Typical: A Gen X Microcast: Recent Episodes
Jaime Clarke
an intern in washington dc goes missing and the congressman from her district in california is questioned the actor robert blake’s wife is found murdered in the passenger seat of his car madonna announces her first tour in over a decade the drowned world tour and you think that about says it all
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you look up from the podium during your reading and see the actress molly ringwald cutting through the crowd finding a place in the corner after the reading you’re relieved to find your editor in the back of the room though your interaction with him is a bit awkward before you can launch into an apology about the whole thing and explain your side molly ringwald appears and it’s clear they are a couple and all else is washed away in pleasantries
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you feel strongly that whoever wrote the review should have to sign his or her name to it that publishers weekly shouldn’t be publishing anonymous reviews if someone feels strongly about a book one way or the other shouldn’t do so behind a curtain also the review mentions bret easton ellis twice which makes you suspect he’s the real target of the reviewer’s disdain you immediately recall an episode at harold ober where the editor of the los angeles review of books called the agent of one of ober’s authors who publicly hated an author with a new book out the editor wanted to hire the ober author to review the author he hated a setup the ober author rightly declined but the fact that the editor initiated the request spooked you around that time you’d been reading a memoir by the long-dead legendary new york times critic anatole broyard who joyfully confessed that it was the job of the critic to bring writers down a notch which he had done time and again all of it swirling in your head as you brooded about the publishers weekly review
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the rapper eminem and his wife reconcile the magazine editor at shout who ran your piece on the rapper tupac shakur invites you to a party in chelsea thrown for a new magazine edited by the daughter of the rolling stones guitarist keith richards neither of you knowing in advance that keith richards is going to be at the party the magazine editor says oh my god when he spots the recognizable silhouette of the legendary guitarist you tell him he should go say something to richards and the magazine editor admits the thought makes him so nervous he might vomit
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a pop culture magazine called shout publishes an early excerpt of we’re so famous by arrangement with bloomsbury usa and the magazine editor asks if you want to contribute nonfiction and you pitch an article about how the rapper tupac shakur’s fans believe he isn’t really dead and will rise again on a date in the future you’re not much of a rap fan so you consult your youngest brother who is to get the facts straight shout loves the idea and runs the piece the whitewater investigation against president clinton closes without any charges being leveled mister rogers from mister rogers’ neighborhood is diagnosed with stomach cancer and announces the end of his show
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an agent in the midst of a divorce rents an empty office at harold ober and you ask him to represent the oral biography of bret easton ellis and he agrees to send it around for you the rapper eminem records a song wherein he describes killing his estranged wife eminem’s estranged wife attends his concert on his promise that he won’t perform the song he wrote about her but he does anyway and she leaves distraught getting in a car wreck on the way home once home she tries to commit suicide by slitting her wrists everyone is afraid of contracting the west nile virus which is spread through mosquitoes the bride who had her tv marriage to the millionaire annulled poses for playboy
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there’s some question as to whether or not the millionaire from the reality show is actually a millionaire and it comes to light that the millionaire is using a fake name and his former girlfriend had to file a restraining order against him when she ended their relationship all the police officers who riddled the immigrant reaching for his wallet with forty-one bullets are acquitted the rapper puff daddy pleads not guilty to charges he tried to bribe his driver into saying the gun used at the nightclub shooting was his a cuban boy whose mother drowned trying to cross the waters into florida and who has been staying with his relatives in miami is seized and returned to cuba to the boy’s father the tug-of-war between the united states and cuba over the boy won by cuba the rapper eminem is arrested twice once for assaulting a man he witnessed kissing his estranged wife outside of a nightclub and another time for waving a gun at rival rappers insane clown posse
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as the clock counts down to the year 2000 the overzealous wait with bated breath for the end of times but when the calendar turns to january all that really happens is a couple of credit card machines refuse to process sales and a bank of slot machines at a casino in delaware all quit working the rapper puff daddy is charged in the incident in the nightclub with jennifer lopez the band rage against the machine plays a concert on wall street and the swelling crowds cause the markets to close early for security reasons
