Feelin' ways about stuff

I felt my age yesterday when I revisited a Miami high school that could be a real life version of that school from Fame. Just with better weather and nobody running around in leg warmers and leotards and randomly breaking into song.

No worries. I'm not a dirty old man who hovers around teenagers. I was there working on a story about a group of kids who designed such an impressive set of artistic, futuristic, furniture that it is on its way to Basel, Switzerland, soon to be displayed in the summer at Art Basel, one of the largest, most hoity toity art festivals in the world.

I like to think I'm a youngish hip guy still. I mean marriage hasn't completely left me in need of hip replacement.

But as I tried to connect with these kids once more to let them know that I too once frowned a lot and felt things about...other things, they just gave me that look, the same one I used to give my parents. While I am in theory old enough to be their dad, these kids could have cut me some slack, 'cause in generational terms I'm closer to them than their folks.

No dice. I'm thinking if I'd worn black jeans and black t-shirt I might have gotten in. That appeared to be the uniform for the artistic kids, whose company I really, genuinely enjoyed. One of those little brats cool kids even commented that my nicely tailored, cream colored, side-vented, single-breasted, peaked-lapel suit, purple pocket square, and sky blue windowpane shirt - that's right; I can dress myself, dammit! - reminded him of an "old" video he'd seen of Miami Vice.

Still, kids don't know everything. For example, they didn't create the first cussword substitute with "fudge it." When I was sporting my Member's Only jacket, you didn't make your swears obvious then either. Like, you wouldn't say that something was effed up. You'd say "that wangs chung!" Get it, like the band? That way you confused your parents and managed to criticize something you didn't like.

In the words of Michael J. Fox's coach in Teen Wolf, "There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese."

Bet those smart Fame kids didn't know that.

Spring Break, the good ole days

I'm sufficiently recovered from hanging out with infants in bathing suits yesterday at the Victoria's Secret PINK party that I can do another post now.

Coincidentally, most of the people who dropped good coin to attend that party were spring breakers. But you probably guessed that by the whole infants thing.

A few observations:

• I am getting old. Any time 21-year-olds look like high school students to you, you are old or on your way.
• College kids are more honest these days. I'll explain. When I was in college waaaaay back in the mid '90s we were frauds. When my guys and I got at least a few miles away from our campus on a Friday night - far enough away that we felt comfortable no classmates would be around to recognize us, we would lie, lie, lie. We'd tell girls we were older than we were. We'd tell them we were anything but students. I recall using "underwear model" as my faux occupation a number of times. We'd buy one reaaaaaaaaaaaaalllly strong semi-expensive drink - one apiece, that is - and sip it all night so as to save money. But we'd play up the cost of our drinks while trying to be nonchalant to the ladies. So I found it interesting and in a goofy way impressive when party host Nick Cannon asked the crowd at one point "Who here has more than $20 in their pocket?" and less than half the partiers raised their hands. It cracked me up. But the honesty was refreshing. Back in the day, my guys and I would've raised both hands in an effort to appease our insecurities and impress the ladies.
• Guys if you are at a spring break party, and you spot a waaaaaaaaaaay too pretty girl and ask for her phone number and she doesn't have a job but hands you a business card, turn and run the other way. She is a stripper. Same goes for you ladies. If some dude who is ripped like Adonis and curiously avoids the subject of what school he attends and doesn't have a job but hands you a card, he too is a stripper. Or he is one of those dudes who lives in his parents' basement, reading comic books, dreaming up Web site schemes, and printing up homemade business cards so that he can "honestly" introduce himself to people as an entrepreneur. I nearly fell out...in laughter, when I sat down to take a break about 10 feet away from a young guy who was trying to talk to two girls. They listened skeptically. The thing is he was a dork. I'm not hatin'. I was just as much of a dork back in the day. But these girls were out of his league. I don't think they were even students, because honestly, they were pretty much out of the league of every guy in attendance - at least the college guys ;-) Anyway, he got around to asking what hotel they were staying in and if he could get their phone number. One of them reached in her purse and handed him a business card. I couldn't read it over his shoulder or anything, but the look on his face suggested my guess might have been right. He shook his head, pocketed the card and got up and walked away.
• This totally has nothing to do with spring break, but when I was leaving the party yesterday and heading back to the paper I cut down an alley to get to my car and stumbled - figuratively - over a dude sitting against the back wall of a restaurant cleaning his crack pipe. I didn't just fall off the back of the yam wagon. Back in Milwaukee, covering crime I hiked through many a dark corner where those little pipes were being cleaned out with a little wire brush or a piece of steel wool. Anyway, this was the first chubby crackhead I'd ever seen. Seriously, I've never seen a large crack smoker. All the ones I've ever seen were pretty frail and gaunt. First time for everything, I guess.