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Abstract

nobody else saw, not even me when reacquainted with the pulses of the everyday world.</p><p id="9c95">It may have been wandering, or boredom, or self-destructive behavior that led me into the bathroom at the blue level of Madison Square Garden with Keegan, a friend from boarding school. I was getting ready to drop two windowpanes of a four-way hit. Whatever I was seeking, I knew that, at the very least, this dose would provide a counter-irritant to douse the peat-fire of boredom and wanting burning in my guts.</p><p id="4657">Keegan asked me how many panes I wanted to take.</p><p id="c93a">I asked, “how many are you going to take”?</p><p id="9068">He said, “two”.</p><p id="46ca">I said, “I’ll take two, then.”</p><p id="b8c7">Soon after I took them he told me that he had dosed on this same acid two days before, which would mean that he had some resistance to the batch and was doubling his intake to make sure he got high. What it meant for me was that if the acid was any good I was going to get very high, and the acid was good.</p><p id="a94e">Whether what Keegan had done was “mean”, “unfair”, “stupid”, “dangerous”, “funny”, or “not a big deal”, wasn’t a question I asked at the time. It was two decades before I began to realize that some of my “friends” were not my friends. It may be of no surprise to people older than fifty that many of the people I once called “friends” were really transactional acquaintances forged in a furnace of boredom and need. At some point in my life (like, about age forty) there was the awful realization that some of the people I referred to as “friends” were simply people that let me hang out with them. They didn’t actively humiliate or shun me, and so, to my adolescent pollywog brain, they were “friends”, even if there was no reciprocity in our relationship.</p><p id="ba48">Keegan was not someone I hung onto. In the brutal pecking order of boarding school hierarchy he and I were roughly equal, though we shouldn’t have been. Keegan was smart and funny, but he was also overweight, messy, and occasionally obstinate, in the kind of peevish way that eventually stops making sense. In a milieu where sports, good looks, and emotional control counted in the calculation of your social credit score, I could fairly count Keegan as an “equal” despite the fact that he was a more compelling, charismatic, and engaging character than I was.</p><p id="9ded">Keegan had another strike against him that may be hard to explain nowadays. His parents were divorced and he was being raised by a single mother. Why that information reflected poorly on him is a topic for another serving of dreck, but there is no question that my dysfunctional, alcohol-soaked, “in-tact” nuclear family gave me a lift. Keegan’s mother, who was smart but stranded economically (though not so stranded that she couldn’t afford boarding school for her son) came to parent’s day alone, or didn’t come at all. While that information seems like it would be the last thing that teenage boys would care about, somehow it factored into the equation, and, in ways that confuse both logic and analysis, made it easier for us to take Keegan himself less seriously.</p><p id="6a81">As I look back at it, I don’t think Keegan was being a dick when he gave me the double dose. We can explain it away by using the euphemism, “he was being mischievous”. He saw it as a prank. Had he not died of a drug overdose when we were in our twenties, I am certain that today he would be willing to either apologize or explain to me why he didn’t need to apologize. I’m sorry he can’t do that.</p><h2 id="ba57">Part II: The Trip</h2><p id="4aa8">After dropping the acid in the bathroom, a metallic flush began on my tongue and filled my entire mouth while we were walking on the concourse towards our seats. I was seeing vivid color trails before any music started. When the Grateful Dead came out, I couldn’t quite fathom what was happening. All I saw was Gerry Garcia’s great gray set of hair mushrooming and breathing as he took the stage. His hair kept expanding until it filled more than a third of the Garden. Then then band began to play.</p><p id="6d9d">Here is the a recording in the concert. There is a crash at the beginning of the opening number, <i>Mississippi Half-Step</i>, which I clearly remember, though at the time, I couldn’t make any sense of it.</p> <figure id="f154"> <div> <div> <img class="ratio" src="http://placehold.it/16x9"> <iframe class="" src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2Fs_PakceAHxs%3Ffeature%3Doembed&display_name=YouTube&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Ds_PakceAHxs&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2Fs_PakceAHxs%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" width="854"> </div> </div> </figure></iframe></div></div></figure><p id="06c9">Throughout the concert Keegan and I stayed in our seats. At one point a Deadhead “twirler” came up to our tier and spent what seemed like hours Grateful Dead dancing.</p> <figure id="9bcf"> <div> <div> <img class="ratio" src="http://placehold.it/16x9"> <iframe class="" src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FtmBIgvOYfLw&display_name=YouTube&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DtmBIgvOYfLw&image=http%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FtmBIgvOYfLw%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" width="854"> </div> </div> </figure></iframe></div></div></figure><p id="ef40">I must have been smoking. I didn’t really smoke much as a kid, but I didn’t “not smoke” and since almost everyone in the world smoked, I sometimes did. Two girls came up to our seats and asked to bum a cigarette from me. I ha

