Nostalgia

Leave a comment Posted on Nostalgia, People, Storytelling, Uncategorized

Some People Never Change No Matter How Much Time Goes By, Like James Dean, For Example

Forever 24 years old.

The legendary James Dean only made three movies and then died at the age of 24. That’s how old most of the cast of Friends was when the show premiered. That’s really young. Yet James Dean lives on forever as a 24-year old young man. We never saw him begin to lose his hair.

Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison (lead singer of The Doors) and Janis Joplin all died at the age of 27. They will always symbolize youthful rock-and-roll. But we never saw them in their 30’s or 40’s. We never saw them make a few flop albums or experiment with doing other kinds of music other than what they were known for. They died in their prime.

 

In the likeness of Barbie taking on several different personas (Beach Barbie, Nurse Barbie, School Teacher Barbie, etc.) and in the likeness of the many available different versions that Ninja Turtle action figures came in (I had three Leonardo’s: regular, hockey playing, and storage shell), all of us have lived different versions of ourselves throughout life so far- including high school version, college version, post college single version, married version, with-kids version. Then there are all the minor phases in between.

 

What’s funny to think about is that the people you were around only during that time of your life may only know you as that version of yourself. For better or worse, you’re still that 18-year high school senior, or the “what will I do with my life?” college student, just an enhanced version. But the perception of yourself and perception of the way others see you is often different. To some people, you may be forever frozen as a version of yourself you no longer are.

Leave a comment Posted on Health, Nostalgia, People, Spirituality, Storytelling, Uncategorized

The Irony of Praying Before a Meal of Junk Food

Bless this greasy burger and these Twinkies to the nourishment of our bodies and our bodies to your service…

Saying the “blessing” before a meal is a complicated and trying process when there is a group of three of more people. I was made most aware of the awkwardness/intenseness involving the procedure during my Junior High and High School years with my church youth group. It always amused me that we were constantly eating fast food and asking God to bless it to the nourishment of our bodies.

The intensity of it is this: I was a hungry kid with a high metabolism. There was food in front of me, but I couldn’t eat it because I had to wait for everyone to be ready for the prayer. That’s cruel for a kid of any age. (Even at 28.)

The awkwardness of it is this: No one knew who was going to be asked to pray. There’s a bit of a short waiting game as the Designated Pray Person is elected. (And by now, I’ve learned to elect myself.)

 

But for those who suffer, there is mercy. I’m referring to the It’s Okay to Eat Fries, Peanuts, and Chips & Salsa Before the Prayer rule. For some reason, God isn’t concerned with us not asking his blessing for unofficial appetizers. However, if there is an actual appetizer, like a Blooming Onion for example, a prayer of tha

 

nksgiving and blessing is required.

And one must always be aware of the Salad Bar Clause. When dining at a restaurant with a salad bar or optional buffet of any kind, it’s important to make sure that someone prays before the first person leaves to go to the buffet. Otherwise, everyone will be obligated to wait for the buffet-goers to get back to their seats before the prayer can be said and everyone can begin eating.

Such anxiety! It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

Leave a comment Posted on Nostalgia, Storytelling, Uncategorized

Animalspeak Volume 3

Twenty-two years ago (November 1987) in our first grade class, my teacher Ms. Sparks gave us all a blank sheet of paper and told us to draw a picture of something we were thankful for.  I was excited.  Thirty minutes later, our teacher walked by everyone’s desk to see the art we had accomplished.  As she came closer to me, I heard her reading off what each of my fellow students said they were thankful for.

“My family.”  “My friends.”  “My parents.”  “My sister.”  “My brother.”

Those were the things I was hearing.  As I looked up from my drawing, I started to realize that maybe mine was a little bit different that everyone else’s.  Ms. Sparks looked down at my picture.  “Animals.”  I was six year-old at the time, but I somehow was keen enough to notice that she that my drawing was weird.

“Yes, animals.  We can be thankful for the animals.”  She went on to the next student, trying to hide the confused look on her face.

I had drawn a picture of a picnic table.  On top of the table were several live animals: a fox, a raccoon, a cat, a bird, a dog, a possum, a squirrel, and I want to say… a horse.  (I really liked the Nick at Nite reruns of Mr. Ed back then.)  At the top of the page, I appropriately titled my masterpiece with an orange crayon:  ANIMALS.

 

Not necessarily animals that I ate.  Just animals.  I had a pet goldfish that I had won a few weeks before at the fair that I named Nippy.  (It was cold outside when I tossed the ping-pong ball in the goldfish bowl.)  But that was really the only exposure I had to animals.  No other pets than Nippy the Goldfish.

I’m still trying to figure out why all these random animals would show up on a picnic table and why I was thankful for them.  Kids are weird.

