By the way, which ones pink

I have been in a conversation via email with a friend about Dark Side of the moon. Below is the entent of the text.

I have been meaning to do a peice about Pink Floyd and what their place is in the scheme of rock and roll history. But for me, it's like the white album. I love Floyd so much and for so many reasons, and perhaps not for the reason so many are attracted to the band (drugs), I have a hard time talking about it with most people because I fear they don't get it and they only tarnish my love of that band, because it hurts me that people aren't getting the whole picture. For those who understand it's something special and far better than a drug trip.

Anyway, this one gets lenghty and very philosophical. It may seem a little disjointed at times due to the fact I haven't re edited yet. But to be fair, I rarely do these with edits, because I have already thought of this things way in advance and I don't like to let reason and changes of heart to corrupt the original passion. I'd rather live with a mistake than re-edit the past.
Enjoy,



All of I know about Dark Side comes from listening to it when I used to sit in my bedroom and read. I got the album, along with Zeppelin Remasters, when I turned 14. It was like giving a kid a hand grenade. But I sat and listened to it, over and over again. And it was mostly for the sonic resources. When I was that age, I was so self obsessed with literature and devouring everything I could about anything intellectual. It was the same soundtrack for mind expansion that so many druggies turn to in college.


Which is why there are so many copies of that album sold. Every day for drugs or intellectual loneliness, the dark side of the moon is able to appeal.


As for the actual meaning, it is about madness in life. Or this is at least the meaning I have heard from commentary from Waters and Gilmore and co. More specifically, it's about getting into the rat race and the methodical routines of everyday life, and how that slowly takes away any semblance of eternal self. Because most of the album was fit together after the fact, the sequence (outside of the closer track) is somewhat irrelevant thematically. But we can see the mass of themes from which they were grabbing from. A drive for money, the endless drive of time (the sun is the same in the relative way but your older) against your individualism and the ultimate showdown between conforming and self.


Much of what I have heard from the band about the themes is about how these things can drive you mad and put you in such a place as so you cannot understand the external world. Combined with the real life dealings of watching Syd Barret go insane from drug induced haze certainly figures into this. Which perhaps can be extended to a bigger sense, almost in a matrix like sense of two worlds, where there are those who are locked in one state of mind from the trappings of everyday life, and those who go mad trying to find something bigger. At the time, it could be argued that it was drugs, but in truth, I never believed that drugs changed the world of those people in Pink Floyd, drugs never changed their views or were opened to other things. They were far too smart and I think the other world was one of near enlightenment, where the truth would be revealed.


Which brings us to the two central icons in the album, the sun and the moon. In perhaps the most basic sense, the sun equals life and the moon equals death. The sun gives us everything and in the rotation of the earth, we are able to see all of the sun. It is always there and it is what drives life on the planet. We know what it is and we can take it as it. But with the Moon, we only see one side of it. It's the dark side of the moon because it is never shown to earth. There are two objects in the sky that we can clearly see, but we only know of the half of one of them. That intangibility of the moon is so alluring and so mystifying. As I think it works for death. We know what it is, but we don't know the other side of it. We know the face of death so to speak, but what is in the darkness, it remains a mystery. And so I think in the end, everything is overcome by the dark side of the moon.


As for the inevitability of people to dismiss negativity. I already have accepted I am going to hell. I mean, I have committed some sins in my life, between pride, gluttony, wrath, lies, deceits. Even on the smaller scales, I think that I don't deserve to go to heaven for not being bad, because simply, I don't think I did anything that great to deserve entry. But even in a deeper sense, I say hell because its a kind of knowledge that I will die, and even if hell is not torture, it is sadness. And I probably don't believe in a greater scheme beyond life, I think we have to make the most of life as it. Because really how great could heaven be if we have to lose everyone around us to get there. Eternal bliss and knowledge can ever truly fill the gap of heartbreak and loss. Even if you were reunited with people in heaven, would you want to see them again? They have lived their life for so long without you or since your departure, it not going to be the same. As good as it may feel to be reunited, you can never go home again. It breaks my heart to think about it, because death is so hard as it is. What would life be if we didn't learn everything we wanted to or had the love of our life we all deserved. Simply, it would be misery.


