Round two…Fight!
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“Give me liberty, or give…aaaargh!”
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“Hold on!”
“I can’t! I love—”
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“Mr. Goldstein? Come with us, please.”
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His bulletproof vest couldn’t stop love.
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“This must be a nightmare.” Nope.
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“I had to. Don’t hate me.”
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Dreams of dying hadn’t prepared him.
***
She smelled the wine. “Nice try.”
Why? Just because.
I’ve probably mentioned that I like to write. I’d like to make a living at it. Hopefully by telling crazy stories about vampires and zombies and space aliens. But every once in a while, I get really discouraged and I ask myself: Why even try?
Seriously though. I ask myself that every day. The odds are crazy. The amount of competition is insane. Readers are fickle. Publishers go out of business every week. The roadsides are littered with the flaming wrecks of would-be writers. You’d have to be delusional to believe that you’ll ever be anything more than one of a million hacks on the Kindle store, selling four copies a month while your co-workers at Pizza Hut chuckle about your sad ambition. You’d be better off buying lottery tickets.
But it seems to me that in this day and age, if you have any kind of goals greater than working as a fry cook at McDonalds, you’re still facing insane odds. There are no longer any magic bullets. There’s no career path or degree or certificate or qualification that guarantees that things are going to be easy for you. For every real grownup job there are hundreds of applicants. I’ve got friends who graduated with sensible degrees, solid blue-chip career degrees like accounting, and it literally took them years to find a job. Years of sending out hundreds of resumes, living at their parents houses and servicing their massive American student loan debts. I know someone who graduated with a good professional degree, found an awesome suit-and-tie job, and got laid off three different times in a year. I know teachers who get blamed for everything that’s wrong with our broken school system, who buy their kids school supplies out of their own pockets, who sweat bullets every year when the layoffs come around.
If there’s a good, safe job out there, I haven’t seen it.
I’ve seen people with bachelor’s in biology making twelve dollars an hour working as lab assistants. I’ve had teachers, PhDs, working as adjunct professors, making less money than the guy outside the window mowing the lawn. Your barista at Starbucks or your cashier at Barnes and Noble probably have English degrees. And take a look at the statistics for law school graduates sometime. Wasn’t that what our parents told us? “Get a good job, be a lawyer and get rich.” Good luck with that.
And in addition to that, some of the most miserable people I’ve ever met got where they are by chasing the money. Dentists and pharmacists and lawyers who spent years and years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get where they are, and they hate it and they hate their lives. It makes you ask yourself: How much money is happiness really worth?
And anyway, you might get hit by a bus tomorrow.
So, given all that, given that for my generation it seems like a good, secure career might as well be in the same category as unicorns and Bigfoot, why the hell not try to pursue your passion? Why not try and do what you really want to do?
Because hell, there just aren’t any safe bets.
The president faced the cameras. “My fellow Americans. We’ve all heard the rumors. Let me assure you, they are completely false. We are in no danger whatsoever. NASA has assured me that the asteroid will miss the earth by a wide margin. Everything is fine. I repeat, there’s nothing to worry about.”
The cameras shut off. The president loosened his necktie and poured himself a glass of scotch. He raised his drink to the room. “Not long now. It’s been a pleasure knowing you all. God help us.”
He emptied the glass in one swig, grimaced, and poured another.
How to seduce Matt Kincade: It’s not that complicated. Bring me some Indian take-out food and watch a Wes Anderson movie with me. I’m yours. Or, I suppose you could show up at my luxury hotel suite in Paris.
Kidding aside, Indian food and Wes Anderson is my happy place. I can’t quite explain it, but an order of chicken korma and watching The Life Aquatic or Moonlight Kingdom will break me out of the deepest of funks.
So I just thought I’d share this perfect little vignette from one of my favorite movies of all time, The Darjeeling Limited. I can only hope it makes you as happy as it makes me.
This is mildly NSFW, so don’t watch it if you’re offended by Natalie Portman’s butt.
The spaceship dropped out of the clear blue sky above Marigold street.
John Sutter, kneeling to adjust the carburetor on his gas-powered lawn mower, noticed the flicker of shadow that crossed his half-trimmed lawn. He looked up, and the screwdriver fell unnoticed from his fingers.
