Because I love spoiling surprises by trying to guess them, I'll give you three clues as to what it is ...
1. It's from a TV show.
2. You may or may not remember this TV show.
3. Refer to clues 1 and 2.
... Give up? OK. Here is Wikipedia's synopsis for the first episode of ... 'There and Back: Ashley Parker Angel' ... My comments in parentheses .
Who can forget the blond, spike-haired Ashley from the platinum-selling group, O-Town? (CERTAINLY NO ONE) Well, now things have changed. (OH HAVE THEY?) O-Town is over (WHAT?!), and Ashley's back as a solo artist (INTERESTING, I'M NOT SURE HIS SOUND HOLDS UP ON ITS OWN, BUT OK). But Ashley is broke, living with his pregnant girlfriend (OOPS) and her mother (DOUBLE OOPS) in a small apartment. Added to Ashley's frustration are feelings that his album producers are holding back on his money advance (PROBABLY A SHREWD FINANCIAL DECISION ON THEIR PART). Ashley's manager tells him his songs are good but not great (SEE? HE NEVER SPOKE TO ME AS A SOLO ARTIST BUT IT CAN BE CHALLENGING TO ACCURATELY JUDGE INDIVIDUAL TALENT AMONG MEMBERS OF AN ENSEMBLE. BUT IT SOUNDS AS IF I WAS CORRECT IN MY SKEPTICISM BECAUSE HIS MANAGER SEEMS TO BE WAVERING SIMILAR TO HOW I THINK I WOULD WAVER IF I WERE HIS MANAGER). Ashley and former O-Town member, Jacob Underwood (OH YEAH, HIM), reminisce about their stardom.
The saying goes 'It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.' Whether or not you believe it I guess depends mostly on whether you've loved and lost, never loved at all or on how touching you found Tommy Lee Jones' performance in Men in Black (I thought he was good). I bring this up not to prime a discussion on the L word, the word itself or the show, but to prove that most American adages are no different than a Pimp My Ride car, in that the frame is what makes it go, not the neon-green 20s or the two-inch TV in the rear-view mirror. Don't believe me? 'It's better to have played and lost than to have never played at all.' See? It still works. Somewhere, Xzibit is acknowledging this.
So, here's where Ashley Parker Angel and I finally meet, just like I'd always imagined, only at a veritable West Coast Customs for proverbs:
'It's better to have been there and back than never to have been there at all.'
I thought about this on a summer afternoon in midtown Manhattan, sitting on a bench in Rockefeller Center, eating soup with my boy Mike. We faced the sunken plaza where people ice skate in the winter, as passing tourists posed for pictures two feet in front of us. A nice guy approached me to take a photo of him and his family, and I made sure to fit the golden Prometheus statue in the frame behind them as I snapped the photo, showing them the preview to make sure it was OK.
I sat back down and scraped out the last bits of chili.
"You know," I said, "These people are coming here from all over to take photos, and we're sittin' here eating lunch." I looked up to the top of the buildings, the blue sky. "We could have it a lot worse."
I'm not there and back -- yet. I'm still there, although my time living and working in New York City -- in between flights around the country -- will soon run out. I'd make a reference to Jeff Goldblum's 'Checkmate' line in Independence Day, but I've already made enough mid-90s blockbuster allusions for one afternoon. Nonetheless, El Toro is about to be completely destroyed, so it's time to throw down with one last intergalactic kegger (YES I DID).
As excited as I am, though, to have pimped out a worn cliche with Ashley Parker Angel's post-O-Town flowing blond locks, I wonder if I'm right. Is it really better to have been there and back than never to have been there at all? Let's figure this out.