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d a pack of Marlboros, but I couldn’t find them in the Vietnam era army jacket I was wearing. I had taken the jacket off, so I just kept turning it over and over looking through various pockets, it began to look like a carnival ride of pickle green cubby-holes. The girls stared expectantly, Keegan kept up a running commentary under his breath that they couldn’t hear:</p><p id="c961">“They’re <i>still</i> waiting. The two girls are waiting patiently while the stoned kid paws at his jacket pockets and grunts. No, that’s a lighter, Gutbloom. A lighter is not a pack of cigarettes, even if you stare at it for a long, long, time. What’s this? Hurray! You found something. A ticket! which is also not a pack of cigarettes….” etc., etc.</p><p id="46a0">After I gave the girls cigarettes, they walked away, and then the ceiling of Madison Square Garden touched the floor.</p><p id="90b4">Forty years ago I might have been able to tell you the peculiar hallucinations that accompanied individual songs. Some of those visions still color my emotional reaction to those tunes if I listen to them now, which I seldom do.</p><p id="1111">More memorable is the image of Keegan and his younger brother, who met us after the concert, standing on a New York City street trying to figure out which way was east. I was quite certain I knew, and I pointed north and said, “That’s uptown”, then pointed south and said, “that’s downtown, so that,” pointing east, “must be east.” I don’t remember if they agreed.</p><p id="d787">We went into an arcade in Times Square named Playland.</p><figure id="4e7d"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*MPnG0QZ1e9-LcTsYgF3z0g.jpeg"><figcaption><a href="https://weber-street-photography.com/2015/08/01/playland-times-sq-1985/">“Playland” Times Sq. 1985, ©Matt Weber</a>. Used without permission.</figcaption></figure><p id="d46d">When I told my brother about my adventure a few weeks after the fact, he told me that Playland was one of the “crusiest places on the planet and I was lucky I wasn’t swarmed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickenhawk_(gay_slang)">chickenhawks</a>.” I wasn’t. No chickenhawks that I remember. No people. There were people, but I don’t remember them. I just remember the green lines of the video game and the sound that the tanks made when they materialized.</p><figure id="e2bc"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*wvY5F25mQqrqBt2iPefnlQ.gif"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><p id="bdd2">There was nothing epic about my trip to the land of Nod. All of the epic was inside my head. From the outside, we were just messy stoned kids wandering around the city.</p><p id="a983">We made it Grand Central Station before the last New Haven Line commuter train had departed for the suburbs. On it, we joined a group of Deadheads from Rye that Keegan knew. They were another dirty lot. One of them was even wearing a top hat. Someone had a tape recorder, and they were playing the concert we had just attended.</p><p id="5c29">An argument broke out between Keegan and someone else about whether the Dead had played the “Weather Report Suite” at the concert (they hadn’t).</p><p id="834d">I wasn’t a Deadhead and had no interest in the argument. At the time I wasn’t impressed by the Rye kids. My ignorance was so complete that I could arrogantly dismiss that which I knew nothing about on the thinnest shred of misunderstood and badly reasoned evidence. I only knew what I knew, which was painfully little, but I was certain <a href="https://readmedium.com/there-s-no-place-like-home-a218b7891be3">that my beloved suburb</a> was in every way superior to Rye, and, so, by the deductive process that renders simple ignorance into mindnumbingly cocksure adolescent arrogance, I figured that the kids from Rye were somehow “wanting” and I shouldn’t waste my time on them.</p><p id="c296">Little did I know that Rye was the town where Ogden Nash lived, where the Dick Van Dyke Show was set, and that gave us Nick Kroll. I thought it was simply the backdrop for <a href="https://playlandpark.org/">Rye Playland</a>. There was plenty I could have enjoyed in Rye.</p><p id="91f2">Some time in the morning we tumbled out onto the station platform and, still as a group, went to a downtown diner that was open. I had a plate of eggs that wiggled, breathed, and grew hairs. My mouth was full of the chemical taste of speedy acid and I knew that I would be awake for at least eight more hours.</p><p id="d68b">We left the wandering pack of Deadheads and made it back to Keegan’s house as dawn arrived. His mother was awake.</p><p id="d19a">Keegan went immediately downstairs.</p><p id="6e00">His mother and I talked for a long time in the kitchen. Mrs. Keegan was kind and interesting… interesting because she seemed genuinely interested in me. She, like my mother, was a Westover graduate, and I had the realization that she was just like one of my aunts… could be one of my aunts… sitting at the kitchen table and making deceptively sophisticated small talk. I didn’t know much, but I knew she was shrouding her concern for both me and her son in her subtle and psychologically-sophisticated set of questions. Her rejoinders to my answers were sagacious. I wish I could remember them.</p><p id="c82b">For all the Koans I could recite (“Why does the Buddha come from the East?”) or snippets of the Tao Te Ching I could burp out (“The name that can be named..”) I didn’t recognize one of the Masters even while she was instructing me. Of course I couldn’t see her. If I had, I would have had to recognize her sister rabbi who was in the kitchen at my house. These boddhisattvas, who understood, endured, and knew so much, were willing to put their own “desires” aside in an attempt to feed and care for pupa hell bent on fucking up their yet-to-be spun cocoons.</p><p id="d2f6">I wish I knew then what I know now. I had met the goddess on my non-ayahuasca trip.</p><p id="5733">But I didn’t know. I went downstairs into Keegan’s basement bedroom to smoke pot, listen to Jethro Tull, and watch the walls swim.</p></article></body>