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no one can figure out for sure if the movie the blair witch project is real or not you see it even though you don’t really like horror films and you can’t tell but think the marketing campaign is to blame for the confusion which is the filmmaker’s intention and everyone proclaims the use of the internet in this way as genius the government pays the heirs of abraham zapruder tens of millions of dollars rather than relinquish the footage of kennedy’s assassination they confiscated that november day in dallas michael jackson’s wife debbie rowe files for divorce the learjet carrying golfer payne stewart from florida to texas veers off course and the fighters that scrambled to escort it see that everyone inside is dead beatle george harrison is stabbed in his home by an intruder the rapper puff daddy and his girlfriend the actress jennifer lopez are at a new york city nightclub where a scuffle breaks out shots are fired and the rapper is arrested
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doctor jack kevorkian the euthanasia booster present at a number of suicides over the years is arrested when he actually helps someone commit suicide the magician david blaine is buried in a plastic coffin under a tank of water for a week across the street from trump plaza everyone stopping by to have their picture taken with the entombed magician the rapper puff daddy is arrested for assaulting the manager of another rapper over a crucifixion scene in a music video the girl who played the sister on diff’rent strokes dies of an accidental overdose
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michael jordan retires for the last time and for good the televangelist jerry falwell warns parents that one of the teletubbies the one called tinky winky is really gay and bad for children a twenty-two-year-old immigrant from guinea is shot forty-one times on the landing of his apartment in the bronx by four police officers who mistake him for a rape suspect and further mistake his reaching for his wallet as him reaching for a gun you place gene siskel who owns the suit john travolta wore in the movie saturday night fever dies from complications after surgery for brain cancer
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the woman who previously stalked late-night host david letterman stealing his porsche and sleeping near the tennis courts of his home in connecticut kneels in front of a train in colorado the house of representatives authorizes an impeachment inquiry against president clinton sportscaster marv albert’s criminal record is wiped clean after a year of good behavior two teens in wyoming pretend to be gay and lure an openly gay kid to a remote area and beat and rob him and chain him to a fence the actor michael j fox who played that kid you loved on that show when you were a kid and all the back to the future movies too announces he has parkinson’s disease the new york tabloids are ablaze with headlines about the comedian jerry seinfeld and a woman he met at a health club who was recently married to the son of a prominent theater family the woman ends the marriage after four months and begins dating seinfeld president clinton settles with paula jones over her lawsuit without admitting any wrongdoing
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president clinton is subpoenaed in the lewinsky matter a few days later lewinsky meets with kenneth starr and admits to a sexual encounter with the president the very next day lewinsky is granted immunity president clinton agrees to testify voluntarily lewinsky hands over one of her dresses which rumor has it contains some of the president’s dna on it the little kid from diff’rent strokes everyone loved is arrested for punching a woman who asks for his autograph while he’s shopping for a bulletproof vest for his job as a security guard paula jones’s lawyers appeal to have her lawsuit against the president reinstated bret easton ellis invites you to dinner at the bowery bar mark mcgwire and sammy sosa are in a race to break the long-held single-season home run record kenneth starr turns in the results of his investigation and calls for the impeachment of president clinton
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drinks with friends at minetta’s for your birthday and you’re standing at the crowded bar trying to get the bar manager’s attention and when you look in the mirror behind the bar you see the actor who played ferris bueller is standing next to you and it takes everything you have not to turn to him and tell him how much you loved ferris and fancied that you were him when you were in high school and when you wake in the morning with a concussive headache you’re proud of yourself for having not said a word frank sinatra dies and the empire state building is lit up blue as a tribute the comedian phil hartman is murdered in his sleep by his wife while their two children sleep in their rooms in the same house the wife flees and brings back a friend to try to help her figure out what to do and when the friend isn’t looking she locks herself in the house and commits suicide
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monica lewinsky wants immunity from kenneth starr who is leading the investigation of president clinton and his alleged misdeeds a white male in his thirties is arrested at sky harbor airport in phoenix for verbally abusing an airport employee and it turns out to be axl rose the front man of guns n’ roses that no one has seen in years the rumor is he lives in a mansion by the ocean in california and never leaves it just rehearsing and rehearsing music no one will ever hear a homemade sex tape of the actress pamela anderson and her husband tommy lee the drummer for the heavy-metal band mötley crüe stolen by a disgruntled electrician working on their house becomes available to the public one half of the disgraced musical duo milli vanilli the ones who had to give back their grammy when it was revealed they were lip-synchers is found dead in his hotel room from a drug overdose
