Growing Up Punk: A Guide to Avoiding Responsibility, Reality, and the Reformatory

Childhood

“[At it's best] punk represents a fundamental and age-old Utopian dream: that if you give people the license to be as outrageous as they want in absolutely any fashion they can dream up, they'll be creative about it, and do something good”

-Lester Bangs

Pop Culture Essay

Sometimes I feel like an old person, mainly while I'm watching TV, and some famous actor who I have never heard of comes on and tries to sell me protein shakes, or a used car, or the latest and greatest iPad. This usually ends with me becoming hyper critical of the commercial, or society in general, and generally being bitter and out of touch, thus the monicker an old person moment. Recently, (but not that recently) I was skimming the nominees for the Oscars, because sometimes I like to pretend to be informed. Here's how it went: Life of Pi for best picture? I remember reading a summery of that book in high school, I guess it's got a shot, against ummmm I know none of these movies. Wait Django Unchained for best picture, really!? Like it was a cool movie, great action, funny dialogue, all and all classic Tarantino, but best picture? I don't know if two hours of Jamie Fox, Leonardo DiCaprio, and “The Jew Hunter” from the last Tarantino flick saying the N-word can really be considered a masterpiece of cinema. Do they feel bad for not giving him Best Picture for Pulp Fiction or something? Wait lemme check Wikipedia, did Pulp Fiction win best picture...no, it did not, but holy shit does Tarantino have a lot of nominations! Does he have like an Uncle that's connected or something? Or they just do this to shut him up, and piss off Spike Lee?

Oh Danial Day-Lewis is up for best actor, big surprise. Dude, if anyone in this world has commitment it has got to be that guy! Remember There will be Blood? That movie was bad ass. I drink your milkshake/bastard in a basket. Ha ha ha, Danial Day-Lewis is insane. I heard his wife once convinced him to role play, so he disappeared for three months to become a volunteer fire-fighter in California during the wildfires, and saved an entire bus load of children and nuns from the blaze... Or something like that; I can't remember really. And, wait Bradly fucking Cooper's up for Best Actor too? For real doe? The guy that isn't Zach Galifianakis from the Hangover is up for Best Actor? What the hell was he in anyways? Silver Linings Playbook. Is that a sports movie? What's the trailer look like?

Okay so, The-guy-that-isn't-Zach-Galifianakis-from-the-Hangover is really angry at this book. Did they just remove the rap from old 90's song and put the trailer to it? Oh snap DeNiro's in this shit! And The-guy-that-isn't-Zach-Galifianakis-from-the-Hangover is mad at Hemingway? See how smart this movie is, referencing authors and shit. Blah blah blah I wanna happy ending! See me venting my frustrations in my life at a book! I want to be loved! Hemingway sucks! What a putz. Come on give The-guy-that-isn't-Zach-Galifianakis-from-the-Hangover a chance, even if he dare diss the never ending fountain of manliness that is good ol' Earnest. Okay so he's working out...for a girl...and he's seeing a shrink...and his wife's cheating on him. Oh no he's going to go crazy now! Look the police! Look how fucking edgy The-guy-that-isn't-Zach-Galifianakis-from-the-Hangover has become! He's a man that's lost everything! He's a serious actor! Remember how Sean Penn went from Spicoli to the most serious actor in the biz? Well, The-guy-that-isn't-Zach-Galifianakis-from-the-Hangover is the next mother fucking Sean Penn! Oh and a new love interest I wonder if he'll overcome his anger issues to be with her? Look they're both married...kinda. And now he's fighting some drunk asshole at football game. Did we mention he has anger issues? Whoa mood shift, cue Mumford & Sons. Check out how indie this shit is! Mumford and Sons bet you never heard this on the radio especially like not everyday since it came out (I don't know if it's “and” or “&”, between “Mumford” and “Sons” but that kinda works doesn't it?). Okay so how is going to overcome his anger? Finding true love? Finding himself in someone else? Helping wayward minority youths? Did she just say dancing?! Fucking dancing! I'm so frustrated this world that I am prone to outbursts of violence on innocent intoxicated sports fans, perhaps if I (dramatic pause) dance out these frustrations! Fuck this movie, I'm done with this trailer.