Across the street, Margaret Wilson dropped her laundry basket and screamed. Soon, the entire neighborhood was watching, people pouring like ants out of their tidy suburban homes and gaping up at the sky. Dogs barked. Babies cried.
The ship looked insect-like, all strange angles and bulges, descending at a stately pace with no wings or rotors or jets.
The people gathered around in a wide, ragged circle as the craft hovered lower. It extruded a set of landing legs and settled down in the middle of Marigold street, hissing and venting gasses and steam.
A pregnant pause followed. The residents of Marigold Street began to talk in hushed tones, “Is it dangerous? Shouldn’t we call someone? How in the world…”
The alien craft shuddered, and the crowd once again fell silent. Then, as they all watched, it began to…unfold. Hatches hinged open, panels slid away, irises irised. Out came racks, shelves, tables, display cases, stuffed full of strange and wondrous objects.
From somewhere, jolly organ music began playing.
A door opened, and out stepped the alien: a six legged, bug-eyed, chitinous horror. Wearing a top-hat.
“Gentlebeings all, welcome to Mixmaw’s intergalactic travelling bazaar! I bring you unique and remarkable merchandise from around the universe, from the nomadic tribes of Kafazz, to the factories of Kranth. Wonders such as your eyes have never seen!
The alien stepped in front of the racks of clothing. He pointed at Margaret Wilson with two of his segmented arms. “You there, transporting your soiled garments. Never do laundry again!” With a segmented arm it held out a sky-blue blouse. “With your clothes made of hand woven Chiksa silk, the dirt slides right off! And it’s smooth as the underside of a Ganwellian cloud plant.”
Margaret ran her fingers along the cloth, sighed dreamily, and passed out with a smile on her face.
“And you sir, using that primitive machine to trim your photosynthetic ground cover! Try one of these, instead!” A boxy wheeled robot crawled out of a hatch in the spaceship and trundled towards the half-mowed lawn. “A tirelesss yard sentry, the Karvallian trim-bot never needs batteries, never stops working, and…it uses advanced Karvallian technology to convert your grass clippings into gold coins.” The little robot tore into the grassy yard with fervor, leaving a trail of shiny golden droppings behind.
“And that’s not all,” said the alien, pulling open a cabinet. “I have spices from the far mountains of Flandoor, the likes of which your terrestrial taste buds have never dreamed! Try this, sir, it’s a Taltanian garlic from the lowlands of Skrife.” He shook out a sample into John Sutter’s hand.
John cautiously tasted the powder. He gasped and fell to his knees, weeping uncontrollably. “It is the single most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced!” he cried. “My greatest regret is that I’ve gone my entire life without tasting this, the perfect ambrosia, the nectar of the very gods themselves! I’ll never again enjoy lesser foods. My life is ruined.”
“Quite right, sir.” Said Mixmaw. “And this is only a small sampling of my wares. Find true love! Defeat your enemies! Cure diseases and live forever! That’s right, the finest and most unique wares in the wide universe are available to you, right now, at low, low prices.”
“Well good God, man, how much!” screamed John Sutter. “I’ll pay anything. Anything!”
“I’m not a greedy being. I provide these wonders practically at cost, for the simple joy of bringing fine products to the far corners of the universe. The spices begin at a price of only twelve Chaburi.”
“What’s a Chaburi?” asked Martha.
“You don’t have Chaburi? Oh, my mistake. I also take payment in Megars, Tandillos, or Kawillian trade certificates.”
“But we don’t have any of those things!” said John. “We only have dollars.”
“What’s a dollar?” said Mixmaw.
“Or, or pounds! Euros! Pesos! Loonies! Yen, baht, rupees, gold, whatever you want!”
“I’m…I’m afraid I don’t take those. And why would I want gold? I have a lawnmower that shits gold. Are you sure this planet doesn’t even deal in Klavix? The exchange rate is terrible, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.”
“No,” answered Margaret, “we don’t even know what those are.”
“Does anyone even have a credit account with the trans-galactic trust bank?” Met with blank stares, Mixmaw held his hat in his hands, sheepishly. “I’m afraid I’ve made a terrible mistake. Really must update these travel atlases. How embarassing. My mistake, of course. All my fault. Terribly sorry.”