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sonny from sonny and cher dies when he hits a tree while skiing in nevada the teacher in washington state impregnated by her twelve-year-old student is released from prison early and told to stay away from the student monica lewinsky files an affidavit in the paula jones lawsuit denying she had a sexual relationship with president clinton and a week or so later president clinton gives similar testimony someone named matt drudge runs an e-mail newsletter about politics and hollywood gossip and he includes an item about a story by a newsweek magazine reporter about some secretly taped conversations that monica lewinsky’s colleague at the pentagon recorded where lewinsky admits having sexual relations with the president drudge’s story is just about how the newsweek story was suppressed internally but a couple of days later the scandal hits all the press outlets at once it seems
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when you pack for the trip back to belgium at christmas you let your friend in connecticut know you won’t return and you’re not sure if that means just to her apartment or if it means something more you’re welcomed like a long-lost son-in-law by the au pair’s family when you return but outside of a nice christmas dinner at their house you don’t see them your old high school friend from phoenix flies to london and you and the au pair meet him there for a planned trip to celebrate hogmanay the new year’s celebration in edinburgh you and your high school friend have always talked about attending but first you stop north of london at the house of a girl your friend met in his travels abroad the house is in willoughby waterleys a small village with a pub at the end of the lane the girl’s house is a two-story georgian called the old rectory and she’s there with her mother and sisters her youngish father having recently and tragically died while working in the garden the house cast in a pall but in english fashion you’re received and put up in the part of the house that has heat you’re asked to sign the guest book and you notice the actress helena bonham carter has recently signed it too
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the lead singer of the band inxs which you saw all those years ago in high school hangs himself in a hotel room maybe it’s an accident maybe it’s something else even a scurrilous rumor about autoerotic sex gone awry the actor chris farley is found dead in his chicago apartment from a drug overdose paula jones’s lawyers subpoena a former white house intern in jones’s ongoing sexual harassment suit against the president the director woody allen marries the adopted daughter of his former lover the actress mia farrow who played daisy in the film version of the great gatsby
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the singer john denver is killed when the plane he is flying runs out of gas you go to see the writer denis johnson read from his new book at the new school and wonder if he remembers a time in the not-too-distant past when he visited the university of arizona and you asked him a couple of questions raising your hand when no one else would out of nervousness or whatever a girl you meet who works for george plimpton the legendary writer and founder of the literary magazine the paris review invites you to one of the equally legendary paris review parties at plimpton’s house overlooking the east river the room filled with names and at least some faces you recognize from the literary world a famous television personality bumps you off the corner of the pool table doubling as a buffet table to get to the food
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marv albert goes on trial for sodomizing and biting a women he’d known for years the tabloids full of details like a woman grabbing albert’s toupee only for it to come off after four days of testimony albert pleads guilty to a lesser charge the promise keepers a christian organization for men founded by a former college football coach march on washington some suspect the group uses the bible to assert men’s superiority over women especially in marriage a handful of women allegedly sexually harassed by president clinton are subpoenaed by the lawyers for paula jones
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princess diana is killed when the car she’s riding in crashes during a high-speed chase in paris to elude paparazzi as you leave phoenix for concord the governor who barely won election is convicted of extortion and bank fraud and resigns you and millions of others watch princess diana’s funeral on television the two little princes walking along behind their mother’s coffin it breaks your heart elton john’s song about marilyn monroe that your younger brother loves becomes a song about the late princess
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the musician jeff buckley jumps into a river in memphis for a swim and his body washes up a week later new york giants legend frank gifford is caught cheating on his wife with a flight attendant paid by a tabloid to do it the widow of malcolm x is burned by her grandson the person responsible for blowing up the truck in front of the federal building in oklahoma is found guilty and sentenced to death the boxer mike tyson bites off a piece of the ear of his opponent in a highly publicized boxing match and spits it onto the canvas robert mitchum dies from smoking and the next day jimmy stewart dies after he refuses to change the battery in his pacemaker the fashion designer gianni versace is murdered on the steps of his mansion in miami after running out for the morning paper
