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I am a Media Whore

Thursday, August 24, 2006

I’m not sure I could pinpoint the exact moment it happened, but I have become a full blown Media Whore. I think it may have started the day I created a MySpace page. See, at first it was just a way to keep tabs on my little sisters and stalk my little brother, but then I started to spruce things up a bit. I made a redneck page, and then an Emo page (that one was fun… stupid Emo), and then thought up a million other secret identities with which I could incessantly mock every clichéd stereotype I saw in the last high school I subbed at until Tom and his band of MySpace minions got miffed because of my magnificent mockery of their millions of multitasking monkeys and barred me from all forms of arbitrary alliteration.

Then, something strange happened. Things got serious. Or at least as serious as I am capable of faking. I put up some real pictures, gave myself a headline, listed a couple of interests, and officially entered the world of MySpace. It was like my very own MySpace bar mitzvah. Except I’m not Jewish. Although my MySpace page very well could be. I have no idea. I decided to give it the freedom to choose for itself. The point is, I had become a MySpace man.

And so it went for a long time. I added my MySpace friends, left my MySpace messages, and even made my very own MySpace blog (see what I did there?). Everything was pretty normal, except for the fact that I had become one of the very people I wanted to mock, but I had come to terms with that by completely blocking it from my mind and guarding it with a magical little tree frog. His name is Froggy McFunklestein. He’s Irish. He has a drinking problem, but it has nothing to do with his nationality. He has a very high stress job, a lot of responsibility. I think he might be Jewish. Funklestein… sounds Jewish anyway. I’ll have to ask him some time. Maybe I could set him up with my Myspace page. Where was I? Oh yes, whores.

A while later I was perusing a fan page of one of my favorite bands, The Dave Matthews Band, and I discovered that their bass player, Stefan Lessard, had started a blog. Now, I have always loved the bass guitar and always wanted to learn to play it. I always take bass when air banding to 80s hair bands. I decided to check it out. It fascinated me. This guy is a pretty normal, laid back guy with his own normal family, who just happens to be the bass player for one of the biggest touring bands in the nation. He talked about starting a MySpace page. I had a MySpace page. He is now in my “Top 8.”

A little while later I was looking at new movie trailers and decided to check out Zach Braff’s new movie, The Last Kiss. See, I’m a huge fan of Garden State. It was the first movie that I really connected with in a long time. Also, Scrubs is one of my favorite TV shows (it would be right behind Arrested Development if the morons at FOX hadn’t cancelled what could’ve been the greatest TV show of the millennium… the MILLENNIUM!!!), so I clicked on the link to the trailer, which took me to ZachBraff.com. Apparently he had set up a blog too (what kind of megalomaniac sets up a website named after himself?). Anyway, his blog fascinated me too. He basically spouts off whatever is on his mind like it’s some kind of blog or something. He talked about setting up a MySpace page too. He is also now in my “Top 8.”

I started to feel like I had crossed some sort of line. Not only do I now have two people in my friends list that I don’t know, they’re two famous people. I started to feel like I was Penny Lane in Almost Famous, except not for real, some kind of MySpace version. I don’t know why I did it. I started to rationalize it to myself. See, it’s not like they were really promoting or selling anything on these sites. Well, not really anyway. I mean Zach Braff has ads for his new movie all over his page and Stefan Lessard’s blog is on his company’s website, but I’m okay with that. It’s just a place where they can clear their mind and let people know what they’re up to.

Then I crossed a line I can never uncross. It’s like mocking some little boy until he cries because he’s weird looking. Only you wait until he’s talking to the girl he likes. And then she starts laughing too because he’s a little whiny baby. There’s no coming back from that. That kid’s going to develop a complex. And then probably become a comedian. And make millions of dollars telling jokes about girls laughing at him. Or shoot himself in the head for not making millions of dollars and being such a failure. I put a banner for The Last Kiss on my MySpace page. I feel so dirty. It was for a contest. Five people out of Zach Braff’s thousands of friends that put the banner on their page get a free autographed poster for the movie. It’s free. You can’t buy it in stores. Maybe on Ebay. Is that so wrong? He seems like a nice guy. It’s more like he hired me as a special promoter for his new movie, like I’m part of some MySpace street team. He hired me with the chance to win an autographed poster. I am such a whore.

