September 6, 1999

Well, that's it. It's over. That's a summer. Cut. Print. Take five.

As I write this, it's the morning of Labor Day 1999. In Chicago, it's not quite fall yet-- there's a pretty sweet Indian Summer in store for our area. But we can't avoid the inevitable, and the start of college football combined with the fact that Jerry Lewis has spent the past fifteen hours on my television set both mean that before we know it, the days will grow cool and then cold, the skies will grow grey, and we'll get some nasty snow and wind. Fall, then winter, will kill the summer vibe.

I'll be frank. I hate the end of summer. I live for the warmth, the brightness, the energy which the season provides. For me, the winter is usually torture. Saying goodbye to August means saying goodbye to summer--no more summer movies, no more great summer singles blasting out from the car radio, no comics conventions, no lazy sunny afternoons in an air-conditioned living room watching some mindless beach frolic on MTV. The fun ends here...at least until next May or so. I only hope I can hold out that long.

"I've long given up understanding why exactly, but during most summers, I'm a junkie for pop culture's crack."--Me, July 1999

But why does losing the summer--and more importantly, losing the pop culture fix it provides--sadden me so much? Maybe I shouldn't have given up understanding why that is, as I wrote in July; maybe that conundrum's exactly what I need to figure out.

It's not an easy equation to decipher, and it's certainly not one that everyone needs to worry about. I'm sure most people have pretty healthy relationships with the culture that surrounds them. But for those who spend May waiting in line five days for Star Wars tickets, buy $75 Springsteen tickets in June, visit a comics convention in July, hit Disney World in August and want to spend their Labor Day seeing Star Wars yet again, there's clearly a more unique relationship going on with pop culture. It's more than just a distraction or background noise; it's the only noise. It's as much a part of life as work, family and friends.

It's reached the point for me when I am so immersed in the pop culture that surrounds me that I feel pangs of withdrawl when removed from it. Last week when I visited Pewaukee, WI and lived in a virtually popless landscape, I missed what I was missing. All the stuff I take for granted, from interesting radio to 76 cable channels, was back at home, and all I had was the most mainstream of culture available--network TV, CNN and a few scattered cable stations. (Oh, and pay-per-view porn, but let's not go there just now, shall we?)

"They feed off only what becomes big enough to reach their small corner of the world. There is no 'alternative' here; it's all sameness."--Me, September 1999

On the other hand, the Pewaukeeites do have beautiful country and relative quiet. The absence of so much distraction probably means that they have time to focus on different pursuits. They garden, read, have meaningful conversations that aren't about Britney Spears' breast enlargement surgery. (Shocking, I know.) It's not a better or worse way to live, it's just different from that which I and many others am accustomed to. Instead of being immersed in pop culture, they are distantly removed from it, and in a sense, they're lucky.

Which continues to beg the question: what do I, or anyone addicted to pop culture, find in the pursuit of constant newness and freshness that is so exhilarating and irreplacable?

"It seems to me that if you place music (and books, probably, and films, and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the center of your being, then you can't afford to sort out your love life, start to think of it as the finished product...Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve..."--Nick Hornby, High Fidelity, August 1995

Maybe that's it. Maybe it's all about emotion, about refreshing the constant well of dead feelings that sit at the bottom of my soul. If I keep hearing new things that provoke emotion, then my emotions will never stabalize. As a result, I'll never have to confront "contentment" or stability. Or so the theory goes.

Maybe it's that I'm trying to recapture some missing slice of my youth. I discovered pop culture as a way of life only when I was in high school, really, and so I did miss many formative years of enjoying the easiest that mainstream pop has to offer--the Jon Bon Jovis, the Dirty Dancing's, the obvious stuff. Sometimes I feel like I'm trying to reconnect with my youth, and somehow remain young, by confessing a passing admiration for a Backstreet Boys song. I can even rationalize that admiration to no end, so that I don't sound like an idiotic brat.

My favorite theory, perhaps for obvious reasons, is that it doesn't really matter that I'm obsessed with pop culture. It makes no difference that I worship summer not just because of the weather, but because of the movies and music. What matters is that I can still walk out of the house on a pretty, cool Labor Day and glory at the blue, cloudless sky in a way no true junkie could. I can abandon the TV, the records, the videos and the books in favor of a beautiful day and the company of friends. That's what matters, after all, isn't it--the people I know and how I treat them.

That's where I've arrived after two months of submersion in the popular culture. I've learned that the POP gains only as much significance as you give it, and that as long as you can detach yourself and live with reality in comfort, you can give it as much significance as you damn well please. That probably isn't any kind of vida loca, but it works just fine for me.

THE END