Okay so let's see Best Actress now. One for five on the “I've heard that name before” score. Ugh, how am I supposed to fake being informed like this. Is this sexist of me? Like I knew every Best Actor Nominee, but only Naomi Watts really rings a bell here, and I can't even name anything she's in. Perhaps it's society's sexism projecting on me, and I don't know any of the Best Actress nominees because they're downplayed due to their gender! No, I think I'm just an idiot. Have I at least heard of any of the movies these, I am certain, talented actresses have been nominated? Silver Linings Playbook again?! Okay I'm sure everyone except this Jennifer Lawrence is a talented actress. Where have I heard that name before though? Jennifer Lawrence...oh she was in the Hunger Games. Hey IMDB, what else was she in? Winter's Bone? Why the fuck would you go from Winter's Bone to “Step It Up 48: The Middle Age Years, featuring: The-guy-that-isn't-Zach-Galifianakis-from-the-Hangover.” I guess if you want an Oscar though, you couldn't find a more safely edgy film that no one has ever heard of this season. Wait a second how old is, sweet Jesus I don't even want to try and pronounce that, Quvenzhané Wallis. Okay so she was born in 2003 making her...nine. I have a pair of underware older than this girl (They're my lucky pair, weighing in at 11 years old and, due to the ravages of time, no longer wearable or washable making them even less wearable). That's pretty depressing.

Okay what else is there? Supporting actor and supporting actress are both kind of boring catigories, I'll just scan it. How many frigging nominations did Silver Linings Playbook get God damnit?! I mean I know the Academy, or whoever picks the nominees, are just a ton of old frustrated white guys, but do they all secretly want to dance too? Like for real, you couldn't throw Tom Hardy, and Chistopher Nolan for that matter, a sympathy nomination for Bane? I mean it wasn't like he was unbelievable or anything, but still worth at least acknowlleging Dark Knight Rises. No, let's give DeNiro a chance at an Oscar for “Dirty Dancing, But Instead of an Underage Girl and Middle Age Guy with Anger Problems;” he's never recieved any critical acclaim. He's a new fresh face! Who's ever heard of Bobby DeNiro anyways? Come on David, you're not mad at DeNiro; you're mad at the system. Remember Taxi Driver? Exactly, you can't be mad at DeNiro he was Travis Bickle in Soccassie's coke phase. He deserves all the lobs the Academy is willing to throw at him.

What else is there? Animated Film: goes to Pixar because everything else is crap more often than not. Cinemotraphy and costume design: good thing I know who these people are (sarcasm). Best Director: Spelburg's up, but he's won enough awards, and everyone knows it; hopefully it goes to a fresh face. Okay so, I don't care about these catagories, or these ones, or they're any good ones left? Oh here we go way at the bottom: Writing! Fucking America got no fucking respect for fucking writers, no wonder fucking “Saturday Night Fever 2: Disco's Dead and I'm Alone” is nominated for thirty fucking Oscars! Let's see though...wait there's two catagories, one for orginal and the other's for adapted screen plays? All the based-on-the-best-selling-novel movies must have kept on winning. This really show's how down hill movie scripts have gotten. Did you actually create something to be filmed and watched, or buy someonelse's creation, shortened it, put the character's name on top of all their dialouge, and rewrite the descriptions less specific and in itallics? Okay, so for orginal we got...Quientin Tarintio versus Wes Anderson? The film hipster in me is torn asunder! I mean Tarintio is resurecting B-Movies with huge budgets, but Anderson's dialouge is like Diablo Cody if she wasn't a talantless lobtotomized hack. And for adapted we got. Oh have got to be shitting me. What the hell was Silver Linings Playbook adapted from? A bloody stool?

Like Fight Club, But Much More Pathetic

I walked into the makeshift ring in Serge's back yard for the second time that afternoon. Deep focus, static shot.  My face was still a little swollen from the last match.  Not a dramatic cut on my cheek that could be covered up by a Nelly-esque band-aid, but rather a general redness and puffness.  Brandon faced me, he had just fought his brother, and almost kicked him through a green house.  I shook his hand, the tip of his thumb was missing from a knife fight last year.  Have you ever seen the video for Micheal Jackson's "Bad?"  The one where those two dudes tie their hands together, and then have a knife fight with the opposite arms.  In the end Micheal Jackson shows up and saves these wayward youths with the power of dance.  Why did he never show up at times like this in my life?

