A Long Time Ago, We Used to be Friends

Entry #976:
July 4th, I went to Prospect Park in Brooklyn and met up with some people I hadn't seen in quite some time. People from that other life. The life I was in the middle of when I started this blog.

And it really is like a completely different lifetime. What's creepy is that I can mark the shift by digging through the archives of this blog. Talking specifically about September and October of 2004. When I truly began my journey through The Swamp of Sadness. (Thanks to She-Who-Won't-Be-Named.)

Back in that other life, I saw these people all the time. Everyone seemed to live just a few blocks from us. This peculiar cluster of couples. Living IKEA-sized lives in Park Slope. We'd go out drinking, celebrate each other's birthdays, throw dinner parties. It's sorta absurd to think about now—that I was ever a part of that parade of domesticity. Someone might have a recipe for potatoes au gratin they wanted to try out, and the group would build a fucking potluck dinner party around it! There were some great amateur cooks in this crowd. A lot of camera-ready couples living our Williams-fuckin-Sonoma lives.

There was no gradual tapering out. Once it ended, it ended. So it was particularly strange to see some of them again, after a passage of years. Besides mine, the old crowd had tallied up two other divorces. Which, make no mistake, is of considerable comfort to me.

Yes, I had the career success of the past year as a source of confidence. And I'd been told that they had all heard about it through the grapevine. And everyone was very cool with me, and plied me with seemingly earnest questions about The Business...

But it's hard to shake that ghostly air of that old life we all participated in. For all my new successes—and the vague promise of future success—I couldn't help but feel like they were all thinking, "That's the guy whose wife walked out on him." We all gingerly avoided talking about our ex-others. What succeeds or fails between two people behind closed doors is impossible to know... but it's irresistible to speculate on.

I left without fanfare. It helped that I was a bit inebriated from some excessively spiked punch, and I played up the blur of drunkenness to try to avoid any awkward sentimentality. A long time ago, we used to be friends. Isn't that enough?

I am fascinated by the story of these kids who made a shot-for-shot remake of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK over the course of seven years. I made tons of movies with my home video camera growing up. Mostly animated movies, coz I didn't have friends. (Ouch!) But the story of these kids working on this labor of love for all those years... I find it genuinely moving...

And it's not something that everyone can relate to. Obviously, I didn't have any friends that shared my obsessions growing up. (Memories, they hurt! THEY HURT!) But there is something about making movies in your backyard as a kid that's... so pure. You're not doing it as an assignment. You're not doing it to try to create a "calling card" and get noticed. It's not shit for your reel. And you most certainly ain't gettin paid. You're just doing it coz you fucking love movies. You're not jaded, you're not under the gun, you don't have anybody to answer to. You're learning by doing. You're doing it for yourself. You're teaching yourself how to tell a story with a camera.

It's easy for it to become a chore. It may sound bullshitty, but I'm always trying to remember that excitement I had as a kid, when I could spend whole summers making movies with action figures. I'm gonna try to check out a screening of the Backyard Raiders Saturday night. If I can get in.
!!!
Microsoft Extends XBOX 360 Warranty. They're finally acknowledging that there MIGHT be a bigger problem than they'd copped to before. Right as I'm about to send my XBOX 360 in for a SECOND repair.

"You love videogames and you don't have a girlfriend?" huffed the Gay Horse. "WHAT are the odds...?!"

Decepticons Shuffled 5:
1. "I Can Dream About You", Streets of Fire
2. "Wild Horses", Guns N' Roses
3. "Banana Skit", M.I.A.
4. "Planet Telex", Radiohead
5. "Midnight Show", The Killers
Autobots Bonus:
"Liquid Spear Waltz", Michael Andrews

TGIF Laugh Corner:
A Long Time Ago, I Used to Work Here.
iPhone dead after 4 days.