Sorry mom and dad.
The first time I heard Britney Spears was on Hoosier Hot 96.3, primarily a rap station that dabbled in a little R&B. At the time I probably assumed 'Britney Spears' was an African American teenage pop star, similar to Brandy or Monica. You can imagine my surprise when I got home from school later that day and turned on this...
And that's the exact moment I realized that I liked girls.
She was everywhere for the next two years. Britney ruled MTV, she was bigger than N Sync and The Backstreet Boys combined and was unquestionably the hottest woman on the planet.
I probably never finished my homework on the bus that day. I didn't finish it a lot of days. Perhaps it would be indicative of things to come. When a teacher (in the gifted and talented program no less) would look at me and ask me why I didn't do my homework, I would simply say 'I don't know. But that was a lie. I DID know. I didn't do my homework because I wanted to watch TRL, I didn't do my homework because I wanted to now race home to talk to all my classmates on instant messenger.
Me: Hey.
Hot Girl in my class: Hey.
Me: Sup?
HGIC: Nothin, you?
Me: Same.
That was usually the end of the convo but at 11/12 years old that shit was THRILLING...and I've found myself nostalgic a lot lately. With so much crazy shit going on in the world right now it seems silly that the biggest deal in the world used to be telling my parents I got a B- on a test or I missed two free throws in basketball. I used to lose sleep over that kind of stuff and now I realize none of it ever mattered.
I look back at the elaborate schemes I used to do to prevent my parents from finding out my bad grades. There are puzzle boxes buried in the woods behind my house full of bad tests. Like I legit ripped them up, put them in old puzzle boxes and BURIED THEM LIKE DEAD PETS.
You know what else would have probably worked? Throwing them away in literally any trash can in the city of Indianapolis.
I was weird.
*******
19 years later I found myself in a rented Chevy Tahoe driving East down I-15 arguing about the rules of Taboo, it was my 30th birthday and I was heading to Vegas to celebrate in style.
The car was full of people ranging from 26-74 which may sound strange on its face but is rather a good encapsulation of life in Venice.
Upon dropping our car off at the Las Vegas Airport a limousine picked us up it was 3pm, we had precisely 18 hours until our flight on Sunday. Less than one day in Vegas, One last hurrah in my 20's before I chalked it up to a decade of debauchery and opened the next chapter in my life.
We checked into a Penthouse at the Vdara. For 8 people we had 3 beds, 2 couches, 4 bottles of whiskey and a funfetti cake. We would have to make it work. It was temporary after all.
I had kind of been viewing this trip as my last stand. While 30 can be viewed as just a number, I have been thinking a long time about changing a few of my life habits. There comes a point in everyone's life where staying out all night and sleeping all day just isn't cute anymore. I started to ration that I was getting close to the expiration date on my laissez-faire lifestyle. After all, you can't live with two roommates and a cat forever. So much like last year's Coachella trip, I viewed this Vegas as a bit of a coda on what had been a wild 10 years. It wasn't a funeral, more of a memorial service for my 20's. But if I was gonna go out....might as well go out big.
Our first stop was at a golf simulator inside the MGM Grand. While I hoped the technology would be a bit forgiving, I can confirm that I put just as many balls into pixelized lakes as I do into real lakes. After four hours at Top Golf, it was already time prep for dinner. I diverted toward Aria to try my hand at the TODs beer chug challenge and for the first time in my life, I lost.
Back in the room I declared to the group that we would be having cake as an appetizer.
It would be the last thing I would eat that night.
Strolling onto the Las Vegas Strip with a blazer that I had bought one day earlier (I treat party blazers like disposable razors. I wear them once and know they aren't coming home with me) we set off for a place to dine with no real destination in mind. I had stayed at the Planet Hollywood a few weeks earlier with my dad and because of this I must have steered the group in this direction.
It seemed that the group had decided to go get some famous dumplings for dinner with some sort of club plan to follow. But when I looked up and realized that we were standing outside the AXIS Theater I played out the rest of my life in a few seconds. In that moment of clarity I pictured every time I would tell someone about my 30th birthday Vegas trip, 'I got dumplings,' didn't seem quite as cool as "I went to Britney, bitch." With that I walked to the box office and handed them a stack of cash,
It was the greatest decision I have made in the past 5 years.
If you are looking for a mini review of the Britney show I will say the following:
She does not sing.
And I do not mean that she lip syncs or sings over an exaggerated backing track...she. does. not. sing.
Hard stop.
The Britney Spears Piece of Me tour is a dance show. Britney plays all of her top 10 hits with absurd dance routines, sometimes bordering on cirque de solei level theatrics and it is awesome. I was having so much fun that I forgot to take a picture, a picture that would have easily eclipsed 200 likes, and I'm not even mad.