And thats the reason why regrets stay with you for so long, they are reminders of how hard life can really be. The downfall of great memories is that their effect lessens with time in your own mind. It begins to take other people or other events to trigger the feeling once again of those memories. But once they fade, it leaves an intense sting of melancholy because you know that time is long gone. I try not to think of my friends from back home too much, because it only makes me sad in the end. I feel like one of the best things in my life has passed me, and I have only the memories which will slowly let fade away and lessen with time on their own.


Simply put, I think most of the world will always be optimists because they want to believe that everything will work out. It's much more comforting to be climbing to the top instead of working from the bottom up. Most people have a psychological need/fix to believe in heaven because they need to believe that their is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They need something to keep them going to avoid indulging the thought that it might all be for naught. As much as I don't agree with people of this ilk, I do not look down upon them, for surely I am looking for my own truths in the world as well, I simply would rather be enlightened through life than from death.


Studies show that people who are able to believe in one form or another that they are doing what they ultimately want to move to be far happier than those who feel like they are failing. Of course, this comes as no surprise, but the other part of this is that those people who do believe are far more likely to be successful in life while those who don't are infinitely more prone to panic attacks and mental breakdowns. It is in the very same vein of reasoning why so many people who rediscover religion are suddenly that much more successful than they were at their moment of rock bottom. They suddenly have something to move towards. It's the light at the end of the tunnel, its the light we move to when we die. It's something to hold on to and it can be a mighty buoyant preserver.


But I am not a religious man in this sense. I still don't believe we are really working to an other worldly goal. I think that Buddha was on to something when he wrote that all life is suffering, and all suffering comes from desire. It is only when you accept these two and give up desire that you can reach enlightenment. Conversely, he also wrote that if the string is too loose, it will not make a sound, but if it is too tight, it will break. If you think of the two in a combined greater scheme, as to believe that realizing that not all of life is rosy and that much of our mental anguish comes from desire of things we don't truly need (which means everything but food, sleep and water), but not too take anything to far as to be dominant and not too be too lax as to be ineffective.


As for an afterlife, I don't really want to believe the common thoughts of heaven, from any sense of the world. First off, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. I am sure sex, meeting your idols, and talking with the angels and learning the truth of all of history and the universe would get old. I also don't believe that Satan could be so evil. If this was a man cast out of heaven, why would he torture the souls of those cast out of heaven like he was, essentially still fulfilling God's will. Moreso, if rock and roll, miniskirts, and booze are all instruments of the devil, Heaven would be awfully vanilla. You would become numb in Hell. You would also become bored in Heaven, and you probably would go mad too, for what could is knowledge you cannot use. Earth would become a spectacle you would forever long to rejoin, knowledge and pleasure be damned.


In Fight Club, there is the scene where the narrator is given a chemical burn from Tyler Durden. It's classic transfigured Buddhism, as you have to let go and hit rock bottom (in essence a sense that perhaps nothing may ever go your way in life). Only then, when you know the extreme of pure pain and sadness may you reach the pure pleasure of enlightenment By saying I believe I am going to hell is not truly a belief that I am destined to a life of torture, but it is transposed Buddhism. I am not afraid of death; I know that there may be no tomorrow. That is my rock bottom. But it was from there, from a deep realization that life may be the only time we ever have, that I really began to appreciate everything all the more.


Enlightenment is that moment when you are able to see everything in perspective, when life makes sense. I came out of this realizing that much of what we have thought about life is reversed. Most of our lives we are taught that life is a great mystery, that nothing is set knowledge.


I think it's the opposite. Life is not the mystery but the question, and it is each life and each soul that is the enigma and from where we may reach a higher plain, whether you call it heaven, enlightenment or rapture.


Life is out to reveal us.


David

(continued...)

Chronicles, pt 2

Second part, same as the first, a little bit faster and a whole lot worse!

Anyway, there is a reason why most films about college suck. With the exception of Animal House which was more like the Marx Brothers go to school, almost every college film or TV since that featured students of age (this excludes Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield, Homer goes to College, and the Futurama at Mars U and Old School) has been close to terrible. For every moment of genius we get like a man composing a thesis that there is always a film with Michael Caine or Gene Hackman on TV, we get something on the whole like Van Wilder and the like.

With high school, the universal expeiriences are of love, friendship and competition can be transcendant becuase they are part of a universal experience and a sense of innocent and joyful recollection, and are seriously relatable because they are in essence human. In short, there is a reason why we remember our first loves and our friends we grew up with. You cannot duplicate the first time. It's always nice to hear someone tell a story about this, whether it is in film or fireside chat, because it's like hearing a new twist on a favorite memory.


