Holes In Thoughts: Things that really are awesome

Monday, December 03, 2007

Things that really are awesome

Most third graders are familiar with what I'll call shopper's ennui: the sense that what you bought can't possibly live up to the fantastic ideal that it's been built up to.

I realized this when as a twelve-year-old boy, I convinced my Dad to buy a $60 (that's six-zero point zero zero dollars, people) remote control car. It was fast, had a pair of tracks instead of wheels, and lasted for exactly fifteen minutes per five-hour charge.

Trouble with that being, of course, that I could use it at most twice a day, since I couldn't see it at night.

I did enjoy that little remote control car enough to remember it a decade and a half later. I also remember that it took me about three weeks to get sick of waiting for the damn thing to charge. It was effectively destroyed within a few months from pretty reckless (though awesome) driving, most of which involved making ramps and launching it in ways that one day, God willing, I'll do with my Volkswagen.

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Anyway, the reason I bring up the remote control car is that it was, for about a year, the Thing I Coveted Most. A few years later, it relinquished that title to kissing and/or sex with girls, but at the time I recognized the feeling and the risk: few things are as good as you think they'll be. I figured kissing and sex would be an exception, but even then I correctly came to the conclusion that buyer's ennui was a real thing.

So in light of the holiday season ramping up its machine, here's a list of things that I bought that were every last bit as awesome as I had hoped they might be:

1. Dating and marrying Rachel. We have our dumb moments, usually caused by myopia or general illness, but I really can't imagine being really happy with anyone else because there is literally nothing I would really want to change. Not even the things that irritate me; those are usually the only things that keep me improving as a person.

2. My VW Beetle. Sure, it has had more repair problems than Chernobyl, but it's every last bit as rewarding as I think having a car can be. I suppose you can say that how awesome something is has little to do with how perfect, practical, or popular it is.

3. The Ampeg 8x10" bass amp I bought. I can feel my brain vibrating uncomfortably when I turn the Gallien-Krueger head past the "5" on the volume dial. It is wonderful being able to play a note that is remorsefully gentle and understated ...and still be 110 dB.

4. My Black & Decker power drill. An odd thing for this list, but it was so amazingly useful when we were pretty much building everything in our apartment, had ridiculously-long battery life and just did things it shouldn't have been able to for longer than I had a right to ask of it.

5. Radiohead's OK Computer, which I bought when it came out without knowing anything about the band, at all. I just liked the cover art a lot. Few things in the history of mankind have exceeded expectations like that purchase. U2's Achtung Baby also ended up being my favorite album, but the magnitude of the difference between expectation and reality were what set OK Computer apart.

6. My trip to Tokyo in 2001 with my family. It went about as well as any family trip can possibly go. We had fun, I slept very little, had about fifteen million great memories, and took some amazing pictures to help reminisce, which in turn really got me into becoming a photographer.

7. The book U2 at the End of the World, which I read at the height of my U2philism, was about as good a rock bio as has ever been written. I remember finding it in the Phoenix Main Library, and thinking, "there's no way this is going to be better than I hope it's going to be" -- but it was. You should read it. There's a part about a giant snake and hookers in Tokyo.

Labels: holidays, life, money, photography, sex, shopping, Tokyo

posted by Steve @ 9:56 PM

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