Orange Julius Caesar
This essay’s a day late and about a buck fifty short of shits because I spent the better part of the week trying to write an uplifting essay about listening to and encouraging the aspects of yourself that others might find “strange" or “weird” or “dumb” and after all of the world, national, personal events of /especially/ the last week I just… couldn’t write that.
Everything’s kind of shit now. I mean, everything’s been pretty shit for awhile, but it feels like this week was like getting fired and as you’re packing your things, you find out that the guy at work who’s a total asshole got the promotion you wanted and he decides to celebrate by stabbing you repeatedly in the left knee with the knife from his congratulatory cake. It’s beyond insult to injury, it’s injury to insult to injury.
As someone who’s obsessed with history and specifically the crevices and nuances of American History, this had already been an /incredibly/ shitty time. This week somehow got even shittier. I know I keep saying “shitty” a lot here, but you tell me what word I should be using because fuck knows I can’t think of a better one that doesn’t sound like I’m King Lear bemoaning my daughters. As that American History squirrel, I’ve long been aware of the darkness and awful, soul-crushing atrocities and travesties of our history. We’re not a “shining city upon a hill” as Winthrop said (and Reagan stole). We never have been. Maybe to /some/ people, and definitely we billed ourselves as such an attraction, but we’ve always been the off-the-highway attraction of prosperity—promising much, delivering a couple of mummies.
But what had fascinated and encouraged me about our past and our future was not what we purported to be, but what many of us /tried/ to be. It was the yearning for that ring, not the grasping of it, that made “us" something to care about and root for. People like the underdog story, it’s a human story. Point out all of the flaws in the underdog arc that you want to (thanks Malcolm Gladwell) but it still speaks to something deep in us. It’s sentimental semiotics.
This week has felt like we have officially and finally given up. The towel has been thrown in and now the sequels to the franchise are just going to be about how the Mighty Ducks quit playing hockey and got summer jobs at the Orange Julius while the town burns to the ground building by building. “BUT THE MALL WILL BE SAFE!” they may cry out. But the mall is never safe. It just offers the illusion of safety like the foam containers from the food court.
That’s it, that’s the tweet. It’s hard to root for the underdog when the underdog’s not even playing anymore. You can’t just follow children around shouting encouraging words at them. I’ve tried and people are not happy about it. There’s supposed to be a sort of gathering place for that kind of unbridled, foolish optimism and… well, I don’t know where that is anymore.
I wish I could have ended this on a happier note, but I ran out of fucks to give. Maybe next week I’ll have found some more under a couch cushion or in the eyes of a pigeon taking flight with a french fry. But today, there are no more fucks. My deepest apologies and condolences.
Have a fun summer! See you next fall.
This week’s songs-stuck-in-my-head has been, weirdly, “La Isla Bonita” by Madonna. Make of that what you will.
