MILLION $$ baby

this past weekend me and my are-we-siblings? friend went downtown to see "MDB" at the Metreon. it was a good movie, but left us gasping for beer. add to that that the Metreon is insane - filled with tourists and teenagers and saturated with the same blinking over-stimulation that keeps me far from Las Vegas - and you'll understand i was quite a mentalfuck. i wasn't sure either of us'd be able to concentrate enough to find a place to unwind.

but we did. luckily i work downtown and had a few ideas about bars with respite potential. to my delight, one was open. we sat there on stools, consuming burgers & beer beneath antique motorcycles, our conversation drifting from the movie to friends, living situations, and the evolutino of ambitions. we meander, she and i.

so have you seen this movie?

clint eastwood begrudgingly trains waitress hilary swank as a boxer. and of course, she's a total knockout. as in, everyone who steps in to the ring with her is knocked completely on their asses in the first round. the story traces ghosts, regrets, struggles, triumph, fathers, daughters and ultimately lets us witness a profound friendship.

a coworker called it "transcendant." welllll, as for me, i couldn't tell whether i felt empty or full at the end. isn't that just a confusing place to be? however i do recall walking away bitterly chewing upon the classic yu-es-of-a storyline showcasing a character who's risen up to become the champ. the best. the celebrated one.

you know this type of story right? i mean it happens all the time. personal triumph! over a painful past! !!!! it's that story of finally getting someone to pay attention to your great potential, and then soaring beyond where even your own dreams would have taken you.

that's how this movie goes for a while.

then there's the abrasive detour.

but anyway. this rise up story - it somehow irked me, triggering my own desire to be something great, something other than the rest, something no one expected. did i mention the bitter taste? is that just me? or are there others who've been told this story again and again? my reaction would almost be funny if i wasn't so annoyed by the way i eat up inspirational tales, hoping i too will grow big and strong, letting them hammer their way in to my head until one day it all just backfires.

apparently i was born this way tho. my collage of rising, sun and moon signs explains it all to me. see: "You have a strong restlessness and yearning for something greater than anything you've yet experienced, and you often live in your dreams and visions for the future. You tend to believe that the grass is greener somewhere else and you like to keep moving, either literally or figuratively. Idealistic and optimistic, you always expect something better ahead. You love to have a goal, something to aim for, but once you achieve it you are on to something else."

My roomate recently asked a bunch of us, "What do you all want out of life?"

our responses dragged out. she stood there with a beer in her hands. we sat on leather couches. i asked my friends the same question.

"to be significant," "to be proud of myself," "to be original and make a difference."

am i not alone then? i mean fine if i am, but what's with this culture of hyped up individual strides and measures of success or failure? do they make movies about ordinary people just doing their ordinary thing, and do we find them inspiring? or do we laugh at and maybe shrink from the ordinariness, the familiarity, the reality?

when i was a kid, my dad read me part of a story titled "ordinary jack," this boy in a family of geniuses who yearns to stand out. enter some un-memorable adult who suggests to jack that he pretend to be clairvoyant, thereby gaining attention and equal footing in his family. sadly, i don't know what happens next because for whatever reason, my dad didn't read the whole story. he probably should have as i've spent the rest of my life wondering when i'd ever discover my own superpower.

i'm just tired of wanting to believe it should happen to me too, you know. where's the acceptance in that?