With college, all great tales are essentially of debauchery and competition. Banging two chicks at a time is a great accomplishment for the 19 year old b-b-boy, but it's ultimately nothing special. It is a great gateway for recollection with friends, but you aint going to be telling your tale of winding up in a graveyard to your kids as you may about winning in high school. (Both are accomplishments are their level) Let me say that if anything, clichés cannot possibly do college and its inhabitant’s justice. Every subculture character, the frat guy, the nerd, the jock, the blonde haired sorority girl, the pothead, musician, and endless stereotypes are innumerable at any institution. Most of the myths and fables of college life are not only prevalent but abound on near any given college campus. From the movies to the books to the websites, it is dead on. But there is something that no text I have ever come upon has gotten right or remotely stumbled onto; college is immensely boring. Overwhelmingly, mercilessly, paralyzingly and dehumanizingly boring.

It is supposed to be the time of your life, and in many ways, it is. It can be fun, liberating, and mind expanding. But falling to this belief ruins the real experience. College has become a commodity in almost every sense of its purpose. It is the place where one is “supposed” to experiment with drugs, sex, and alcohol. It is a time when it is ok to do crazy ridiculous things. When the time is done, you move on, and then you enter real life. Students refers to it as “part of the College experiment,” a time in their life when they acted aside from their personality lines calling it “a phase.” The sad result of this is that discounting college experiences demeans the whole incident because it relegates it to a time when they are not living their life, but acting outside of their personality. Once you learn that most every college student is stuck in this temporal, 4-year mindset, you begin to realize how worthlessly shallow and hollow they and the experience both are.

People are very rarely the people they are; they are stuck between the person they were at the end of high school, full of ambition, dreams and hope, and the person at the end, disheveled, totally free, and having to face life without their parents for their first time in their life. When people get to college, often the freedom and pleasure of the place works against the entire process of growing up. They then become part of that system of clichés that dominate. They become in one way or another a member of a social subculture, most do it subconsciously to be what they wanted to be in high school or consciously to fit in.

This is what makes college something of aberrance in human psychology; it is a place where it is ok to succumb to the trends, to act out of your natural character. This trend is what dominates and shapes college life. I would call it college culture, but that would be a misnomer, for college is nothing more than a collective mass of subcultures, living in harmony relegating the whole college atmosphere to a collection of cliques. By the end of the college cycle, many Juniors and Seniors are dying to get out of it, “the time their lives” because they have unwilling succumb to a horrible routine and they can wait to break out of it and get into the real world. These are the usually the same people who reminisce the strongest. Everytime I heard a soon to be graduate say "I can't wait to get out and have a real job" or "It's great sleeping with soroity girls, but I need someting more" I just wanted to throttle them. I mean, people rarely got it.

So I guess, in the self ordained level of enlightenment about college I had come to, it was nigh impossible to let go. For every moment I thought that a 9-5 job with benefits was something worth having, (essentially the little angel appearing to get in a reminder that at some point I had to grow up) , I would continue to think of the final moments of a bad movie which sticks with you in the way that high school movies do and college movies don't.

The movie was Biloxi Blues, which for those who never saw it, it is all about Matthew Broderick as a new yorker going into the army. I suppose it's decent, but its a little long winded and didactic (it's hard to find the middle ground in army movies, you can either do Mash or Private Ryan, the inbetween is preachy and verbose). However, it closes with a line (I'm paraphrasing here...or misquoting, I never know) "I look back on these times with joy. I loved the expeirience for the most selfish of reasons, because I was young."

So thus we return to my actual saga of life instead of my supposistion about it. Finding it impossible to break in to a decent job in any field, I was forced outside of my chosen field for the simple reason of keeping myself fed and sheltered, I took up at in internship for the sad, yet simple reason of padding a resume. My plan was to take a short side path as a lackey and then turn into a career after a few months.

