That Weird Life

Where do the weirdos go when the going stops getting weird?

I miss the weirdness. I miss that Weird Life.

You could work a shitty job, live in a cheap shitty apartment, pretend to go to school, and just do weird shit.

Shit like, be a small town college radio DJ. Or start a band. Or just go to shows. Or make art. Or go to late night poetry readings at coffee shops. Or get really good at pool. Or just do random weird shit.

You didn’t have to live in a big city for this. It was all over the small cities and backwaters of America. And not just college towns.

I know this because we’d take road trips. Gas was cheap, so we’d drive 10 or 12 or even 20 hours to go to another city to see some band and hang with other weird people doing weird shit. You could do it anywhere.

I don’t know when that Weird Shit Life started. Maybe it was after the war? Maybe it was the Beatniks? Or was it the Hippies?

I don’t know what set it off but it had something to do with the excess bounty of America. There was slop in the system. And life was good. You didn’t have to work so hard if you didn’t want to. You could just skate by and not only survive, but thrive.

I’m not quite a Gen Xer. I’m more of an old Millennial. But by the time I dropped out of high school in the mid-90s that way of life had been going for a while, and it was still going strong.

Set in Austin Texas, Richard Linklater’s 1991 film Slacker documents the Weird Life.

And yeah kids, that’s really how it was.

First you just walk around and do nothing. Then take your a Fisher Price Pixelvision to a party, pass it around, call it an art film. OR encounter some weird chick on the street selling Madonna’s pap smear.

You could just do things (man).

I went back to Austin recently. That place has changed. The neighborhood where they shot most of Slacker has really changed.

They tore down the old houses that had been subdivided into small cheap apartments where the denizens of Weird Life dwelled.

The apartment houses were replaced by high-rise condos with names like Arc and Rise and Synergy. When you walk into one of these buildings your greeted a Community Manager. Who are always semi-attractive woman with a last name for a first name--like Kennedy or Madison or Blake.

And they’re always excited and happy and want to welcome you to their “Community”.

Because they “Manage” the “Community” and they’re Super! Passionate! about their Passion! for their Community!

Those chicks are living the opposite of Weird Life.

They live in Serious World.

But for some reason they have to pretend to OMG I LUV IT! all the time.

My Austin Uber driver and I laughed about the Super Positive! Madisons and Kennedys of Serious World. He was about my age, and also used to live the Weird Life.

We were about the same age, and both pondering our next moves. Just figuring out how to survive (without even a mention of “thrive”) in this new world.

He was considering moving to New Zealand and getting a job as a bus driver. I told him he should go for it. And that I’d happily join him if not for being locked down with my wife and kids. Because living the Weird Life just isn’t possible in the America of 2026--and it’s not coming back anytime soon.

The Weird Life ended sometime between 9/11 and the great recession. Economics had a lot to do with it. And so did social media.

We lived the Weird Life because we were curious kids. We were junkies for knowledge. And not just book knowledge.

We wanted to EXPERIENCE the world.

We wanted to KNOW it.

We wanted to find and do and LIVE weird shit.

So to assuage that curiosity, we lived the Weird Life.

There are still young people today with that insatiable curiosity. But they’re all online. Because the internet provides a pretty decent synthetic knowledge fix. And it’s cheap. And you don’t even have to leave your parents house (not that you can afford to move out anyway).

So the Weird Life is gone.

And probably for good.

But who knows... maybe if there’s a glut of housing stock, and maybe if food and gas prices come down, and maybe if crappy jobs paid a little better, and maybe if Al Gore unplugged the internet, it could all come roaring back.

Maybe if we stay Positive! it will come back.