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oj simpson is forced to take the witness stand in the civil trial brought against him for the wrongful death of the murdered friend of his wife by the murdered friend’s father who promises to haunt oj until the end of oj’s bill cosby’s son is murdered along the freeway in los angeles when he stops to help a stranded motorist employees of michael jackson’s neverland ranch sue him for wrongful termination they claim was retribution for cooperating with the grand jury looking into allegations of child molestation word leaks the reclusive author j d salinger is going to publish a new book or at least a book-length revision of one of his old new yorker short stories a teacher in washington state is arrested for having sex with her twelve-year-old student she’s pregnant with his child
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your last residency at bennington begins amidst the january snow with an incident involving a drunken student sexually harassing one of your poet friends so that you have to intervene not knowing the residency will degrade further from there after the student is asked to find accommodations off campus your journey from the midnight showing of less than zero to the alma mater of bret easton ellis culminates with your graduate lecture about said journey
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everyone doing the macarena at the democratic national convention the rapper tupac shakur is shot in las vegas after attending a boxing match miraculously the letter you wrote to bret easton ellis asking to interview him for your graduate lecture at bennington which is to be a recitation of your literary journey to date is answered your father telling you that someone named bret left a message on the machine and when you return it ellis invites you to come to new york to conduct the interview in person and you immediately agree to the plan tupac holds on for almost a week before dying rumors that he’s faked his own death abound the mother in texas who hired a hit man to kill her daughter’s cheerleading rival’s mother in an effort to get the rival to drop out of contention is sentenced to prison
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no one believes the story the menendez brothers tell about the abuse they suffered at the hands of their father and they’re found guilty of murder don’t eat meat or you’ll catch mad cow disease charlie keating’s conviction is overturned and he’s released the unabomber is arrested when his brother recognizes the rantings of the manifesto published in the newspapers as those of his crazy brother living in the woods in montana the rapper mc hammer files for bankruptcy and you think man where did all that money go the actress from the superman movies is found hiding in some bushes in a suburb of los angeles with all her hair cut off and ranting she was apparently in the bushes for days
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madonna reluctantly testifies in court against the man who broke into her hollywood home and threatened to slice her up if she didn’t become his wife we’ve made his fantasies come true madonna admonishes the court which compelled her to testify sitting right in front of him instead of by videotape or some other method one way to meet a celebrity on your terms one of the producers who made all the big movies of the eighties like flashdance beverly hills cop and top gun is found dead in his bathroom from a drug overdose and there are whispers that a botched penile implant is to blame magic johnson comes out of retirement to play for the lakers
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photos of oj simpson’s wife and friend in rivers of blood on the saltillo tile of your youth are all over the news oj tries on the bloody glove a police officer found on oj’s property but the glove appears not to fit one of charlie keating’s lieutenants is discovered in the early morning in his lexus parked in the parking lot of a toy store a bullet in his brain a few days later another of charlie’s lieutenants does the same in his home a handsome actor whose movies you haven’t seen is arrested for soliciting a prostitute in los angeles the world agog as the handsome actor’s girlfriend is a world-renowned model and actress screen legend lana turner dies a couple of days later but the handsome actor and the prostitute dominate the news
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oj’s houseguest tells about going to mcdonald’s with oj the limo driver meant to take oj to the airport rang the doorbell repeatedly before oj appeared looking sweaty the guy tricked into meeting his secret admirer for an episode of the jenny jones show learns the secret admirer is a man and murders the admirer a few days after the show the singer selena is murdered by her assistant who it turns out was stealing money from her the newscaster refers to her as the mexican Madonna someone blows up a truck in front of the federal courthouse in oklahoma
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when you awake dazed to the sound of clanging heaters you get your correct room assignment and scurry off to the welcome reception in the commons disappointed that most of the other writing students have not heard of bret easton ellis or the ones who have just smile talk revolves around the poet robert frost or the writer bernard malamud both dead and lionized and decidedly not very interesting oj simpson’s trial for murdering his wife and her friend begins in los angeles
