I had an odd experience this past weekend. I got drunk (not odd), went bombing around Netflix for some shit to watch (not odd), and stumbled upon Road Trip.
So you know, I was drunk and I decided to watch it. Spoiler alert….The movie….Its…
Quick diversion here on why that is. I already don’t like Todd Phillips, the director of Joker (Road Trip was his first movie), so we are starting off bad. And plus I really don’t like Tom Green. Sorry.
And whats fucked is the supposed highlight of the movie is like Tom Green improvising. Just him by himself in rooms ranting and shit….man what a bad time for the boner comedy.
But yeah what you get is a dogshit script, held together by Tom Green improv and shitty direction. So, you know, I did not like it.
But that’s not the point of the story. The point of the story, is I seemed to shock some people with the fact that I had never seen this movie. I got a ton of “IT WAS SO IMPORTANT AT THE TIME” and “WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU DOING IN THE 2000s?”
This kind of threw me for a bit. Probably more than it was worth.
Either the person I was talking to vastly underestimated the cultural influence of the 31st highest grossing movie of the 2000s, or I was missing out on cultural touchtones of my generation.
THEN (unrelated) I was digging in old hard drives, looking for something random and found a ton of random artifacts from that time. So I can say with certainty what I was actually spending my time with instead of going see teeny bopper horse shit.
So, we are going to list some of those things below. Not at all to say, “See what I was doing was a better use of my time.” It most DEFINITELY was not. Some of this shit would have been better for me to drop.
I think I am building this list as an artifact. A point in time. I can say from these pieces what I had going on in the 2000s, so it sounds right to put it here.
Trying to be overly cool and going see a bunch of obscure shit. Natch. Just looking at emails, it was about getting groups together to go to the indie theater and write shittly written reviews on those movies. And I mean once a month turned into once a week by the time college rolled around, so there was a ton of this. I can see for sure that I didn’t go to the local movie theater unless it was some nerdy shit I was passionate about. And I was definitely an ass about anything mainstream. This is probably a big reason that I missed the causal movies of the time. Like if I went to a rental store back then, i was looking for some obscure shit. Not Road Trip.
Building shitty sprite comics. I kept finding all these folders of sprite sheets, and I couldnt figure out what the hell I was gathering all these materials for. Oh, I found a folder that only had one or two. Some webcomic series that I had the intent of publishing and never got around to it. Was reading alot of those back in the day, and I never finished it. Here is a taste of the shame.
I think I had good reason for no one seeing these. They were as not good as Road Trip.
Hustling on mIRC or AIM for obscure content. Already back then, I was obsessed with the .avi format. Back then, there was a ton of content that I loved that flat out you couldn’t get. Wasn’t on TV anymore and wasn’t being distributed. Shit like Sifl n Olly and Real Ghostbusters. I spent hours hustling random forums, pinging people and shit. I got full collections, but it took years.
Playing a shit pile of UO/Dark Age of Camelot/Star Wars Galaxies. WoW was later. But a ton of time was spent on those games. Almost like it was a hang. Just hours spending bombing around doing stupid shit. Fuckin good times were had, but definitely another reason why I didnt see Road Trip.
Standard late high school/early college fare. I think this bucket is anything that life requires. I spent time trying to get internships. Finding financial aid. Doing different student programs in college. I kept finding all these powerpoints that I did for various student groups and random jobs in college. To be honest, even looking at them now, I don’t remember getting anything from any of these. What I mean is experience, jobs, etc. But, I definitely must have spent a ton of time doing this stuff.
Crafting live journal bullshit. A lot like my current bullshit, in the latter part of the mid-2000s, I spent a ton of time on Live Journal entries. I found draft after draft of these long ass entries I would put together. So you know, some things never die and Shame Springs Eternal.
Every other creative endeavor. I did a bunch of creative stuff in that time period. Made movies with my friends. Had various bands with my friends. We had some end product just for us, but a TON of time was spent doing that. Days of being at each other’s houses with computers set up, editing or plotting world domination or planning the next thing we could record. I still love all that shit from that era, and it means the world to me. But, it was definitely a reason I wasn’t keeping up with the trends.
I don’t know what all of that gets me, other than a look back into a period of time. Oh and shame.
I guess what it says about me is that being connected to every little thing (in a way that’s unavoidable today) was never a priority. Found the shit I liked and dug in deep on it.
I didn’t see Road Trip cause it looked stupid, and I wasn’t going to see it unless I had no other reason. Drunk and bored 20 years later, seemed like a good enough reason. I was wrong. The movie was bad.
That is all.