Perhaps the greatest fallicy of college is that it will yeild you a job when your four years are up. Whether you major in business, law, linux or literature, the jobs are not exactly there. Clearly those who are graduating are more educated, more elloquent, armed with theory and history than those who did not graduate. It may be due to our shoddy economy, but the truth of the matter is those of us who went to college are now going to be underneath many of our high school compatriots who entered the working world instead of university and have since moved up. In one of the first weeks at my current job I met a kid who had moved just moved from Chicago. He had planned to go, ironically, to USC film school as I was, but instead decided to build up some money to ease the tension of student loans that were to come. Starting as a lawn mower in 99 at 8.50 an hour, he left in mid 2003 with a salary of 42,000 and a mercedes benz, paid for in half by his company. He was entering the world I had just left and leaving behind the world I myself was now entering, with a benz to boot, no less. It is a tribute, I guess to the creative mind, but for those with a creative bone in their body see a blast of ironic instead of a glimmer of the American spirit. Ironically, it is people in cases like this that take many of the entry level jobs and force so many of those with simple bachleors back to earn a more formal degree.

The flip side of course was the struggle that was keeping myself afloat financially. The trick was getting started. And So I'll go back to Mid October. About the same time I was starting my internship and watching the cubbies suffer a death more horrible than imaginable, and then watching the Red Sox suffer a worse fate, I headed to Vegas for a bachleor party. Perhaps the single greatest feature of living in LA, even moreso than the occasional odd celeb encounter, is that you are hours from Vegas. but more on that in a bit, my top four celeb experiences:

4. The violinist from the band Flogging Molly. I said to her "I love your work. Here, let me buy your next round, I d'ld your band with out paying. Then we'll be even"

3. The google guys, and having a banker friend tell them that he needed 2.5 percent of their worth to be their banker. Only later did we tell him who they were. You know the face a man makes when he messes up with his girlfriend and it suddenly dawns on him he may not get laid for weeks. Multiply that by 100.

2. The wife of the guitarist of Def Leppard. It was real hard for me not to yell: "Hello cleveland!" I did however say, "So can I sleep with you to meet Mick Jones (of the sex pistols)?"

1. Hillary Duff. When I was valeting for a big event at my hotel, Hillary was one of the VIPs. I was bringing up a brand new range rover when I waited for my owner to come. After a minute or two, I was approached by a few men in suits with earpieces. I asked what the deal was, to which they responded that a big star was coming out. I asked who, and they of course responded it was the songstress of my summer. As I write this, my smile is ear to ear. It was unreal then. So, I waited and finally Hillary came out, posed for a few pics with the papparazzi, and headed to this car. As she got in, I said hi with an idiot grin on my face (I couldn't for the life of me come up with anything better. Usually I am good with celebs. I have told Weinstein that I couldn't stand The Talented Mr. Ripley. I talked for a good ten minutes with Billy Bob Thorton while everyone else shuddered in fear, and even looked Hefner in the eyes and asked him if he thinks he may be responsible for the moral majority outcry and boomer retreat about sexuality) Moments later, as she put the car in drive and began to take it out of idle, a man comes up and bangs on the door. Hillary opened cautiously and baffeled. Before she could speak, the man simply told her that this was his car. There was some confusion until he pointed out his garage opener. So the Duff clan exited the car, watched him drive off and th mother looked at me and asked: "So where is Hillary's car?"

So it was mid october and I was going to Vegas. Mind you this was an unreal time where I live. We were in the midst of the recall election, which to me was essentially the ultimate reality dating show scenario. If it was TV it would boil down to this. "All right contestant bob, here is your decision. Do you choose to stay with your wife or leave her. Mind though, that if you choose to leave her, you must immediately find a new wife." I mean, really, isn't democracy supposed to be better than this. I mean, I believe in the constitution and in America. But I no longer beleive in our current democracy. And I say this alot, when people ask for examples, and I say "California 2004, Florida 2000, and Minnesota 1998." Really, we have had an election come down to faulty voting mechanisms and senile seniors, and in two of our biggest states, we have elected the leads of Predator for our govenors.

One more quick interjection. With the exception of diehard supporters, last weekend was a real awakening about the state of presidents and their voters. Where I work there is a Ronald Regan Suite. He used to rent out the top floor of the Fox Building two doors down from my hotel (it's the Nakatomi building in Die Hard, and seriously this brightens my day everytime I go to work there. I am just waiting for someone to throw a German corpse onto my car and yell WELCOME TO THE PARTY PAL!) Anyway, anyone under 30 ranted about how they hated Reagan. Anyone over 30 said that he was the greatest president of our life. Me, I really appreciate what Reagan did in the first few years of his presidency (slashing taxes where they needed to be cut, I mean we used to be able to write off credit card debt, easing up FCC restrictions for the spread of cable, and making Americans feel good about being Americans again, granted the Mircacle on Ice had so much to do with this its astounding)After his second term, not so much. He attacked the ghettos, sold arms to terrorists, and called single mothers immoral. All of those are awful. But these people were so split along the age line it was ludicrous. Mind you of course, we elected a muscleman to run the worlds 5th largest economy.