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bad reviews for bret easton ellis’s book start rolling in and you’re not sure why but you write a letter to the editor of entertainment weekly in response to one of the harsher reviews and to your surprise they print it the thrill of your name in the magazine matched only by the message on the answering machine at home that vanity fair is going to print your letter as well the stars aligning when you happen upon a flyer on the fourth floor of the modern languages building on campus where all your creative writing workshops are held for a new low-residency mfa program at bennington college you take in the news stunned a little and then steal the poster so that no one else sees it before you can get your application in former president ronald reagan announces that he has alzheimer’s the last the public hears from him
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rumor has it that kojak’s son is a student at the university of arizona and that his girlfriend tori spelling has been seen around tucson and that tori spelling’s castmate from 90210 jennie garth is from phoenix which matters to devotees of the show you’ve never seen it though you know all of the characters’ names oj simpson is suspected of murdering his wife and her friend and then leads the police on a slow freeway chase radio personality howard stern withdraws from the race for governor of new york rather than publicly reveal his financial statements
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the actress winona ryder offers a large reward for the little girl from ryder’s hometown who is kidnapped from a slumber party your friend from maryland who is as much a fitzgerald fan as you tells you that river phoenix died outside a nightclub in hollywood owned by johnny depp and while there seems to be an insinuation in these facts it’s just a terribly sad thing that happened the girl in your apartment complex who tells you the dirty joke you don’t understand until much later has a copy of the rob lowe sex tape and shows it to you and after all the years of hearing about it and even the coy allusions to it in that movie rob lowe made as a comeback after the scandal the video of what happened in the hotel room at the democratic national convention in atlanta years previous is tame and a little boring the body of the little girl from winona ryder’s hometown who was kidnapped from a slumber party is found an olympic skater is attacked whacked in the knee and it turns out to be a hit ordered by a rival skater radio personality howard stern announces his candidacy for the governor of new york
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arizona voters approve a statewide holiday for martin luther king jr and are rewarded when the national football league awards the state the right to host the super bowl three years on the actor who played the older brother on diff’rent strokes is arrested when he’s pulled over by police who find drugs and a loaded gun michael jackson appears on oprah winfrey’s talk show and claims to have a skin disease and that he doesn’t bleach his skin like some suspect a truck bomb explodes at the world trade center doesn’t do what it’s supposed to knock one building into the other but it does kill a handful of people the actor who played the older brother on diff’rent strokes is arrested for stabbing a guy renting a room from him when he tells the guy to quit yelling at his girlfriend but he’s later cleared when the stabbing turns out to be self-defense the little kid from diff’rent strokes everyone loved wins a lawsuit against his parents who squandered all the money he made the actor son of the famous martial artist is killed on a movie set when a blank is fired at him same as it was jon-erik hexum years before
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a teenage girl on long island shoots but doesn’t kill the wife of the guy who works on her car when she brings it in to his auto body shop the friend of the actor who played colonel hogan on one of your favorite shows as a kid hogan’s heroes is arrested for colonel hogan’s murder at an apartment complex in scottsdale the murder happening sometime in the late seventies long before you even started watching the show and you wonder at the complicit silence among the adults who knew that the actor had had his head bludgeoned in his sleep and possibly as a result of his sex life which included homemade pornographic movies and swinging and who knows what else the friend who is arrested all these years later was always the prime suspect and there’s doubt that the evidence will stand up but the news repeats all the salacious details for those not in the know
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magic johnson arranges a press conference to announce that he is hiv positive and will retire from basketball immediately and as his team the lakers are perennial tormentors of the hometown phoenix suns some fans are not as compassionate as they could be magic goes on his friend arsenio hall’s late-night show to assure everyone he is heterosexual and not gay which gets a standing ovation from the crowd lasting minutes one of the kennedy relatives goes on trial for raping a woman at the family compound in florida the movie about jfk’s assassination fires everyone’s imagination especially those who have been living with so many unanswered questions for so long the rich texan with the funny name and funny voice who announces his bid for the presidency on a nightly cable talk show even though he doesn’t belong to either of the two traditional political parties
