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There have been few birthdays in my semi-long life that bothered me to the point of angst.
There was my eighth birthday. We had a party the day before. Well, my aunts threw a party for me because my parents had to be out of town. At one point during the festivities (which basically came down to a bunch of cousins running wild through the yard, which was no different than any other day except this time we were wearing birthday hats. At least I was) my older cousins informed me that I couldn't play any birthday games because it wouldn't be fair for me to win. The odds of me winning were rather slim, though. I was a clumsy, uncoordinated kid and I wouldn't have been able to pin the tail on the donkey if he shoved his ass right in my face. When I cried to one of my aunts about this birthday game injustice, she told me to stop acting like a little kid.
Huh? Stop acting like a kid? But...but I am a kid! Then the light bulb came on. I would be turning eight the next day. What if eight meant you weren't a kid anymore? Did they give more chores at eight? More homework? Would I suddenly have to worry about taxes and war instead of spending my time watching cartoons and playing with my Easy Bake Oven?
I spent a very restless night imagining that I would wake up old and crippled. Never mind that I had eight year old cousins who were still as youthful and worry-free as ever. Once an idea like that entered my mind, there wasn't a reasonable fact you could throw at me that would get me to stop worrying.
Of course, the next day dawned and I was still a kid. My skin was still smooth, my pajamas still had teddy bears on them. Just to test things out, I watched some cartoons and was relieved to hear myself laughing. Well, at eight I assumed that only kids laughed at cartoons. 34 years later, I'm still laughing. At the same cartoons.
So that was my first bout with birthday angst. I was relatively birthday-worry free for the next 17 years. Then came the big 2-5 and crisis of major proportions. All my friends were following the proper life time line set forth by generations before them. Some say there are four stages to life, but in between the Birth, School, Work, Death phases was Get Married, Have Kids. It's what us suburbanites did. Or maybe it was just an Italian thing.
I find it laughable now that at 25 I was having what essentially boiled down to a mid-life crisis. Where was I going? What had I done with my life? I was going to be A QUARTER OF A CENTURY OLD! For weeks leading up to my birthday, I refused to entertain any ideas of a party, not even the traditional bar crawl. To make matters worse, my cousin got engaged the day before my birthday.
If I knew then what I know now.....eh, you know how that one goes.
That was the last birthday crisis I had. The milestones of 30, 35 and 40 came and went without a care. It was easy enough to combat the creeping-of-age poltergeists that were threatening to possess me at 40. I got married that day. Yes, it was my bright idea to combat another life crisis by hijacking my birthday with my own wedding. It worked, oh yes, it worked. But now I'm doomed to a lifetime of combined anniversary/wedding presents, which always translates to "something for the house."
So here I am two years later and already I'm faced with another birthday crisis. I thought I was off the hook until 50. I mean, who has nightmares over a 42nd birthday? 42? I should be thrilled to be celebrating the age that represents the answer to life, the universe and everything.
Let's take stock of things here, to give this questionable fear of 42 some context: I love my life. I really like my job and all the people I work with. The thought that I'll be there the rest of my working days does not depress me at all. We just became first time homeowners. In short time, I will be a business owner. My marriage is great. My kids are wonderful. My entire immediate family is healthy. Sure, money is tight, but I've already accepted that will always be the case. I already have everything I need and most things I want. I have wonderful friends. I'm satisfied with what I have done with my life and what I'm doing now. The future looks good.
So, what gives? If I'm so damn happy with life, why would 42 pose such a challenge? In a word: time. See, now that I'm fully enjoying life and all it has to offer, it occurs to me that I already reached that half-way mark. I waited too long to become self-satisfied! And honestly, I wouldn't really notice the passage of time if it weren't for those two daily reminders that the clock is ticking. That is, my children.
You know that Bugs Bunny episode where he's on a desert island with those two guys who keep eyeing each other as hamburgers and hot dogs? It's kind of like that. Every time DJ says something about starting middle school next month or Natalie say something about starting high school next month, my children disappear and are replaced by images of Father Time. And he's laughing at me.
