Me & Francesco's: Does Growing Up Mean Selling Out?

This coffee shop is infested with adults. These are the worst possible kind of adults, too. They’re not old and curmudgeony and bitter to the ways of the world. They’re not 40 somethings that are taking a break from their lives of soccer practice and PTA meetings and mandatory sex for a quick latte to numb the pain. Those are the adults I can handle. While they’re full of shit just like everyone else, I can at least sympathize with these old bastards a little. They have been in the game long enough that any and all light inside them has worn out, leaving a husk that I can put up with for a few hours.

But no, these are the worst kind of adults: young adults, a term so paradoxical that it almost betrays the amount of terrible nonsense that these packages of faux-enthusiasm contain.

They’re all fresh out of college: done with being the vagabond artists that they once were, ready to be a part of the norm. Armed with bullshit degrees, they’re all to happy to be off into a bullshit workforce, smiles wide and ready. They prattle on about their prospective new position working for Corporation Incorporated, doing Office Job #472, boasting about how their parents are so proud. I bet. Finally, Suzy took out her piercing and is getting a ‘real job’ (whatever the fuck that means). How does it feel to be just like everyone else now? Apparently, it feels pretty damn great. But not quite great enough, judging from the at home enhancement of their tans and teeth. Keep reaching Suzy. Keep reaching.

These people don’t seem to care about making a difference. For some reason, any and all creative desire for change and revolution has been replaced with power suits and pony tails, all too-perfect and too-perky to be real. With style plucked straight from the pages of Drones Weekly, they adorn themselves in the same overpriced shit as a thousand other desperate 20 somethings, all living, breathing commercials for The GAP. Two blouses and a pair of pumps later, welcome to the rest of your life. Business Casual: The New Everything.

Never mind the fact that mere years ago, they were touting the merits of ethically made clothes and picketing outside of malls, bursting at the seams with a desire to re-design the system. That’s gone now, replaced with fantasies of business meetings and blackberries. They’ve abandoned their dreams of changing the world for a dream of driving a sedan during their hour long commute, ideas of carbon footprints long behind them.

The pair of friends sitting in the window at the front is busy patting themselves on the back for getting promoted within their company. Congratulations, you’re still one of thousands, but now there’s a few people below you on the totem pole of bureaucracy (never mind that you’re eons away from ever cracking management, the impossible to reach summit). Let the accomplishment wash over you in the form of a no foam, no fat chai latte. You deserve this, trooper.

Do those 80 hour weeks seem all worth it now that you got a corporate mug and a slightly bigger cubicle? We all know that success is measured in the amount of shit that you have on your desk, so keep it up until you’ve gotten that complimentary potted shrub you and your idiot co-workers have been drooling over for months. That’s the dream, isn’t it? The perfect desk accessory means a perfect life. Or so the higher-ups tell you. They’re not distracting you with meaningless trinkets and titles, they’re encouraging you to be a better you. Because obviously, they care about you. You’re not just a number to them, you’re a friend. At least that’s what they told Todd, right before the canned him and 300 others during the layoffs. Wonder whatever happened to that bailout money...in unrelated news, your CEO has a new yacht.

I guess that the reason why these people bother me so much is that I can’t tell if I’m looking into a mirror or not. My biggest fear is to become one of these dolts, one of millions that are happy to slowly die under fluorescent lighting as long as it means that they can fill up their houses with shiny, high priced stuff before they finally kick it. If six years down the line me and my friends are commiserating about commutes over coffee, I’m going to jump in front of the first sedan I see.

Me & Woody Allen

Everyone romanticizes themselves.

Some more than others, but at the end of the day, we all have this idea of ourselves that is fairly rosier than reality. I feel like for most of us, we fancy ourselves as characters in a Woody Allen movie. Especially us, the college kids. The one that toss words around like 'avante garde' and 'troubled' and 'fundamentally'. It is this demographic that would like to see themselves, would like to be the very absent-minded, intellectual, complicated, romantic failures who say terrible, witty things and make reference to old Swedish films. Who have neurotic tendencies that come across as endearing, who are old souls, who write novels, who seem 'above it all' and live in severely cultured cities where they see a therapist twice a week to deal with the weight of their own genius.

Sadly, there is a problem with this illusion comes about when you realize two things: firstly, these characters, these fantastic pillars of taste and knowledge and modern living, are in and of themselves idealized versions of Woody Allen, the creator himself. We're constantly trying to make things come out perfectly in art because it's really difficult to do that in life. The characters you see, especially the male leads, are Allen's romanticized versions of himself, brought to life through snappy dialogue and celluloid. The difference between me and Woody Allen, is that Allen is able to project his romanticized self to an audience, who then accept, fall in love with, and eventually aspire to be that version of Allen, even if they don't realize it. Basically what I'm saying is, Allen gets away with it, where as, I don't.

The second epiphany is that ironically, almost brutally so, the characters that Allen creates wouldn't even know who Woody Allen is, let alone go to see his movies. Except for perhaps Woody Allen himself, and even then I'm sure that he probably wouldn't enjoy them, and would go on about how the main character was unlikable.

Woody Allen in 'Annie Hall' would have fucking hated 'Annie Hall'.