"Sport of the Future"



If Chuck Klosterman is to be believed-- and he's as believable as anyone else I can think of-- most of the women who were a certain age in 1989 were irrevocably warped by John Cusack's portrayal of Lloyd Dobler in Cameron Crowe's Say Anything. The basic premise being that these women, of which I am one, have a jones for the sweet, sensitive, goofy, self- effacing, guy who is looking for a "dare to be great situation", but that we forget that this guy is fictional.

I don't have the complete quote because, as a result of The Great Materials Goods Purge of 2010, my copy of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs ended up somewhere between the moon and Mar del Plata, but in the first track of this opus, "This is Emo", Klosterman says of Dobler/ Cusack something to the effect that every woman of our generation "would sell her soul to share a milkshake with that motherfucker."

So that pretty much sums it up.

I'm pretty sure that if a dude shows up on my front lawn wearing a trenchcoat and holding a boombox aloft-- even if that dude were John Cusack-- I'd be on the phone to the Weymo 5-0 before Peter Gabriel could finish the first verse, but I won't deny there's truth in Klosterman's premise.

During the birthday greetings frenzy that was my Saturday, I took a moment to catch up with another of my favorite old friends (who, like Diane Court, was a valedictorian) who responded to my recent foray into kickboxing with the line "sport of the future."

Geez. I didn't end up with Lloyd Dobler. But yesterday at the dojo, I took off my gloves, looked at my red wraps and realized I might have turned into him. Except for the part where, you know, I'm not a dude.

Let's consider the facts. I like the Clash. I don't want to buy anything, sell anything, or process anything. I'm pretty sure I'm close to being finished with high school (in a sense), and I don't know what I want to do with my life. But I know that I don't know. I'd like a dare to be great situation. Given the right opportunity, I'd definitely follow a boy to England.

But what I've been doing a lot lately, is kickboxing.

And it's about the only thing that's giving me a sense of motivation, focus, and direction in this crazy mixed-up world of ours.

So, maybe Chuck is to be believed, or maybe sometimes we have to be our own hero.