Author: "Bad" Billy Pratt

Elizabeth Warren and the Death of MTV

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“You smile like a cartoon, tooth for a tooth; you said that irony was the ‘shackles of youth…’”

If you’re someone who likes getting the ending up front, I’ll spare you the details: the hero of the story is Bill Berry. I had gotten a copy of R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People (1992) the week of its release- the cassette was yellow- and immediately fell in love with the record. While it would be years before I could appreciate the clever writing of singer Michael Stipe, the album served as a welcome departure from what I understood as music in the early 1990s. While Axl Rose and Metallica were producing work of equal measure, R.E.M. was my first exposure to the idea that things didn’t always need to rock- R.E.M. wasn’t afraid to give a moment space and allow a song to breath- this gave “Drive” room to brood ominously and “Everybody Hurts” time to emotionally settle. “Nightswimming” is still one of my favorite songs and always manages to make me cry.

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Suburbia

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“Whatever happened to all this season’s losers of the year? Every time I got to thinking, where’d they disappear?”

There is no place I’d rather be than walking beside a well-groomed front lawn on a suburban street in mid-August. Late afternoon, when the sun is just beginning to set- tired from a long day’s work- making its march toward the kind of warm hue that feels like a soft blanket enveloping your soul. The sound of distant lawn-mowers and the scent of cut grass- really, to properly maintain the admiration and respect of your neighbors, twice per week is ideal for lawn-care. American flags next to empty mailboxes. Dogs barking beside hamburgers on propane grills.

When you’re in eighth grade, suburbia is your canvas. You burn things in the woods and throw eggs at houses. Hop fences and explore backyards. Stand atop a hill overlooking the town below and throw-up a double middle-finger. You let the girls hang out with you and act like it’s this big deal and if they’re not cool enough they’ll have to go home. You probably could have seen their tits had you been more socially adept. You’d be stargazing had there been stars to see.

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Defiance on the Road to Decay

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“I’m not dead, I’m not for sale.”

The waning days of August. After midnight; 2 a.m. about to roll around as inconspicuous as the 80,000th mile on the odometer of an old girl who won’t quit. Not quite ready to bring it down just yet. Miles of quiet. Last man standing. Watching the tide roll in. Everything leading to this feels weighted and opaque- a dull ache only noticeable in moments of stillness. When you’re young, there’s a timelessness to the hours before dawn. They dissipate in the moonlight. The keys to your dad’s old beater will open up the world around you like never before- possibilities expanding beyond the infinite. Everything with a veneer of significance. Sitting at a diner and only ordering coffee. Telling ghost stories on old country roads. Hopping fences and trashing swimming pools. Searchlights in graveyards on Saturday Nights.

Once this is lost, it’s gone for good. You get to an age where late nights just feel late. But you search for little bits and pieces of it. Maybe you drink to forget that the clock is always watching; a grim, invasive specter. If you have anything left to give- any mark left to make- you’re coming up on now or never. This is something an adult can never forget- no matter how many drinks he’s had.

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On Writing and “The Pussy” (2016)

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When asked for writing advice, Delicious Tacos likes to keep things simple: get up early, every morning, and write. And there’s something to that- the foundation of writing is interpreting the disorganized thoughts of the writer through language and bringing those ideas to a place of external organization- coming to terms with what is initially termless. This is why keeping a journal is often recommended as a form of therapy. However, this only explains the process of writing- the easiest and most direct way to become a writer– rather than explaining what the goal of a writer should be, something that warrants equal examination.

A good writer is tasked with splitting his veins open with a razor blade and covering his keyboard in blood- a prolonged and terrible ritual. You’ll know a piece is finished when your face is numb, eyes unfocused, and body trembling. You’d think Delicious Tacos would have something like this- the horrible reality of being on the writing grind- considering I learned it from reading his work.

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Underachievers: Nirvana, Green Day, and Generation-X

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“I wanna publish ‘zines and rage against machines…”

Toward the end of 1990, you couldn’t get away from Simpsons merchandise- from posters, to pajama sets, to pencil toppers- mostly featuring Generation-X’s very first mainstream media icon, Bart Simpson. You see, before The Simpsons (1989) became fixated on Homer’s gradual decline into retardation, the show’s initial protagonist was skateboarding prankster Bart- the country’s first take on their next generation.    

