I Used to Live in the Future
So I'm sitting here, packing my bags for my girlfriend's friend's (you still with me?) Texas wedding that "Society" says I need to attend...
(I hope Texas' "Society" is also forcing THAT guy to attend, so Tex and I can hang out at the bar, do tequila shots with Shiner longneck chasers, and talk shit about everyone doing the Chicken Dance...)
Like any Good American, I'm packing all my shit into one blatantly oversized carry-on, which, upon boarding the plane, I will insist fit above the seats "last time."
And I will MAKE it fit, because I care so little about this wedding that I'm not worried about crushing and wrinking my nice duds before I even get there. As a matter of fact, I'm already balling up my suit and pouring Jack Daniels on my shirt - to cut out the middleman.
But a single, overwhelming, pre-flight thought hits me as I fill tiny 3.7 ounce containers with my smell-good shit and toothpaste, look frantically for a quart-sized clear Ziploc bag to hold it all, and stare, first at my menacingly deadly nail clippers, then at my fingernails, wondering just how much they're going to grow in the next 48 hours and whether I'll need to smuggle the clippers on board in my shoes...
Yep. It hits me like a board between my eyes:
I used to live in the future.
I remember the future like it was the year 2000, and man was it awesome.
I know it's hard to picture in these troubled times, but, seriously, the future was great.
Look at my ordeal today, for example: in the future, you could get to the airport ten minutes before your plane was going to take off with shit falling out of your bag as you fell out of the taxi, and the flunkies in security would just laugh and say, "you'd better run!"
In the future, you could sit in the emergency exit row of the plane and get shitfaced and laugh about how glad you were to have all that legroom, because if an emergency DID happen, you were going to need a little help.
In the future, you could joke about this shit without getting on some government watchlist, like I will in a few seconds...
Oh, and the great things about the future weren't just limited to airplane observations (which, as any student of the future knows, were hack even back then).
No, the future was really, really awesome, for a lot of reasons...
In the future, our leaders had worked through most of the major international and domestic challenges of the day. In fact, things in the future got to a point where the biggest social issues were interns without gag reflexes, and our rock stars were so bored that even Metallica decided to give up on being angry and cool - and got bored enough to start harassing 17-year old kids for downloading crappy live versions of Welcome Home (Sanitarium) from Napster.
(Come on Lars, like you expected someone to pay for that WHOLE album?!? There's an eleven minute guitar solo on there!)
THAT's how much free time we had in the future.
The future was also a great time to see the world.
I'm glad I took advantage of the future when I had a chance!
I could bore you with stories from the future, but a good example from April of 2000... My Jewish friend and I had one too many puffs of a Bedouin's "peace pipe" at the Dead Sea, and we took a wrong turn into a rough Palestinian section of Jerusalem as we sped home in our now-beat-up rental car. We were lost, it was getting dark, and all of the street signs were in Arabic...
And you know what happened to us? A tall, attractive British lady in yellow spandex jogged up to our car out of nowhere, knocked on the window, and gave us directions back onto the highway - after complimenting my friend's hair and recommending a place for us to grab a beer to chill out first!
Man, the future had it all - Bedouins, cheap rental cars, and hot women in spandex who would show up to save you in the nick of time...
Shit.
Forgive me.
Here I go, rambling on and on about the future, like some old cliche.
Thanks for humoring me.
I can only hope that when I tell my kids about the future, they'll believe me.
I'll tell 'em, back in the future, I used to drive a super-efficient Volkswagen Golf, but nowadays I'm driving an SUV that barely passes its emissions test...
They won't believe me.
The future was THAT good.
Well, no sense in getting all nostalgic for the future. For now, I'm just hoping my flight is delayed less than 3 hours and I make it to Houston in time for at least one drink at the reception's open bar...
I hope your future was as good as mine, because things aren't getting any better any soon.
I'll save you a beer.
(I hope Texas' "Society" is also forcing THAT guy to attend, so Tex and I can hang out at the bar, do tequila shots with Shiner longneck chasers, and talk shit about everyone doing the Chicken Dance...)
