My Dad was awed by Mike Tyson. So was I. When Mike Tyson was in Atlantic City he liked to eat at the White House sub shop on Arctic Avenue, just off the beaten path of the casinos. He was as real as the rapidly-drying cheese between the chewy steak. The White House had the best cheesesteaks on earth. Frank Sinatra had them flown out to his place in California.
My parents drove into the thick of Atlantic City at night to get those cheesesteaks. I remember a little black girl with corn-rowed hair. I remember how scary Atlantic City was, a dark, scary slum. The apartments had too-white interiors lit by fluorescent lights. The residents walked down the streets and made weird noises.
Mike Tyson was associated with the grit of Rocky's Philadelphia, of bell-bottomed hoodlum "creep" and ice-skating rinks closed on Thanksgiving.
Today I was at the Time Warner Center on 59th Street, one of my favorite places in the world. I educated myself there. Through the summer of 2004 I went to the Time Warner Center's Borders and read everything I could get my hands on for hours on end. The Time Warner Center was my college.
A group of rowdy black kids were behind me on the escalator. We're so post-everything we are even post-nihilism. Though I think New York City is as big and bad as it ever was, it certainly is not the NYC of the "Crocodile Dundee" movies. There are no muggers approaching people on 42nd Street. "Hey man! You got a light?" Pulls out a switchblade: "Now give me yo' wallet!" There are no longer bad-asses in Michael Jackson get-ups.
The fact of the matter is that in my time kids were KILLERS. Not only that but they were FUCKERS (literally and figuratively.) Or they were DRUGGIES. Or they were into something WEIRD or ANTI-SOCIAL or WEIRDLY ANTI-SOCIAL.
Let me state this emphatically:
KIDS NOWADAYS ARE PUSSIES!!!!!!!
KIDS NOWADAYS ARE PUSSIES!!!!!!!
KIDS NOWADAYS ARE PUSSIES!!!!!!!
They are too busy texting and tweeting!!!
They don't even know what FUCKING is all about...
If I see one more black kid on a skateboard I'm going to join the KKK!!!
Everyone should be an 80s Cliches, an 80s stereotype. Why not? There's no such thing as originality anyway. I'll be Patrick Dempsey from "Can't Buy Me Love". I'll be the nerd who gets the girl at the end.
The fact of the matter, my friends, is that we are simply evolving into something else. We're evolving into ADHD-suffering Sensation-Mongers. We will soon only be individual bags of sensations. The fact of the matter is that we can simply go on in this automaton state forever. It can last for eternity.
So I think of Mike Tyson and I think of how "out of style" I am. How am I going to stand up to the relentless march of progress. And should I? Really, do I suffer that much! No, I don't! I've made myself suffer by resisting life. Think of Nietzsche. Think of myself. Forget others. Perpetually become one's own self. See cancer, see light, see darkness, see progress, see stagnation! (I had a short story today - it popped into my head around the time the texting, skateboarding blacks made all that noise and I forgot it! How could I forget it! I've been so blocked lately and a writer is not supposed to write about being blocked but I have been blocked. I had an idea for a short story.)
I saw the New Yorker on sale at Whole Foods. Now they're talking about neuroenhancers. I need to read my Hegel. We're evolving into something new and lately I've been feeling like I've been left behind. I have bitterness toward metro - or at least toward the scumbags who now edit it. But could I even write for them anymore? I don't even know what's going on anymore? What would I write about? What's a Twitter Tweet? Oh, I just want to separate all the mucky-muck from myself.
What was I thinking of today? How could I have let an idea pass me by?
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