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Reality

Thursday, August 10, 2006

I haven’t written anything in a long time. I’m not sure why. I once wrote that writing was therapy to me. In the past, these periods of mental silence marked troubled times which were always followed by frantic purgings of emotion and thought onto blank notebook pages as they counseled me through dark hallways. These are not troubled times, or at least not in the typical sense.

Overall, I’d say I’m pretty happy with the world right now. Sure, I would change some things if I could, but I’m living life one day at a time. My life is filled with more uncertainty now than it’s ever been before. I know what I’m doing this weekend, but beyond that, it’s nothing but a blank page. The strange thing is I’m not worried. There are a million things that could go wrong, a million things that could blow up in my face right now and completely destroy me, but I’m not at all scared. So why haven’t I been writing?

Apparently, this was a problem even in my earliest years of grade school. I was looking through some old files in my parents’ basement the other day and I came across some comment sheets my teacher had written in first grade. She said I was reading above my level and showed great promise in my writing skills, but that she had trouble getting me to focus. A later note said that I had stopped writing completely, that I said there was nothing to write about. She said she found ways to get me to write something, but that I seemed largely uninterested with the tasks at hand.

Why wasn’t I writing? In those days, you don’t write anything but what you did for summer, or what your favorite color is, but I wanted nothing to do with it. I did find one little story I wrote. It was called “The Garbage Pail Kids Fight the Junk Kids.” I basically made up my own version of the classic Garbage Pail Kids and had them duel as only a six-year-old can. It came down to a rope climb. Fast Cast from the Junk Kids beat Russell Muscle from the Garbage Pail Kids because Russell’s muscles made him too heavy and the rope broke when he got to the top.

I guess that’s the answer. My teachers wanted me to write about reality, about what was going on in my world. I wanted nothing to do with reality. For whatever reason, I wanted to get as far away from my world as I possibly could. They said that I read a lot, but that I had trouble focusing on anything else. What they didn’t realize is that I was focusing.

I was focused so intently on leaving my reality that I would often leave it for hours or even days at a time. I have this intense memory of one day in my early childhood where I just got up from the couch and floated through the air. It’s one of the best feelings I’ve ever had in my life, and it never happened. Everything about that memory feels real, but my mind, reality tells me it’s not.

I think that’s what’s happening to me now. I think I’m running away from my reality. Every moment of my life up to this point was planned out and set in motion long before I ever knew what I was doing. I knew I was going to go to college, I knew where, and I even knew what I needed to do to get there and get through it. All that lies ahead now is possibility and uncertainty. Somewhere in that uncertainty is a career, somewhere in that possibility lie marriage and a family. There is nothing but responsibility ahead of me.

I must be scared. I must be so scared of taking that next step into society that I want nothing to do with it. I finished the first draft of my first feature length screenplay recently, but I think I only did that because it wasn’t finished. It was the only door left that was still open. I finally closed that door and left myself with nothing but a million unopened doors to choose from.

I’d like to sell this screenplay, or even get it to the point that I feel comfortable showing it to the public, but I have done nothing since I finished it. I have dreams of being a screenwriter and working in the film industry, but I have done very little to get the ball rolling. I tell myself that I’m waiting for feedback, but that’s a lie. Sure it’d help, but I know exactly what needs to be done to take it to the next step, it’s just a matter of sitting down and focusing.

I guess that’s the curse of the dreamer. We become so comfortable in these fantastical worlds we create, that we completely lose sight of reality, or even begin to hate it and despise all things that call it to our attention. I guess they call it “Escapism.” I guess I’ve been escaping for most of my life. Maybe it’s time to accept my reality and let it help other six-year-olds escape their own realities.

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I am a Cat

Thursday, June 8, 2006

The other night, as I lay restless in my bed staring at the ceiling, I began to reflect on my past and came to an exciting conclusion. I am part cat. Not only do I enjoy a good glass of milk, love chasing mice, and lounge around the house for most of the day, but I have the innate ability to fall from any height and land unharmed. I cite two specific instances for your consideration:

1. I was probably 12 or 13 years old and was out playing with my friends. We came upon a tree outside the neighborhood pool. I decided that the tree needed to be climbed. I set out to conquer said tree in the name of 12 year olds all over the world. I was at least 3/4 the way up the tree when a branch gave way under my enormous weight of about 82 pounds (I was not a large little boy). I plummeted to the grass below and landed on my feet, collapsing into a squat. I jumped up with nothing but a small scratch down my right arm. My friends all stood in awe and bowed to the glory that is I.

