If I had to argue which year of high school was the best, it would be junior year. Everything was clicked into place and ready for a fantastic year of formative memories. To start the summer before, I had turned 17 and was celebrating the one thing that meant a lot to me. I was going to see Rated R movies by myself. Even though it was also the time that I could get a driver’s permit, it would be another year before I began to take it seriously. Even then I felt like I got a license less out of desire and more the necessity of hauling myself to college.
In 2006, life was going well. I remember the first Rated R movie I watched was Kevin Smith’s Clerks II (2006). I had been following Kevin Smith on Myspace and found his style of writing revolutionary. It mixed pop culture with allegories for everyday life. Because I had formed a habit of staying up late, I would often pop over to HBO, which is where I discovered Clerks (1994). These guys were standing around just talking about the mundanities of life, and it was the most thrilling cinema I had seen. There was a kismet that Clerks II became my first Rated R movie. Even though its themes felt more prevalent in 2023 than 2006, I remember latching onto it, finding the nerd culture endearing itself to me. When the film was done, I’d jump over to meet up with my ride who was seeing Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) in a room that was significantly more packed than mine.
Another thing about turning 17 was that it afforded the opportunities to finally attend TV show tapings. For years Alex and I had plans to drive to Burbank, CA and attend a live taping of The Tonight Show, then hosted by Jay Leno. In years prior, we were unable to purchase tickets because of an age restriction. We even showed up to the NBC offices early that morning, figuring that it was the only way to for sure get tickets. While the staff was nice, they rejected our offer and we ended up going on a tour of the studio that included peeks at Entertainment Tonight. We also saw them filming a soap opera.
I was into late night TV around then. On top of finding excuses to watch the new South Park, I would sometimes jump over to NBC or CBS and catch their late night talk shows. It was an era where I was curious about comedy history. I’d spend time listening to interviews and collecting lists of older comedies that I should watch. If it was from the primary names of Saturday Night Live, I would put it high on my list. People like Steve Martin or John Belushi were ideal with The Jerk (1979) being a personal favorite that I’ve seen at least 20 times. At the time I didn’t have the DVD, so I watched it a lot on AMC where they censored the dog’s name to "----head." Like a lot of odd censorship, it only cemented an easy amusement of people poorly editing videos. There was a bit that Jimmy Kimmel Live also did by adding bleeps in odd places that felt revolutionary to me as a teenager.
But to return to The Tonight Show. Alex was back out visiting. I think this was around the time he was dating the other Alex, so he split time between me and her. However, we went with my mother to see a taping that included: Michael Clark Duncan, Ant, 30 Seconds to Mars, and the world’s tallest dog. Having been three times, I’m aware that a lot of it is rehearsed and the surprise goes away after a while. However, because we were on standby the first time, I remember walking in as Leno was doing the pre-show bit and just having that rush of shock that you get from seeing a famous person that you’ve admired. I had found Leno’s autobiography from a used bookstore and knew what his first joke was.
I get the appeal, even from a tourist standpoint, of going to these types of shows. While I haven’t gone to many over the past 15 years, being a teenager who was discovering how big the world was, it was thrilling to see these celebrities being interviewed and have some small connection. I wished that I got to see Adam Sandler, but he was more of a New York and David Letterman kind of guy. Luckily, I got to see Lindsay Lohan during her promotional tour for Bobby (2007), which was a big deal for me.
To return to the first visit, it was a nice summer outing. We’d get our tickets in the morning and then spend the day having breakfast and finding small activities to do before taping started in the early afternoon. When it ended, we’d go home and get a VHS tape to record the episode and see how different it looked.
In hindsight, I think each of those visits were varying degrees of special. For starters, I think getting to see Michael Clark Duncan now feels golden given that he would pass away in 2012. He was promoting Talladega Nights and was jovial. Meanwhile, I remember walking out after the taping and hearing people say, “The singer of 30 Seconds to Mars is so shorts.” Given how divisive Jared Leto would become, it’s amusing to see him before I ever associated him with Jordan Catellano. At another time, I got to see The Foo Fighters perform “Skin and Bone” while Dave Grohl rocked out during the bridge.
