Teenage Wasteland

I’ve been a teenager for six years and eleven months. That’s a complicated way of saying I’m 19. I’m still 19. I have three weeks left of saying that. The writer in me sees this as a strict time frame to figure out how to eulogize these years in a way that appeals to my own life and the lives shared by anyone who’s ever been a teenager.

It’s ambitious, but simpler the longer you think about it. Really, being a teenager can all equate to two opposing ideas.

1. Being a teenager is an eternal experience

but…

2. Being a teenager is a fleeting experience

Capturing this dichotomy has been sought after by countless artists over the years. It’s why Cameron Crowe went undercover at 22 back¹ into a local high school to write Fast Times At Ridgemont High. It’s why St. Vincent-St. Mary’s basketball games were shown on ESPN in 2003. Hailee Steinfeld and Stevie Nicks both grappled with being at the Edge Of Seventeen. We feel that something is coming to an end, but that end will bring about permanent ramifications.

As for the eternal, I’m happy to report to my older readers that teenagers are still listening to Nirvana, packing theaters for scary movies and running halfcourt 3s on any court they can get access to. At least the ones I hung around did, the cool ones did.

Speaking of, I didn’t realize things were fleeting until Nirvana wasn’t all that cool to me anymore. Suddenly I was seeing those scary movies alone and shooting hoops with strangers.

Don’t cry
Don’t raise your eye
It’s only teenage wasteland

Moments are invincible. Moments bear no mind to what happens next, or what happened before them. For seven years, I’ve been lucky enough to treat my life like a moment. As my moment comes to an end, I’m turning to what I know best to honor it.

13-14:

I’m grouping my first two teenage years together for this chronology. These were the ages I moved from Tennessee to Texas, marking the most significant TN-TX relocation since Davy Crockett.

My teenage years were ushered in with a classic scenario; the new kid that’s trying to navigate a high school with an established ecosystem. The time I spend navigating unknowingly provided fodder for two pieces I wound up writing for MMH.

The Adele Eclipse, which draws parallels between society’s reaction to a total solar eclipse and Adele’s 30 album.

and

Long Live Movie Days, where I make Cody Tannen-Barrup feel old by comparing stories about watching movies in class.

MMH Developments

Music: “Holy Diver” by Dio came across my YouTube feed and it scared me, but I couldn’t stop listening to it, which scared me even more. Listening now, it’s fun ‘80s metal camp. Listening then, it was an aggressive shock to my system that legitimately altered the course of my music-listening life.
Movies: I was having a major Hitchcock moment around this time. I think I burned through Vertigo, Strangers On A Train, North By Northwest and The Birds in one sweet tea-drunk evening.
Hoops: At this age I was still holding out hope that I’d wind up as a then-5’8 white version of Zach Randolph in the NBA.

15:

If I ever get famous from this writing thing, my freshman year short film, Arthropod, will be what I will try to bury. I still stand by the concept though, here’s the film’s description (via an iMDB page I made for myself after it screened at a local film festival):

‘A radical animal rights group faces a moral dilemma when fleas are discovered in their office’.

The film, for being fully created by a 14-year-old holding a camera for the first time, isn’t terrible. I feel like making an embarrassing short film as a student is a rite of passage for any artsy kid. You haven’t grown up until there’s a YouTube video you don’t want anyone to see but you’ll still leave up because you’re secretly proud of it.

MMH Developments

Music: I was front row for Greta Van Fleet’s first tour in a relatively small House of Blues in Dallas. Punches were thrown in the crowd. Bras were thrown from the crowd. It was a perfect caricature of what 15-year-old Simon thought a rock and roll show was. Perhaps inspired by me, Greta Van Fleet has now dined on caricaturing rock and roll shows for years now. I’m not into them anymore, but it’s still one of the most fun shows I’ve ever attended, unfortunately.
Movies: I went to the Dallas premiere of Knives Out and for some reason became totally convinced that either Chris Evans or Ana De Armas would show up after the credits. I got so wrapped up in the anticipation that I didn’t fully appreciate the movie until a rewatch years later.
Hoops: The 16-seed UMBC Retrievers upset 1-seed Virginia Cavaliers and I’m convinced it’s the greatest sports moment since Ali-Frazier. I’m also convinced that nobody called them the Retrievers because I’m hearing that name for the first time right now.

16:

I arrived at an impasse. I was too young to work but too ambitious to sit around and accept the previous fact. So I did what every bored sports fan tries at least once in their life; I started an internet blog.

The home page boasted “BASKETBALL BEESWAX” in bold, all caps letters. My excitement that the name wasn’t already taken single handedly fueled me through about six months straight of daily blogging. Looking back, the workload I put on myself for no other reason but having something to do was pretty insane. I’m glad I did it though. Basketball Beeswax made up the entirety of my portfolio when MMH hired me, which means at least one Jewish guy from Western Mass (Sasha) thought my work was good.