I'm flashing back to the Summer of 2008, which I've detailed ad nauseum to have been the grand piano of my all-time summers, when I spent about two months in New York City. I lived at Columbia University way up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and it took until my last night in the city to get my one buddy up there to visit. While the sunlight dimmed as we ate dinner at a sidewalk bistro on Broadway (It was a bistro, trust me), I looked out to the buzzing street. 'This time tomorrow night,'I said, 'I will be on my parents' couch back at home in Pittsburgh.' We laughed, finished our food and went out for a few drinks. The next night, at the same exact time, I stared at the television from the couch in my parents' living room. And that was that. No Broadway. No sidewalk caf--er--bistro. New York life, the company you're supposed to keep, gone.
Later that same week, with my clothes nestling back into their old, familiar drawers, my buddy Craig picked me up and we went to go hang out at this girl's house. It was the first time I'd go out after coming back from New York. It was early August. (I had left in late May.) It was a balmy night, so we sat out on the back deck, and after a while, a girl I know from high school turned to me and asked, 'Mitsch, where have you been all summer?'
Then, when the leaves turned red, I was again walking the Pitt campus during my final year of college, doing the best I could to get by on the least amount of possible effort (3.82. Eat it). So, if you're keeping score at home, my first summer in New York, one I wrote a whole big thing about telling all five of you how cool it was, dropped me right back off at college before anyone noticed I was gone. If only I could have been so stealthy during some ... other endeavors.
But, no matter how foolish I was back in 2008 (so long ago), I never expected to stay in New York, because summer internships only last for ... the ... (Kids? Anyone?) ... summer! (Seriously, a summer intern in September is like a blizzard in May. As soon as you hear your first 'You're still here?!' it's time to go.) So, the back-to-earth logic applied then, but only in the same sense that all the astronauts who went to the moon back in the 60s didn't really expect to stay on the moon. Or maybe they did, I don't know. Times were different back then. People smoked on TV!
No, the REAL reality check came some months later, when many, and that includes myself, expected me to go back to New York after graduating ... and I didn't. Not by choice, but because the company at which I had interned, one I thought was antsy to hire me as soon as I sauntered onto the job market with my college degree and little else, hit some hard times and couldn't offer me anything. The people I knew there had moved on, voluntarily or ... otherwise, and that was that for me. I remember the lynchpin moment for this. It was a night in December. I was a senior. I typed a nice, sincere but confident email to my main contact -- a great woman who had been with the company for 20-plus years, who absolutely loved me, who told me to email her when I was ready to come back full-time -- I fired it off, leaned back in my chair and got an instant reply. Undeliverable. Slam.
So, technically, I had been there and back. But by the time 2009 bullied its way onto the scene, it was like I'd never been there at all.
You may already know the story of the next year and a half: the 'Grace Period' summer in Oakland ... the newspaper job and high school football ... then the move to Colorado for Summer 2010: 'Let's See What Happens.' It culminated on a Tuesday night that September, when I sent a few texts as I waited for my dad outside Denver International. I'd be back in Pittsburgh on Friday. And two weeks later, I'd be back in New York. For good.
So I'd hoped.
It's August. I'm still going to work, only nobody double-takes when I walk through the office (at least not yet) and I've yet to get my first 'You're still here?!' (at least to my face). I'm not a summer intern, rather a glorified temp (I added the 'glorified') who stuck around for 11 strong months, during which I got to do some pretty cool things. I chatted up Chris Mullin while lifting weights in Miami and guarded Bill Simmons in a pick-up hoops game in Dallas. When you do these things, you feel like you've made it. I did these things.
Thing is, I also count Minnesota as one of the 37 states I've visited. You're like, 'OK, I'm not sure what you'd be doing there, but ... whoa, 37 states? That's a lot!' See what happened? You didn't even bother to ask what I was doing in Minnesota, just that I counted it. The truth? I spent two hours in the Twin Cities airport, cussing softly in a TGI Friday's as I watched Pitt lose a basketball game. But I was there. So it f**king counts. (You hear that Gilbert Brown? It COUNTS! MAKE A ******* FREE THROW.)
