Sunday is my last hurrah. I will be turning 25, the last good year. What I mean by this is this is the last year that something somewhat major happens. 16 you get your license, 18 you can vote, 21 you can drink. At 25 your car insurance drops and you can rent a car. After this, it’s all down hill. From now on you get gag parties in which people give you gifts referencing how old you are. 30, 40, 50. It really isn’t until you hit 90 that these birthdays stop. Then at this point you’re just amazed you’re still alive. So yeah, this Sunday I will be turning 25. I should be living it up and partying hard for my last good birthday, so I probably need to call up some old friends and get them to take me out, buy me drinks, and make it legendary. (I’m a realist so I’ll go ahead and say this probably won’t happen).
You know, it’s funny what a young man recollects. ‘Cause I don’t remember being born. I don’t recall what I got for my first Christmas and I don’t know when I went on my first outdoor picnic. Oh wait, that was Forrest Gump, not me. It really is funny what you do remember though. The past couple nights I’ve fallen asleep listening to music. Then I remembered something that for some reason always in the back of my mind. When I was really young I remember being at my Grandma and Grandpa Schepker’s house. They had cable and we didn’t. I remember watching MTV. Now, I couldn’t have been any older than 9 at the time. I was probably younger. I remember watching a black and white music video there. What stuck out in my mind about it was how the video was shot. Not only was it in black and white, but there were a lot of unfocused close-ups and what I would now call “lazy” camera work. This was intentional. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the same style of camera work that made the tv show NYPD Blue famous. Those things, and not who was on the video, made an impression on me. Years later, after seeing that video again, I realized that it was a video for a song called “Brenda’s Got a Baby” by Tupac Shakur. Those who know me know I’m a huge Tupac fan. It’s funny how I was connected with him that young, years before I became a fan of his music and it’s funny that I would still remember seeing a single video over fifteen years ago. It was a good video though.