31 March 2004: The Kids Are Alright

My school, and the Y where I teach and where I practice yoga almost daily now, are both located within two blocks of Berkeley High School. I'm frequently en route to or from class (sometimes academic, sometimes yoga) when the school day ends or it's lunchtime, and I end up sharing the sidewalk with mobs of high school kids. It freaks me out how young they look. They're young enough that if I'd gotten around more in my youth, some of them could be my children.

I see a lot of them dressed the way my friends and I used to dress in high school, wearing t-shirts for bands that I danced to live at City Gardens, bands that don't exist anymore: Dead Kennedys, The Ramones.

There's a girl who lives in my building who can't be more than twelve years old, who has pink-and-orange hair and wears Ramones t-shirts.

I hear snatches of their conversations. They're hungry for the same things I was hungry for, angry about the same things I was angry about, alienated in the same ways I was alienated.

And a few days ago, I overheard this bit of conversation, among a small group of them:

First Kid: Man, I wish I lived back in the Eighties!

Second Kid: Aw, man, things were so cool back then!

Third Kid: Yeah, did you see The Breakfast Club?

Second Kid: Yeah! That was fucking cool! The kids had it together back then!

 

I shit you not.

I'm so old that I've come back into style.

•     •     •

A thought: Every year, participants in Burning Man build the latest version of Black Rock City. For the ten days of each year that it exists, Black Rock City is the third-largest city in Nevada. Then the city is dismantled and carted away, with every effort made to Leave No Trace.

Because Black Rock City attracts many artists and writers, it's featured in a whole lot of art and writing - often by people who take a rather utopian view of it.

We're leaving future archeologists with quite a puzzle: all these references to a fabulous utopian city... of which there will be no archeological trace.

Think about this for a bit.

Then think about Atlantis.

•     •     •

Went into SF last night to see The Reckoning with Finder, Stray, Alaska, Salamander, and Ikar. First time hanging with new friends from Orphans in a non-Orphans-related context. Went mostly for that reason - to hang with those particular people - but also because The Reckoning was worth seeing a second time (I saw it with Dragon Lady a week ago yesterday, for our "Nicky has time to go on dates again" celebratory date).

All you theatre geeks, RPG geeks, and people who love the things that theatre geeks and RPG geeks love: go see The Reckoning as soon as possible. Especially Ace, Stagewalker, and Geminica... this movie made me think of all three of you, to the point where it was painful, when the lights came up, not to find you all sitting nearby.