So off I went with the last of the my cash. Perhaps the only real upside of my breakup with my ex was that I wasn't going to cheat on her in Vegas. I am not saying this as an act of debauchery it is just simply one of those things in life you know, almost psychicly, that something bad is going to happen. I knew that if I went, I was going to hook up with a girl somehow while I was in Vegas. My uncle lived in Vegas for about a decade. He told me simply that there is one surefire way to get laid in Vegas. How to, you ask? Leave your room.

I of course was flush with the boundless optimism of Vegas. I would go there, get laid, make enough money to pay my rent and live happily ever after. Not one of the three panned out. Nonetheless, I had an amazing time. We had a dinner that left all of us so full we were demoralized, my exact sentiments when we got in a limo was "fuck strippers, I just want to lay down and digest for a good hour." I went to my first strip club, and due to the fact that I had sex in the week before (including one event where she puked on my bed) and I was still messed up from my breakup, most of the time all I could do is admire the girls skin. I mean, really, have you ever felt a stripper? It's unreal how soft they are, it's like your childhood blanket with boobs. But at the end of the night, I was at a blackjack table, making jokes about my future govenor along the lines "get ya ahss to masss" with a friend of 20 years and randoms that got the jokes. As I stumbled to my room in daylight, I was left with the feeling of Vegas, baby. (another highlight, I was driving a friend home for his business trip and he thought he had lost his cell phone. The cell, of course, was in the back of the car. But this man, Brad, has the ability to convince anyone, including himself that the worst is coming, including one tale when he revved up everyone so much on one trip that they were convinced that writings on their bananas were from a serial killer known as Bananaman.)

So then was the wedding two weeks later back in my home state where I faced my folks for the first time since graduation. There are few faces like the, "we're so glad to see you, but what are you doing with your life, seriously?" look in life.

Days after I got home, I began to valet again. I had valeted during my senior year and made more money than any 18 year old should have. I bought every CD I ever wanted. I spent close to 1000 on cigars alone. I ate out constantly. Life lesson 53, the more things change, the more they stay the same. And so I was valeting again and taking in cash to pay for details and having a paycheck for utilites and rent. Small note, on my flight home I was seated near Lou Ferigno, aka the incredible hulk. Three days later, I valet his car. Only in Hollywood.

And then I went home for christmas and had to leave New Years Eve because of ticket prices. So I found myself back home with little money and less faith in myself. As I left, I had to ask my dad for some cash for rent. Few things are worse than asking a parent for help when you are supposed to be out on your own. They are willing, but they aren't happy about it. So come new years eve 2003, I found myself in DFW in the airport fridays across from my single serving friend from the flight before. I suppose it was better than two years before when I was walking 7 miles in 3 degree cold to a hotel with a great friend, pretty much out of sheer spite, and arriving at 6 am at the hotel, only to wake up later and effectively shit out my mouth in the morning. But after a heartwarming hookup with my airport friend, I was in the air again.

When I got home, the typical LA gunshots into the air were along with the fireworks for the new year. And I was now Jet Lagged beyond belief. This would continue until today,

But the rest is for later, I'll finish.
Hopefully this trilogy won't have a climatic chapter with Ewoks.

Till then

David

(continued...)

Chronicles of a post graduate year, pt 1

Around April of 2003, I stumbled into strange territory: I had fallen in love with a girl and I was actually dating her. This was something new, because all of the girls/ loves of my life have never been anything near normal dating circumstances. They usually followed one of three paths. 1. Absolute lovelorn and she didn't care. 2. We could get along on the phone or IM but in person it was like watching paint dry (this also was probably helped by the fact that when I was talking to them, I could play videogames and look at porn). 3. I realized I actually liked this girl but her train had sailed. So there I was, dating a girl who I didn't want to leave in the morning, and living out the twilight months of my college experience with reckless abandon.It was new territory and as wonderful as you can imagine the early stages of love to be. At the time, my friends were actually thinking of making a false newspaper whose headline read: David Turner actually has a girlfriend." For a man who had an amazon black woman run out after fooling around, this was gold to them.

