I had an extremely satisfying moment of schadenfreude at my high school reunion, but other than that, yeah, kind of a wash.
Crap, for me it's 20 years this summer.
If I'm that old, I should probably be sleeping now.
I see no reason to go to any reunions. Facebook meets all my extremely limited needs regarding keeping up with people.
My 50th H.S. reunion is next month. I'm not going to bother, I didn't care for most of them then and care much less now.
I was intending to not go to any reunions, because I felt bad about not keeping in touch with anyone. But now that I'm in touch with people through Facebook, I'm looking forward to seeing them in person.
Stanley, I dare you to send a hobo. It's just as hilarious as a stripper.
8: You mean neither is actually all that funny? I'm impressed she went through with it, mostly.
My 10th was actually a great shindig at a park, but then the serious people took over for the 20th and I've not been back since.
I have to admit: sending a stripper to pretend to be you at your ten-year high school reunion is a pretty damn hilarious idea.
Eh, I suppose. Kinda lame, kinda shitty. Definitely not as funny in practice as she seems to think it is. And by the end it looks like not many were fooled, or at least not for long. But apparently she's made it into a full documentary?
My 45th is this year. I'll go if I can. It will mostly be the locals who never escaped Wobegon.
11: yeah, somebody's angling for bigger things. "So I hired a crew!" Did you, now. God thing you skimped on the Mercedes so you could afford to... finance a movie about what rich jerks people were in high school?
Eh.
Someone's got some waaaaaay unresolved issues with high school.
14: I'm not actually gonna send a hobo, Blume. Geez.
9: Right, no. The sense of "hilarious" has been perverted forever! I lament this.
The trouble with class reunions is that in both high school and college I had more friends either one year ahead or one year behind me than I did in my own class. Maybe I should crash the previous high school class's 10-year-reunion this year.
My wife went to her high school reunion hoping to see her best friend. Her best friend had a miserable high school experience because everyone in her high school was so horrible, so she wasn't sure that her friend would show. Her friend did show, with her famous rock star husband in tow. The horrible people fawned all over her friend and her husband. My wife said it was like watching everybody's planned reunion revenge come true.
I was poor when they had my college reunion, so I crashed it.
I blame my inability to close the italics tag on the searing memory of my previous poverty.
17: You should try to have reunions that don't involve specific class years. My old college group of friends actually did this every few years, though it's slowed down a lot as we get older, so people are increasingly freaked out by it, but still, it's good: one friend recently said, "I know I always liked you guys very much, so I knew it would be okay." Apparently it was, though I couldn't make it, too much else on my plate.
My 10th was actually a great shindig at a park, but then the serious people took over for the 20th and I've not been back since.
My 10th is this summer, and originally, it was going to be a casual affair in a park. One of my old friends got ahold of it, though, and now it's some crazily expensive formal affair. I don't believe I will be attending.
I think I've said here before that the amazing thing about going to my twentieth was the unsurprising nature of everyone's current situation. The offbeat do-gooder from tenth grade biology? An urban planner in Asheville. The hail-fellow-well-met guy from French class? A bond trader of some kind. The radical feminist from AP English? A union organizer. And on and on.
I couldn't tell if this happened because of self-selection (the surprises, particularly the bad ones, may have stayed away) or because people basically chart their course in high school and don't deviate much from that point forward.
I have no need to go to a hs reunion, but oddly, I would very much like to go to a jr high reunion. There were only sixty kids in my junior high class, all of whom were impressive, so I'm much more curious about how they turned out than I am about high school people. I suppose I could join the Facebook and find out, but I'm not ready yet.
You should try to have reunions that don't involve specific class years.
My parents' (official) college reunions are like this. Three or four years included each time. The college was fairly new and very small when they graduated, so it makes sense.
22: I was unsurprised by (1) the self-selection of attendees -- only the significantly successful (well, and me, and this one other guy, but that's a different story) made it out -- and (2) the absurd level of achievement on the part of those fuckers. Oh, you're going for your second PhD, really! Isn't that interesting.
On the other hand, one graduate from my high school reached such an insane pillar of success so early that, by comparison, none of them have done squat. So that's nice.