So if you got a text from me that night in September, before my dad and I, along with all my worldly possessions, pulled away from Denver International in what surely was the heaviest Honda Civic ever, I gave you my future -- Colorado-Pittsburgh-New York -- with a dash of Minnesota. The layover wasn't two weeks in Pittsburgh. It was 11 months in the Big Apple. My final destination? The living room couch at 506 Mohican Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA. As always, it's an open-ended ticket. And we're about to start boarding.
Oddly enough, I might as well be taking off from Denver again, where I stopped off in late January between legs of a trip from Salt Lake to New York. I strolled through the concourse and remembered the last time I'd actually been inside. It was in July 2010, when I still lived in Colorado Springs. I'd returned from a work trip to Vegas, the trip during which I met my boss before he was my boss. That time, I drove the hour south home, with the hulking crest of Pike's Peak guiding me. This time, I took off Eastward and pressed my nose against the window to see the front range of the Rockies, dominated by the mountain I once stood on top of, disappear. I slumped in my seat and closed my eyes, knowing that at one time, that was my life. You know, too, if you've ever seen my profile pic on Facebook and Twitter ... or my desktop background.
I leave New York this time knowing that this was my life. (Get ready, because I'm about to hold you hostage like an 80-year old showing slides of their trip to Branson. Dim the lights please?)
And this ...
This, too ...
And we'll throw in some South Beach for good measure. (The blurriness is all part of the whole ambiance, so just go with it ...)
(OK, lights up.)
Pretty soon -- HEY! You awake? -- Pretty soon, I'll leave New York like I left Colorado and return to Pittsburgh like I returned twice before before leaving again (Just making sure you're paying attention and weren't eying up Ashley down there.)
Though I would have liked to have stayed here longer, I bet Neil Armstrong and, to a lesser degree, Buzz Aldrin would have taken another couple days on the moon. And I'm thinking Ashley Parker Angel juuuust may have preferred another few years of O-Town as opposed to living with his pregnant girlfriend and her mom and not making any money while being taped for a reality show exploiting his plummet from success.
Nonetheless, in far different ways, we were there. Which beats not having been there at all. There's nowhere left to fall, when you've reached the bottom, it's now ... or never ......
Later that same week, with my clothes nestling back into their old, familiar drawers, my buddy Craig picked me up and we went to go hang out at this girl's house. It was the first time I'd go out after coming back from New York. It was early August. (I had left in late May.) It was a balmy night, so we sat out on the back deck, and after a while, a girl I know from high school turned to me and asked, 'Mitsch, where have you been all summer?'
Then, when the leaves turned red, I was again walking the Pitt campus during my final year of college, doing the best I could to get by on the least amount of possible effort (3.82. Eat it). So, if you're keeping score at home, my first summer in New York, one I wrote a whole big thing about telling all five of you how cool it was, dropped me right back off at college before anyone noticed I was gone. If only I could have been so stealthy during some ... other endeavors.
But, no matter how foolish I was back in 2008 (so long ago), I never expected to stay in New York, because summer internships only last for ... the ... (Kids? Anyone?) ... summer! (Seriously, a summer intern in September is like a blizzard in May. As soon as you hear your first 'You're still here?!' it's time to go.) So, the back-to-earth logic applied then, but only in the same sense that all the astronauts who went to the moon back in the 60s didn't really expect to stay on the moon. Or maybe they did, I don't know. Times were different back then. People smoked on TV!
No, the REAL reality check came some months later, when many, and that includes myself, expected me to go back to New York after graduating ... and I didn't. Not by choice, but because the company at which I had interned, one I thought was antsy to hire me as soon as I sauntered onto the job market with my college degree and little else, hit some hard times and couldn't offer me anything. The people I knew there had moved on, voluntarily or ... otherwise, and that was that for me. I remember the lynchpin moment for this. It was a night in December. I was a senior. I typed a nice, sincere but confident email to my main contact -- a great woman who had been with the company for 20-plus years, who absolutely loved me, who told me to email her when I was ready to come back full-time -- I fired it off, leaned back in my chair and got an instant reply. Undeliverable. Slam.