Also added into the mix was my roommate and best friend in Kris, who moved in the previous September. Why are these two related? Well, in one of the long pillow talks me and my ex shared during the time, I was talking about the genesis of my friendships. She asked me, "so when you met Kris, was it love at first site?" Essentially, Kris was the first person since I left high school who made me feel like I was at home again. It's truly a weird experience. I had a slew of good to great friends, but with Kris, it was like a meeting of kismet not seen in years. We pushed each other to extremes in drinking, goofing off, pranks, purchases (more on that later), and late nights listening to the Clash. It was like freshman year all over again, staying up to late times with people of kindred spirits. However, this time, me and Kris usually yellled through the walls, to much agita of out neighbors. My favorite was a discourse that went something like this:


Me: You realize we killed a 24 pack of high life tonight?
Kris: And the few beers that Walter left (our 3rd roomie)
Me: Why do we drink?
Kris: At this point, with graduation looming, mostly to keep the gun out of my mouth.

I could hear numerous windows shut in response to my uncontrollabe laughter.

Another one of these earlier in the year led to the following. It was one of the first weeks of school in the fall semeseter. I, of course, had Fridays off and had gotten bombed the night before. He had decided to take a class on Afro-cuban music. I, using my Friday off, decided to go for a drive to nowhere and figure out what the hell to do with a free day (god bless the non working man). Driving along the 10 in LA, I saw a small plane descending into landing at the Santa Monica airport. I knew what I was going to do. After watching rich men take off on 3 day weekends for Vegas and Big Bear, I knew I had to go up into an airplane. Long story short, 40 minutes later I was airborne with a man with poor English dialect who loved my enthusiasm headed for an airport 40 miles away. This of course, was all free for me. We landed, talked to a guy who owned a plane, and flew home. I left around 4 in the afternoon and caught a stream of traffic on a Friday in that you see once a year in LA. All the while, I had Led Zep 4 blasting at full volume. Somethings in life are far better than sex. This was one of those few moments, where I had spent not a dime, and had a high as great as anything in my life.

So Kris got home and found me on the couch watching the 730 simpsons. He looked at me with a look of disapproval, thinking I had spent the whole day on the couch (which was not unwarrented, mind you). And follows:

Kris: Man, I just had one of the best days of my life. I went to class and learned an entire samba and was taught by this awesome professor who talked about everything in life you could imagine. A discourse on love life and music, and I got to play congas. What did you do.

Me: I went by plane to van nuys all for free, and got to actually fly for a while.
Kris: Damnit. How can you do this. I have an unbeleiveable day and you top it without effort.

The end result: By the end of the next day, he had bought a set of $500 congas and I had a set of bongos. From this point on, our neighbors hated us. Add in to the equation that we had an enormously powerful home theater system which we would blast Zep, the Clash, Elvis and the stones on at 3- 5 in the morning, always topped off by me yelling "JUMANJI" at the top of my lungs, and you have a good idea of what our nights were like.

So back to the waining days of April and the beginning of May. We continued like this and were living college at full blast, i.e. postponing papers because wacky races was on Cartoon Network, coming up with new drinks made of vodka and frozen box wine and a dash of fruit punch for taste, and doing Elvis Karaoke twice a month.

Then it was graduation night. My parents had just come into town and I was going to go to sleep early to get up for the mass ceremony at 7:30. I went to bed after the 1 am sportscenter and was going to get a good night sleep. Of course, in comes Kris with 8 friends and 2 cases of beers. Obviously I wasn't going to bed. So I got up and hung out, with the full intention of getting up of course. Flash forward to 6 am with me, in full cap and gown attire going to Mac Donalds to get breakfast and drinking a drink consisting of Vodka, frozen box wine, fruit punch, and coffee grinds, which I was sure would keep me alert. Needless to say, I didn't wake up until 12:00 the next morning, barely in time to make my own graduation. ( I am still pissed at USC for not reading my post-graduation plans which were: President for life in Argentina)

So after the tearful goodbye from my parents at the end of the weekend, it began. I was no longer living off my parents and I was going to make a name for myself. Right after I ran out of graduation money.