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the video for madonna’s new song is banned from mtv and the guy on nightline asks her if she’ll make even more money from the song now that it’s banned madonna says yeah so the girl who played the sister on diff’rent strokes is caught robbing a video store in vegas where she is living and working at a dry cleaner’s everyone watches the video tape of the rodney king beating on television you are haunted by the image of the famous guitarist’s toddler son falling to his death out an open window in new york a high school teacher in new hampshire is found guilty of ordering one of her students who is also her teenage lover to murder her husband warren beatty musing about how madonna doesn’t exist if there’s no camera the kid from the partridge family who is a radio dj in phoenix is found cowering in his apartment closet when the police come to arrest him for beating up a transvestite prostitute
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the controversial rap group 2 live crew is tried and acquitted on obscenity charges in florida stemming from a concert performance secretly recorded by two undercover police officers a few days before they’re acquitted a federal judge declares their best-selling album obscene the chaos of the atmosphere surrounding the national football league’s unprecedented rescinding of the super bowl they previously awarded tempe when arizona voters reject an initiative to create a martin luther king jr holiday the loss of the super bowl means the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars and also black entertainers have called for a boycott of the state which loses more money the shadow of the used-car salesman governor lingering
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your high school girlfriend on the ten-dollar-a-minute ship-to-shore phone calls that will come out of your paycheck along with the tracksuit you’ve been wearing day and night and when your high school girlfriend says maybe it’s better if you stay for the entire summer you jump ship the moment the boat docks after two weeks at sea spending five of your last dollars on a cab ride from the ship to the airport leafing through a discarded people magazine about marlon brando’s son murdering his sister’s boyfriend while your father tries to get you a ticket on the last plane back to civilization
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the old ford pickup truck cruises the harbor of ships gearing up for the sea the ships becoming smaller and smaller until you reach yours the smallest among them and you’re awarded a matching blue tracksuit with the words dutch harbor alaska stenciled in yellow down the right leg as clothes until your bag can be found you’re instructed to help load the supplies stacked on the dock for the journey men of substance both fictional like jay gatsby and real like charlie keating have about them the myth of the self-made man and you buck in under this pretense the money earned over the summer will be more than you’ve ever made in your life and you’ll use it as seed money to reinvent yourself when you return to phoenix
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charlie is summoned to washington to testify before a committee about lincoln savings and loan and when he takes the fifth the news goes wild and the phones in the runners’ room light up the mail full of indictments and threats the one correspondent who faithfully sends a package every week with epithets and pictures of his father who lost everything when lincoln failed and took his own life the manila envelope like finding a rattlesnake in the mailbag
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a television actress from a show you’ve never heard of is murdered on her doorstep in los angeles by a crazed fan from tucson and the papers drop the tidbit that the actress became the object of the crazy’s obsession when his first obsession the girl from back east who wrote the letter to the russian president died in that small plane crash and it seems weird to share an obsession with a crazy person and you’ve never considered that the false intimacy celebrity creates could be dangerous two brothers in beverly hills murder their parents with shotguns in the family tv room and try to convince the police that it’s a mob hit related to their record producer father’s business but the police don’t buy it and the brothers are ultimately arrested
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a serial killer everyone describes as handsome is executed in florida the actor who played the older brother on diff’rent strokes is arrested for shooting someone in a drug den in south central los angeles the president or whatever of iran puts a bounty on a writer you’ve never heard of the commercial pepsi paid madonna millions to make debuts during the cosby show but the next day the video madonna made for her song like a prayer debuts and the two side by side are a study in extreme contrasts suddenly christians are supposedly not drinking pepsi
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that fall your history teacher wants everyone to volunteer for a political campaign during the current election cycle the incumbent democratic candidate for senator’s office across the street from campus the obvious choice but just to be contrary you answer an ad for the republican challenger someone you’ve never heard of a financial planner of some kind who hasn’t a prayer of winning and when you report to the financial planner’s house in the gated biltmore estates you learn the campaign team is just you and the financial planner’s son who has dropped out of the university of arizona and put his band’s music on hold to work on his father’s campaign the mission that day is to put up campaign billboards but the posthole digger is impotent against the hard desert floor and you don’t get one sign up