I have a kid in high school? How the hell did that happen? Wasn't I in high school just a few years ago? Sure, if you can call 24 years a few. What doesn't help is this "everything old is new again" culture. I took the kids to Kohl's the other day for some back to school shopping. And lo and behold, the demon ponchos I've been writing about were front and center in the junior department. Every mannequin looked like it stepped out of my junior high school yearbook. It's as if a time machine exploded in space and puked the 1970's all over America. How soon before I'm sitting in a high school auditorium wringing my hands over the rebellious youth taking over the town?
Yea, went off on a tangent there. But it's all related, somehow. The prevalence of 70's nostalgia here in 2004 has opened some kind of age wound. Seeing all these fringed skirts and ringer tees (with ironic 70's era logos on them) is making me face the fact that I'm old enough to have the accouterments of my childhood worshiped by the kids of today. I'm a dinosaur, a fossilized relic of a time when Earth Shoes were fashionable and 8-tracks were cool.
So how do I combat the onset of 42? How do I counter attack the feeling that time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future, that I'm shorter of breath and one day closer to death? I buy myself a lava lamp, listen to some Led Zeppelin and play a game of Pong.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. But I draw the line at ponchos.
Ok, 42. I'm ready for you.
[Update: In light of the email I'm getting, I really should note that my birthday is not today, it's next week. I like to agonize in advance. But, thanks for the pre-birthday wishes!]
Everyone needs to have one of these.
I was about 13 years old when I first entered the Palace. I was a tag-a-long to an older friend who was going there just to score a nickel bag.
Pinball Palace was a small, almost hidden place, tucked between the Jerry Lewis Movie theater and a specialty bra shop. From the outside, it looked forbidden and dangerous, two things that combined to point a beckoning finger at me.
Gina opened the door and I followed, knowing that this was exactly the kind of place my parents warned me about.
As soon as we stepped inside my brain went into sensory overload. The smell hit me first; cigarettes and pot and teenage sweat swirling together in the dank heat of the Palace.
The noises. The clacking of pool bools as someone yelled break!; the dings and and whistles of the twenty or so pinball machines that lined the walls; the cursing of the bikers at the pool table; the jangling of quarters in the pockets of Levis; the fist banging on the glass as a machine cried out TILT! It was all underscored by Led Zeppelin's Trampled Under Foot shouting from the jukebox, and the combination of those sounds became my own Pied Piper, begging me to follow.
I was hesitant that first day and just hung in back of Gina while she made a deal with guy at the change counter. When she was done, we went behind the movie theater, smoked a joint, and then snuck in the back door of the theater. They were showing Shampoo. We watched Warren Beatty, naked on the floor and humping the daylights out the poor girl underneath him and all I remember is a person was watching them through a window and said something like "Now that's what I call fucking!" Gina sat gaping at the screen, taking in every word, every movement, probably taking notes in her head, and all I could think about was going back to Pinball Palace.
The next Saturday, Gina took me with her for another buy. This time, I brought quarters. While Gina flirted with her dealer, I made the walk towards the machine in the far corner. The Bally Wizard.
I slowly put the quarter in, knowing full well that I would become addicted to the flashing lights and turning numbers. The quarter dropped. I hit the reset button. The silver ball popped into place and I slowly pulled back the lever, feeling the resistance of the coiled spring. I let go. The tip of the lever and the metal ball connected and as that ball went around the curve on its journey towards the playing field, it took with it my grades, my social life, my allowance. From the first loud ding when the ball rang up my first score, I was obsessed.
My fingers worked the flippers as deftly as the lady in the school office worked the typewriter. I moved this way and that, swinging my hips and nudging the machine a little to the left, a little to the right, careful not to piss it off enough to make it tilt. My eyes darted between the ball and the scoreboard and my heart skipped a beat as I saw the paper taped to the top of the glass with the high scores for the week listed. My name would be up there one day. Yes, it would.
Gina had to drag me out of the Palace. Even when my quarters ran out, I wanted to stay and watch the masters play, the guys who turned over the numbers on the scoreboard, the guys who could smoke and drink and play at the same time.
And then it wasn't just Saturdays anymore. I started walking there after school. If Gina wouldn't go there was always someone else willing to hang out and watch me play pinball with me instead of going home. We would throw a few quarters into the jukebox (three plays for twenty five cents!), and play the same line up each time. Led Zeppelin. Todd Rundgren. Deep Purple.