And so it began. But we needed a name for it. And it came in mid May when me and Kris were watching MTV hits on cable at 3 in the morn. It suddenly dawned on us that Hillary Duff's song "why not" was awesome. Albeit that we were hammered, but this song RULED. I mean, not only did the video have the sweet, sweet Hillary Duff, but it had a theme we could relate to. Why not. I mean, wasn't Marilyn Monroe right when she said: "Did you ever notice that 'what the hell' is always the right decision?" From this point on, we were free. It would be 4 in the afternoon, 1 hour earlier than the acceptable drinking hour, and he'd look at me and say, "wanna drink?" I of course would say "Why not."

As an added bonus, we had now inherited another couch for our living room now that friends of ours were leaving, leading us to rename our apartment "Couch-a-chutess" or my fav "Rancho-couch-a-mounga." We had three huge sitting spaces and had no intention of letting them go without asses to meet them. For a while, one of my freinds was sleeping on these as a home, and although he cut into my PTI time at 2:30 and I had ill feelings for him for that, there are few greater feelings than waking up to find another friend rare and to go for another day in the life. We were followed by LAPD choppers not once, but twice. I got three letters from our landlord in one week. Two for "noisy drinking parties" and one, because I have a tendency of writing "for sensual massage" in the memo field of my rent checks, "for inappropriate remarks." It was like being in high school and recieving detention again.

One time, Kris went out with his father for lunch and I had a friend over and we went to the market to get beer so we could watch a movie. When they came home, me and my friend were buzzed and an hour into the Godfather, also armed with a large inflatable high life bottle to boot. His father looked at me and said: Isn't it a little early to be drinking?" I responded: "yeah, but it's a little late in the day to go out and find a job"

And so June transpired as such. Me and Kris would push each other to levels of creative drinking, including one such incident:

Me: We should do something tonight.
Kris: We could do the century club.
Me: Nah. (my girlfriend was with me)
Kris: We could do double century club. 2 shots a minute for 100 mins!
Me: That's just crazy enough to work! (needless to say my gf was not happy)

This continued for a while. I would get up around 1, look for jobs online (and in the rare case of being invited to an interview, I would go, nail it, and then be told I was inexperienced, which to me is a crock of shit. I mean really, it's like the NBA draft, where the employers looked for paper potential instead of character and intelligence) My father would barb me constantly about getting a job. He would call, and I would have to tell him that I was failing at getting a job anywhere respectable. He would tell me to get a job so I could have a good life, but really, all I wanted to say was: "hey dad. I am getting drunk 4 nights a week. I am sleeping with a 19 year old virgin. I am living with my best friend, hanging out with great people, and having the time of my life. This is what I have always dreamed of!"

But it started to slide. We had G2, which was graduation 2 i.e. a month past graduation and worth celebrating, and everything went downhill. Many of my friends had a falling out. Many were leaving, some because of the events of that night, and that night of beer pong in the apt. complex parking garage would be the end. A week later my gf left for a 10 day vacation, both of my roomies had left (one went to Europe, the other moved out). I kept looking for a job and was failing (see my thoughts above). Finally, my lease was up and I had to move out. The wonderful summer of Why not had turned into the period of Why, God Why, and everyone was miserable about their lot in life. No longer were we coasting on hopes, promises and money given to us by family and friends and were forced to vie for our own.

So I moved to another apt. and got ready to live another chapter. The only job I got was as a busboy at a cheap Cajun diner. Soon after me and my GF broke up, futher solidifying the end of an era, and leaving me with a meaningless and awful job, a heartbreak that would last 7 months, and the general feeling of "I am better than this, I deserve to be somewhere, I went to college Damnit!"

But the hard thing is, I really never actually truly desevered great treatment. I mean, sure I did all of the typical things, and was far more educated than my co-workers, but that didn't make me a better busboy nor did it mean that I was due. But that entire feeling of insecurity about self worth is wildly unnerving and when it was amplified by a rent check bouncing and watching The Two Towers and playing Madden 2004 and having to deal with the fact that sometimes fantasies are far off for a reason. By the beginning of October, I was let go by the Cajun restaurant and had only the 2003 baseball season to pre-occupy my time. It was blissful but at the same time, I knew that that time was coming. I had become part of the working class by unfortunate circumstance and was having to deal with what would be a month of poverty and borrowing from friends. Added to this all was the horror that was the Cubs loss, and it was a mass of misery.

But come November, it turned around and the love of blue collar came to be beautiful.

But thats for the next time.

Until then part 2 awaits.


David

(continued...)