25: On the other hand, one graduate from my high school reached such an insane pillar of success so early that, by comparison, none of them have done squat.
I thought you were a lot younger than GG Allin.
I suspect that the effect of self-selection at my high school reunions tends to involve the most successful not attending (because they've moved away and can't be bothered). Within the large majority of people who stayed around, however, it's certainly quite possible that the more successful are more likely to attend.
I myself have no intention of attending, of course, so I won't have any way to test this theory.
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Proper facebook protocol for announcing to the world that you're having a sex change appears to involve 1. changing your profile picture 2. talking about a "great rebirth" in your status and 3. posting a picture of yourself new-gender-appropriately attired in San Francisco.
Huh!
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26: this person graduated a couple of years above me.
Did GG Allin graduate high school? I'd be a little disappointed in him.
At the fun 10th, I found I spent most of the time talking to people that I had known in elementary or jr. high school but had generally drifted away from during sr. high school.
25: It's hard to gauge who's the most successful person from my graduating class. That said, I know it's not me.
29.2 Wikipedia claims "Allin graduated from Concord High School in 1975, and shortly after formed the band Malpractice with several high school friends and his brother Merle."
Teo, where are you these days? I think I'm going to drive to Gallup next week. (Anyone want to come?)
Born Jesus Christ Allin at Weeks Memorial Hospital in Lancaster, New Hampshire
Boy did they miss the mark with that one.
31: Yeah, but you probably weren't voted "Most Likely to Succeed". The only thing I can say is that if the people in my class were unobservant enough to vote me that, maybe I was.
And speaking of reunions, on the flight to Cleveland a few weeks back, I sat a row behind Jason Newsted. He was incredibly sweet to my older boy. As was his groupie trophy wife.
Oh, you're going for your second PhD, really!
There are two graduate students in my program who already have PhDs in physics.
I would go to my 10-year HS reunion. There are people I don't keep up with on facebook whom I'd like to see again. Why not?
35: The assumption in my high school was that we would all succeed, no one person more likely to do so than the next patrician.
I hope you compared him unfavorably to Cliff Burton, ari.
37: Why not?
Please do attend, and I am sure you'll come away with at least one front-page post worthy answer.
37: convince everybody to get all drunk and go skinny-dipping in the algae/runoff pond!
I didn't end up going to my 10th. Probably the biggest attraction was the likelihood of sleeping with any of several interesting girls, which I knew my gut-level probability judgments were radically overestimating in the usual wishful way.
They don't really do reunions here. But it'd be fun to go to one. I don't think I look anything like people would expect, so that'd be amusing.
But I also suspect it'd be depressing. A huge percentage of my former school mates seem to still be living in the same village. It's not a terrible place, but that just seems slightly sad.
i have over the years observed an not-terribly-famous brit rockstar i was at school with -- but did not know, it was a big school -- declare easily and often that his time there was WORSE THAN PRISON
a: he has not been in prison
b: no it wasn't anyway, even if he was quite miserable
c: he is an idiot
But I also suspect it'd be depressing. A huge percentage of my former school mates seem to still be living in the same village.
That would rather take some of the point out of a reunion, sure enough.
"Donald! You haven't changed a bit!"
"You saw me two days ago. We work together."
re: 45
Yeah. Much more interesting for those of us who buggered off elsewhere, I'd bet.
The idea of a school reunion sounds like my idea of hell. If there was anybody at school you wanted to keep in touch with, either you did, or if you lost contact somehow you can find them easily enough these days.
On the other hand, spending an evening shut in a room not only with the people you swore you wouldn't piss on if you saw them catch fire, but worse, the vast majority who you couldn't care less about then, let alone now. It sounds like a company Christmas party without even management buying the beer. Shudder.
For twenty-plus years I have been grateful that they do not do high school reunions in the UK.
I didn't like any of the people I went to school with all that much: I didn't like any of my teachers all that much: and I cannot remember any stretch of time in my life where I have been as consistently miserable and lonely for so many years without any let-up.
Further, I would assume the kind of people who do go are the people who had a great time back then and haven't had as good a time since.
46. How did Mutombo get to be the patron saint of this place?
50: But you go into a bar and yell "Who wants to sex Mutombo?" just one time ...
