Suburbia, Two Towers, Punks, Fen, & why I feel lost no matter what I do

Maybe I just saw a bad mix of movies in the past few days, but how did my life get where it is. I saw Suburbia on DVD and Two Towers in the theater. Those are both movies which take me back, for different reasons. So I'm examining the path I took to get from there to here and I just can't see it. So how can I figure out where to go from here.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were really important books to me. I suppose if I had not had to get rid of the box set one of the times we moved, they would probably be quite collectible now. I remember convincing my school to fund a D&D club in high school and science fiction club and strategic games club in college. I remember the first time I went to a science fiction convention and there were thousands of people into the same weird stuff I was.

I just unpacked a carton of old photos and there is one of me in this homemade vampire victim costume sort of wrestling with a friend of mine in a wizard costume. And I look like I'm having fun. I know he and I had a falling out not that long after that though. We had worked together on various extracurriculars and he felt like I worked him too hard. At least then no one could accuse me of doing it for the $$$$$$$$$. I'm just a workaholic and ya don't get paid for after school projects. It wasn't a particularly eruptive or important falling out and I did not realize how many people I would lose contact with after school.

When I got the call that he had died, I felt like it would be weird for me to go to the funeral, but I'd thought I had years and years and years to patch things up there. I've always been discouraged from going to family funerals. My grandfather's funeral, with four hundred people spilling out into the street, when I was in fifth grade, was the only one I had been taken too.

So the scene in Suburbia, where they are not welcome at the funeral . . . because of what they look like, what they dress like, what they represent, what they are, or perhaps some other intangible thing . . . well, it struck a chord with me.

I feel like I've passed through all of these subcultures and I still both do and do not identify with most of them. The things people use to determine friend or foe there just seem so ridiculous to me, as artificial and foolhardy and capricious as deciding your friends by the color of their skin.

The thing I like about Los Angeles overculture is that it admits it is artificial and the things it values tend to be things which are good for you anyway. Get a nice ride. Get a cell phone. Get in shape. Get a good haircut. Get new clothes. Get a nice house. Get off your ass and take that picture, launch that magazine, shoot that movie, go to that audition, etc. I'm already way too good-looking for fandom, but I am fat fat fat for Los Angeles. I am already too successful for punk, but I am not nearly accomplished or successful enough to be more than a blip in Los Angeles.

The thing I don't like about Los Angeles is that I probably know someone who has fucked Elijah Wood, but I probably don't know anyone who loved the books who would be capable of comparing them to the movies with me over coffee. Of course, I live in LA, so I've been working on quitting drinking nonemergency coffee anyway. It is unhealthy and should be avoided, unless it makes me more capable of success.

Oh, and the other thing I don't like is that, at the end of the day, I don't really fit in. I can never completely swallow everything I am supposed to believe anywhere. I never really really fit in any where.

--Amelia G