Britney still looks as good as she did that first day on TRL and yet I can't help but compare our last 10 years. She's certainly had some ups and definitely had some downs. (As have I) but on the night of January 28th, 2017 we were together in the same room and it was perfect.
Around 11:30 the show ended. People had been handing me drinks all night as they found out it was my 30th. I was starting to lose track of time or how much I had consumed, but somehow I ended up with my old roommate at the Wynn.
"Where are we?"
"I think I can get us into Dillon Francis."
So I stood there for a moment, considering sitting down to shut my eyes for just a second when I saw a side door open.
"Moelman...in here!"
After walking through what appeared to be a janitor closet, I realized I was in the back VIP room of a club.
"What is this?"
"We're at Dillon Francis."
I wasn't quite sure if this was all real or some sort of Narnia fever dream, but someone handed me a whiskey and ushered me onto a stage, directly below a CO2 cannon, an ideal spot for someone who has a proclivity to sweat like I do.
Before long, our entire party had managed to make it back stage of the Dillon Francis show and I realized I was dancing in full view of a bunch of bros that had spent likely thousands of dollars to get a dance floor table at Omnia.
I walked through a broom closet.
The crew started thinning by around 4am. The first round of flights was at 8am. Fortunately I had the foresight to book something afternoon. By the time I returned to the room, the best available bed was the pull out couch right next to my elderly friend, certainly not the woman I was expecting to wake up next to on my 30th.
The next morning I was predictably in rough shape. I had 2 more pieces of cake and a bag of potato chips before grabbing a beer out of the fridge. I think I had two more before I made my way to McCarran.
I returned to LAX to find a total shit storm as every left leaning person in person in Los Angeles county came to protest Trump's travel ban, ensuring that I would have a top 10 awful hangover.
I walked from terminal 3 to the In n Out on Lincoln and grabbed an Uber home, praying that there would be no activity waiting for me at 627 Westminster.
Of course there were people there with bottles of Champagne, whiskey, cupcakes and pizza.
It could have been worse.
And then I woke up Monday on the couch, 30 and a day....with the rest of my life ahead of me.
What now?
It's a scary thought. I'm more lost now than I think I have ever been in my life.
As cocky and stupid as I was when i was younger, I at least thought I had the answers.
High school: Do JUST well enough to get into Indiana.
College: Join a frat, graduate from Kelley, have fun, move to Chicago.
Chicago: Work this awful job for 2 years and leave.
LA: Start your career as a TV writer.
Well I started my career in entertainment and it stalled a little. I'm 30 and confused.
But then I look back at what just happened...
Seven of my friends came to Las Vegas with me on a whim because they like spending time with me.
10 more were waiting at my house the next day to welcome me home. 9 more came over the following night to watch my favorite movie with me and eat popcorn.
If I have 20ish people that want to spend time with me, I can't be doing that bad right?
A few of my close friends wrote me notes online and sent me cards. None of those cards said, 'I hate you, you're a huge dick.' They were all messages of love.
Family members reached out to tell me how proud they are and people all over the world told me they were thinking of me.
It got me thinking...what if my perceived problems now are just as insignificant as the ones I was worried with 19 years ago? Is beating myself up over work stuff the equivalent of burying my bad test scores in the backyard?
My car got towed last week and I really thought it was the end of the world. It cost me $1500 to get it out and I kept thinking 'welcome to 30, life sucks now.' But in reality, my life doesn't suck. I had a ton of fun in Vegas and there is no reason to make a blanket statement like 'time to grow up, can't be blacking out in Vegas anymore.' Just like after last year's Coachella I didn't truly feel some cathartic release with a decision to finally be over it.
I think what I have realized is this 'thing' that is inside me, will never be out of my system. I'm not going to wake up one day and just be done being me. This is who I am. I'm a single dude living in LA (omg I just paid off the blog title) trying to make it doing something cool. I'll have professional and personal ups and downs, but I think the maturity lies in picking my spots moving forward.
Again I'll bring it back to Britney, she had her kids taken away from her in 2007. That's a real life holy shit problem. You all remember it, she lost her mind, shaved her head and then spent most of the next year and a half in rehab. And now she makes half a million dollars a night dancing around to her old music. I do that shit every Saturday and no one pays me a cent!
It's important for me to remember that there will be good days and bad days, days with regret and days full of hope. But if we have our health and the love of those around us anything is possible and the future remains bright. I'm 30 now and I don't know where I'll be in 5 years, but I do know there are a lot of people willing to help me get there.
No comments:
Post a Comment