THE INCREDIBLES – STILL AWESOME

I recently bought The Incredibles on DVD, and have since concluded that it is my favorite movie ever. I can’t even think of enough adjectives with which to sing its praise. It’s got family, it’s got humor, it’s got spaceships, powers, and the enemy is mediocrity! In short, contained within the start and end credits is everything I hold dear, sans creepy crawlies. It’s like they made it for me. Watching the extra features predictably made me want to stop everything I’m doing in life, run down to Emeryville, and starve myself outside their front door until they let me be their coffee boy or something, but instead I just went to Emeryville and bought some filing material at Office Max. Sigh. Talk about mediocrity.

Along similar lines, I’ve been stalking all these people I used to know in high school via MySpace, a social networking site popular in my home town, apparently. It’s quite surreal. They’re mostly people I knew peripherally, but some I knew very well, and then just fell out of touch with over the years. Turns out they’re all still kicking, mostly still in Clinton, and many have art degrees. Path not taken, greener grass, etc. The feeling is akin to reading the Williams Alumni Review: everyone else seems to lead glowing lives replete with meaningful friendships that they maintain while traveling the world or saving the world or painting the world or all these things. My only consolation is that I could probably spin a glowing and fantastic yarn about my whimsical left turn to California and the meaningful and invigorating work I do, punctuated by the merry times I spend with my dear, dear friends without technically lying, thereby at least potentially invalidating my impression of everyone else’s lives. It warms my black and shriveled heart one single femtojoule.

Hey, first whiny post in a while! Go me! Actually that last paragraph was supposed to be about what my life would be like had I gone to art school. The answer is that it would be exactly the same except I’d be pining over Scientific American and wishing I had studied science.