The Difference Between Good Movies and Entertaining Movies

And why a movie doesn’t have to be both.

I am not a huge movie person. I have a handful of movies and movie franchises that I enjoy, but by and large, I am not the type to watch a particular movie every year on a particular date for some reason or another. For me, movies are entertainment, but not necessarily something I pin my life to.

That’s not to say I look down on people who do those things. I’m a big fan of fandom in general, and as long as you’re not really bothering anyone with your fandom or being a gatekeeper, I don’t care what you do.

Do you want to hold an annual marathon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe through Endgame to see which of your friends can stay awake for the whole thing? Go for it. Do you spend your entire May 4th binging Star Wars movies? Sure, whatever makes you happy.

I do enjoy movies, however — I saw the first Avengers on opening night at midnight with a bunch of friends, and it is one of my favorite movie experiences of all time. As a kid, I watched the re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy in the 90s, and it turned me onto the franchise to the point where I spent the next decade absorbing as much Star Wars media as I could.

All of this is to say that I have a certain understanding of how movies can inspire people, to make them excited about something in what may otherwise be a bleak existence. Movies are important to a lot of people, and everyone has different tastes.

That said, I don’t particularly appreciate it when people crap all over summer blockbusters and popcorn movies. There is a whole group of people that will take every opportunity to beat up on Star Wars, or the Transformers franchise, or the Fast and the Furious franchise, or any of the over-the-top big-budget movies.

First off, why waste your energy? You’re not convincing anyone, you just feel like complaining about something. Second off, who cares? So what if Star Wars isn’t high art on the level of Citizen Kane? It doesn’t have to be good to be entertaining.

