It has been two years, six months, seven hours and fifteen days since my last post. I suppose I could go on a blow by blow, self-serving, "Story of our film so far"-style recap of what has happened since. Like those Christmas letters that your one aunt always sends, three pages, double sided, telling you everything that happened to your forgotten side of the family since January of the last year. But recap pages are for 1970s comic books and people with short term memory loss. So I'll spare you and simply dive back in off the top turnbuckle, probably ending up with brain damage.
No, I wasn't off on vacation. No, I wasn't unfairly suspended for throwing at Aaron Rowand. The point is that two and a half years ago, I realized that by keeping up a blog, I was accomplishing nothing more than perpetuating my stereotype as a pretentious student. I had the look down. Checkerboard Van's. Check. Messenger bag. Check. Urban Outfitters t-shirt with an offbeat movie quote. Check. Despite the fact that his body of work is relatively unimpressive, I was willing to follow Joss Whedon into hell and back. Check. I even took a class on Russian Literature...and was actually convinced it made me better than other people. (Strange thing about Dostoevsky. Depresses the living hell out of you, but you come out with an odd feeling of superiority). Check and mate.
Rereading some of those old posts was my own personal Bizarro World. I really wish I could use the evil twin/bipolar disease/someone else logged in under my name as though I'm Tyler Durden or Smeagel or Norman Osborne-excuse. But no. It was me. Writing in a style that I didn't think myself capable of. And I'm talking about a weapons grade, registered independent, horn rimmed glasses wearing, Six Feet Under apologist, NPR donating, (500) Days of Summer adoring, Maureen Dowd in an election year-brand of pretentiousness.
It wasn't so much of a blog as it was a public journal. And we all have two separate journals. We have the one that we leave out in the open, hoping that someone will stumble across and see how deep we are (read: Dear Journal, Patti Mayonnaise still won't talk to me...) and will presumably be published after you are famous and your followers can bask in your previous brilliance and insight. Then there's the one that we keep hidden in a safe, cool, dry spot that will only be released upon your death along with your will and the photos of the Eyes Wide Shut-style sex party you once attended.
In a phrase, I was trying too hard. And there is a big difference between being natural, and trying waaaay too hard to the point of being unwatchable.
And then today, as I was scanning in images and data entry...it hit me. In the year of our lord 2010, I am a 23 year old man. I have a job. I have bills to pay. I have to worry about my career. I have friends who are getting married. I am making decisions that could actually have an impact on society. I am hip deep in adulthood.
I suddenly have a half-decent reason to blog. (Sidenote: I'm well aware that I'm stretching the definitions of the words "half" and "reason").
Because that's what a college degree does for you. It's not so much that you've read x amount of books or you have mastered the five paragraph essay. It's that you've graduated the the point where you have real problems. Suddenly my opinions have value (still debatable, I know). Society has deemed that I have an actual reason to be all angsty.
College is a great vehicle for whiny post-adolescents. But you really have no reason to whine. It's no longer "I have a paper due" or "I'm only getting laid once a month" or "I got caught illegally downloading HBO" or other things of that ilk. Granted, I'm writing from the perspective of someone whose business cards still say "Intern." But I'm a paid intern. I have credit card debt, I have almost outgrown form 1040EZ, and now I actually vote, and not just for the candidate who promises less homework, more kegs at parties and Coke in the drinking fountains.
I can't say there's going to be a theme here. Just the assorted rants of a 23 year old, sexually frustrated Hollywood intern with an encyclopedic knowledge of Los Angeles Dodgers rookies of the year, Civil War history and obscure episodes of "The Rockford Files." And as opposed to three years ago, no more of that obnoxious "self-censoring in hopes of having a unique voice." There's going to be less censorship than a libertarian administration regulating the South Park writers room.
And so begins the great pretentiousness purge of 2010. The first part of this is to never use the word "pretentious" again, as it turns out that most people who have that word as a part of their lexicon fall under the definition. Kind of like how God could create a boulder so heavy that He himself could not carry it. Except with people who can quote from Proust, Elvis Costello and Garrison Keillor and try to make it part of normal, coherent conversation. So I won't use that word. Except in reference to Wes Anderson movies. God does he suck.
Screw Flanders,
-Max
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