I got my first punch deflected. Stallone in Rocky. The second landed on his left cheek. Stallone in Rocky II.  I might actually be able to pull this off.  I dodged Brandon's first and second punch, but the third landed in my ribs. Carl Weathers in Rocky IV. I lowered my guard for an instant.  Brandon saw his opportunity, and went for it.  Before I could raise my arms, Brandon's foot knocked my temple. The plot of Rocky V.

My knees buckled.  Oh shit, I'm going down. I started to fall, collapsing onto myself.  I stumbled forward, then backwards, then onto my back.  What would Edward Norton do?  Oh yeah, yell for a stunt man.  I laid on my back for a second and looked up at the sky for a moment.  Static shot, cue indie music, preferably Elliot Smith 'cause have you even seen The Royal Tenenbuams? Brandon stood over me, with a lit cigarette in his mouth.  Switch from deep to shallow focus.  He took one drag, then handed it to me.  Maybe it was my brain bleeding, but I'd like to think he said, "I regret that we meet in this way.  You and I are of a kind.  In a different reality, I could have called you 'friend.'"

Critical (re:Boring) Post

The shift the second and third chapters shows a devastating shift in tone to coincide with the shift in the lives of Toph and Dave.  From frantically and joyously rounding the corners and swerving around an ocean highway, to a different sort of frantic search for somewhere to live, Eggers accomplishes a lot with the shift between chapters.  The carefree, and perhaps self endangering voice of chapter two is cut short with the realization that the world can be and still is a cruel place.

Where this comes from is a relocation of self-obsession.  Eggers illustrates this self-obsession with the line, "Look at us, goddammit, the two of us slingshotted from the back side of the moon, greedily cartwheeling toward everything we are owed." (47). First Eggers establishes Toph and his importance in the world, calling all to look upon him, goddammit, and then he shows his sense of entitlement.  This is the mindset of Chapter two, I am the center of the world, and I deserve it damnit all to hell.

This is in stark contrast to the second sentence of chapter two where he writes, "All these people impeding us, triffling with us, not knowing or caring who we are, what has happened."  Suddenly the Eggers are no longer in the center of the world, but rather the margins.  Although most certainly acording to Eggers, they are still owed, but they are no longer being given what they deserve.  People don't care about their situation, and these realization creates a resentment in Dave.  His status internally has been shifted from deserving center of attention to marginalized undesirable.  However, this does not change the sense of entitlement within Eggers himself, but simply shifts it to a more resentful rather than optimistic.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Hotpocket

Acknowledgements:

Like you, dear reader, I am a student at Ohio University, and as such my spring break consisted of very little time to read due to what the Romans call aqua vita, yet a lot of reading which teachers inexplicably expected me to get done.  So the last two days have consisted of me reading a some four hundred pages of Jack Kerouac's On the Road and AHWOSG.  So because of this, my two friends who choose to remain anonymous will be called Sal Paradise and Marylou, and I might sound a little like Dean Moriarty.  I not only acknowledge this, but embrace it because Dean Moriarty is a pretty cool guy in my opinion.  I also realize that if you haven't read On the Road (but why haven't you?) that the previous section will be very confusing and nonsensical.  

The Author also acknowledges a small hunched over homeless man with a glass eye he once talked to in the Mall of America as the savior Christ reborn.  Because he was a very convincing man, with diagrams and this huge well thought out speech about how the government used to control his thoughts before he got a lobotomy (that'll show them), and him and George W. Bush road the same bus to school growing up, and... (Imagine like 6 more pages of this).

I 

I am the new.  I am a survivor.  I am really, really, stoned right now.  Sheeeeit.  I haven't been this stoned in a minute.  Like not since that one time with Devon, Aldo, and-What the hell is that beeping...Oh the microwave... OH SNAP! I have a Hotpocket, fuck yeah.

I begin the long thought out journey to the microwave, I walk out of the blanket fort my girlfriend made of our bed (it's a futon really, but we sleep there so it's a bed).  We have a tapestry hanging from the lofted (actual) bed above, when the light comes in from the window the whole little cavern is stained with an oddly warm blue light.  It makes the morning a lot more relaxing.

Outside Marylou is talking to Sal.  Her hair drapes over her shoulders down to her ass which is cupped in her dayglow highlighter jeans.  For a moment I am over-whelmed with the urge to bang her.  She turns to me, and looks at me, questioningly with her beautiful blue eyes.