The audience also got ice cream. Despite all the memories, the one thing I remember most is how Alex had that angry young man energy going on. When we left NBC, he’d look up at a banner with a poster for The Office and complain about how bad the show was (in 2006). He’d also carry around a biography of Bill Hicks and suggest that Leno had plagiarized him. Given that Alex also has an unreleased song from a personal project (who I won’t name here even if I don’t think it has a digital footprint anymore) called “Bill Hicks is My Hero,” it makes sense that he’d be overly passionate about the ethics in comedy. For as much as pop-punk music was more his line of focus, he had a love of stand-up comedy that would come to inform some of his career later in life.
I can’t recall much of the 2006 summer with him. Maybe I’ve accidentally brought it up in the previous entry and am getting my dates wrong. However, he would leave and school would start again. I remember first running into my group of friends for junior orientation day. It was sometime before the actual semester where we gathered to receive our class schedule and talk to counselors if we had any issues. It was evident how much of an impact Talladega Nights had on the era because I remember someone randomly saying, “I will jump you like a spider monkey.” There was talk about whether it was better than Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), and given that we never got a clear-cut answer, we just had to agree that Will Ferrell was the funniest man alive. Put him on a sports field and he was bound to make you laugh… Kicking & Screaming (2005) notwithstanding.
A lot of this entry may end up focusing on two English classes. It’s inevitable that I talk about them because one ended up being a really good class while the other ranks as the worst I’ve probably ever taken. It was so bad (how bad was it?). It was so bad that even my parents had to question why I wasn’t taken out of it once things quickly became clear that I was potentially wasting a whole semester.
I don’t blame my counselor for thinking that A.P. English was a good idea. I was an English major, currently in the journalism department, and having Cathcart for another class wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. If anything, I already had a comfortable nature with her and could appreciate her style.
However, things quickly came to a head when I realized that my reading comprehension skills weren’t great. Even as a voracious reader, I wasn’t consuming text with nuance and understanding themes. Given that I don’t think I really developed a more refined approach to reading until my Mid-20s, I think it informs why I am somebody who enjoys “mood” more than whether or not a story makes sense. I am more drawn to a story if I believe that I want to be follow their journey. I was fine with moral ambiguity. I just needed to feel connected in order to travel with them through these strange worlds, themes be damned.
Which is an issue with A.P. English. I was a bad test taker and hadn’t really mastered essay writing. Given that we had to keep a journal and have a word count per page, I was overwhelmed from the jump. However, the moment I realized that I was probably going to be fucked for the next year was when I read John Steinbeck’s seminal classic “The Grapes of Wrath.”
I don’t even want to say I read “The Grapes of Wrath” now because of what happened. Over that summer, I was encouraged to read ahead so that we could jump into certain discussions. I technically read every last page of “The Grapes of Wrath,” but my retention was so bad that I had gotten to the last page and had one revelation: I hadn’t remembered a single line. Given that I was the type of student who was shy and didn’t like to contribute in class, I was doomed to sit in the background and take voracious notes. Around me were people geeking out about the text, and all I could do was nod and act like I knew what was going on.
In what remains one of my most traumatic academic memories, we were assigned to read Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw” as a fun gimmick for Halloween. Again, I read it and got to the end without any strong sense of what I witnessed. When it came time to write an essay, I turned to the only place you could on short notice: SparkNotes. It isn’t what it is today, but the mythic force had been a worst kept secret since I was in middle school. I remember reading the SparkNotes and doing what I could to make it sound like my own words. I believed my memory was coming back to me. As I happily clicked ‘print,’ I turned it in and awaited the worst possible thing. I still recall, in red pen, Cathcart putting a prominent 0% on the paper and saying, “You didn’t read it, did you?”
I had to wonder why I was even in that class after a point. I couldn’t even appreciate the satire of Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” which was optional reading.
My resentment translated to how I saw other students. None of them were mean to me, and yet I took their ability to understand the text as an affront. I was going to make it difficult for them to like me. Two of them, James and Sara, weren’t my favorite mostly because of proximity. It carried over the year to the point that I felt bad when I realized they were both actors and doing fantastic work for our theater program. That was also the semester I was assigned to see our production of Pride & Prejudice and gave it a negative review for no other reason than I was bored. Given that a school’s journalism department is, in the most common sense of the phrase, support the cause of the school, it was a stupid move on my part. However, I got so much mail over that one review that it kind of amuses me.
