Get A Life? Moi?
It was supposed to be a nice little jaunt to the Good Luck bar for a drink or two. It’s a very rare occasion when Cathi gets the hankering to go out for drinks, so since the opportunity presented itself it was prudent of me to go grab it by the balls right?
One of the best things about where I live now is the fact that these places are within walking distance, so I broke out my gloves, iPod and all and headed down to the bar.
When I got there Catherine and Tyson were in the back room, so we sat and chilled in the corner and shot the shit. Everything was ok until this group arrives.
This Korean girl whose hair can best be described as a two-leaf clover with 10-foot high pompadours and an outfit Fergie would die for asks me quite nicely if she and her group of five could sit next to us. I politely oblige scooching closer to the corner to try and give them more room. The group of five quickly becomes a group of 10 or 12 surrounding us and forcing us deeper into the corner of the sofa. However we don’t really have a problem with that.
That is until the camera comes out. Now in such a dim-lit place as the Good Luck bar, the flash of a camera can be quite harsh on the eyes. It’s much like watching those Japanese kids cartoons that induce seizures. But these out-of-towners which we surmise to be from Torrance are having a good time, and what’s the harm of a picture or two?
Then we realize that a picture or two becomes a complete documentary of their night out into the glitzy underbelly of the Eastside, their proof of accomplishment from the minutes they toiled on Yelp. Tyson asks one person in that group if they could stop the documentary since the flash is really grating. That one request then turns into a complete affront to their having fun. It’s almost as if we were the cops raiding their rave and trying to confiscate their drugs. Whatever.
As the verbal vollies started to come to an end, Ms. Geisha Pompadour lashes out, “Why don’t you guys get a life?”
Which quickly got me thinking, wait, do I have a life? Well I go to work everyday, a cog in the well-oiled capitalist machine being a willing participant in the demise of civilization. In return I get money which helps give me the illusion that I am prospering rather than rotting my soul. I have friends, and we enjoy each other’s company (I assume) which helps buffer the rotting a bit. I do go out to bars every now and again to give the illusion that I am still in the part of my life where I’m wild and willing to take a ravenous bite out of culture.
But hold on a minute. They’re the ones coming to a neighborhood bar thrusting their presence upon everyone in the bar while taking pictures every second as if their presence needs to be confirmed. One picture missed is yet another denial of their life. So in the end is it really us who needs a life?
I mean granted my life isn’t all glitz and glamor. There’s the paying the bills, making sure I have enough money in my bank account to pay bills and all of that rot. But at least I’m not going into a Torrance bar with my group of friends and taking pictures incessantly. I’ll leave that to Sir David Attenborough.
In the end, after they left our area and continued to document their night, we still had an enjoyable time.