Round Up the Usual Suspects

Big WEEKDAY NIGHT plans, out to prove I've still got it, though I should probably point out that whatever "it" is, I likely never had it. It's not that I can't tell if I did (like HPV in most men or something), it's just that the "it" has to do with the energy, imagination and drive to be the type of person who goes out full-stop, let alone on a Thursday evening. I remember heading home from my then-girlfriend's apartment in LA in the early 2010s, in what I thought was a creaky, wee hour of a school night only to casually pass in the street the dressed-up young people teetering on their tall shoes or trailing a wake of Acqua di Giò and unearned confidence on their way to just going out. I didn't feel old or resentful or begrudging at all, more mystified at the reserves it must have taken to function not just that late, but the next day. Looking back, I assume it was a potent combination of parental money and crushed-up Adderall. It was the 2010s after all.

I am going out with young people in their 20s on this occasion, but it doesn't count as "cool" if you had to make them in the first place. It's nice if you can be friends with your children when they are adults, but it's not going to follow as evidence that GenZ kids think you are worthy of hanging around with. At least it hasn't gone well every time I've brought up that I'm 49 in the group chat while playing an online video game. Typically those rando Zoomers scream (ALL CAPS) the N-word at me and encourage me to kill myself, but to be fair, they say that to everyone.

We are going out to see Dune 2: The Re-Dunening or whatever it's called. Movies have been/had been one of the few things that could get us to sync up our schedules properly and meet up, but that's getting more and more rare as they drift inevitably to stubborn, insistent independence at the exact same time as group-environment consumption of motion pictures is becoming less and less of a social imperative, both globally and within the nucleus of my nuclear family. The comic book movies used to do it, but between the three of them, the responses now range from unaware/indifferent/hostile, again reflecting in our small way the sentiment of society writ large. I saw The Marvels by myself. In the boys' defense, it was only "fine."

But the first Dune (the first of the revival, from 2021, not the first-first one with Sting wearing a French-cut G-string) everyone seemed to actually like, so it seemed like a possibility we'd go to this one. Then I actually got an unsolicited text from my almost hermetically un-contact-able youngest son ask/stating "when we seeing dune 2" (sic), which I hesitated to print here unaltered for fear of blasting out your viewing screen with all the unbridled, raging enthusiasm, but this blog thing is a chronicle of the moment, if nothing else.

Just shy of $100 in IMAX tickets later and we're all set. It'll also cost me in gas and whatever we end up eating beforehand, but these are investments I'm more than happy to make. Compared to girlfriends and their passel of age-appropriate boon-companions, hanging out with dad is a thing with less immediate appeal, as is appropriate as they move through their eras of establishing themselves as independent adult people, or as I call them: traitors.

I guess I should be proud that they (and their generation in general), having grown up in the Hype Era of an aggressive, all-encompassing media biome, are more inured to the lure and cynical manipulations of studio advertising blitzes (both subtle and gross), so they don't feel the need to rush out and consume on command. But it was nice to count on at least 3-5 dates a year with a new Marvel or DC spectacle to blithely sit through without talking to one another for a couple of hours. I mean, I still haven't even seen the Aquaman sequel yet. The fact that one did go see it with their girlfriend when it came out, I have to say I took that news pretty well, all things considered. The blood-curse I placed on Jason Momoa as a result I'll have to suspend for the running of the movie tonight.