The alien climbed into his spaceship. The stalls and shelves and racks and displays neatly folded themselves back into the ship. Irises irised. Panels slid shut. Hatches hinged closed. The ship lifted off the ground, up, up and away, and disappeared into the baby blue sky.
I hung out with the gothic kids in high school. Black tee-shirts. Doc Martens. Heavy metal. Righteous alienation. We were angry, depressed, rebellious. We hated everyone. We scowled.
Music was loud and angry. Nirvana. Smashing Pumpkins. Type O Negative. Marilyn Manson. White Zombie. Deftones. Rammstein. Metallica. We wore our teenage disaffection on our sleeves.
You know how it is. You fall in with a group of kids. The consensus determines what’s cool and what isn’t. You quietly conform. You listen to what your friends listen to. You like what they like. You wear what they wear. If you have disagreements, you keep them to yourself.
Which is why I never told my friends that after a long day of scowling at the mall, loitering at hot topic, demonstrating our nonconformity by making a giant fucking mess at our table at Carl’s Jr, I’d go home, slip on my headphones…and rock out to Bruce Springsteen.
Yeah, that Bruce Springsteen. Like many artists, something weird happened to him in the eighties, but if you’ve never listened to his earlier albums like “Born To Run” or “Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey” do yourself a favor.
It was the cover to “Born to Run” that sold me. I found it, originally, in a stack of LPs that my older brother got for free someplace, hidden between the Sabbaths and the Zeppelins. I don’t know why by brother even had them, since this was well past the record player era. I suppose the men in my family never could pass up free. Anyway, something about that pose, that guitar, that leather jacket. It called to me. I pulled out that warped old record and put it on my parents dusty record player.
And then I heard it. The piano, the harmonica. And Bruce’s inimitable voice.
The screen door slams
Mary’s dress sways
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that’s me and I want you only
Don’t turn me home again
I just can’t face myself alone again…
Poetry.
How could I explain to them, my tragically cool friends, how Springsteen spoke to my teenage angst, to this unformed yearning in my heart, better than Nirvana or Manson ever could?
Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a place in my heart for the Deftones and Tool and Nine inch Nails. But at some point I got tired of being so angry and depressed all the time. Nine inch Nails was just wrist-slitting music, but in Springsteen there was hope. There was this pull, this desire to go and find something better, to just get up and go.
When I got my first car, I loaded up and went on my first solo road trip, blasting Springsteen and singing along to every word…and then I crashed and had to call my parents to come rescue me. Thunder Road, indeed. But that secret teenage shame is a whole other story.
Bonus Springsteen:
They’ve even got a sequel out…
There’s something about low-budget dystopian sci-fi from the eighties and nineties…I don’t know if I can explain it. It’s just so…exuberantly bad. No computer graphics, no fancy set design, just a bunch of weirdos who somehow got access to a budget, and went running amok in the desert with a few old cars and gallons of fake blood. Horrible, yet innovative practical effects. Props made from spray-painted thrift store finds. Terrible dialogue. Worse acting. Bitchin’ synthesizer soundtracks. I love ’em. I’m not sure what that says about me, but there it is.
Now I’m not saying these movies are good. They didn’t get robbed of an Oscar or anything. They ain’t Children of Men. If you’ll care to look to your right, you’ll see Matt Kincade’s Circle of Cheese™, illustrating that movie quality is in fact more circular than linear. If it gets bad enough, it gets good again. Crazy, counter-intuitive, but true. Because I said it’s true. And I think I know what I’m talking about.
Buckaroo Banzai, Mad Max, Escape from New York, some of these are pretty well known. But there are a few gems that seem to have slipped through the cracks.
These are a few of my favorite video-store finds, from back in the days before Netflix, when your parents wouldn’t pay extra for cable so you had four channels to choose from, and KTVU played The Road Warrior or Robocop like every other week which was cool, but still… if you wanted to see something different, you had to go on down to Blockbuster. And honestly, for being usurious corporate robots, they still had some pretty weird, obscure stuff.
Most of these you can find on the internet, whether on Netflix, for free on YouTube, or off the pirate bay. I don’t know, google it. Most of these are more fun if you’re slightly inebriated on your intoxicant of choice. Continue reading
Matt Kincade 