Summer comes, bringing along with it an unending stream of unfunny comedies, tiresome sequels, unnecessary remakes, and the occasional arthouse counterprogramming. And explosions! Can’t forget the explosions!
So anyway, I meant to post this on the last day of the month (as is my wont), but I failed. The ironic thing is that I had the post already written. But I was lazy, and by lazy I mean I was away from the internet for the weekend. Not yesterday. But yesterday was recovery from the weekend.
Here’s the deal, right? I am a private school brat, if by “am” we mean “was,” but the point being, when one is very nicely invited to a state school for an art show by a good friend from back in the day,* one thinks, “hm, this shall be a nice change of pace, seeing what sort of thing I missed out on lo these many years.” After all, my undergraduate years were at an insitution nationally famous for the paucity of its social life. I got a little bit “Tom-Wolfe-in-Radical-Chic” while I was there, had a marvelously intemperate time and I learned some interesting facts.
-When one idly mentions that he’s in town from Evanston, where he graduated from Northwestern a couple years ago (he being terribly sick of NU and finding it tiresome to have to admit he went to such a toolish institution), it causes a strange reaction in state-schoolers, whereby they gawk and gasp in admiration and step back a little. I had this happen eight or ten times, where someone visibly became more interested in me after I said the N-word.
-Corollary: being from a very prestigious private school apparently makes schlubby geeks with bad hair and two-day stubble endlessly attractive to women.
-It seems that state school parties are poor, and therefore cannot afford liquor or wine. Instead, they have kegs of “beer.” Forgive me, but aren’t party schools for partying? Not for lack of trying, but I couldn’t get tipsy, let alone drunk, no matter how much Keystone Light I chugged. I believe I would probably explode like John Hurt in Alien before becomine successfully intoxicated.
(Q. How is American beer like making love in a canoe?
A. They’re both fucking close to water.)
I’d be tempted to blame my extraordinary tolerance, honed as only a writer can hone drinking skills, but I really just think it’s because my system rejects beer that you can see through. (Also, an aside: I’m really quite tired of the rumours that I’m an “alcoholic.” I’m not. There is a pronounced difference between alcoholism, and simply getting drunk at every possible moment, including weeknights, to dull the pain of being alive. It has to do with the way you pour the vodka).
-Creepy Old Man Moment of the weekend – I am with three freshmen and a 22 year-old:
-Freshman girl: “Remember when [that song] was really big in eighth grade?”
-Tim’s inner monologue: That’s not right…[math, math]
-Tim: “You’re a freshman, right?
-Freshman boy: “Yeah.”
-Tim, to the room at large: “I was in college when y’all were in junior high.”
It was at this precise moment that I really felt the lack of a bottle of high-priced gin.