And Speaking of Misspent Youth...

I spent the whole weekend roped to my computer writing. Sadly, I wasn’t writing anything fun, but a report to submit to an environmental regulatory agency. By the time I put it in the hands of a reviewer, I was whipped down and spent. That meant only one thing… time had come to drink a whole bottle of wine… and straight from the bottle. Don’t need no stinkin’ glasses!

Fuck! What weekend?!

Whilst drinking said bottle of wine, I removed the technical jargon that was floating in my head after two days straight of writing, re-writing and tweaking text by watching the Lords of Dogtown. Which is a movie that is based on the story of Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary that Stacy Peralta made a few years ago. Both are fantastic so I recommend putting them on your Netflix queue or go to wherever you get your flicks and check them out.

Now, I grew up in Southern California, mind you, in the northernmost city in Southern California, but Southern California none the less. Santa Barbara is a surf/skate town and my crowd was the skate punk crowd. The aforementioned movies describe a time that was about 10 years before my era, but I looked up to those guys and had s-u-c-h huge crushes on boys of that ilk. They were tough and performed heroic tricks without any consideration of bumps, bruises, road rashes and broken bones. Perhaps stupid, but definitely dreamy. You see, they tended to have these incredible bodies… but I digress.

Anyhow, the point is these movies get the late 70’s in Southern California right, which is a rare bird. Most of what you see is a polished up Hollywood version of what it was like then and I’m sure in some circles it was like the Hollywood version. What is presented in these movies is the gritty underbelly of the disaffected youth that influenced so much of popular culture that spread across the whole country.

And when you are done with all that, rent Thirteen which is a movie that was directed and co-written by the director of the Lords of Dogtown and shudder in your boots if you are a parent to an adolescent girl in Southern California. Thirteen is not an uncommon story.