Eras.

[I found this in one of my old sketchbooks yesterday. It was something I wrote when Ed was housesitting for his aunt and uncle in this after watching Conan the Barbarian on DVD with my friends Ed, Andy, Joe, and Ginny. It was originally published on the now defunct www.astyle.com where it was totally ignored because it had nothing to do with cars, sex, or Aaron Kwok.]

Okay, so everyone at one time or another I think everyone has this
feeling like they belong in a different era. It's not like I feel like a
total outcast or something, like, say, Emily Dickinson or Gloria Estefan,
but sometimes I wish I grew up and lived in a different time. I don't
think it makes me crazy to assume that others feel like me. Just tell me
I'm not crazy. Please. No. I am not alone.

Anyway, I went to a Cheap Trick concert over the summer thinking that
for a few hours I could suddenly become a high school burnout in 1978 who
would steal 4 warm Strohs from the garage, drink in the woods, make out
with chicks, and maybe get my hands on some firearms. Its kinda a "Dazed
and Confused"/ "Over the Edge" / every movie about summer camp made in
the late 70s dream world I'm talking about here. So i put on my Kiss
shirt and drove to some isolated bar off a strip-club strewn highway in
Old Bridge, N.J. Instantly, everyone asked me if I saw the Kiss show. I
didn't, the shows sold out. But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
Just rock.

The most fascinating thing of the show was the audience. Mostly in
their late 30s, these blue-collar, Bud drinking proletariats grew up with
Cheap Trick, and 20 years later, they're gonna try to make things right,
for an evening. By the way, right now I'm watching "The Breakfast Club"
with my roommate and the Molly Ringwald character lamented, "When you
grow up, your heart dies." I think that really rings true, y'know? It's
like a.....motif.

The musical orgasm of the night came when during the song "Surrender,"
Robin Zander got a little chant going in which everyone yelled, "We're
all alright!! We're all alright!!!" And for those two minutes, no matter
if the guy to the right of me was fired as a cable installator, or if
that girl in front of me got shafted waitressing today, we were all
alright. Everyone told us (well, them) their whole life they were not
all right; their parents, their teachers, the cops. They were burnouts,
they smoked pot and listened to early Aerosmith. But they were wrong.
(The parents and teachers, that is.) Cheap Trick elevated the haves and
have-nots alike to ecstatic proportions. I think the song "Cry Cry" (I
think) says it best: "Jump in my love car/ We don't hafta go far."

The guitarist threw picks at the crowd and I got one, but it fell in my
dresser at home so I had a good thing and I just blew it.

Wait. Now as I watch "The Breakfast Club," I think I wanna grow up in
the 80s.

It really doesn't matter to me. Growing up in the 50s would be cool, as
well as the 60s, for obvious reasons (i.e. Little Richard and the
Monkees. In that order) Growing up in the Depression would probably be
kinda bad. My friend's grandfather did and he "broke rocks all day."
But now that grandfather owns a Country Club. I work there. It's an
O.K. job, I guess. Once I stole a couple beers from there. But they're
long gone, man.