Also, from right below that article ((Kobe/2)+1)!
I sort of had essear's problem in high school. I haven't been back there since I went to a retirement party the year after I graduated. I might have gone to my 5th, but I didn't feel succesful enough.
Funnily enough, I didn't care about that at my 10th college reunion. I didn't really register for that one, just crashed it.
but worse, the vast majority who you couldn't care less about then, let alone now. It sounds like a company Christmas party without even management buying the beer.
Yep. I thought I had enough curiosity about my high school classmates to make one evening drinking with them entertaining. I was wrong -- it's not that it was unpleasant, but I've never had so many polite conversations in my life "Really! So what are you doing now?"
Haven't been to any -- I've been in the wrong time zone, and it's not worth a trip. (And we were having a kid just as my 10th came 'round). Still, the Werewolf gets it right: the appeal, if any, is in that longshot possibility.
You Brits are hopeless: if it's good enough for Mira Sorvino and Janeane Garofalo, it ought to be good enough for you lot.
I quite liked school, and had some good friends there. I even liked some of my teachers. So I don't have the 'hated high school' narrative thing happening.
That said, my life is very different these days, and I don't especially miss people from school, even the ones I liked. There are probably three or four people I would like to get back in touch with [and where I know they aren't on FU, or Facebook]. The rest of them, I'd go just to be nosey.
"They don't really do reunions here. But it'd be fun to go to one. "
My old school has a dinner in London every year, and occasionally does proper class reunions in Winchester. Never been to the dinner, and only once to the reunion. It was a bit dull, to be honest, since it had only been about five years.
if it's good enough for Mira Sorvino and Janeane Garofalo
Who?
Apparently tags aren't my thing today. I blame the media.
The trouble with class reunions is that in both high school and college I had more friends either one year ahead or one year behind me than I did in my own class.
This is true of me as well (at least for high school; years didn't mean very much in college.) That said, I still don't want to see or hear from any of them, aside from the two or three with whom I'm still friends.
In the past year or so I've gotten a few different emails from people I used to know looking to reconnect. I've always been fond of a passage from Max Beerbohm in which he describes a letter from an aging Whistler to to a former friend--"a signal waved jauntily, but in truth wistfully, across the gulf of years and estrangement"--but it turns out that my reaction on receiving something similar is "Fuck and no." The most recent email urged me to join Facebook. I'd actually been considering it before, mostly to keep up with some professional stuff and related interests, but the non-stop high school reunion aspect has stopped me cold.
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Freddie MAC CFO found dead, police say it's suicide.
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I'd actually been considering it before, mostly to keep up with some professional stuff and related interests, but the non-stop high school reunion aspect has stopped me cold.
Hear! Hear! (Where? Where?) (There! there!)
46: I knew this was going to be Mutombo's last playoffs, but sad to see it end so abruptly. Here is a video of his Houston Rocket teammates doing impressions of him.
They don't really do reunions here because, if you went to the right sort of school, there wouldn't be a need; you'd keep bumping into people you were at Coll with in the House at divisions, in the boardroom, in your club, at the Eton and Harrow match, in the mess, at Shepheard's or Raffles' Hotels, in Rotten Row, etc, etc. And if you went to the wrong sort of school, the last thing you want to do is remind yourself of that crippling error.
I went to my five-year college reunion, but only because my college friends and I had all decided it was a good place for a meet-up. I guess my ten-year high school reunion has passed. I didn't go. I didn't hate high school, but it didn't seem to be worth it to make a special trip back.
I think I don't want to see all my horrible high school tormentors grown up into unremarkable citizens. I know they're probably all okay, and I know they've probably all got kids doing the same stuff to the 2009 version of Frowner (and to the mentally disabled kid, and the kids of whatever racial background is totally the minority now) who will, like them, grow up to become lawyers and commodities brokers and have expensive houses in Edge Cities nationwide.
Part of this is cynicism; part of it is genuine horror, because it seems like you can never break the cycle. Horrible teens make others suffer and then grow up into polite citizens so you can't even call them on it. What am I going to say? "So, do you remember the time you were making sexually explicit remarks that she didn't quite get to the large-breasted and mentally disabled girl? She knew you were making fun of her, but she didn't understand quite how, you know. Do you bring up your kid to do that?" That's what I'd like to say, but people would probably think it was even more of a buzzkill then sending a stripper to pretend to be me.
