opticnerve

I'll love you more than my after-show monster bong hit

These things usually start with a 'Who are you?', so I'm going to pretend that you asked that question. This is a loaded question, actually, because the problem of identity has been a major theme in my life. It extends even to my name; my legal name is completely different from the one I use on a daily basis. I'm a 'visible minority', but I don't speak the language of my grand-parents. I'm not overtly 'ethnic', but there is cuisine I eat at which my friends cringe. If you had met me at the beginning of the year, I would have told you that I was this certain person. Now, I'm not so sure. I don't know.

Existential angst aside, I like music (who doesn't?), but my professional life has kept me so busy that I haven not had time to update my scene-ster street cred. I rely on my BFF (yes, I do have one) to keep me in the know about the kind of hip bands who have obscure names, and a small but rabid fan-base of geek core admirers you'd find at a Weezer concert. I'm a bit of a gypsy. I've lived in Toronto, LA, Montreal, Vancouver and now, Massachusetts, all within the last 4+ years. I love Yo La Tengo and Sarah Silverman. I'm more indie than I am rock. One of the reasons I left LA was because management at a pretty swanky resto in West Hollywood mistook me as one of the staff, when I pulled up in my 6 year old Japanese car (I'm looking at you, Sushi Rokku). In some ways, I'm more blue than white collar. Teal, actually. I surf, I snowboard, I make and play video games, I read comic books on the can, I wear hoodies to work. It's like I'm still in college, only without the Mac-&-Cheese-and-hotdog dinners and the cinderblock bookshelves. I do clean up well, though. I don't have cable, so I read a lot. Not because I think TV is an opiate for the masses thing, but because I don't think 'Dancing With The Stars' and 'Grey's Anatomy' speak to the demographic of which I count myself a member. I have a smarmy kind of charm around the people I really love. The other pedestrian details that one normally finds in a personals ad also apply to mine: well-adjusted, no criminal record, never been the subject of military experimentation, closet fan of honky tonk music, doesn't get 'Donnie Darko', hates the 'wink-wink' white-bread hipsterism of Wes Anderson's films.

If you're still reading, it would be at this point at which I answer the 'Who are you looking for?' question. Does the fact that I would like to meet a surf-loving, snowboard-happy, bike-riding, glasses-wearing, bookish librarian-type who appreciates the humour of the source of the quote in my headline, who likes to snicker at the hipster kids at shows and who can talk intelligently on subjects ranging from the need for more public space to the brilliance of Matt Groening, indicate that my standards are too high? Cheekiness aside, I'd have to say that meeting a 30-something girl with left-centre politics (I am Canadian, after all), who doesn't feel like a 30-something, would be dandy. Between work and being a complete stranger in New England, I'm finding it tough to start a social circle.