Like any Good American, I'm packing all my shit into one blatantly oversized carry-on, which, upon boarding the plane, I will insist fit above the seats "last time."
And I will MAKE it fit, because I care so little about this wedding that I'm not worried about crushing and wrinking my nice duds before I even get there. As a matter of fact, I'm already balling up my suit and pouring Jack Daniels on my shirt - to cut out the middleman.
But a single, overwhelming, pre-flight thought hits me as I fill tiny 3.7 ounce containers with my smell-good shit and toothpaste, look frantically for a quart-sized clear Ziploc bag to hold it all, and stare, first at my menacingly deadly nail clippers, then at my fingernails, wondering just how much they're going to grow in the next 48 hours and whether I'll need to smuggle the clippers on board in my shoes...
Yep. It hits me like a board between my eyes:
I used to live in the future.
I remember the future like it was the year 2000, and man was it awesome.
I know it's hard to picture in these troubled times, but, seriously, the future was great.
Look at my ordeal today, for example: in the future, you could get to the airport ten minutes before your plane was going to take off with shit falling out of your bag as you fell out of the taxi, and the flunkies in security would just laugh and say, "you'd better run!"
In the future, you could sit in the emergency exit row of the plane and get shitfaced and laugh about how glad you were to have all that legroom, because if an emergency DID happen, you were going to need a little help.
In the future, you could joke about this shit without getting on some government watchlist, like I will in a few seconds...
Oh, and the great things about the future weren't just limited to airplane observations (which, as any student of the future knows, were hack even back then).
No, the future was really, really awesome, for a lot of reasons...
In the future, our leaders had worked through most of the major international and domestic challenges of the day. In fact, things in the future got to a point where the biggest social issues were interns without gag reflexes, and our rock stars were so bored that even Metallica decided to give up on being angry and cool - and got bored enough to start harassing 17-year old kids for downloading crappy live versions of Welcome Home (Sanitarium) from Napster.
(Come on Lars, like you expected someone to pay for that WHOLE album?!? There's an eleven minute guitar solo on there!)
THAT's how much free time we had in the future.
The future was also a great time to see the world.
I'm glad I took advantage of the future when I had a chance!
I could bore you with stories from the future, but a good example from April of 2000... My Jewish friend and I had one too many puffs of a Bedouin's "peace pipe" at the Dead Sea, and we took a wrong turn into a rough Palestinian section of Jerusalem as we sped home in our now-beat-up rental car. We were lost, it was getting dark, and all of the street signs were in Arabic...
And you know what happened to us? A tall, attractive British lady in yellow spandex jogged up to our car out of nowhere, knocked on the window, and gave us directions back onto the highway - after complimenting my friend's hair and recommending a place for us to grab a beer to chill out first!
Man, the future had it all - Bedouins, cheap rental cars, and hot women in spandex who would show up to save you in the nick of time...
Shit.
Forgive me.
Here I go, rambling on and on about the future, like some old cliche.
Thanks for humoring me.
I can only hope that when I tell my kids about the future, they'll believe me.
I'll tell 'em, back in the future, I used to drive a super-efficient Volkswagen Golf, but nowadays I'm driving an SUV that barely passes its emissions test...
They won't believe me.
The future was THAT good.
Well, no sense in getting all nostalgic for the future. For now, I'm just hoping my flight is delayed less than 3 hours and I make it to Houston in time for at least one drink at the reception's open bar...
I hope your future was as good as mine, because things aren't getting any better any soon.
I'll save you a beer.
posted by Matt at 10:01 PM
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2 Comments:
Wow, Matt, thanks. I really miss the future, too. It IS sad that our kids, when and if we do have them, will have no concept of how cool the future was . . .
Hmm, I still drive a VW Golf of the Future. It was purchased exactly 6 months to the day before the stone age returned.
I hope the future comes back - it could if people smarten up and stop being afraid.
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