And those savvy Simpsons writers seemed to have nailed it. While Bart’s driving characteristic was apathy, it was a kind of self-aware apathy. Bart wasn’t stupid, he was an “underachiever”- he was capable of more but consciously chose less. This  hyper-aware apathy would become the generation’s defining trait. The following year Kurt Cobain was hailed as the “voice of Generation-X,” releasing Nirvana’s seminal Nevermind (1991) record. The stand out single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” served to define the generation with the very same self-conscious apathy: “I feel stupid and contagious; here we are now, entertain us.”

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Forgiving Your Father and “Return of the Jedi” (1983)

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“All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside. It’s hard, but it’s harder to ignore it.”

Re-watching Return of the Jedi (1983) as an adult makes the scene where Luke burns the body of his father stand out as the true climax of the original trilogy- the culmination of Luke’s journey. While it may seem tragic that sister Leia wasn’t there beside him, this was something Luke had to do alone. After all, it was only Luke who saw the human face of his father and bore witness to his humanity- only Luke would have been able to understand his father. Luke delivering his father’s funeral was his final rite of passage into manhood, and the true return of the Jedi.

Every man will have to bury his father, but will every man have understood his father when the time comes? The evolution of a man’s relationship with his father mirrors Luke’s struggle with Darth Vader throughout the course of the Star Wars saga- from not truly knowing him through the inevitable conflict of a young man’s transition to adulthood. If you’re lucky you’ll have a moment where the pieces come together and you see your father as a part of yourself- but not everyone gets there… and, unlike a Hollywood movie, the story may end first.

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Heartbreak and “Big” (1988)

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“Who wants honey? As long as there’s some money. Who wants that honey?”

In a flash Amy was able to transform our hetero-normative experience back into something she was more comfortable with, her own safe space of gender neutrality, with the magic words: “get this shit off me.” Tossing her the tissue box, I chastised her for breaking the narrative, something usually reserved for slightly longer than fifteen seconds after sex. Amy may have rolled her eyes, but the fact of the matter remains: sex is the narrative of attraction.

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Authenticity and “The Cable Guy” (1996)

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“I’d rather be anywhere, doing anything…”

There was a gleam in her eye when Ghostbusters (2016) came up in the group’s discussion. She corrected the speaker, a male, who didn’t make an elaborate point to reference the movie’s notorious gender component- “the new Ghostbusters” he offhandedly called it, but this was “girl Ghostbusters,” she said with pride. After all, she was a high school Science teacher and this was a victory with which she could attach herself.

This attachment was the point, existing independently of the movie. She may not see it, nor should she have to- her attachment to “girl Ghostbusters” had served to bolster her identity. The actual film is an afterthought- a big budget talking point. Beyond all the fuss, Ghostbusters is a pile of crap with regurgitated jokes, so who really cares?

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Bamboozled

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Even if the dire unavailability of parking in Jeanette’s neighborhood had made the task of meeting her at her apartment for sex seem daunting, only minimally rewarding, I always had a thing for girls who looked like the nerdy Chipette and this fact added a feeling of urgency to a situation marred with inevitable difficulty. Parking matters; inadequate parking is as off-putting as a bridge or toll, and I distinctly remember cursing the wind on an early August morning in 2006, drunk out of my skull, taking the parkway home because I was forced by law to relinquish my hard-fought spot, as per alternate side rules, and couldn’t find a new one anywhere.

How would I have explained this to a dutiful officer of the law? Would he have been so kind as to understand the inadequacies of parking in that god forsaken, asshole neighborhood?

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Problem Glasses

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We were somewhere around our second bottle of wine when I made the startling realization that Amy’s unexpected British accent had faded into something more typical and American. Picking her up that night for drinks at The Reptile Zoo, I told her I wasn’t expecting a British accent. She asked what I was expecting, and I didn’t have a good answer. You exchange a few messages with a girl on OKCupid and agree to meet for drinks- what is there to expect?

You’re there because your perceived value matched her barest threshold- stripped to its core through years of careful revision; weathering her expectations down to the essentials that she would have scoffed at as a younger woman- grade-D, but edible, meat- but edible, the part you’d like to emphasize.

She’s there because she wrote back. 

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