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the recall election of the used car salesman governor is set and your private-school classmate’s dad who is a congressman agrees to run though before the election can happen the car salesman governor is indicted for this and that and removed as governor you actually like the classmate he was the kid who sat in front of you on your shadow day way back when and he actually spoke to you unlike the others and you identified him as an all-right guy right off though you never really became friends with him or the kid running for student government who gave his campaign speech in the gymnasium and listed one of his hobbies as being an avid beaver hunter and everyone shrieked ending the kid’s candidacy and earning him a week’s suspension but also a bit of legend which far outweighed the punishment though not so for the senior who appeared on camera during a news investigation about boondockers in the desert kids gathering with illegally purloined alcohol and then scattering drunk and whatever else behind the wheels of their cars the senior agreeing to be interviewed on camera and telling the reporter that nothing could stop them from partying which although it was probably true did abruptly end his studies at the private school when he was expelled as not representative of the school’s student body
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you spend time cruising the east side of phoenix a part of town previously unknown to you exploring the roads lined with expensive homes even wending to the top of camelback mountain where the priciest homes of all are perched and also the biltmore area with its boutique shops and exclusive restaurants and the difference between this world and yours solidifies all of it bifurcated by the private school that resides geographically between the two and maybe not just geographically just like the two eggs in gatsby though you start to think less of jay gatsby and more about f scott fitzgerald famous and rich and then broke and forgotten in the same lifetime but immortal in death and that seems more desirable than money something to really strive for but the how is too hard to parse and you drop it until you’re watching the credits roll on the midnight showing of less than zero and see that the movie which you consider powerful for its examination of the importance of loyal friendships is based on a novel and later you do a little sniffing around the phoenix public library and learn that the author is more like fitzgerald than not and maybe that’s the blueprint
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everyone listening to the new u2 album the first few bars of the first song everywhere like weather someone initiates a recall of the mormon car salesman governor and then the news becomes just about that the story advancing incrementally sometimes without any new facts just everyone’s anger and embarrassment especially when the governor digs in and doubles down like politicians always seem to just like the senator with the girl on his lap did when everyone said he was finished they’re always the last to know somewhere in texas a baby falls through the tiny opening of an abandoned well and for two days the television documents the rescue the baby miraculously okay when she’s pulled free
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the sunday-morning tv show loses his job because he drugged and raped his secretary along with another preacher which completely validates and supports everything you think about religion same again when the other preacher gets caught with a prostitute months later and same again but this time about politics when the photo of the senator running for president and the model on his lap is everywhere attending the baptist church with your private-school friend a megachurch down the street from the private school surprised to see the rocker alice cooper in the front pew with his family his daughter’s baptism on the agenda of the program in your lap you really don’t have any idea who alice cooper is but know he’s someone famous who lives in phoenix but he just looks like a father and a husband in church
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the papers full of oliver north and his secretary fawn hall and iran-contra the term plausible deniability floating through conversations a term you like there’s a rumor rob lowe is dating the secretary and also a rumor about richard gere the heavy metal group judas priest is ordered to stand trial over two teens in nevada who shot each other on a playground one of them dying instantly the other maimed and living a few more years their parents think they did it because of subliminal messages in judas priest’s music the mormon car salesman elected governor of arizona without a majority cancels martin luther king jr day calling it an illegal holiday also calling black children pickaninnies and telling black people they don’t need a holiday they need jobs oh and the time he told a jewish delegation that america was a christian nation and boy did those japanese businessmen’s eyes get round when they found out how many golf courses arizona had and the retribution is sure but slow playing out for months and years to come