This is the other frustrating thing about A.P. English and Journalism being taught by the same teacher. I liked Cathcart and had very little animosity towards her. Whereas any other class I could go home and grind an axe, I just had to shift my emotions between annoyance and dedication. I had been promoted to editor in journalism, which meant I was regularly looking at other students’ work and providing feedback. Even if I wasn’t the most prolific or necessarily published author, I was doing a lot behind the scenes to make our best work shine. Cathcart claims that I had a very approachable style in terms of criticism. I knew how to provide feedback and make it feel unintimidating. While I think that senior year was more memorable in terms of journalism class, I do think that moving up the ranks gave me ways to achieve more than sit in the back listening to Zebrahead while doing Sudokus.
There were plenty of chances where I could’ve jumped ship on A.P. English, and yet I stayed with it all the way through. I think there’s a part of me that lives by the “finish what you start” mentality that was prideful. For as much as I was beyond the point of hope, I wanted to believe that something would emerge as this shining light. It would, but I’ll save Summer School 2007 for the next entry.
I’m not sure if this part is true, but I also remember knowing Claire around this time. She was a quiet girl who minded her business. I only ever saw her when she performed in talent shows that the school was ushered to. She is one of the better dancers to come out of the school at the time. She was very classical and had this grace. The only downside is that in Senior year she had an injury that caused her to need a skin graft, so she missed certain events. With all that said, I did see her around in the years since, including at the high school graduation photoshoot for my sister. Alex was there. I’m still surprised he was able to come out so much.
Another random detail was that we read “The Grapes of Wrath” in part because Cathcart was planning a trip for her class to visit Salinas, CA one weekend. I chose not to go, believing that I was already at odds with the class. In hindsight, I regret it because Steinbeck is now one of my favorite writers and I think the way he describes Salinas is beautiful and rich. He really is a one man tourism board.
Before I shift to the rest of the school, I want to touch on another one of the dumbest things I’ve done. One day towards the end of the school year, there was news of an A.P. Test. Without doing any research or really bringing proper supplies, I showed up to the classroom. My logic was that it was where everyone else was. I’m talking to staff members and they acknowledged that I hadn't signed up nor paid. However, because one student hadn’t shown up, I was given their spot at the request that I eventually pay for it. Long story short, I not only failed that test, but I failed to pay.
Nothing was more intimidating than the post-high school tests we were required to take. As much as A.P. Tests were not going to impact me, I look at S.A.T.’s and how I had to go downtown one weekend to take it. I didn’t necessarily fail it, but my grades were underwhelming to the point that I didn’t believe I stood any chance at getting into a “great” college. Then again, I didn’t have a dream school. A community college was probably going to be my ultimate landing dock. My dad was persistent that I take the S.A.T.’s, believing it would do plenty for my overall presence in academia. Alas, I couldn’t tell you a single thing about it. With that said, I did pass the CAHSEE (California High School Exit Exam) on my first try with very good grades, so it’s not like I was a total failure.
To start shifting to the rest of my school life in 2006, I am happy to report that none of it was as bad as A.P. English. Even if I ended up having to retake a semester of math before transferring to the yearbook department, there was something more comfortable and easy to grasp about that material. Math will never be my most beloved subject. Numbers are hard for me to memorize and the formulas are like Teflon. I am grateful that I passed at all, but it’s a conflict that will become more prevalent as I enter college.
For now, I am going to shift into the other titanic force. Creative Writing is one of those classes that I had been anticipatory for years. Given that Vann was the first teacher I had that made me feel motivated in high school, I was wanting to return to that English classroom and just get into the freeform environment. Because of how things worked out, this would also be the central group for Visions (who will be getting their own entry).
To this day, nothing feels more heartbreaking than realizing that this would be considered my favorite year for Visions. While I appreciate that every year brings something different, the fact that the juniors took control of the program when I was a senior meant I was very much a secondary cast member. Meanwhile, the irony was that I was a junior surrounded by seniors who were preparing to have one of the most successful years in the program’s existence under Vann. Our readings would be packed. Submissions would be overbearing. We’d have so much of a demand that our final event would move from the cafeteria to an outdoor location on campus with live music from this local band called Dietre Krushev.