This is a distinction that I think a lot of people miss when it comes to movies and media in general. Something doesn’t have to be good to be entertaining. In fact, something can be the opposite of good and still be entertaining. The movie The Room is widely considered one of the worst movies of all time, but people love to watch it. Heck, the existence of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and RiffTrax proves the popularity of watching bad movies because they’re bad.

So watching bad movies because they’re bad is fine, but what about those big summer blockbusters that are jam-packed with explosions and light on exposition? They may not be bad, per se, but they’re definitely not going to win any awards for their dramatic storytelling.

Herein lies the point. When I judge a movie (or other media), I do so on a scale of good vs. entertaining. A movie can be good (i.e. Citizen Kane, which is considered a fantastic movie) and not necessarily be particularly entertaining (many people don’t care for the amount of exposition in it). On the flip side, a movie can be entertaining (Take your pick of summer blockbusters) and not necessarily be good (it can keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the runtime, but you won’t remember a thing about it an hour later).

There are plenty of movies that come out every year that are considered good but not entertaining. These are often called “Oscar bait,” and their sole purpose is to win “artsy” awards like Best Screenplay and such. They often don’t make a ton of money at the box office, but that’s not the point of them.

On the flipside, Michael Bay has made a career out of making entertaining movies that are, just, not very good. The Transformers franchise has made almost $5 billion at the box office, despite having mostly bad reviews from critics. However, despite the various plot holes, inconsistencies, poor acting, and generally bad scripts, audiences love them because HOLY CRAP IT’S THE TRANSFORMERS GUYS!

And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that. Plenty of people go to the movies to watch a good movie, but plenty of people go to movies to be entertained. I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens twice in the theater. Both times I enjoyed the movie thoroughly, and both times I left the theater and reflected on how, generally speaking, it wasn’t a great movie.

This approach can be taken with any media. Many people have shows they like despite them not being terribly good — reality TV tends to get lumped in here. Plenty of people read trashy romance novels despite (or perhaps because) of the fact that they’re terrible. There are plenty of terrible video games that people will play and beat just to say that they did, and they often have fun doing it.

Sometimes, I think we get hung up on whether a piece of media is good and miss the point of whether it fulfills its role in the world: to entertain. James Cameron’s Avatar was, by all accounts, hackneyed and derivative, but that didn’t stop it from making a billion dollars. People liked it, and they went to the theater in droves to watch it. And that’s okay.

I think what this all boils down to is this: let people like things. I’m serious. Too many people bash on movies or comics or books that are “bad” even though they’re popular. To these gatekeepers, liking something that falls into this category makes you a shallow, dumb person — the thing you like is bad and you should feel bad.

Why, though? Why can’t people just like the things they like without it being a value judgment on their character? Why does liking popular things make you bad or dumb? Why does liking a big-budget popcorn flick make you shallow? Why can’t people read trashy romance novels without being judged?

There is no reason for any of it. People are different and like different things. Just because you like something considered “high art” doesn’t make that thing more worthwhile than something popular. Popular things are popular for a reason: because they have mass appeal. Sure, they may not be art pieces or even terribly good at all, but that doesn’t mean we need to crap all over people who like them.

So, next time you see something that seems shallow or bad but is inexplicably popular and decide that you need to bitch about how bad that thing is to anyone who will listen, I have a piece of advice for you: just don’t. Everyone will be better off for it.

If you liked this, please subscribe to my publication, Thing a Day. I publish something every day on a variety of topics, so you never know what you’re going to see!

The Difference Between Good Movies and Entertaining Movies

And why a movie doesn’t have to be both.

Thing a Day

In which I write one thing each day.

I Work To Live, and You Should Too

Why we are not (and should not be) defined by our jobs.

You’re Allowed to be Bad at Your Hobbies

And you don’t ever have to get good.

Kids These Days Should Have It Too Easy

Or: Why being a grumpy old fart about younger generations is dumb.