Sometimes I would ask my mother for a ride to the library and when she pulled away after dropping me off, I would run across Front Street and duck into the Pinball Palace. I rationalized my lying. I wasn't out doing drugs - no respectable 13 year old considered pot a real drug, not when the bad kids were doing angel dust - and I wasn't out getting pregnant like Mrs. Winslow's daughter. I was just playing pinball.
The frequency of my trips to the Palace waned when winter dug its heels in and no one wanted to walk that far. Occasionally, we would get a ride to the movie theater and slip inside the Palace instead. Each time I walked through those doors was like the first; the smell, the sounds, the pumping of my adrenaline would all be new again.
They closed Pinball Palace before the good walking weather came back. Neighbors were complaining. Community action groups were picketing. Churches were praying for the souls of the kids caught up in the glare of those flashing lights. They claimed Pinball Palace was a haven for dirty, unkempt teenagers who cursed and drank and smoked. It was stealing the life and soul of the community's young adults.
And then, it was gone. I cried, I mourned, I laid in bed at night, my fingers twitching to imaginary flippers, the game playing out in my mind. We had to find another place.
That summer, my parents sprung the news on me that they were taking me out of the "terrible" public school system. They didn't like my friends. They didn't like my attitude. Catholic high school would surely lead me on the path to a righteous life. I would make new friends, they said, friends that wouldn't drag me to those filthy pinball places, friends who wore skirts and ties and gave their quarters to the collection basket instead of machines.
By the end of the second week at the new school, I had made a few new friends just like my parents wanted me to. Momlet me stay after school each day and take the late bus home, assured that I was sitting quietly in the cafeteria with my new virtuous friends studying and doing homework.
Not quite. See, the 7-11 across the street from school held a deep dark secret in its back corner. A Bally Wizard pinball machine. My new friends, who hated ties and skirts and hoarded their quarters like gold, would watch me play for hours each day, taking bets on whether I would break the high score or not. I had a following. I was the Pinball Wizard. Catholic school was working out just fine.
Sure, 7-11 wasn't quite the same as the smoke-filled palace. But Kevin did bring along a portable cassette player each day and we listened to Genesis and Todd Rundgren while I swished and swayed and occassionally tilted.
Pinball eventually gave way to other video games; Asteroids and Galaga and Space Invaders. Arcades started popping up everywhere. My pinball skills were no longer celebrated, I was a has-been, a thing of the ancient past.
I never regret all those hours and quarters spent feeding my pinball frenzy. I never regret the time spent learning the exact angles of each machine, or feeling the excitement when my name went up on the high score chart.
My mother always told me that I was wasting away my life playing those games, that I would never get anything useful out of it. Hah. What does she know? If it wasn't for those quick relfexes and incredible hand-eye coordination I developed at Pinball Palace, I would have never kicked my son's ass at House of Dead 2 the other day.
All this talk of the 70's has obviously woken a sleeping giant within.
Today I'll be offering a series of my older pieces on that wonderful, horrible decade. First up:
The Summer of '76:
Summer memory: On my 14th birthday I received Frampton Comes Alive. I sat with my friends behind 7-11, drinking beer hidden in Slurpee cups and smoking cigarettes. I had the album with me, in all it's vinyl glory, and my eyes glazed over in that 14 year-old girl way whenever I looked at the picture of Frampton on the cover. That hair! Those eyes! Swoon!
I never confessed that I didn't really like Frampton's music. I liked his hair. Ok, I went crazy over three songs on the album but the rest was crap. But I was cool for having it, and we went back to my house and listened to the stupid wah-wah pedal thing and when you are 14 and you just smoked some pot and the record player is emitting sounds of "do you feel like we do" played through some voice synthesizer, all you think about is some Charlie Brown special where the teachers are doing that wah-wah-wah voice and maybe playing some air guitar to Show Me The Way.
Holy shit! I was smoking pot at 14? You mean I only have about two years before my daughter comes home reeking of resin and bong water?
Anyhow. As much as Frampton's hair and synthersizer amused me, I had other musical avenues to explore. 1976 was the year the Ramones debuted. Kiss's Destroyer came out that year. Blue Oyster Cult's Agents of Fortune. Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak. And even though I had all that metal running through my brain, there was no way to avoid the musical vomit that came out of the tinny AM receiver that summer.