I want to believe it was the year I found a groove with Visions and was producing some of my favorite work. I was finally in an environment where I wanted to impress people, and I was pushing out as many ideas as I could in hopes that someone would see it and smile.
At the same time, I look at the journals I wrote for that class now and am baffled by how much was unmitigated subconscious shining through in very abrasive dark humor. A lot of it stemmed from how I saw punk music at the time as rebellious and confrontational. I won’t pretend to say a lot of it was good. There’s probably a large portion that’s embarrassing and shouldn’t be brought to light. I was very much a young, frustrated individual of the late 2000s who didn’t know how to process ideas. For as much as I could determine which were the good ideas, I just needed to get everything out.
It’s here where I begin to understand certain subtexts that existed within myself. As someone who treated conversations like a chess match, I realized I was picking ways to mess with people based on how close I wanted them to me. The Creative Writing class was full of people I wanted to stay in my orbit, so they would get something more genuine. I look at my notebook and see someone who is struggling with a variety of internal conflicts. I joke about self-harm and have these stories about women trying to survive difficult relationships. There’s a lot of amateurish deconstructions of religion and celebrating gay culture. I don’t know how much I believed in a sincere way, but I think they were all subjects that became more earnest the more I realized that maybe I was saying something indirectly.
When I was with my other friends, the lunch group, I was surrounded by polite bigots. Danny was a homophobe. Tim was an odd case where he also disliked gay people but one Halloween wore his younger sister’s clothes and pretended to make out with himself. Meanwhile, I enjoyed being annoying and decided to allude to queerness by answering whether I’m Thomas or Tom by saying, “I go both ways.” It’s an easy joke, but it allowed me to mess with people. I don’t think it came to the point where I told them I was gay, though I did it with a few people… including someone I’ll talk about in the next entry.
Returning to Creative Writing. It was both a delight and maybe ironically not the best use of my time. Given that old expression “youth is wasted on the young,” a lot of my writing was about scratching below the surface and beginning to understand an idea. I didn’t have anything great to talk about, but I tried to be amusing. People liked my writing and I was often encouraged to share material in class. However, it was clear I was mostly using it to make jokes and not do anything substantial. I also produced a poorly designed poetry book that’s difficult to read because I had no idea of visual presentation.
Though if there’s one story that makes me realize how much I needed to tone down, it was the final story assignment. I chose to do something vulgar. The climax centered around my protagonist asking Jay and Silent Bob for help, and they had this profanity-laced exchange about liking pussy. I forget if Vann simply mentored everyone through that final assignment, but he definitely pulled me aside and convinced me to cut down on profanity and maybe come up with more original characters. It was for the best, but I think it speaks to how much of a livewire I was. I had stray thoughts that had no home. I did have a great entry in our contest for students to write “the worst possible story” which made everybody laugh.
For reasons I forget, I decided to hold a party for everyone in Visions at my house. We were a mile or two from campus. Everyone came over, including Alex P. with his brother – who was very much into ska to the point he wore a vest with a checkered-pattern and various band logos on them. It wasn’t a meaningful get together and there were strands of people I don’t think I even knew there, but it was the best house party I ever had/hosted because everyone was polite.
We had an acoustic performance by Avi Buffalo in our backyard. To provide context, he’s the person I knew in my high school years to most likely have a Wikipedia page (the other being Allie Goertz). Whether as a band or as an individual, he was a local legend for a time as he managed to appear in Spin Magazine and had environmental ads that played in theaters. I’ve heard from others that his albums have made their way into libraries as well, so he’s done well for himself. I actually helped Avi vote in 2016, so it seems like he was doing fine as of then. I do enjoy that I somehow managed to make an event like that happen.
This was the case given that my sister’s parties were much less “cooperative.” While they started simple enough, they would evolve into moments that often went late into the night and caused people to call the police for noise disturbances. I shouldn’t say any of them were necessarily problematic. Outside of getting our house toilet papered once or twice, they always ended roughly the same. Most of the cast would leave by the end of the night while a handful passed out in our living room. Given that they were HER friends and not mine, there were times where it was unpleasant. To my sister’s credit, we have talked about it in more recent years and she’s more considerate about letting me know when friends come around.
