One of our beautiful dancing dreadlock women from our show at Indiana University. I’m desperately trying to remember the name of her dreadlock. ADRIAN! That was it… you know, so she can yell AAADRIANNN!!!
Crazy. I just watched Clerks 2, and I did so voluntarily.
When the first one came out in 1994, I was in college and everyone made a huge deal about it. I was contrary and single-minded (and yes, still am), and didn’t want to see it because it was so popular, and didn’t want to see it because it wasn’t sci-fi. By the time I met Heather and she sat me down to watch it, I think I may’ve been frankly too old to really appreciate it. There was a certain nostalgia to the unending conversations about Star Wars, and I’d experienced a dead- end job or two, but I’d already enacted my plans to get myself out of those situations, and so I had a certain amount of contempt for these motionless characters.
We came back out to the cars after the show (plural cars because Kimmy and Alex drove out with us and now we truly, truly Love them) to find them beautifully cacooned in frost.
But I think I got Clerks 2 right at the right time. Unashamedly, I also really Loved “Without a Paddle” – an (ironically) sophomoric coming of age movie with Seth Green in it – these are both movies about approaching and hitting and passing the scary milestone of thirty years and about realizing what’s been important, what IS important, and what you’re doing with your Life. Both end up just being about friendship, really – and about the things that really have lasted through all that time, never to be surpassed or replaced by our careers or flash-in-the-pan romances…
Part 1 of our audience at the Brown Hotel in Indiana, Pennsylvania. More on them in a bit. They were most excellent. I didn’t get nearly as many names as I’d wanted to, but I think that’s Mandy in the middle… I point that out only because she sort of threatened me some bodily harm if I DIDN’T remember her name...
I don’t know – I’ve just finished watching it here on Corey’s couch in Coal Center, PA. It’s about six in the morning, and I’m probably tired and a little emotionally vulnerable. All sorts of things happen at around six in the morning…
Part two of the Brown Hotel audience. Sorry guy in the middle… the microphone stole your face!
It was good to see the characters evolve so much, and to see that there was a reason for what they’d been doing – justification. Especially for someone like me, who’s been so quick to judge people, so quick to feel contempt for others all my Life… ha, it also points out that if I find THIS movie is so adroitly precise in its observations of Life at this moment, that probably 12 years ago, if I’d seen the original Clerks then, I probably would’ve really related to that too… I would’ve gotten what everyone was talking about. Maybe.
Part three of the Very Enthusiastic Brown Hotel crowd. I’ve got to admit, I haven’t had an audience make me feel this good in a long time – I mean, they listened and they responded. They felt the intensity and rocked out with us. I think Heather has a tendency to prefer “listening room” environments – but I Love these and could probably play to similar audiences forever. They drank in everything we had to give and then fed us in return. It was a great ego boost, reminding me that though there are good bands and bad bands, beyond that – there are good audiences and bad audiences – and this was simply one of the best we’ve ever had.
It does make me wonder what I’m working towards, but also reminds me that I’m doing exactly what the movie’s about, to a certain extent. I’ve taken one of the only things that I’ve Loved doing in my Life and turned it into my single job. I’m not even talking about music – that’s just become a neccessary side-effect of breathing and keeping sane – the part that I Love so dearly is the interaction and the performance and the ego and the joy. Ha, and maybe I’ll someday buy up one of the old, closed venues that Heather and I used to play somewhere and reopen it as something of my own.
I’m not ready for that yet, and really that’s Heather’s dream but I could find a place in it.