How many times could you hear Rick Dees singing Disco Duck before you wanted to go deaf? The song that defined my summer of 1976 in the worst way possible was Starland Vocal Band's Afternoon Delight. Sure, I was too naive to know the song was about catching a little noontime nookie but it annoyed the piss out of me anyhow. On one end of the radio dial you had Gordon Lightfoot mourning his Edmund Fitzgerald and on the other end was a constant barrage of More, More, More and Fly, Robin, Fly. I would always hope that somewhere in between I would catch Play That Funky Music, White Boy and I would close my bedroom door and do some spastic dance while pretending to be ultra cool.
I wore my Disco Sucks button with pride. And I spent hours in my air-conditioned bedroom dreaming up ways to change the music industry. I wrote my own lyrics, 4-chord save-the-world type lyrics that would show those white suit wearing disco freaks that there was more to life than dancing.
Save the whales, Save the whales
Send your money through the mail.
Later on, I would form a band called Pond Scum with my little sister and we would have revolutionized the music industry if we only knew how to play an instrument. Even though Lisa could bang out the Theme from M*A*S*H* on the recorder, we didn't think that was quite enough.
I would lay in bed that summer listening to the radio and Nazareth's Love Hurts would come on and I would cry. At 14, I knew nothing of love or hurt, but I knew that the voice coming out of my speakers did and his hoarse cry of sadness always made me feel as if love were nothing to look forward to.
1976 was the bicentennial of our nation, and while I remember the fireworks and the ships in the harbor what I remember most is the local theater only charging 76 cents to see a movie for the rest of the summer. Maybe we saw the Bad News Bears or maybe it was Blood Sucking Freaks, all I know is that at some point in 1976 I saw Burnt Offerings in a movie theater and complained that there wasn't enough gore or scares and that Oliver Reed gave me the creeps. And that year there was Carrie, which made me vow to never go to a prom or date John Travolta, and Taxi Driver, which made me leery of cab drivers and Robert DeNiro and Logan's Run, which made me think of plot holes and bad acting.
1976 was the year that there was all that hoopla about Red Dye #2 and I had to stop eating maraschino cherries by the dozen.
1976 was the last summer I remember feeling so innoncent, so oblivious to the world around me. 1977 brought the Son of Sam and loot-filled blackouts and the feeling that the world wasn't about some pop song and summer would never mean quite the same to me. At least not until 1978. But that's another story.
(And just for the record, Summer of Sam was one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life)
Please, for the love of go-go boots, NO. No one should have to live through that again. Ever.
Look. Look at these dresses:
[click for bigger image]Wait. Wait until I get home. I have pictures of me in ponchos! I will sacrifice my dignity and post all the 70's era photos of myself and my sisters that I can find if it saves just one child from having to face this fashion again. We must fight the industry and tell them NO. No ponchos, no, handkerchief dresses, no enormous stripes or plaid pants or corked shoes. It's wrong and you know it.
What's next? Eight tracks? Tuna casseroles? Pea green living room decor? Dorothy Hamill haircuts?
I swear to you, if my father starts wearing his beige and brown leisure suit again, I will make the fashion mavens responsible for this pay.
I've got to find those poncho pictures.
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You know what really sucks? When you go to bed secure in the knowledge that you have your morning blog post all sewn up because you saw this article on how the fashions of the 70's were coming back - including ponchos - and you thought to yourself, oh, that's what I'm going to blog about in the morning because that subject is just ripe for picking, and then you form some wonderful sentences and snarky insults in your mind about ponchos and then, you wake up in the morning, pull up The Bleat and see that while you were sleeping, James Lileks was sucking the 70's idea out of your head with a magical bendy straw.
Curse you, James Lileks.
Back to the drawing board.
It was one of those moments when you say something you know you shouldn't. But I couldn't help myself. I was fourteen and still in the throes of teenage-girl-smart-ass disease.
25 years ago tomorrow, I was sitting in the backyard listening to the radio when I heard the news. I went inside and found my mother in her room, making her bed.