If you did say that, they probably wouldn't remember.
My main incentive for going to my 10th HS reunion was that it happened a month before I would be proposing to AB (the actual proposal was a date-specific, romantic surprise, but we'd been ring shopping together, so the enfiancing* was not), and so I was pleased to be able to show off my great wife-to-be. But I probably would've gone anyway. I was semi-disaffected in HS, but I knew at the time that it was a unique, passing phase, and had a fair amount of fun with it. I didn't have a fraught relationship with all the people I didn't care for/about, and there were a couple dozen that I knew I'd be happy to see (as it happened, this one girl I had only semi-noticed in HS was there, and I'm pretty sure we would have totally hooked up given other circumstances).
I was a bit surprised to learn that they were, in fact, disappointed in my achievements at that point, but, well, you know.
* it's a real word, isn't it?
Yeah, that's the annoying thing. I remember. Partly neurosis and natural bad temper, partly the sheer rage of that particular day (it wasn't the only time; it was just the first I noticed) burned into my brain. I shouldn't have thought about it, though, since now I want to go find those guys and punch them.
The high school reunion would be a great place to do that!
That would make a successful and rather dull movie, I think: average 30-something decides that she's going to beat up her HS tormentors at the reunion, trains (montage!), goes on a road trip to the reunion, has learning moments, finds love, and then doesn't actually beat anyone up because they're all okay after all.
because they're all okay after all.
Except they never are.
JRoth, why were all these semi-strangers so invested in your material progress?
I guess I sort of find it hopeful that being a jerk to someone in high school doesn't mean you're going to be a jerk for life (and probably doesn't mean you're training your kids to make fun of the disabled; grant the high school kids some agency in their assholish ways.)
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saiselgy just used the phrase "take a gander" (meaning "take a look"), which i had till now believed purest cockney -- is it global?
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BTW, for the record, I laughed a lot at the linked vid. I recognize its flaws, but most interesting things come from someone who's maybe a little obsessive about something not that important.
72: It's something I don't hear often, but that doesn't register as obviously foreign. Something my grandmother would have said.
The 20th just passed. I haven't been to any of my reunions. And it feels so good.
Kinda lame, kinda shitty.
She put a lot more effort into her scheme than it was worth, probably, but that's kind of admirable. What an enterprising young woman! And I got a chuckle or two from the video, especially the line "You were always very alternative ..."
If there was anybody at school you wanted to keep in touch with, either you did, or if you lost contact somehow you can find them easily enough these days.
Ditto. There's the expense of time and money, too. I might go across town for an evening to satisfy my curiosity about old classmates, but I have no desire to go off and spend a weekend with them.
70.last: no, it was the ones I had (more or less) known best. They were just surprised that I wasn't a "famous architect" by then - it was, kind of sweetly, an indication of their esteem. They were surprised to learn that I'd spent half of my post-collegiate time doing handyman work instead of designing skyscrapers or whatever.
72: very common over here.
72: Huh, I had always assumed it was some sort of US-ruralese. I've heard it from various Americans.
71: Well, people probably don't really train their kids to make fun of the disabled, but I assume there's often some kind of family culture of ruthlessness at work, especially when the kids in question are rich, popular and successful. I find the whole "growing up into ordinary citizens" thing distressing because honestly, lots of people are harmed by larval "ordinary citizens" in their brutality phase. Also, it gives me the creeps to think that the various ordinary citizens I work with probably did the same kind of stuff my classmates did in HS (popular football player broke little nerdy boy's arm, etc etc).
"A work of 1887, The Folk-Speech of South Cheshire, says, "Gonder, to stretch the neck like a gander, to stand at gaze". The next known example is from the Cincinnati Enquirer of 9 May 1903: "Gander, to stretch or rubber your neck". It is claimed that it comes from thieves' slang."
Blimey it seems it in fact usually considered to be of US origin. I guess I thought it was rhyming slang, for what I can't think.
I like "to rubber your neck".
