about me______________
I realize at 28 I'm not as smart or together as I thought I was. This is a sobering realization.
I think.
navigate_______________
previous
next
new
old
profile
The Jackass Chronicles
Get out of my head
The whole thing with going out to restaurants has been instilled in me since I was a child. My family has this weird sort of paranoia that everyone is staring at us while we eat. Sometimes they are, because in my family, we all look startlingly identical. We all have the exact same coloring, eye color, hair color and faces. My mother and I could be sisters and my brother and dad look like 2 handsome young men taking us out on a double date. Ick. Also, we lived in Indiana for a stint where the people REALLY ARE staring at you whole you eat (the entire state stares at everyone, all slack jawed and glass-eyed) and your restaurant choices in 1979 Indiana were limited to really indescribably bad restaurants, mainly buffet joints. So I�ve grown up with this fear of sitting in tackily decorated, dimly-lit, wood-paneled restaurants, making awkward conversation while old people gum their prime rib and stare at me.So imagine my shock when watching �About Schmidt� last night I found a deleted scene ABOUT THIS EXACT PHENONMENON. It was fucking brilliant. Seriously. I don�t know why they deleted it. Because obviously I�m not alone in this fear. Jack, freshly retired, goes out with his wife and another couple and as the prime rib is served and they start eating, Jack starts looking around and starts freaking out because he realizes that this is his life now. Tacky, early bird specials at Omaha restaurants and meals eaten in silences because you have nothing left to say at age 66. The camera zooms in on wrinkly mouths working and gumming their prime rib as he quietly freaks out. I�ve never seen anyone capture this fear and loss of virility and vitality better than that scene. So good. The entire movie, really, is so well done. It managed to capture my biggest fears in life. Namely:
A long marriage where you�ve completely run out of things to say to each other and everything the other person does annoys you
A meaningless career where your zenith was Assistant Vice President (at an insurance company no less! It�s like the director made this movie based on my neuroses) and while you enjoyed moderate success you never went after your dreams and aspirations. The yearbooks and the trip back to college and his fraternity�sob. You took the conservative and comfortable path instead of really taking any risks.
Children that you love dearly and they sort of love you, but basically, they just want to get on with their life without you.
Being alone, thanks to the detached and isolating way you�ve lived your life since you were about, hmm, 16.
Jesus. Um, yeah. I�m still a little freaked out. Even Jack�s snobbery about people who haven�t lived their lives like he did is to the letter like me. It�s so ironic that he can�t detect his own self-loathing and see that his future son-in-law is a schlub like he is, but instead of insurance, he peddles waterbeds.
OK, I�m going to stop now and dunk my head in sink.