2. After my freshman year of college, I worked as a stock boy at Party City. Halloween was approaching and we were filling the aisles with plastic skeletons and Hot Dog costumes. I was sent to the back in search of old stock tucked in the darkest corners of the stockroom. I climbed to the top of the 16-foot ladder and reached out for the boxes we needed. I could barely reach them. I nudged the boxes closer to my grasp and just as I grabbed a hold of them, the ladder fell from beneath me with a crash. A girl screamed. The boxes fell with a deafening thud and before I realized what had happened, I found myself on top of the very boxes that caused the fall. The owner came rushing out in fear of a lawsuit and was so surprised to see me lying there with a smile on my face and not a scratch on my body that he placed a plaque on the ladder as a tribute to my splendor.

Now, I did not always have these amazing abilities, there was a time when a simple fall could mean my definite demise. As a boy living in Indonesia, I once rolled off the top bunk of my bunk bed onto a marble floor in my sleep. I broke my elbow and had two pins inserted to fix the damage. In another childhood incident, I was lying on top of the bar in our house when I fell asleep. Somehow, I rolled off of said bar and hit my head, resulting in a concussion.

I can think of two explanations for this discrepancy. First, that somehow over the years as a result of my accidents, I evolved into the cat-like superhuman that I am today. Second, that sleep is like Kryptonite to me and strips me of my feline features, leaving me vulnerable to the everyday effects of gravity. Either that, or I am still in a coma as a result from the bar top fall and none of this is real at all . . .

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Success

Sunday, April 9, 2006

Success: it’s a word that gets passed around a lot in society, but I’m not sure anybody really knows what it means. Since grade school we are brought up to believe in a certain standard of success. It all starts with one simple question: what do you want to be when you grow up? From that day forward we are pushed along through the checkpoints of success, steered toward some mysterious Xanadu that no one seems to achieve.

The first question is sincere enough. We all laugh as a child reaches into his or her dream world and pulls out the most amazing of aspirations. What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a fireman. I want to be a movie star. I want to be a doctor, a writer, an artist, an athlete, a rock star, a veterinarian, a lawyer, a comedian, and on, and on. This is the only time that this answer truly comes from the heart. After this point, our answers become beaten into submission by society’s view of success. After this point, the answers are quickly followed with, “Oh … what are you going to do with that?”

What has happened to the standard of a man’s success? Today’s society honors only the rich and the famous. In the Greek society, the most revered men were also the poorest. They were the thinkers, the writers, and the philosophers. Today, any student of philosophy is barraged daily with insults and snide remarks, mocking them for what will most certainly be an “unsuccessful” future. What has happened?

This thing called money is a strange thing. It has destroyed many societies and I’m sure it will be the downfall of our own. We are all prisoners in this society. What is the American dream? To get rich and become successful. There’s that word again. This time it comes after the money.

If you look outside in any given day, you will see a nation of zombies. We are all following a ritual. Each of us, it seems, is on his or her own agenda, struggling to make ends meet, dreaming of fame, fortune, and success. When meeting new people, the question is always asked, “What do you do?” like it somehow defines who we are. Those days are long gone. Very few people these days can be defined by what they do. People are no longer following their heart. This must be pushed aside as we are poured into the mold of success laid by society.

Why do people do it? Why do we give up our earliest dreams as we submit to the power of the almighty dollar? What is the difference between a dead CEO and a dead custodian? Nothing. They are both dirt, but only one has truly lived.

If you talk to any “blue collar” worker, they will never tell you about their job. They will only tell you about their passion. For some it is their job, but to these it is so much more. Their eyes light up as they tell you about their day, as they tell you about the problems they solved or the amazing stories they heard from the other guys. For others, their job is just a means to an end, a way to survive in this society as they follow their passions.

