Saturday, February 23, 2008

A Blast from the Past


My friend Furlong tagged me in this photo today on Facebook. Please forgive the gratuitous vulgarity. I did a lot of tasteless things for no good reason when I was younger.

In retrospect, 2000 was a pretty good year. I partied a lot, stayed up late, read Kafka's The Castle, Henry Miller's Sexus, Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut and Benjamin Kuras' Czechs and Balances. I only got 3/4 of the way through The Idiot, and I haven't returned to it. I spent Christmas 1999 in Svratka and New Year's Eve at Stara Osada in Brno, where I was drunkenly hugging the toilet by 12:30 AM. In April I got a sweet job working the backshift at the Ultramar across the street from my apartment on Chebucto road (where this photo was taken) and I'd get off work at 8:00 Monday morning (which was my "Friday night") and sit on the front steps in flip flops and a straw hat, watching all the commuters on their way to work and drinking moonshine out of a 3 litre jug (it took me over a month to drink all 3 litres). Caitlin was born that June.

Part of me asks, "Has it really been 8 years?" but another part wants to know, "Has it only been 8 years?"

6 comments:

DCP said...

In the year 2000 I still thought I wanted to write movies. Also, I wrote electronic music a lot which I don't do at all anymore and haven't for like 7 years. Additionally, it was the first year of my fear of flying. Ahh, the olden days!

John said...

Do you find your fear of flying getting progressively worse as you get older? My own fear of flying started when I was around 21, and has grown from a vague unease to the point where the last time I took a long flight I had to knock myself out with tranquilizers for pretty much the whole time.

DCP said...

Well, I just flew for the first time in 7 years, and it was ok because I took klonopin. Otherwise it would have been unbearable for me.

noelle_in_team said...

Dude, hello. I wrote a blog today. Also, there is a great play going on this week at the Fox Auditorium. 7:00 on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday... Chace, Jason, and a few others are in it, including me. You might want to check it out.

John said...

Glenn: Klonopin, eh? You get a prescription for that? I hate flying because of the crazy disparity of scale, I think. It fucks my shit right up.

Noelle: I'd happily check out any play at the Fox auditorium if I were less than a 7 hour drive away from it. You should videotape it, chop it into segments and put it up on youtube and I'll embed it on my blog. What's the play called?

DCP said...

Yeah, I just told the doctor I was going to fly and was scared and he gave me a prescription for it without even asking for proof I was flying.