It was arguably a time where my dad started to have small strands of tyranny. I believe he saw our high school years as a chance for a second childhood. It started innocuous. He’d find what albums I was into and play them all the time. It seems cute at first, especially since he’s your gateway to concerts and not feeling as repressed as the Catholic school years would’ve let on. However, there is something about him finding things that interest me and making them about him. What is probably the most noteworthy was The Offspring’s “Americana,” which was a record I really liked. It had plenty of snarky pop-punk humor, which he adored overacting to. He would play it loudly and make you reconsider liking anything at all. It wasn’t as bad as what happened with “Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace” where I bought it and almost immediately he stole it from me. Long story short, it took awhile to want to listen to “Americana” with any fondness.
Given that he was an adult, it also meant he saw himself as the sole master of making rules. I understand what he wanted to enforce, but it also ended up being psychologically damaging. Because he felt entitled, it meant that I was perpetually feeling suppressed in my own home. It wasn’t every day, but there would be times where suddenly you remember random conflict and arguments. He was wanting to be happy all the time and have stimulation where I was fine being relaxed. That may be why on one occasion when I said that I felt uncomfortable having a lot of cats, he responded, “I will have as many cats as I want.”
The one thing that felt worse than this random threat was that he was rebuilding a family with my sister’s friends. Because she tended to befriend people with odd home lives, they would end up staying over a lot. I forgot her name. I’ll call one of them Keebler. She had a joke with my sister that she looked like a Keebler Elf. The one I’ve known longer, Vanessa, has had a more storied home life that I’ll refrain from talking about if just because I don’t actually know a lot about it. I’ll just say that she didn’t finish high school in a prompt fashion.
It went from having people over for one night here or there to them becoming more of a constant presence. It got to the point where my dad felt so endeared by joking with them. He would intentionally call them “daughters.” Given that I have mixed feelings on them cumulatively, it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. If you thought he was stringent on “having as many cats as I want,” you best believe he was holding onto this strange belief that these people were infatuated with him.
I’m not going to deny any claim that there was a positive relationship between all of the “daughters,” but it feels different when it’s coming from the most personal resource imaginable. I get it as a term of endearment and I’m cool with others using it, but for close to 20 years now, I have felt some cringe whenever hearing somebody outside of common notions refer to themselves as a family member. Even Alex, whom I consider to be a great friend, I can’t call anything above “my main man.”
There is something to being in a house where every request you make is rejected. While he gave enough rope to not be a total dictator, there was the sense that – again – he was using us as a second childhood. He was misusing his platform by suggesting that these strangers he barely knew were “the daughters.” It reflected a level of significance that I don’t feel they earned in such a short window. Friends, yes. Any other nonsensical term I’d be cool with, but “daughters” hurt because it lacked merit. My sister, yes. She was his daughter. Not Keebler or Vanessa. Just because they were over often didn’t earn them that right.
As a result, I struggle to call anyone of close proximity anything like that. It feels heartbreaking, because I do see others blissfully using it and think that there’s something beautiful. I’ve brought it up with him and he said he wouldn’t change it. Much like the cats thing. Much like playing music too loud. It was his house and he would be the master of every decision made. Given he was also hanging around the group at house parties, it felt like he was compensating for something. I will not suggest he did anything inappropriate. He respects people’s space. However, he qualified as a hovercraft parent at times.
This is maybe hyperbolic because I don’t think it was an everyday problem. I think it got worse as my sister’s high school years moved on. The irony came when she managed to talk with me about things and eventually realize how much they bothered me. It took years, especially since it felt like we were pitted against each other simply because she had friends over and I didn’t (though it was by my design), but we got there.
There were other things going on in my family that might’ve caused conflicts. This was around a period that’s fairly notorious. My uncle was an addict who I never really felt close to. He’d have periods where he was clean and able to stay focused. When he did that, he was a fantastic member of society. According to my dad, my uncle was the type to go over to Cal State Long Beach and sell things persuasively. My father had enough animosity for him that I took his side and just assumed the worst whenever he was brought up. Because my grandparents were kind and, let’s face it, Catholic, they kept wanting to give him a chance to redeem himself even as he was in and out of jail.