"Come on are we going to play Smash or what, pussy?"
"Yeah, for sure dude.  Just lemme this this Hotpocket."
"But I wanna play Smash David!  Come on!  Just eat it on the way out."

I am fumbling with the Hotpocket.  This tab bends over here, and snaps into the back.  Okay, okay, I got this now.  And if I pull this tab right here then...oh it tears the crisping sleave to make it easier to eat.  Huh! To be honest I never thought I'd be eating a Hotpocket "on the go," but I now understand the genius of the on-the-go packaging.  Like damn, the people at- um

"Who the hell makes these?"
"What? huh? who makes what?"
"Hot pockets. Who makes 'em?"
"I dunno David, you're on the computer right now, "doing homework" why don't you look it up? hur dur dur." Marylou mimed slapping a keyboard or a drunken seal trying to play piano, I'm not quite sure which.

I will look it up!  Okay, H-o-t-p-o-c-k-e-t, wait...Hot Pocket is two words?  Ooops... I'll go back and change that later. Wait why was I googling Hot Pockets?  Oh yeah, just click on wikiapedia, da da da microwavable turnovers blah-dee blah blah oh here we go...since 2002 they have been produced by Nestle...Nestle?  Really?  The chocolate guys?  Well I guess they make coffee too, but Hot Pockets?  What else does Nestle make...Holy fuck Nestle has giant article---and a huge criticism and controversy section!  What has Nestle done so wrong huh?  What is the chocolate made of orphans or something?  Okay Marketing of Formula: one of the most prominent controversies involving Nestlé concerns the promotion of the use of infant formula to mothers across the world, including developing countries...Okay blah blah blah critics say this leads to the unnecessary suffering and deaths of babies, largely among the poor...Shit.  What else is here?  Ethopian debt?  In 2002, Nestlé demanded that the nation of Ethiopia repay $6 million of debt to the company. What the fuck Nestle?!  Ethopia really?!  Horsemeat Scandal?! Suddenly I've lost all desire to eat this Hot Pocket.  I think it just neigh'ed at me.

Thank You Mr. Taylor

Virginia Woolf: Long sentences, long words, flowing and wandering topic

Everyday I tread on these poor soles, wore thin and stained by a life in the dirt.  White hi-top Chuck Taylors are more than simply a shoe, they're my shoe.  They're the only shoe I have worn since I was sixteen because they serve as a canvas for both my wandering mind and restless hands when they hold a sharpie, but also a canvas of the world they tread picking up the grime and wear of the world in which I ramble.  Even after they have become decrepit and decaying they still hang from my ceiling not only proud veterans of countless days and nights under foot, but also a record of my life.

What is this, a shoe signed by every member Bomb the Music Industry! out of sympathy for me puking outside of their show.  Next to that a shoe with a hole worn in the bottom which allowed a rusty nail to penetrate through my foot and forced me into a doctors office.  Or this shoe which has the art work of the LSD addled mind of a cute little blonde.

It has been said that you can not know someone until you walk a mile in their shoes, well if this is true then can I know my past self by walking through memory lane around these Converse corpses.  These shoes which lose all whiteness are left as dirty dingy sacrifices to a lifestyle which I have chosen.  These poor and pure soles decay so my own may go on, for it is the very act of walking which allows me to escape the segments of this world which bother me so.

Survivor's Guilt

This is really long, pretty damn emotional, and perhaps more information than you would like to hear. You have been forewarned.

“And well, I've been thinking things, thinking things that I just hope aren't true. Like maybe you don't choose punk rock, because punk rock chooses you."

            -from "Picking Sides" by Wingnut Dishwashers Union

Idolatry is alive and well among the punks. Growing up punk my walls were decorated with posters and pictures of Sid Vicious, Kurt Cobain, Dee Dee Ramone, and countless other dead rock stars. I used to watch SLC Punk, and imagine myself running around Utah and causing chaos, because there wasn't much else to do in my “suburban prison.” The problem is that when you look up to heroin addicts and suicidal psychopaths, who also happen to play guitar, you get a warped view of your place in the world. Drugs and death are glory, and all your energy goes towards them and causing anarchy. You stand in opposition to safety and all forms of responsibility, especially responsibility for your own life, or at least that's what happened to me.