Near the end of this year, I interviewed an old record store owner in Dallas who told me to meet him at his shop at “midnight, no earlier, no later”. When I got there, he looked me dead in the eyes and asked “Do you want this to be a good interview or a bad interview?”

“Obviously a good interview,” I answered. He promptly took a little black jar out of a drawer, informed me that it was cocaine that had been personally gifted to him by Keith Richards, and proceeded to snort eight thick lines of it before telling me to start asking questions.

Credit to him, it ended up being a pretty good interview.

MMH Developments

I got in trouble for scribbling random Top 5 lists directly on a wooden table at school. They called it “vandalism”. I called it “therapy”. Anyway, here’s a few of those lists that were previously exclusive to the Lake Highlands High School cafeteria.
Music: Good songs by bad artists; 1. “Gone Baby Gone” by The Violent Femmes 2. “Make It Mine” by Jason Mraz 3. “Generator” by Foo Fighters 4. “My Prerogative” by Bobby Brown 5. “Last Train Home” by John Mayer
Bad songs by good artists; 1. “Under Pressure” by Queen AND David Bowie² 2. “Just Can’t Get Enough” by Depeche Mode 3. “We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Billy Joel 4. “Otha Fish” by The Pharcyde 5. “Sexual Healing’ by Marvin Gaye
Movies: Films I haven’t watched but don’t feel like I need to in order to understand them; 1. Soylent Green 2. Forrest Gump 3. Scarface 4. The Hangover 5. Friday The 13th
Hoops: Players that nobody appreciates like I do; 1. Zach Randolph 2. TJ McConnell 3. Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf 4. Boris Diaw 5. Jonas Valanciunas

17:

It took me spraining my wrist and then spraining my ankle the day I recovered from the wrist to give up my dream of being a newly-6’0 white Zach Randolph in the NBA. Somehow, these two injuries were the only ones I’d ever suffered in my life. I still haven’t broken a bone, so while I’ve given up on being an NBA roleplayer, I haven’t given up on being a new age David Dunn.

MMH Developments

Music: I listened to every Stevie Wonder album start-to-finish while playing online chess in school and came to the conclusion that he’s the best recording artist of all time. I also came to the conclusion that I needed friends.
Movies: In another, less painful self-realization, I attempted to make a ten minute short film before realizing that I actually dislike working with cameras and that storyboarding could be used as a torture device on me. Writing was always what interested me, it took me drawing out one too many Dutch angles to figure it out.
Hoops: Pre-sprains, I played in an AAU tournament that was interrupted by a cat walking on the court.

18:

At the end of the year prior, I put on this huge concert at a Dallas theater which cost me way more money than I had and way more effort than I was able to give. Somehow, it worked out. I carried this on into a full year of barnstorming concerts around Dallas. One venue was inside a storage unit. Another was at a 21+ bar that didn’t find out I was underage until day-of.

I call my brand “One Time Only”, OTO for short. At least once a week I’m chastised with “If it’s called one time only why are you doing it so many times?” Each event is supposed to be its own one-off, these people are not my target audience.

MMH Developments

Music: Ozzy Osbourne releases “Patient Number 9”, an album that’s an afterthought to most music fans. Not to me. I was unreasonably obsessed with the idea of an Ozzy record that was produced by people who grew up listening to Ozzy. As a result, they get to make the Ozzy record that they always wanted, using him like a mascot in a sense. He gets paraded around with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck; reunited with Tony Iommi and even shares the stage with Zakk Wylde, a guy who’s made a whole career out of being a Black Sabbath fan. The whole album is like Ozzy’s metal silliness crossed with pop chorus and sensibilities by the younger producers.
Movies: I did one semester at a community college where they made me editor of their student newspaper. I got into a full screaming match with the paper’s movie review student because he was too scared to watch and review Smile despite it being his job to do so.
Hoops: I made three separate attempts to see LeBron live and failed in a different, dramatic way each time. It’s chronicled in more detail here.

19:

MMH Developments

Music: Marked my fifth Erykah Badu show. The best ticket in town.
Movies: How cool is Letterboxd? And how did iMDB not think of this years ago? I never expected to have two movie apps on my phone.
Hoops: Finally settled into my pickup retirement, only breaking when the batsignal for dropsteps and corner threes is shown for me.

I can’t eulogize what’s currently unfolding, but I’ll say this:

I write for a living, and for the time being I can’t see a fleeting end to this. This moment in my life, still being a teenager, is incredibly special to me. But that’s how it always feels. Moments are invincible. I enjoyed mine.

1. #2 in the “I cannot believe he didn’t get in more trouble for this” power rankings behind OJ and ahead of Joe Pesci releasing a rap song. [↩]
2. The most disappointing collaboration of all time. Bar none. It was two of the most talented music acts of a generation together, it should’ve blown our minds. Instead it’s a silver medal to “Ice Ice Baby”. [↩]