 

Animalspeak Table of Contents

Volume 1 http://wp.me/pxqBU-f2
Volume 2 http://wp.me/pxqBU-f8
Volume 3 http://wp.me/pxqBU-gu

Leave a comment Posted on Nostalgia, People, Storytelling, Uncategorized

Facebook is a Middle School Talent Show

I put together the top five reasons why facebook seems dull, come lately.

I have been on facebook since April 2005, going on five years now. Back then, in a simpler time, the site was only for college students. No quizzes. No lists. Just the facts. An Atari version of what we now know facebook to be.

And it was fine except for one thing: I could only be friends with people from college. No family. No friends that weren’t currently enrolled in a college. I wanted more “friends”. I wanted to catch up with the cast of characters that made up my entire life. I wanted to collect them.

So as facebook grew from a dorm room project into a million dollar operation and then to a billion dollar business, I got my wish. Plenty of “friends”. Not restricted to colleges.

 

Since 2005, I have watched facebook defeat Myspace in a tortoise versus the hare race, turning Myspace into nothing more than a creepy old house that no one wants to go inside of anymore. Facebook has for all practical purposes become the new e-mail, the new photo album, and the new substitute to actually calling people on the phone.

Facebook is the undisputed champion. Yet a few nights ago one of my actual real life friends asked in a status update on facebook if he was the only person that thought the site seems like it’s getting dull.

I agree with him. But here’s the thing. It’s not really facebook’s fault. Part of it is us and part of it is our “friends”. Sort of like a middle school talent show. I can’t blame the school if the entertainment itself isn’t good. Sometimes there are more baton twirlers than garage rock bands.

I have compiled the top five reasons why facebook seems dull, come lately:

1) Random friends we barely remember from grade school aren’t quite as interesting as we gave them credit for in our nostalgic minds. They grew up. They have families. And we’ve got nothing to say to them. Because everything we would want to know is there on the info tab on their profile.

2) Those same random people tend to be the ones who constantly do those annoying quizzes and games. Yes, I do hide the quizzes and games on my Live Feed. And yes, I could just delete those people altogether. But I don’t. Somehow I would feel guilty. Their only crime was making me look at the new pig they got for their farm.

3) The Status Update option causes many people to think that the rest of the world sees them as a celebrity. There are enough reality shows that we are ashamedly addicted to. We don’t need another one that tells us when our lab partner from our 9th grade science class is making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Or that it made him thirsty. And we definitely don’t need him doing the most cliché thing on facebook status updates: On Monday, saying, “Ugh, I hate Mondays. On Wednesday, “Hey ya’ll, it’s Hump Day!” And Friday, “TGIF”. Sunday night, “Ugh, it’s almost Monday again.” Thanks Sir Idiot, that really added a lot of value to my life.

4) Just like Wikipedia and YouTube, we eventually milk facebook for all its worth. There’s nothing like those first three fascinating months of using facebook. But after reading the profiles and seeing the pictures of everyone we actually care about, the only thing really left to do is come back in a few weeks when they all have new pictures and info.

5) The friends we regularly communicate with on facebook are coincidently our real life friends anyway. Sometimes it’s actually easier just to send a facebook message than to send a text or find a convenient time to call. We get distracted by all our facebook friends and their shenanigans but ultimately it comes down to the true core of why we like facebook in the first places. Our actual friends and family.

Like boy bands, social networking websites have an average lifespan of five years. But I see facebook as the exception. After all, facebook gives us the creative control to hide, delete, and regulate the content we see in front of us. For us all to abandon facebook the way we did Myspace, it would take a social networking website that is substantially better than everything facebook currently is and offers.

And I know for me, it took almost five years to get nearly 700 “friends”. I’d hate to start that process all over again.

Leave a comment Posted on Nostalgia, Storytelling, Uncategorized

The Ball at the Very End of the Credits of a Movie

Do you have what it takes to stay and watch the credits when a movie ends?

There are two kinds of people in the world. 1) Those who leave the movie theatre when the credits start to roll and 2) those who stick around to actually read the credits. Obviously, I’m part of the latter group.

It all started for me circa 1985 when the 1982 comedy The Toy constantly aired during a free trial period of HBO. I loved that movie, without good reason. All I remember about it now is that at the end a kid shoots a guy in the forehead with a suction-cup dart gun. And that’s the end of the movie.

Then the credits roll. At the very end, the last thing to rise up on the screen was the symbol for The Motion Picture Association of America. At that point, I would scream with excitement, “Ball, ball, ball, ball!…”

I think the reason I was so ecstatic was because it reminded me of one of the enemies from an Atari game I played all the time. And that taught me to stay tuned to watch the credits at the end of movies. To see The Ball. At some point, my motivation stopped being to see The Ball and instead to find out actors’ names and the location of filming.

It’s always interesting to see when a movie is filmed somewhere other than Los Angeles or New York.

Plus, there’s always a possibility of a hidden scene after the credits- most perfectly executed in Napoleon Dynamite.