Fading Light of Youth

I'm looking forward to reviewing every manner of mass media on this page, so I thought I'd put together a baseline ratings guide to keep myself centered as a fancy-ass critic of culture both low and high. This was a suggestion from my wife who was teasing me about explaining the difference between a 7.4 and 6.9 on my scale. It is mostly a gut feeling for me, not an average of values for a given work, but a final tally meant to indicate overall place in quality relative to everything else I've ever experienced. Most importantly, higher scores indicate something was more memorable, moving, or meaningful - the rarest qualities in the modern glut of available media. In the Army Now (1994) Rating: 0.0  I love a good terrible movie. Based on what I've experienced over the years, it is easier to make a movie that is so bad it is good than it is to make just a flat out bad movie. I can't imagine how difficult it was to make this sucking chest wound of a movie....

I joked in part one of what will surely be a thirty part series that I was relying on Netflix's viewing history to keep all the garbage (and fine art) we've been watching straight in my donkey brain. As I prepped for today's edition, I actually needed help from Google to identify some of the titles. I consider myself a professional couch potato slash brilliant aesthete and I'm still taken aback by just how good and just how bad popular media is, and these few selections reflect that. For me it is becoming less frequent that something will actually move me emotionally or impress from a creative standpoint. That's actually a good thing because back in the day I couldn't watch something like Big Momma's House without getting emotional or too horny...or whatever. Now what I'm looking for is stuff to succeed or fail on its own terms, and things are more enjoyable when I only expect distraction rather than any kind of fulfillment or, god forbid, happiness. ...

When I was nine years old I went to sleepaway camp for the first time. I had gone to YMCA Wabansi day camp when I was younger, where you went home at the end of every day except for the last day of camp, when you could sleep over if you wanted to. That night was usually a bloodbath of sobbing and projectile urination inside a cabin of shame and regret; why would anyone want to spend the night away from home? But if you had any balls at all you'd pick yourself up, wash your sleeping bag thoroughly, and kick it up a notch the following summer at Camp Unahliya, where you spent the entire week away from home. I always had a great time at camp and usually wound up befriending the counselors. I was really confident and loved making adults laugh, something I was getting better at every year. Really nine to ten years old was the coolest I ever was or will be because I was walking around listening to gangsta rap, decked out in Raiders gear, just fully talking the talk of someone cool ...

During one of our many quarantine redecorating sessions, I found a box of junk from elementary and middle school. There were some old school projects, drawings, some seriously disappointing report cards. I found a little drawing project I did in kindergarten, you're supposed to draw your family and then write a little bit about them. Mine is famous in our family because it is all lies or misinformation. I can't remember if I was simply a liar or if I also had no idea who the people in my family were. And, my personal favorite, I found a couple "about me" projects from over the years where I list some of my favorite stuff. I guess we always think that we have great taste at a given moment but typically terrible taste in hindsight. Funny how that works. But, if you're anything like me, you get a big kick out of learning about people through their favorite things. For the record, these are mine on Wednesday, May 13th, 2020. "Again, that could change." ...

I've been very happy to see a resurgence of friendly surveys and questionnaires popping up on Facebook. They were all the rage when I was a freshman in college and now that the general population has as much free time as a freshman in college, people are pounding them out. Now I know these are most likely a tool for Phishing scams and passbots, and I'm fine with that! But I'm making my survey a lot less general in the hopes that people will not be afraid to reply in a comment below with their responses. Here are the blank questions to copy, paste, and answer. My responses, and some silly pictures to keep you entertained, are below :)  1. How are you enjoying quarantine? 2. How are your pets doing? If you don't have any pets, would you like some? 😁😁 3. What's the best movie you've seen recently? The worst?  4. What time do you usually go to bed? Wake up? 5. What's the sickest you've ever been?  6. Have you been creative durin...

Is there any scientific understanding of when we start retaining our earliest memories? Is it different for every person? Is there the possibility of a person who remembers basically everything? My earliest memory may be fake, but I've had it a long time. I'm in a crib or similar holding pen and I'm taking in things, like shapes and distances. I remember where my dad was standing. It's probably bullshit since I stopped using a crib when I turned twelve.  The best (most reliable) memories from my really early childhood are from home videos. As usual, I was lucky here because the camcorder was released the same year I was.  We have video of my second birthday. I look like a pit bull puppy with Alfred Hitchcock's head awkwardly resting atop the shoulders, no neck to be found. I have a frickin' rad firetruck birthday cake. The house is packed. I didn't have a thought in my bulbous head. It's beautiful. I wasn't quite this cute, but clo...