It was the Friends reunion that finally did it
Lately, pop culture has sought to smash me in the face with nostalgia that has made my knees buckle with the realization that my heroes, icons and cultural touchstones are slipping away into history. And yet I feel no older than I ever have. Having come of age — whatever that means — when I did, the world and my place in it was defined by popular culture. And so was yours, be honest.
My whole life, my friends and I have communicated in film quotes, song lyrics and other such references. To this day, I am still drawn to those who can keep up. These characters and their stories are our present-day mythologies, and they are as real as religion. And the older you are the deeper your catalog of references is, and that’s just fun.
You’re at a ball game and the bases are loaded and there’s two outs and they start to play this manic-sounding song on a synthesizer. You want to lean over to the twenty-somethings next to you and say, “This song is called Pressure and that’s why it’s funny.” I’ve always been the kind of person who has to be in on the joke and get why everybody is laughing. Maybe everyone is like that.
But I’m not done. Why am I unable to hop in a recliner, pull a blanket over my legs and start reminiscing about how cheap cab rides used to be. Remember cabs?
I am fifty-one which sounds absolutely impossible and until recently I lied about my age and got away with it constantly. Because of jobs and career (performing arts and hospitality,) I have often been in the company of people much younger than me and maybe this has kept me young. (I invited a cocktail server at my hotel to my fiftieth birthday party and she squealed, “Oh my God are you turning forty!?” I said, “Yep.”)
But popular culture is conspiring to jar me from my reverie.
Chewie, we’re home
Goddamn if this one didn’t catch me off guard. In case you were in a medically induced coma since 2016 — the preview for the long-awaited final three episodes of the whole Star Wars franchise was the first glimpse at the Star Wars universe the way I remembered it — the way it was meant to be — where life and our childhood left off, and it came in the form of that preview.
I grew up mainlining Star Wars in every form that it came in. It’s a pretty awesome preview; and at the end, is the guy we now know as Harrison Ford — giant movie star since forever — once again as Han Solo in what anyone would recognize as the Millennium Falcon standing next to Chewbacca. And don’t tell me these guys didn’t know exactly what they were doing when they gave him that to say — “Chewie, we’re home…” The first thing we have heard Han Solo say in thirty years was “We’re home.”
That was a tough time for me personally — career disappointments, an unexpected divorce, coming to terms with the fact that I was now a part-time dad to my (then) three-year-old… I was sitting alone in my new tiny apartment trying to think of how to make this a home to my son — the word home had come to mean something profound to me. I wanted to go home too. I just didn’t know where it was at the moment, and I felt lost. But suddenly Han and Chewie were back, and I was a kid again. They had found their way home, and one day I would too. I heard myself gasp and cried like a baby in front of my computer.
But now, shit like this happens in small ways all the time. The other day, I saw some old lady wearing a Wayne’s World baseball cap and thought, “That old lady is down with Wayne’s World. Party on Old Lady… oh wait, … Oh God she’s my age.”
Celebrity sightings at the high-end hotel I work at go like this;
“That old woman looks like Warren Beaty.”
“That is Warren Beatty.”
Rocky has cancer!?
Along with Springsteen and Stephen King who are both aging like the bad asses that they are, one of the other forces of pop-nature that is part of my personal canon was the Rocky movies. (What a time to be alive!) Until, that is, the ending of Creed 2 sought to shatter my soul. I don’t think I’m ruining the plot here if you haven’t seen it; it’s a Rocky movie, how do you think it ends? The end is a wrap up of Rocky’s desires and dreams as he steps out of the lime light once and for all in a way that leaves audiences in a puddle. And at the end of the fight, Donnie offers his hand to Rocky to pull him up into the ring to join the celebration, and Rocky waves him off.
“It’s your time, now” he says and slowly sits back down, perhaps to never set foot in a ring again. I felt like that was me up there — and my entire generation.
The film ends with the young, fit Donnie helping Rocky walk up the iconic museum steps. Helping Rocky walk up the steps. When they reach the top, Rocky says, “If you look hard enough, you can see your whole life from up here.”
“How’s it look?” Donnie wants to know.
“Not bad at all,” Rocky says.
Jesus Christ, are you kidding me? Rocky! Am I supposed to sit down and get out of the way? Rocky Balboa; who’s getting up off the mat a second faster than Apollo Creed to win the title and overcome a life of adversity and poverty was a touchstone of striving and dreams coming true is the goddamn underdog story of our lifetimes. If Rocky’s quitting, should I even try? I’m still in striving mode.
Then came the Friends reunion.
A guilty pleasure to be sure — everyone in the house was asleep. I turned off the lights and drew the blinds like I was eating an ortolan. I thought it would be fun and funny. I could see in the actors’ eyes real loss and nostalgia. When that show was at the height of its powers, those guys were the center of the universe and the world was theirs for the taking, (after their agents’ 15%, but still) and no one’s feeling sorry for Joey for being fat now, and most people never reach the heights they did when they were only kids, but I was deeply saddened by what I felt was their awareness of something that was long gone that they would never get back.
Their time had gone by. Did that mean mine had too? I refuse to accept it. But I miss my friends too. I miss reminiscing about things we can barely remember. I miss my own version of those days; those carefree years when you’re young in Manhattan, going out every night, trying to date whoever you want; everything shimmering with Possibility.
The show had me thinking — we don’t get together like this. We might never do this. You do not realize how young and good-looking you are until you see a picture of yourself from twenty years ago. What I saw as I watched them walk around the Friends set — often in strange silence — was the reality of how much time had passed — time you don’t even feel go by every day until those days add up to years.
We all have some idea of what they have been through since. What have we all been through — kids, divorces; addiction and illness; the highs and lows of life. It made me think of my old gang and where we all now and how we had all changed. But like those good-looking millionaires on the screen, we all have those memories and our families to be thankful for, not to mention the fact that we are still among the luckiest people on this dying planet.
Seinfeld would never do this to me, I thought.
Gozer
My son will be ten this year and we are both counting the days until the Ghostbusters reboot because I raised him right. We watch the preview all the time which features some of the original cast but is mostly about kids, and it is going to be epic fun, I believe because they did it right. They are passing the baton. It’s easy to imagine Bill Murray contemplating his reflection as an almost eighty-year-old man back in the costume with his proton pack on. That dour, bone dry expression, about to say something irreverent and classic.
They’re all too old of course and Egon is dead, but they gave the girl who plays his granddaughter little Egon glasses to wear, which I found strangely touching. (Egon’s GRANDDAUGHTER!?) What a wonderful non-verbal homage to a favorite character. I’m assuming she exhumes the practice of busting ghosts for a new generation. But that little girl who looks like a tiny, very cute Harold Ramis represented my own very cute son and I did not have time to feel sorry for myself.
Instead, it was just great to be alive and in on the joke.
