Things white kids liked in the 90's: Quoting Dazed and Confused

The day after I graduated grade eight, Matt Emigh rented Dazed and Confused. It was newand I hadn't even heard of it but Matt was always current with his films... and the Montreal Canadians. A bunch of the graduating class of R.G. Sinclair went back to my house to watch it in my basement but we were more interested in gossiping and eating pizza than watching the movie. How typical was it for a bunch of suburban kids to be inside on a beautiful June day, sitting in a basement with the tvon but not paying attention to it? Wasted youth. I don't think I actually watched Dazed and Confused until we rented it again with Matt Emigh when I was 17 and I taped it that time. We had also bought beer at Mr. Beer the brew by you that to sold teenagers to compliment our evening while smoking cigarettes in my parents rec room while they were out of town. The dubbing of this film led me to memorizing the entire movie which also led to all of my friends memorizing it. Dazed and Confused became staple viewing within my group of friends, so much that two games were formed out of watching it. The first was a drinking game, where you had to take a drink every time Mitch Kramer touches his face. In the scene outside the Emporium I think he touches his face 19 times inside of two minutes. The other was even simpler, you'd get a punch in the arm if you quoted the movie while watching it with your friends. This obviously stemmed from the fact that all we did was recite the movie while watching it thus ruining the film for everyone else, so we installed a penalty system.
Dazed and Confused connected with us so well because it was about us. Even though Slater, Pink, Donny, Benny, Mitch, Pickford and Wooderson were from 1976 Texas, they were just another bunch of bored white kids living in a small city with nothing to do but drive around and party in the forest. Everyone had a popular athlete at their school who hung out with the stoners, everyone had an older guy who was still clinging onto his youth in high school to stay feeling young and pick up impressionable young girls. I was amazed how a generation with a twenty year separation from mine exactly the same, it showed me how slowly small city life progresses. Technology changed but teen life hadn't, they drove around with 8 tracks, we had CD players, that was about it. We still all smoked pot, drank beers, smoked cigarettes, interacted with the opposite sex and felt bored all the same as the teenagers from the movie. It gave you sense of ease, like you weren't alone, that everyone goes through the same thing, which you don't know until you're in your twenties.
Lastly, if you haven't watched Dazed and Confused in a while, watch it again, in my opinion it is under rated from a film stand point. Richard Linklater wrote and directed an entire film about one solid day with a cast of about twenty characters that you care about. It's difficult to direct and write a film where you care about even one character, but there is not a dull moment in Dazed and Confused and you care about what happens to everyone in that film.

...birthday

It's my birthday today and I'm drinking beer and watching TV in a hotel room outside of Detroit. It's not like I'm Howard Hughes or anything, but I do have a buzz and I just exchanged emails with my best friend Hugh who has a birthday a day apart from me so it was a quick reminisce session. My friend Rebekah who I dated in high school just texted me how we had our first real conversation on my birthday 15 years ago, she reminded me because she knows I love to reminisce (which is what this blog is all about). So here are a whole bunch of suburban, white birthday memories.


Age 13 - May 9, 1993

On this birthday I became a teenager and I had Geoff Fisher, Steve Oakley and Marcus Thomson sleep over at my house. My mom made us coffee so we could stay up all night and watch the Exorcist and play the VHS board game Nightmare.

Age 16 - May 9, 1996

This was a pretty cool birthday, it was the first time I went to New York city. The morning I left for NYC with my mom I handed in a geography paper about nuclear waste disposal in the North West Territories that I completely made up. Then I got in a car and drove to my mother's cousin Georges house. That day I went to Michael Moores office and then that night I smoked expensive cigars with my cousin Alex and read Playboy.

Age 19 - May 9, 1999

This was a monumental birthday for any Canadian teenager living in Ontario, it's the birthday you can legally drink. As most of these birthday's go this one was full of missing scenes. I went to the big club in Kingston, AJ's Hanger at 11:00 but they wouldn't let me in because my birthday wasn't until midnight so I went to The Shot and drank a pitcher to myself. After this I remember only a few things. I remember singing all of This Is How We Do It on a stage, I remember doing about seven Dr. Pepper shots which are something dropped in beer to make it taste like Dr. Pepper. Then I remember laying on Ben Fishers floor back in my neighbourhood with Jessica Castel and Ben playing The End by the Doors on accoustic guitar as per my request. I also requested that the lights be turned off because the room was spinning.
The next day was my actual birthday and I was, understandably, in rough shape. I didn't come out of my room all day and when it came time to pick up my girlfriend Rebekah at 4:00pm, I had to get my dad to drive me because I'm pretty sure I was still drunk.

age 20 - May 9, 2000

On this birthday I drove to Toronto with Jess Flemming and Brian Laplante to Toronto to see Ween for the first time. Ween played for three hours and were amazing. Ween were eating sandwiches on stage and threw one into the crowd hitting Jess in the face, after she had already been pummelled by dreadlocks from sweaty hippies. We stayed awake on the drive back to Kingston by playing a band naming game for two and a half hours.

age 21 - May 9, 2001

On my 21st birthday I was with my best friend Mike Perlin in Ottawa working for the government. We got off work at 4:00 were drinking Absinthe and beers by about 4:20. Then we smoked a joint and hit a patio, Perlin bought me a piece of cake. I barfed up that cake up at around 10:00 and the next day was the worst day of my life. The next night I ran into Harmony, my girlfriend from high school, and made out with her in a park.

Age 25 - May 9, 2005

My friends Dave and Sarah were having the type of office party at their work where you bring your family. I went to drink from the Keg the company had bought and we played frisbee standing on chairs over cubicles. Then I went to the 360, a punk bar on Queen st. that had two dollar beers on Mondays and everyone bought me whiskey shots. I was in bed by 11:00pm. The 360 is now an Ugs store.