I haven't gone to any yet, but my tenth will be in 2010, and I think I'll go to that. Probably.
This has been one of my favorite movies ever since I first saw it. That's mostly just because of all that quirky John Cusack humor, but no doubt the fact that I probably first saw it while a senior in high school helped, since it's about a disaffected guy who goes home for his 10-year high school reunion.
My tenth-year HS reunion actually did end up with skinny-dipping.
The next known example is from the Cincinnati Enquirer of 9 May 1903
I'm not surprised. My grandmother lived just north of Cincinnati and I remember her saying "take a gander." She also loved the word "pethy" (i.e. "stale, spongy, tasteless"), an Appalachian word by way of Gloucestershire.
64: My sister went to an English public school, and they're having a reunion at 10 years.
I wasn't going to fly back East when I lived in California for my 10th high school reunion, but at the time of my 5th and 10th, I lived an hour away. I don't, however, have a car. While it is possible to take a train and then a cab, it's kind of a pain.
My college reunion was a subway ride away.
I would very happily attend my 10 hear hs reunion, which, in fact, is this year! There were nice people in my class who I don't see ever, and I'm successful enough that it wouldn't be too embarrassing to go. Hmmm. One issue is that my class (and school) is so ridiculously small that the chance of anyone else showing up is small. Maybe fb could be mobilized to make this happen.
I thought I had enough curiosity about my high school classmates to make one evening drinking with them entertaining. I was wrong
I went to my tenth and enjoyed it. Recently attended my 30th, and was bored silly. I still have guilt over the fact that I made my wife come along.
Stanley should send Cousin It and explain that he hasn't shaved in a week.
I had a schedule conflict for my 10th reunion. The conflict then fell through, however, and I still didn't go. The 20th is this year, and I'm not planning to attend that one either. I can't say that I hated high school, but many of my friends were in years other than mine so I'd end up not actually seeing many of the people I'd really want to see anyway.
Plus, Facebook has been a very weird thing. I'm getting friend requests from people whose names I only barely recognize. If those are the people at the reunion, that's going to be really awkward. I'd rather not spend an entire night telling people, "I'm sorry, but I have no idea who you are."
I'm getting friend requests from people whose names I only barely recognize.
Oh yeah. I wasn't terribly social in HS, but I guess I ended up being fairly well known from a distance for various nerdy endeavors. I don't know these people, and I'm mortified by the thought that they think we were friends, or even friendly.
I'm getting friend requests from people whose names I only barely recognize.
I've gotten similar requests and I've ignored every one of them. Weirdly, a few of them weren't even from people with whom I was merely acquainted, but from people I couldn't remember at all. I'd like to think that's because I meant so much more to them than I ever knew, but then, I'd like to believe that some of the emails I get demonstrate a genuine care for my potency, too.
A huge percentage of my former school mates seem to still be living in the same village. It's not a terrible place, but that just seems slightly sad.
When Homer goes to his reunion he wins various prizes including "Most weight gained" and "Traveled the least distance to be here".
I'm getting friend requests from people whose names I only barely recognize.
I friended someone I met for one day on my very first trip to the U.S. years ago, and then yesterday a connection of hers asked to friend me. Weird.
from people I couldn't remember at all.
Heh. I got a request from a person whose name and picture I recognized not at all, but from the friends in common, we'd clearly gone to the same high school. So I accepted, and get a message, "Hey Russ! This is (maiden name), but maybe you'd figured that from the picture." Maiden name wasn't any more familiar. Anyhow, a few months later, I get a mass invitation to join a group "Remembering _______", of whom I also have no memory whatsoever and am 99% sure I never met, but who apparently died since graduation. After a couple more weeks, I get a direct message from her asking could I please join the group because the family needs support. I replied that I felt odd joining a group to remember somebody I didn't remember, but joined anyhow so as to end the conversation.
I wish I had a grandmother like that.
I got friended by a girl from high school, recently, who used to be friends with my then girlfriend. I haven't spoken to her in 20 years. Quite nice to hear from her, but a definite 'bolt out of the blue'.
Generally, however, very few of my schoolmates seem to be on Facebook. Far more of them are on Friends Reunited.
I have to admit: sending a stripper to pretend to be you at your ten-year high school reunion is a pretty damn hilarious idea.
