the first couple of years just coming to terms with my new, more dangerous peers. Strange things happened to the face in the mirror, my visage no longer reflecting the innocence (naiveté) of my mental persona.
I put off learning to drive until it was thrust upon me by peer pressure when I was 16 and a half. When my driving instructor arrived at my house for our first lesson, I had had my learner’s permit for a good six months and had never been behind the wheel. Driving was for older people, not little kids like me. I completed the course and didn’t take the test for months afterward. It took me a good eight months just to wrap my mind around the fact that I might be qualified to try and control one of these metal elephants.
Eighteen and off to college. If not for my parents driving me to the dorm on the first day of orientation, I would still be living at home. Well, you know what I mean. Having a room of my own (more precisely a 4×8′ mattress on top of the bunk bed in my triple) that was not only not attached to my house but was more than 30 miles away seemed inconceivable, if I may quote the Princess Bride.
I’ve been in my late teens ever since. Not willing to capitulate to yet another alteration of my numbers, I mentally held off doubling that first digit. So, in my mind, I’m still 19. But now I look in the mirror and see, for all intents and purposes, a 26 year old fossil sobbing back at me. I hang on to my younger mental image not out of vanity or conceit, as I imagined the plastic-surgeoned Hollywood-istas would, but out of fright and desperation. Time moves like a pile of rubble down a slope. At first it creeps along slowly, letting us take in great views of the vast but ultimately unconsidered future. It imperceptibly picks up momentum, the bits of rubbish jostling us around a little more violently as we begin to sink into the rocky pile. Soon we can feel the breeze in our face and realize a shift is occurring, that this ride may not be as painless as we thought, that our calculations about its duration may have been slightly off. At some point a large rock smacks us in the face and we understand at once that we cannot be passive about this trip, because we are now sunk to our waists in a thick mass of hard, dense objects hurtling recklessly towards the as yet unseen but inevitable bottom. How will it turn out? Will we come to a crashing end, the rocks smashing our bones to bits as we lie helpless and broken in some dark, lonely place? Or will we slowly suffocate in the rubble, sinking to our doom, never to see the final destination we had been heading for all this time?
This is the source of said fright and desperation. The great 26 on Thursday is that first unification of face and rock. I can no longer even pretend that I am still a youngster. I had all of these grand ideas about what I would do before I was old; incredible things that only young people can reasonably attempt. At least 25 was still in the first half of the 20s, and when you’re in the first half, you’ve barely begun. I am now planted firmly in the second half, with no choice but to try to reconcile my view of myself and the real me, the things I wanted to have done vs. the things that I actually have. That’s the real reason behind the cult of youth in America. It stems not from vanity, but from the very potent anxiety over our unrealized goals and ambitions.

Have you ever gotten to a gift-giving holiday such as your birthday or Christmas and realized there’s nothing that you really need? My special day rapidly approaches and I pretty much already have everything I require, and everything I want is just completely rediculous. So, here’s a list of these things that won’t enrich my life in any way, but that I will pine for unashamedly:

17″ PowerBook
Scion tC
12 MegaPixel Digital Camera
60 Gb iPod Photo
Solid chunk of polished stainless steel
Every season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
My own house (just to remodel)
XBox 360
Retro-chic furniture
Wacom tablet
30″ Apple Cinema Display
Digital projector
The Complete Works of Eero Saarinen (coffee table book)
Cool stainless steel toaster
Dremel (actually might come in handy)
AutoCAD
MiDi Keyboard
Soling Sailboat
1 Terabyte External Hard Drive
Motorola Razr Cell Phone
Epson Wide Format Professional Inkjet Printer
Democratic president (ok, this will be good for all of us)
Pet dolphin
Big piece of chocolate cake

There, that’s all. Just need about $40 million to do it. I’m going to buy myself a winning lottery ticket for my birthday, then fill these gaping consumerist voids with junk. Or maybe I’ll just hang out with my groovy friends. It’s a toss-up.