I remember during these years that my uncle was given a restraining order against my grandparents. While it didn't last, it was a sign of where everything was going. I don’t know that I saw him a lot, but when I did there was apprehension. Given that I was over at my grandparents’ house with some consistency, it was always a shock to discover him passed out in the back room. That’s where the computer was. It's where I would scroll through Myspace and wait until my parents picked me up. With all that said, I don’t know if I remember any specific bad events that stand out in this situation.
To shift slightly, I want to jump around to a story regarding Gina. She had moved to Temecula, CA for a job. Every few weekends, we’d go visit and stay at her place. She had gotten my dad back into NASCAR for some dumb reason, and I was stuck playing video games with David. There isn’t much to say other than they were kind to me and would offer bottles of Smirnoff, which I much preferred over beer if just because fruits taste better than… dirty water? What’s in beer? It’s not great.
There were a lot of great afternoons. However, if I must describe events that make me question my father’s use of boundaries, then I must bring this one up. I was writing a lot of poetry at the time. As a result, I was bringing notebooks everywhere and dropping a few lines in my free time. I guess that I left a notebook in a visible space because the next thing I know my father is open to a page and laughing at something I wrote.
It wasn’t more than a gag piece I wrote for my own amusement. To summarize, it involved the idea of taking “sex toys” in a literal direction. It’s not my best, but watching these adults laugh at my writing was traumatizing. They enjoyed making fun of the line “tickle me Elmo, bitch.” As a private piece that I probably would’ve forgotten about otherwise, it became a fixation of them making fun of me for writing sexually explicit poetry. I had written a lot that could be considered that, and I think it’s formative for young people to write dumb stuff to figure things out. However, there is something discouraging about adults who should know better openly mocking you for writing something very dumb and denigrating any idea of independent sexuality.
It was also traumatic because it was only one example in a long line over years of my father feeling entitled to my private collection. This actually started when I was a child and wrote stories on a personal laptop about a dog. I forgot if I consented to him seeing it, but by the way he talks about the story, I know he’s seen it. Sometimes it was on a family computer so there may have been confusion, but even then something was different. I was 17 and in high school. For as much as you could fear a child doing drugs and committing arson, it doesn’t constitute looking through their private notebooks, or if so openly admitting to it and mocking them for having independent thoughts that went from superfluous to traumatic. With all this said, I do think my father has forgotten this particular incident as he’s never brought it up.
The years where he would look into my folders and pull out my poems was traumatic. It’s not because I was writing life ruining material, but because it was ripped away without consent. Things would be in one place one day and then disappear. I only know he has taken some of my writing because he talks about it with pride. He talks about these otherwise trivial poems and I am horrified less because they’re good/bad, but because they were out of my possession. I should be able to control my writing.
He also did this with my albums. Given that I had racks and racks throughout my room, it would be easy to not notice one missing. He was never courteous to ask or even put it back without drawing attention to it. As a result, keeping count of everything became a necessity. My copy of Green Day’s “American Idiot” got scratched. Suddenly, things that were used for me to define my personal identity were no longer mine. It became difficult to want to enjoy the music I liked because I feared sharing it even once would cause him to steal it and imprint his own territorial mark.
I feel unnecessary paranoia and shame around it. I have fear of someone, likely him, finding it and exploring deep thoughts that shouldn’t mean anything to anyone but me. In a move of some regret, I have thrown out a section of them because of that insecurity. While I have saved ones that I deem very personal and necessary to understanding my past, there’s now holes in my life that I cannot recapture. They’re not the most precious holes, but I hate that I eventually came to that conclusion.
My father has made exploring independent sexuality at times difficult. While he’s definitely supportive of conventional behaviors relate to men adoring women, it gets complicated from there. He struggles to be mature about me watching films that have small traces of eroticism. I think of the times I’m watching The Sopranos doing scenes in the strip clubs, or a lot of moments in Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001) and him just making fun of me. There becomes shame around seeing naked bodies. It’s less that the moment is awkward of seeing me watching something so vulnerable, but that I am doing something "weird." I like to think I’m discreet about watching more explicit cinema, but he finds ways to come around and make you feel bad for watching it. It wouldn’t be an issue if it’s once or twice depending on context, but I do now inherently feel nervous to watch sexual movies (read: not porn) when anyone is around even though my mother is a tad more lenient than he is about things.