I suspect one's reaction to this depends in part on how much hated high school, if one did. While the stripper concept did turn out to be funnier in theory than in practice, I hated my high school enough to like the idea.
My college reunions, on the other hand, are fantastic.
a definite 'bolt out of the blue'
Now I have "Bizarre Love Triangle" in my head. ("Every time I think of you I feel shot right through with a bolt of blue . . ..")
i second the greatness of romy and michelle, and would use R&M's exact plan if i ever went back to a reunion (which i shan't): viz of claiming i'm now a billionaire bcz i invented post-it notes
94 to the video, by the way. I don't wish I had a grandmother who pestered people to join groups on Facebook.
I guess I ended up being fairly well known from a distance for various nerdy endeavors.
This. I was involved in every performing art at my school, and half of my high school class had known who I was in junior high when I was winning spelling bees, etc. I realized years later that I had probably been better known than the "popular" people had been, but I'm still unable to define how, exactly, they had that label and I didn't. It's just a curious detail of high school life, and I suspect it holds true everywhere.
I can have a little college reunion right here. Oudemia! How's CA?
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From Variety -- HBO picks a Sex and the City writer for a new pilot:
Pilot will revolve around the fictionalized male editor of the column and his family life as he endures a messy divorce, a strained relationship with his teenage daughter and a difficult return to the world of dating. The stories and personalities from the Times' column will be woven in the series' storylines as the editor deals with finding writers and picking out stories from the thousands of submissions that the newspaper receives.
What column? You know what column.
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I haven't been to any high school or college reunions, because every time I want to drink with my old friends, I get married.
I guess will and I can have high school and college reunions, even though we went to the same schools, like, fifty years apart.
She's good. Say, whatever happened to Lee Mueler?
I suppose 106 should be googleproofed.
106: Heh. You spelled it wrong so that's ok. He got married a couple of summers ago -- not to JA, of course. CA was best man. Still in Chicago. Runs a technical school. We'll catch a bunch of Cubs games with him.
Unfogged tie-in: snark and rfts have met him and his wife!
and half of my high school class had known who I was in junior high when I was winning spelling bees, etc.
Yes! Everyone in my junior high knew who I was because they would always announce things like math competition wins and quiz bowl tournament wins and geography bee and whatever else I did back then over the intercom. To this day my parents are always telling me how they ran into someone I went to school with who said they were my friend, and I've never even heard of the person. Somehow I was like a celebrity to those kids, but I don't remember being popular, even if they remember me that way.
High school was less like this, because I was more social and other people were winning things too. (And then there was college, where I could be quasi-invisible if I wanted!)
My 10 year HS reunion is coming up sometime this year. I started working 50 hours a week at Wendy's homeschooling after 9th grade, so I didn't graduate, and thus am not invited. But it is really striking how the graduating class must have been 20%-35% black (small town Alabama public school), but the people attending the reunion are 100% white. In fact, no one seems to be attending other than the dozen or so upper middle class white bitches who ran the school as students and are now organising the reunion as well, and a somewhat wider circle of their hangers-on.
Everyone in my junior high knew who I was because
...I was the weird kid with bright red hair.
I was the weird kid with bright red hair
The one with a lazy eye, or the one who ate boogers?
Or the one who ate lazy-eye boogers?
But 112 is just the same reason everyone at Unfogged knows who you are!
Stanley, if your bad band is still looking to change its name, there comes via mcmc on facebook the following excellent candidate: Satan's Actual Asshole.
all this talk of reunions just sent me round the interwebs the last two hours trying to track down members of the band i was in as a student, 26 years scattered now
two well-known in their own small spheres, one dead, two ungooglably vanished (they had a million people's names), and two whose names i forgot myself
113: The one with the intimidatingly large genitalia, actually. Which one were you?
You had eight people in your band? Damn.
we did but not all at once
Don't even try to tell me that's not a great name, Stanley.
"Intimidatingly Large Genitalia" could also function as a band name, though I'll concede that it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Wait, scratch that! That's not what I meant!
Also, "Lazy-Eyed Boogers".
You had eight people in your band? Damn.