Too many people today let their job get in the way of their passion. They let it wither away as they chase their own white rabbit of success. People have become selfish and heartless, soulless robots serving the great machine. Everyone has his or her own agenda and will step on anyone to achieve it. This is our society. This is our success.

I stopped telling people my dreams of becoming a writer. Nobody cares about that. They want to know what I am, not what I want to be. I tell them I’m a stagehand and they quickly become uninterested as I explain further. That’s not a real job. That’s not one of the boxes you can check on your census form. I tell them I’m also a substitute teacher and their eyes light up. “Oh really? What do you want to teach?” They are quickly brought back down when I tell them it’s only a way to pay the bills as I chase my dreams. I have no desire to teach.

This is a sad semblance of life we have created for ourselves. Life has nothing to do with earning money. Life is about meeting new people, seeing new places, having new adventures. If you talk to someone on their deathbed, they will never speak of their job. They’ll speak of their friends and their family and the good times they had over the years. So why do we make a career such a high priority in today’s society? Why do so many people set their job before their friends and before their family?

There are some who say that money is a necessary evil, that you must be able to support a family to be successful, but at what point do you rid yourself of this evil? How many of these people “supporting” their family truly know their children? How many of these people can even say they really have a family? Is this success?

I am convinced that the only way to truly be successful, to truly be happy is to follow your passions. A man who is doing what he loves is much more pleasant to be around. He has a stronger family and stronger friends. No one cares about how much he makes or how he pays the bills, those people shun him, these people only care about who he is, and these are the only people he cares about. This man is real. This man will live long after he dies in the hearts of those he touched as he followed his passion and lived his life. These are the men they write stories about. These are the only men that succeed.

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Change

Friday, March 17, 2006

I cut my hair today. It has been almost a year since I last cut it. I don’t really know why I did it, I just got bored with it. I decided things had become way too comfortable for me and that it was time for a change.

Thinking back, I’ve noticed that I thrive on change. Since I graduated High School, I’ve lived in 6 different cities scattered across the continent and moved hundreds of times within those cities. Over a period of 4 years, I never lived in the same apartment more than 6 months. I’m constantly rearranging the furniture in my room and in my house. I’m never satisfied doing the same thing for an extended period of time. My current jobs vary so constantly that I never know what I’m doing from one day to the next. I can’t even play video games for much longer than an hour. I’m rarely satisfied watching one of the hundreds of movies I own. I’m always looking for something new.

This has nothing to do with ADD. I can sit still for hours on end doing absolutely nothing but staring at the wall. I can focus on the most boring subjects if I really want to. This has to do with my constant need for change. I find that I’m happiest with my life when I’m trying new things, or in a completely new environment. I am most comfortable when I am uncomfortable.

In some ways I guess this is a good thing. If I’m always looking for something new, then I should always be learning, I should always be progressing. On the other hand, there are things in life that can’t function under constant change. Constant moves can be hard on a family. Constantly changing jobs can get in the way of a career. There has to be some way to allow for constant change in a completely functional life.

My ideal career would be one whose job requirements change from day to day. I want to see new challenges every day of my life. I don’t like it when things are so easy that they become monotonous. When my brain goes into auto-pilot, I shut down and I start looking for the eject button. This is why I struggled so much with school, learning new formulas, equations and patterns just didn’t cut it for me. I needed classes that encouraged deeper and more complex thinking, classes where there was no right answer, classes whose problems had more than one solution, classes that made me constantly change my thought process. Eventually, I found a subject that allowed and even encouraged this constant change and was able to graduate.

My ideal family would be one that welcomed change. I want to travel the world. I want to see new people and new cultures. I want to go places unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I want to visit worlds that are completely foreign to me. Sure, I can be based in one spot, but I need adventure, I need plot development.

I guess my point in all this introspection is that too often we get settled into our lives and become comfortable. I find my life becoming a cycle. I start something new, or go someplace unfamiliar, go with it for a while, become comfortable, then start looking for change once again. I need to break out of my comfort zone and keep it broken. I am happiest when things are changing. This is what makes life exciting, constant change. Look at the animals in the wild, they’re always changing. If a gazelle gets too comfortable, it gets eaten. I think there’s a reason that the earth we live on is built on a web of tectonic plates constantly in motion. I don’t think life could exist any other way. Without change, there is no life.

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