unpause yourself!

you ever see some random stranger and fear you were looking at your future self, but didn’t like what you saw?

first time it happened to me was with my mom’s last boyfriend. okay guy, good to her, but was single and alone at a fairly older age, never married, never had kids, and still lived in the house where he grew up after getting it from his parents when they died. i thought i was seeing my future…

…that was twenty years ago. two decades. i was barely eighteen at the time. but does the above description sound hauntingly familiar?

after mom died he’s pretty much been alone, working a dead-end job (parents left him plenty of dough so i think this was out of boredom) still driving the same truck he had when they were dating (and had had for a decade before – i remember it picking us up from the airport after a family trip to the UK summer of ’89) and has been getting sicker lately, and will probably end up dying alone in the house his parents died in.

again, sound familiar?

then at the gym recently i saw another random person and wondered – another look at things to come? he had great hair if this had been 1979 (and now it was all silver – probably wasn’t when the style was first rendered on his skull), a black concert t-shirt, and was working out in jeans (with a crease so sharp you could cut paper with them) and boots. i hit a back machine after him and almost choked on the cloud of old spice or aqua velva or whatever aged aftershave musk shit was oozing from his leathery hide…

…here’s my guess: some woman he was really into, or thought was really hot, at some point positively commented on the aftershave, hair, and/or attire, and he figured he’d rock the look to snag somebody. no ring on the finger, so i think it hasn’t worked yet – but if “style” is truly cyclical i suppose at some point this guys theory will hold true.

i wondered if this was me.

i’m keeping my DM tradition alive and going to see depeche mode this weekend in houston. last show i went to before that was nine inch nails & jane’s addiction. before that i believe it was the cure. next one i planned to hit was ac/dc. one i regret missing was judas priest.

note the pattern? not a single act that didn’t “hit their stride” after the 90’s. not that they’re not still putting out great albums – but seriously, i’m showing my age here…

(at this point leia is heading to the comments section to reference her cheap trick / def leppard experience…or what of it she remembers through the booze…)

i think we all hit a point where we stop keeping up with trends if we don’t watch it. for some it’s just getting stuck in a rut be it career or marriage or a kid or what have you. you have to keep an eye out or it could happen to you. i had friends that thought i was regressing back like that when i pulled the CD player out of my car and replaced it with cassette. in the year and some change since only one cassette has been played in it, and then only to test to make sure it worked. it went in for three reasons:

1. leaving the top down all the time it was only a slight chance anybody would steal a chevy factory cd player – nobody on EARTH will swipe a chevy factory cassette!

2. i have a twelve disc cd changer in the trunk that can be operated from said cassette deck

3. i have a killer sounding iPod adapter what works with a cassette deck

but back to the point here – take a look at yourself, your music, your wardrobe. if your happy, keep it going. but if you think you MIGHT be a bit dated, try some new shit – might work out for ya!