Happy Birthday to my good friend Kevin Magee! Being a Gemini, I've been told my whole life by the Sylvia Plaths and other mystic, overweight women in the world, that I am a twin. I always grew up thinking if anything, Kevin was my twin. We've always had a similar energy, one most people just kind of get overwhelmed trying to keep up with. We, along with our thoughts, constantly bounce around, and have some physical similarities.
Obviously, there are also some differences between Kevin and myself, I always thought he had better control, of himself, his impulses, and his own potential. I, on the other hand, constantly feel like I have no control of myself, and that instead, outside influence controls me. Paradigms and fads and all kinds of other annoyances that get in the way of true individuality seem to pull my strings. So, on this morning, on Kevin's 27th birthday, I will make an attempt to well, do something to fully sever those strings of outside influence.
It began with a beer, as it usually does, but this time at nine o' clock in the morning on a Tuesday in May, one that is quickly heating up...both the day and the beer. Here we are, pushing 30, and trying, but mostly ignoring, what exactly that means. I'm pushing 30, and soon enough I'll be pushed around by 60, and since I know I won't be touching 90, I'll consider this my mid-life crisis.As I raise a toast to my dog, who has no fucking clue what I'm doing, REO Speedwagon serenades us both with "I Can't Fight This Feeling".
No, I can't fight this feeling anymore, so let's get it out there...I am a strange dude. If I had a nickle for every time someone told me to my face"you're weird" I would be drinking a keg instead of a twelve-ounce bottle right now. So, I'm done fighting the weird, and done trying to be anything else, except for weird, because here we are, in the middle of a short-lived mid-life crisis, hating the notion of being normal. Normalcy rejects me like a Smallpox vaccine. That was such a weak, weak, analogy. So, moving on.
I used to hide sweatpants in my bookbag when I was a kid, because my parents made me wear jeans and I hated them. As soon as I got to school, the sweatpants went on. And every day, they were equally pissed, when they dropped me off in jeans, and I came home in sweatpants.
I chewed holes in all of my long sleeve shirts, and spent most of my youth playing in the woods by myself, and when I wasn't playing in the wilderness at the age of five, I was being quizzed on every state and capital in the country, every U.S. President in order, who their VP was, their wife's name, and what their occupation was before they became President. I drew sketches for hours and cried, a lot. Whiniest, most spoiled, bratty beat-red faced, stubborn little prick on the planet. I only ate grilled cheese, and cheese sticks at restaurants until I was in high school, and I probably drank more milk than water for most of my life.
I dressed in Abercrombie and used to skateboard at the same time, the first CD's I owned were: Quad City DJ's, Spice Girls, Bush, ICP, and Slick Rick. I also wanted to be a ninja for most of my childhood, and still to this day wonder "what if?" I fully applied myself at that young age to the craft, of Ninjary. I could Spiderman my way around the world. I probably still have some shred of me that believes Santa could be real, and I know "for a fact" I have had dozens of conversations with a ghost. It was a guy in his early to mid-twenties who functioned in an advisory role to me at a young age. When I was a child I told my mom I was killed by someone who was "Chinese" in my former life, and now looking back I'm not sure if it was my former life or a pre-destined fate of how this one will end.
I like to write poetry and box, so obviously, things are still at conflict here, on this day, on Magee's 27th birthday. I ran over a bird last week by accident and still feel bad about it, but envision every car that cuts me off on the highway, flipping into the air like a Jerry Bruckheimer action-movie, bursting into flames and incinerating everyone inside. I think that if I try hard enough to envision this fatal crash, I might make it happen.
I walked out of an interview last week because I was told I would have to shave in order to get the job, and just last night I called someone an "asshole" for dying of a heat stroke, because drinking water is "day 1 shit".
I'm in love at a girl whom I barely know and haven't even seen in five months, I just talked to my dad for the first time in 8 months, and I'm not entirely convinced my dog isn't a person reincarnated. I threw a cheap shot elbow to someone's forehead the other day because I didn't like the look on his face, and when a fight almost broke out a couple weeks ago my natural instinct was to say "I'll skull-fuck you, I'll fist-fuck you, and shut that cunt's mouth!".
Not once have I felt bad about any of that.
So, here's to you Kevin, and our Gemini-ness, and all of the other personalities and oddities and other completely off-putting things that happen in this world. I think, on this day, I have realized alongside age, that I am just getting better at being immature. I think I'm going to be Middleweight Champion of the world by the age of 30, and I want to simultaneously pursue a career as a stand-up comedian.
So, I guess I've toned it down a bit from the "Ninja" pipe-dreams of the past, but seriously, being a salesman, banker, or insurance adjuster just sounds entirely too fucking normal and adult for me right now.
Special shout to Biggie Smalls (dead), Mr. T (hard), Corey Thomas (guy), Josh Hamilton (drugs), Chris Benoit (dead), Bruce Buffer (eh), Al Franken (douche), Ricky Williams (stoned), and last but certainly not least, Ronald Isley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qnSz6Lh5pY
Happy days of birth you random fucks.
