Tony Hawk is trying to sell me Qunol

He‘s old. I’m old. I remember when Tony Hawk was the young skater, emissary of cool. On MTV. Now he‘s on cable news. Yes, the skateboard. But also the supplements and statements that have not been evaluated by the FDA. Sometimes it‘s Tony Hawk. Sometimes I‘m in the grocery store and they‘re playing The Cure. The didn‘t even play the cure on the radio in the 80‘s. Now I can hear them in the produce aisle at Gelson‘s. I wake up at 4AM most mornings. Not because I have to. But because I have. All of it subtly reminding me, “thou willst soon perish.”

The future is so mind numbingly stupid. A student today told me that she is interning at William Morris Endeavor reading scripts. Except that they don‘t call it script coverage. They call it script surveys so she can‘t join the IATSE union. Also, these scripts are written by AI. She says they‘re terrible and the story falls apart after 10 pages. But the same geniuses who have brought us every financial collapse are at it again. They‘re going to get AI to write movie scripts. Yeah, that‘s what people want? It‘s interesting because they don‘t want scripts written by AI or humans. People don‘t particularly want to watch movies or TV shows anymore. They get entertainment from social media and video games.

Video games I can kind of understand (though the storytelling is always a bit – unsubtle – for my taste). Social media is so stupid. I check my Instagram like once every 2 weeks at the most and it‘s just because if I don‘t make an appearance I get too many calls and texts from people I‘d rather not have extended conversations with. I‘m not very social and that‘s not a problem (for me.)

I‘m going to stupid Florida on Friday to see my mom. My mom loves it there. I don‘t love it there. It’s boring and hot as hell. I suppose if I were a pontoon boat / fishing enthusiast I‘d love it. But I find the natural landscape in Florida to be mediocre. My mom lives in a suburb that looks like every suburb I‘ve ever seen in Florida. Her‘s is newer and there’s an okay swimming pool nearby. When I‘m there I nap a lot. My mom doesn‘t want to move into my backyard guest house. She‘d rather be alone in Florida where if something goes wrong I‘ll have to fly across country. At 85 something is going to go wrong, sooner than later. 

I’m also thinking about the election. I won’t go into that because OD is apolitical and I kind of like that. All I’m going to say is, you gotta be kidding me. Obviously I’m a big liberal. Gay, atheist, academic, living and working in Los Angeles. Do the math, right? I just feel like we have a choice between a known quantity who sucks and has sucked his entire adult life and an incredibly qualified woman who, were it not for the fact that the future is stupid, would be running away with this thing.