8? PFFFFT.
more euphonious is "unfeasibly large genitalia", though (naturally) this is an old joke in the uk
i just remembered another of the names (also ungooglable)
I went to my 10th and had a good time. The low point was that ms bill, who knew none of these people, got along best with the girl who dumped me after the senior prom.
OT: Worried about The Gathering Storm? Turn on your Doppler Gaydar.
Quite.
Satan's Actual Asshole
More appropriate for a geological feature somewhere in the desert Southwest, IMO.
Satan's Proctologists, OTOH, would be a great name for a band.
93: "Remembering _______", of whom I also have no memory whatsoever and am 99% sure I never met, but who apparently died since graduation
But that's your route to having sex with Barbara Hershey the guy's mother.
of the two well-known in their own small spheres, the one who went into art: his art has got no better, not a tiny bit
Satan's Actual Asshole—what remains when the Mineshaft is finally abandoned.
First hit returned by Google Image Search for Satan's actual asshole. (safe for work)
It was so weird to open UF comments and see 135. Gosh, everyone's talking about Satan's actual asshole!
Here's a celebrity version of the gaythering storm, calling for a Giant Gay Repellent Umbrella.
Hey, Mike Rose of Channel 101 fame is in that video!
Teo, where are you these days?
Chaco. I have Monday and Tuesday off; if you'll be in Gallup then I could easily meet you there.
More appropriate for a geological feature somewhere in the desert Southwest, IMO.
Maybe this one?
There's also Satan's Actual Blowhole.
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Just picked up Robert Stone's memoir Prime Green. This sentence is in the second chapter, with a little, but very little and nothing explanatory, context.
Did anyone else out there, subscribers wrote to ask, remember the Lucky Pussycat Bar off the Bund in old Shanghai?
Now I had looked a little at old Shanghai via Ballard remembrances, and this recent post on Architecture.
But is amazing how consistently yet entertainingly Stone maintains the tone/meaning of the blockquoted sentence for his remembrances of the 60s. Catholic girls on Friday nights. 100 lb bouncers. Impressions on the edge of comprehensibility. An ancient sailor asking if anyone remembers Old Shanghai.
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Oh, one other thing. I can't find it in the Stone, so maybe it was a reviewer at Amazon who said the 60s had a counterculture whereas now the youth only have subcultures.
That reminded me of this lament by Chris Bowers about left activists working too damn hard and not having any fun. Bowers is inspired by a Terry Eagleton article on the late 19th century. (I think we all know now that Obama is not adequate Change, and I think there is some serious thinkin' to do)
Robert Stone was not political, didn't work for civil rights or march against the war. He did get stoned with Richard Alpert & Ken Kesey. Maybe there was no point or purpose, maybe there was.
Do buttoned-down idealists working 60 hour weeks to ameliorate problems really frighten and change the system?
Even so, there seems to be a big contradiction between what progressive activists are trying to achieve, and how we are actually living. Our lifestyles and workplaces seem to be part of the problem we are trying to fix. If [we]haven't even liberated ourselves, how can we help liberate anyone else?...Bowers
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Another Satan's Actual Asshole/Mineshaft candidate. This one's pretty fugly.
I think I'm going to drive to Gallup next week.
I just left there three hours ago. It was intact when I left.
I really like 143. I've stopped working really hard, but haven't quite done what comes next.
I shopped a Robert Stone writing class in college and wished I'd stuck around for it, although I don't think it would have changed everything.
80: You're a handsome devil. What's your name?
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I keep reading the name of this thead in the sidebar as "Although, maybe I could send a Holbo", and indeed, sending John Holbo to your 10 year reunion in your place would be pretty funnny.
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Oh, and 28: Guess what I heard being discussed in the kitchen at work this afternoon.
149: haha, I'm sure you did. Feel free to e-mail me their thoughts on it. I was quite surprised.
She just floated right past that "so I hired a crew" part. Sounds like the whole production must have cost at least $5000.
As you know, Bob, I'd rather ride out the collapse of society in the ruins of London than deal with the people I went to school with. The tiny minority I might want to talk to I can; most of them seem to be moving here anyway.
It's an eternal European tale; you run off to the big city, but by the time you get there the village has as well.