"Hey, mom. Guess you won't be going to that Elvis concert next week."
"What?"
"He's dead."I may have snickered, I don't know. Mom ran into the bathroom and turned on the little radio she kept in there. I remember the voice. I remember the exact sound of the tinny, staticy voice that relayed the news to my mother in a much softer way than I did. Elvis was dead. My mother's eyes filled with tears and despair while her face registered only that small "o" one's mouth makes when they hear shocking news. That "o" stayed there for a while, but the despair in her eyes had become hard and angry. She was pissed at me. How could I have told her like that, knowing that she idolized Elvis in a pure, passionate way? How could I do that? What kind of daughter was i? Well, I was fourteen. That's my only excuse. I was a fourteen year old whose mother made fun of her own idolization of another self-obsessed, overly dramatic singer who similarly became a bloated replica of himself. And later, dead and bloated. Maybe it was my way of evening up the score. My mother had this friend Noreen. Noreen was the largest woman I ever knew. Not just heavy large, but tall and wide and her hair was piled up on her head so she looked even taller. Her voice roared even when she whispered and her sneezes were legend in the neighborhood, said to be heard from at least three blocks away. She wore mumus and housecoats and tons of hairspray and sometimes she wore an ugly fur coat that made her look like a small woodland creature was nesting on her shouler. Noreen and my mom were the Elvis duo. They worshiped him. They loved him. They knew everything about him and owned everything to do with him including Elvis commemorative plates and I think one of them had an Elvis wristwatch. I grew up with Elvis's hips grinding in my face and his voice grinding in my ears and I have to admit that at some point, I realized what the attraction was. When I would lay in bed on summer nights, trying to sleep while my mother and Noreen and the rest of their crew played Pinochle in the kitchen and had Elvis on the stereo, I knew. His voice would come drifting into my room and I could feel the sensuality, the danger, the passion that lied within his words. I would never tell anyone this, of course. I went about my daily business of bowing before Jim Morrison and Robert Plant and never let on that I thought Elvis was cool. Especially to my mother. That would just ruin the taut, tenous relationship that we both thrived on. Who was I to break the rite of passage of mother-teenage daughter bitterness and anger? Noreen and my mother were going to see Elvis in August, 1977 at the Nassau Coliseum. They had seen him many times before but this one was special. They had a feeling this would be his last tour ever. They were like little giddy school girls in the weeks leading up to the show. Sometimes my mother would take out her ticket and look at it. As I write this I realize that my mother was 39 at the time. The same age I am now. When I was fourteen, 39 was old and withered and wrinkled. 39 was too old to be getting worked up over a hip-shaking idol. Yet, here I am at 39 and I'm not old or withered or wrinkled and I would certainly get worked up over my hip-gyrating idol. She was so happy. And I crushed her world. It would have been a much softer blow if it came from Cousin Brucie or Uncle somebody on whichever oldies station she was listening to. It would have been a bit easier to take if her teenage bag of hormones didn't make some smarmy remark about dying like a fat, beached whale. When Noreen found out we heard her from two blocks away, bellowing and carrying on. Her booming voice sounded through the neighborhood like a siren, a mourning call for all Elvis fans in East Meadow to gather on her lawn and weep. Not really. But it was something like that. I don't think my mother ever told Noreen the way in which she found out about the death of their hero. I probably wouldn't have lived to tell this tale if she knew. She would have kicked my ass all over town. When Noreen died, my first thought was that she would finally get to see Elvis again. My second was that I was now safe from my mother ever spilling the beans to Noreen about my youthful indiscretion. 25 years later,my mother still has not forgiven me. Maybe that's what drives every argument we have, every nit-picky little fight we endure. Maybe she's still mad at me. I know she still resents it, still thinks about because yesterday she told my daughter that I laughed at her when Elvis died. I didn't laugh. I may have snickered a little. Maybe. I sent an email to my mother this morning:
I'm sorry, mom. I'm sorry I told you like that. But in a way it's your fault for making me sit through Viva Las Vegas and Jailhouse Rock, for forcing that horrid "In the Ghetto" on my ears, for making me tried fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. It's been 25 years, mom. I promise to play Elvis at my wedding next week if you promise to get over it already. Deal?Maybe I should reword that.