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sophomore year starts off with the inxs concert at the mesa amphitheatre the pastel-colored crowd sweating in the summer that won’t end and when it’s over some of the crowd follows the limo you and your friends rented to ferry you to and from the party thinking maybe you’re the band but your friend sticks his head out of the window and the jig is up and the cars fall back everyone laughing but some annoyed not to have teased the ruse further to at least see if any girls were in the trailing cars there’s a lot of talk about who is going to be participating in hands across america the guy from st elsewhere coming to phoenix to be part of the chain the idea something ferris bueller might come up with no one can answer the question about whether or not max headroom is a real person or not self-aggrandizers everywhere like that fake jimmy swaggart who gets wal-mart to pull rolling stone magazine from its shelves or all those celebrities in the antidrug stop the madness video the world is full of attention seekers it seems sean penn punching a musician at a club in los angeles e.g. or anyone on entertainment tonight or a current affair which becomes obsessed with the preppy murderer in new york only because he’s handsome
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everyone says michael jackson now owns all the songs written by the beatles which is confusing the question about whether or not your grade-school popularity will transfer with you to high school is answered pretty quickly as you become an anonymous freshman face in the small mexican town on the outskirts of phoenix the high school mostly mexican too but white kids bused in from everywhere until the mexicans are a minority again those mexicans you get to know through your after-school job at the fish and chips some of them even recognizing you from over the summer especially those you began to favor with free food including the security guard a local you’ve cultivated the saxophone that has lain dormant since the seventh grade reawakens in your first-period band class marching season that fall playing halftime at home and away games riding the bus hassled at work for needing friday nights off the busiest of the week don’t you know but band is your entrée into the world of upperclassmen who take a liking to you like others in south dakota and north dakota and montana did previously and you don’t try to analyze it just say yes to hanging out with them at their houses late into the night drinking their parents’ alcohol or to the midnight showing of the rocky horror picture show some of the upperclassmen are in the drama club too throwing toast and rice at the screen after your shift at the fish and chips has ended then driving around until all hours of the night looking for alleged parties sometimes in other school districts someone knows someone who is having a party or not breaking into the resorts ringing camelback mountain to use the pool if all else fails
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new coke debuts and even though the soda delivers everything it promises there’s such a stink about it that they bring back the old coke and there’s a rumor that the guy who came up with the idea was fired the summer of repeated viewings of back to the future and miami vice reruns if only to stay out of the crushing heat waiting for the sun to set to walk the neighborhood with your boom box playing van halen’s 1984 crashing party lines for however many cents a minute at night that summer all the girls dressed like Madonna phil collins playing the london Live Aid show and then flying to america on the concorde for the other show the same day jack nicholson everywhere that day too everyone cooing over a band called u2
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the night everyone had their wits scared away from watching phantasm which rumor had it was directed by a teenager and then you want to make a movie too but easier to start an air band called phantasm which wins the school talent show handily you lip-synching the words to open arms and don’t stop phantasm is asked to headline the next parent-teacher dinner and the keyboardist drummer and lead guitarist agree with your suggestion of performing a couple of bryan adams songs run to you and heaven make the cut the whole band shops for stage clothes at the millers outpost at westridge mall keeping the receipts and tucking the tags in so everything can be returned the following day
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madonna sings her new song like a virgin at the video music awards wearing a wedding dress and a bustier vh1 debuts a couple of hours after the def leppard drummer crashed his corvette into a brick wall the eighth-grade graduation trip to disneyland purchased by selling tom-wat door-to-door because a lot of kids will never graduate high school the teacups and the hotel with piss-stained elevators and strawberry hill and california coolers after curfew the girl from somewhere in the east being invited to russia after she wrote a letter to yuri andropov which made you start writing letters to celebrities to see if they’d write back though they mostly sent signed pictures of themselves or the handful of videos on the new music channel or michael jackson’s thriller video or what happened to michael making that pepsi commercial or the first woman on the supreme court or when that famous actress fell off the boat and died or the first test tube baby it all happened after none of it connected in your mind at least
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that vanessa williams thing was right around the time of the mcdonald’s massacre you couldn’t turn on a television without hearing about those poor innocents just eating lunch and then a circumstance occurs like earlier when the teenage sears security guard shooed away the kids gathered around the in-store video game console and the youngest boy whose father would become the host of america’s most wanted ended up dead at the hands of a child predator or the time before that when someone was putting something in tylenol
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@TypicaloftheX