So, technically, I had been there and back. But by the time 2009 bullied its way onto the scene, it was like I'd never been there at all.
You may already know the story of the next year and a half: the 'Grace Period' summer in Oakland ... the newspaper job and high school football ... then the move to Colorado for Summer 2010: 'Let's See What Happens.' It culminated on a Tuesday night that September, when I sent a few texts as I waited for my dad outside Denver International. I'd be back in Pittsburgh on Friday. And two weeks later, I'd be back in New York. For good.
So I'd hoped.
It's August. I'm still going to work, only nobody double-takes when I walk through the office (at least not yet) and I've yet to get my first 'You're still here?!' (at least to my face). I'm not a summer intern, rather a glorified temp (I added the 'glorified') who stuck around for 11 strong months, during which I got to do some pretty cool things. I chatted up Chris Mullin while lifting weights in Miami and guarded Bill Simmons in a pick-up hoops game in Dallas. When you do these things, you feel like you've made it. I did these things.
Thing is, I also count Minnesota as one of the 37 states I've visited. You're like, 'OK, I'm not sure what you'd be doing there, but ... whoa, 37 states? That's a lot!' See what happened? You didn't even bother to ask what I was doing in Minnesota, just that I counted it. The truth? I spent two hours in the Twin Cities airport, cussing softly in a TGI Friday's as I watched Pitt lose a basketball game. But I was there. So it f**king counts. (You hear that Gilbert Brown? It COUNTS! MAKE A ******* FREE THROW.)
So if you got a text from me that night in September, before my dad and I, along with all my worldly possessions, pulled away from Denver International in what surely was the heaviest Honda Civic ever, I gave you my future -- Colorado-Pittsburgh-New York -- with a dash of Minnesota. The layover wasn't two weeks in Pittsburgh. It was 11 months in the Big Apple. My final destination? The living room couch at 506 Mohican Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA. As always, it's an open-ended ticket. And we're about to start boarding.
Oddly enough, I might as well be taking off from Denver again, where I stopped off in late January between legs of a trip from Salt Lake to New York. I strolled through the concourse and remembered the last time I'd actually been inside. It was in July 2010, when I still lived in Colorado Springs. I'd returned from a work trip to Vegas, the trip during which I met my boss before he was my boss. That time, I drove the hour south home, with the hulking crest of Pike's Peak guiding me. This time, I took off Eastward and pressed my nose against the window to see the front range of the Rockies, dominated by the mountain I once stood on top of, disappear. I slumped in my seat and closed my eyes, knowing that at one time, that was my life. You know, too, if you've ever seen my profile pic on Facebook and Twitter ... or my desktop background.
I leave New York this time knowing that this was my life. (Get ready, because I'm about to hold you hostage like an 80-year old showing slides of their trip to Branson. Dim the lights please?)
And this ...
This, too ...
And we'll throw in some South Beach for good measure. (The blurriness is all part of the whole ambiance, so just go with it ...)
(OK, lights up.)
Pretty soon -- HEY! You awake? -- Pretty soon, I'll leave New York like I left Colorado and return to Pittsburgh like I returned twice before before leaving again (Just making sure you're paying attention and weren't eying up Ashley down there.)
Though I would have liked to have stayed here longer, I bet Neil Armstrong and, to a lesser degree, Buzz Aldrin would have taken another couple days on the moon. And I'm thinking Ashley Parker Angel juuuust may have preferred another few years of O-Town as opposed to living with his pregnant girlfriend and her mom and not making any money while being taped for a reality show exploiting his plummet from success.
Nonetheless, in far different ways, we were there. Which beats not having been there at all. There's nowhere left to fall, when you've reached the bottom, it's now ... or never ......
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