As I said before, I really don’t particularly mind crappy movies, especially crappy action movies. I might even go so far as to say I LIKE crappy action movies (c.a.m.). But I am right now watching one of the worst of these films I have ever seen, even for my lowered standards. Before I divulge the title of this little gem, let me first give a few prafaces. First, I have been a mild fan of Christian Slater since I saw him in Murder in the First and, shortly thereafter, Broken Arrow (c.a.m. alert). He seems to do a decent job in these kinds of films. Second, I have been a mild fan of Steven Dorff since the first Blade (c.a.m. alert #2), in which he is fun to root for as the villain of the piece. Plus Blade is a fantastic movie. Third, I don’t much care about Tara Reid, the only member of the American Pie group that was completely superflous, explaining why nobody really noticed when she basically didn’t show up in the second film. She’s kind of squinty and raspy, in that “look at how squinty and raspy I can be” sort of way. Rates about a .03 on my annoy’s-Chris-o-meter. Anyway, given those stellar remarks, I am ashamed for these three’s performances in…drumroll please…Alone in the Dark. Never heard of it? Not surprising. It was one of those “dark” “spooky” “scary” action films that was lost amid other, more popular fare. Like The Spongebob Squarepants movie. It chronicles events in the life of Edward Carnby, formerly of the secret black ops “Division 713″, the paranormal assault branch of the US Government. Revolving around an ancient Native American tribe called the Abkani and their belief that the world was split between light and dark, the protagonist must go against his old outfit, “Division 713″ as “strange beings” who can turn invisible begin attacking him and his girlfriend to retrieve an “artifact” he found in South America. It turns out that Carnby is ahajk agbhutw waugaeighe….who cares. What this movie lacks in cohesion it more than makes up for in cliches. Oh my, this movie was written by a Google search engine. “Query: action movie cliche lines” “Returned: ‘Once you make it down here alive, you’re already dead.’” That’s an actual quote, as Tara Reid reads an “ancient Abkani warning sign” when the group is trapped down a hole. I became aware of this trend within the first few moments of the film, when it suddenly lapsed into voiceover. It was so abrupt that at first I was confused about who was talking to whom. Finally, it dawned on me that Christian Slater was talking to ME. What a nice guy he is.
I am now about three quarters of the way through the film. They just had two of the five people in their party die. After blowing up countless creatures and being sealed “to their doom” down an abandoned mine shaft, they found a doorway with the aforementioned inscription. They made their way down a tunnel lined in human skulls to find another entryway completely sealed with concrete blocks. Without hesitation, they blew it open and decended some stairs, finding (*surprise*) a secret laboratory. In the back of the lab was a gigantic metal door, which they found a password for, and opened. Beyond the door was a small one, in which they could use the artifact as a key. They held the key up to its hole, and Steven Dorff said, with a straight face, “Are you sure this is the right way to open it?” Christian Slater replied, “Yeah, I don’t know why, I just feel it. The answers to all the questions I’ve had my whole life may be on the other side of this door.” To which, and I am not kidding, Tara Reid said, “You know, Carnby, some doors are not meant to be opened.” That’s when I stopped the movie and wrote this. I am now waiting for someone to die so that someone else can kneel by their corpse, hold their fists in the air and scream “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” in slow motion. I’ll let you know if it happens.

——————————
Ok, I’ve finished it. Wow. I have to revise my previous statements. This is the BEST movie I have ever seen. It was hilarious! Every upcoming filmmaker should be forced to watch this. If you want to see a perfect amalgamation of every c.a.m. ever made, watch Alone in the Dark. Please. Oh, and by the way, it essentially happened. Uwe Bowll (director extraordinaire), you are a genius.

—————
*Update, 02/10/2006*
In reviewing the video game trends of 2005, Play magazine lists everything bad about the gaming industry, including this fun quote:
“Movies based on games continue their awful reputation; Uwe Bowll leads the pack.”
HA. Vindication!

My friends are amazing. At some point fairly recently I went from having a bunch of friends that I hang out with to having a bunch of adult friends that I am proud to hang out with. I used to have a recurring dream, nightmare really, when I was something like 10 or 11. I find myself in a typical conference room in a typical office building, staring down at a blank yellow pad. I look up when the voices suddenly cease to find myself surrounded by people in suits, staring at me. I am, needless to say, not wearing said attire, and feel rather foolish at how underdressed and undersized I am sunk down into the oversized (or, rather, regular sized) office chair. Silence pervades the space, but the air sizzles with expectancy, everyone waiting for me to say something. I look again at my pad, hoping beyond hope that there’s some saving grace written there. It is still blank, like my mind. I begin to protest that I’m just a kid, and that I couldn’t possibly be qualified to speak to all of these people, but the looks of exasperation and judgment on the others’ faces cut me off. I feel angry, embarrassed, stupid, and mistreated all at once. Why can’t I be a kid for just a few more years?!

Anyway, I’m looking around at my life now, and I realize that not only are we all grownups doing grownup things but that being an adult has almost nothing to do with being prepared for innumerable meetings (meatings). That’s just what my parents happen to have to do, now that they are both managers. Their careers began just as simply, when they found something they loved to do and did it. I’m sure neither of them envisioned their lives as they are now when they began more than 40 years ago. Which brings me back to my friends. They are amazing. Did I already mention that? It seems that each of them has jumped into the wide world of doing what they love and getting paid for it. Several are successful in music. A couple more art. One works with genes to cure cancer. Another is an architect (jealous!). A few have intellectual or teaching interests. Some work well with their hands and their heads. Others have mad computer skilz. One or two are already headlong into the entertainment industry. And yet others beautifully express the written word. And here I am allowed to stand and watch them succeed, feeling proud and humbled by their achievements, hoping that I can follow (in 3.5 years). At the very least it feels good to see the future of this country look so bright. Especially because not one of them is a damned Bush-loving Republican. Stupid Republicans.