Which is interesting given where things started. When I was in Catholic school, we were watching at home American Pie (1999) and various other raunchy comedies with less of a care. As a high schooler who was more appropriate for that type of cinema, he felt like it was a fun game to make fun like it was an immature game. This was also the time where I remember hearing him say something upbeat when he flipped through channels and caught the tail end of But I’m A Cheerleader (1999) when the women kiss. I’m not blaming him for all my insecurities, but he definitely treated parts of our lives like some weird fraternity hazing.
I was invited by my mother to a film shoot at Cal State Fullerton. It was for this movie The Comebacks (2007) starring David Koechner. Given that he still had the good will of Anchorman, it felt like a good chance to see how a film was made. I did learn a lot of terms, including pantomiming. We sat in their “football field” area among dummies with beanies on their heads and watched as something nondescript happened on the field. This went late into the night and happened over a few days. I only went once, but my sister and mother went a few times.
The event was boring, especially in an era where cell phones were a glorified Snake machine. You had to watch and hope anything made sense. I couldn’t even tell you what scenes we might’ve been in. I will say that it was fun in the sense that there were crew members entertaining the crowd and handing out prizes. I would return to a taping of Semi-Pro (2008) later that I think went a lot better. My friend’s brother is allegedly in the film. I also got to watch Will Ferrell, Andre 3000, and Woody Harrelson play basketball for a few hours.
Even if my mother was not fully in the picture at this time, she made a concerted effort to be around. As mentioned before, we would get together and attend tapings of The Tonight Show. We went to one late in 2006 where we decided to watch Stranger Than Fiction (2006) beforehand and it became one of my favorite movies. It introduced me to metafiction and how to make stories centered around recontextualizing reality. It’s innocent compared to stuff like Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), but it’s a charmer.
In journalism, I was assigned to interview the new teacher Ryan and felt like it was the rare moment where I did a good job. Most of my pieces never ran and I always felt like I lacked self-awareness for what my audience wanted. At one point I wrote a maybe too Catholic-oriented read on the recent news that former gang member Stanley “Tookie” Williams was being put up for execution that I’m grateful in hindsight it didn’t run.
I will touch on something random that happened in journalism class. There were these sisters who also attended St. Cornelius. They were upbeat and very nice. I have no complaints about them. I’ll call one Ally. She had that opportunistic personality that really wanted to make a difference. On one of the first days of class, she insisted we listen to this song that she felt symbolized journalism. I remember her swaying her head back and forth and smiling to John Mayer’s “Waiting on the World to Change.” It was a simple enough moment, but I think speaks to what kind of mentality she had.
She was especially friendly to me because I was in my waning days of going to St. Cornelius. I saw Ally’s family at church a few times. I found her cute. While we rarely had a significant conversation, I still remember her playing John Mayer and having that rare sense that, yes, here was a cute girl. It bypassed my instinct that I needed to know somebody before I could see their real beauty. For those few minutes, I was just taken by the energy she was putting off.
Like a lot of students, she only lasted the semester. My senior year had some of the most promising students who unfortunately didn’t stick with the program. I was an anomaly. I started in the program given that Freshmen weren’t qualified for the class. I’m sure there were a few students that translated between any two years, but I can’t recall them at this time. To me, they all exist in that one-year window. For example, our editor-in-chief one year who I’ll name Terry was this exuberant, skinny man who also was on the dance squad. I don’t know how much he did, but I saw him in a Christmas pageant as the lone guy in a dance routine of women.
As the year came to a close, I had a lot of newfound memories to go with. My lunch group was inviting me on weekend trips to the park and the theaters. Visions was having its own upward trajectory, and I was getting in good with yearbook and journalism. The only downside is that my summer would be a bit muddled by the presence of Summer School. With that said, it wasn’t necessarily a total waste. I would find people there that would come to mean a lot in the closing stretch of the high school era.
For now, I want to detour and explore some side stories. Along with a piece that will better explain why I loved my time at Visions, I will be spending the next entry dedicated to the short, strange history of what it felt like to be a teenager on Myspace.
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