In this episode we learn about "Going Outside" then and now.
Then we hear a Zoom meeting gone horribly wrong,
And finally we learn all about the summer that the
First Gen X Man did not become a Movie Star.
In this episode we learn about "Going Outside" then and now.
Then we hear a Zoom meeting gone horribly wrong,
And finally we learn all about the summer that the
First Gen X Man did not become a Movie Star.
Many Meanderings
Episode 2
MUSIC UP: Many Meanderings Theme
SFX: Applause
Hello, hello, hello. Thank you. Thank you fake audience. Please stop, you’re fake embarrassing me. Ok, now I’m fake blushing.
Hello and welcome to Season One Episode Two of The Many Meanderings of the First Gen X Man. I am as always your host and Chief Meanderer Wil Boudreau. Wow, Episode Two already. It’s hard to believe it’s been two weeks since we last spoke. Although not that hard since the concept of time has completely lost all meaning.
ECHOING EFFECT
We’re all trapped in vast vacuous void. A black hole of online life. An infinite loop of despair with no end and no beginning, only a vast yawning emptiness.
CASINO SFX
Actually, it’s kinda like the world has become a giant casino, no clocks, lots of booze, an all you can eat buffet just steps away. And that’s us, sitting in front of our screens instead of slot machines. Mindlessly whiling away the hours. On and on. Until we fall into a carbohydrate induced coma.
LULLABY MUSIC
SFX: SNORING
SFX: ALARM CLOCK
Ok, I’m awake now. And I’m excited because we have made it all the way to Episode Two. If this were the Rocky movie series, this would be the one where Rocky actually beats Apollo Creed I’ll bet if you asked the average person on the average street how the first Rocky movie ends, they would tell you that Rocky beats the reigning champion. But he doesn’t. His big victory in Rocky 1 is that he goes fifteen rounds with the champ. But then he loses.
I’m sorry but I don’t think that would ever gonna fly now today. It’s too much of a downer. This is the era of intensity and instant gratification. Today they would’ve focus grouped the Rocky One ending where he loses and people would’ve would have clicked the big red thumbs down.
SFX: BOOING CROWD
They didn’t pay 15 bucks a ticket plus another 50 bucks for soda and popcorn and Snow Caps to see the guy lose! The studio would’ve run right back to Hollywood and reshot the ending where Rocky beats the crap out of Apollo Creed.
SFX: CHEERING CROWD
Except it wouldn’t have been Apollo Creed. It would’ve been a super villain like the Green Goblin, or Lord Voldemort or maybe a genetically modified velociraptor. And Adrian wouldn’t have been his nerdy librarian girlfriend. She would’ve been a hot green alien.
SFX: CROWD OF GUYS “OH YEAH!”
MUSIC UP: SEXY GREEN ALIEN MUSIC
Now that would’ve been a movie.
But I digress.
We have three heaping hot helpings of meandering for you today. Not to worry though, all meanderings are completely gluten free, 100% vegan, and served with your choice of salad or fries. It’s the apocalypse, I’d suggest the fries.
First up I’m going to be talking about going outside.
Sounds so simple doesn’t it? Going outside. “Can I go outside and play Dad?” “Sure, son, just come home when the street lights come on.” That’s how it was when I was a kid.
But not today. Oh no.
MUSIC UP: SCARY FILM SCORE
Asking my kids to go outside is like asking them to go to school. It’s like asking them to go work in that diamond mine in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Asking my kids to go outside is like asking them to go to the dentist while simultaneously preparing my income tax returns. In other words, it is not something my kids want to do … at all.
It drives me, and my wife, absolutely crazy. Particularly these days. “Hey, you’ve done six hours of online school, think maybe you’d like to go out in our gigantic kid Xanadu of a yard and maybe spend 10 minutes running around?”
“Nahh! Dad, we’re good. We were thinking about fighting about who got to sit in this particular part of this particular couch for a while.”
We have a big yard. It’s a big reason why we bought this house. We have a play set, a zip line, an outdoor ping pong table, a basketball hoop, bikes, scooters, a pool that’s not open yet, but still we do have a pool, and a stream that runs in back of our house. And I cannot get them to set foot outside of this house unless I go.
MUSIC UP: FEEL GOOD FOLK MUSIC
When I was a kid, going outside was all we wanted to do. I remember it was always officially summer when we were actually allowed to go outside after supper. We’d sit all be sitting at our Formica kitchen table, having dessert. If it was a really good night dessert would be lemon meringue pie from Purity Supreme supermarket, if it was a not so good night, maybe the world’s worst cookie ever made, Keebler’s Pecan Sandies. Yuck, they tasted like they were actually made with actual sand from the Keebler Elf Daycare Center sandbox. Were they a tad dry? Um, one bite and your mouth felt like you’d just gargled with the entire Sahara Desert. Pecan Sandies were more of a practical joke than an actual dessert.
Anyway, we’d notice it was still light outside and we’d ask my Dad. “Dad, can we go out after supper?” And if he said yes, we’d feel like he’d just told us we were all going to Disney World. Alright, maybe not Disney World, maybe Canobie Lake Park the world’s best amusement park when we were kids, ok maybe not Canobie Lake Park, maybe bowling at Crowell Bowl, which was a very nice bowling alley. Ok whatever we felt like, it felt good.
There was so much to do outside. We’d ride our bikes, attaching a card from a deck of playing cards to the bike frame with a clothes pin so that the turning spokes of the bike would make the card flutter and make the bike sound like a motorcycle when we went fast. At least that’s what we thought it sounded like.
We’d play street hockey. I actually had a street hockey net, the red metal tube with red netting model. It was my job to move it out of the way every five minutes or so when someone would yell “car” and we had to let someone pass by.
SFX: Car horn.
Usually it was a mom who’d wave to us while she was driving with one hand and smoking a Parliament Light 100 in the other.
“Hello kids. Have fun playing the street hockey.”
MUSIC UP: FUN ROCK SONG
One day my friend and I went down into something we called “the pit.” It was a little valley at the end of a steep slope that all the giant rocks and trees and other stuff they had bulldozed out of the area when they were building our 1970’s development had been thrown. My Dad always scowled that the developers shouldn’t have been allowed to just dump all this stuff there. But to us, it was nothing short of awesome. I mean come on. Giant boulders to climb on. Huge bulldozed trees lying on their sides just waiting for to jump around on like Tarzan.
There was even an old car down there we’d sit in and pretend was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Flying around in the clouds above our little town, running away from the creepy “I smell children” child guy. You know that guy, with the giant foot long nose and long black stringy hair. That child catcher In Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is the single creepiest character ever committed to film. I’d sooner have Hannibal Lecter over to babysit and teach a cooking class.
Anyway, one day my friend and I were down in the pit and we decided to light a fire in an indentation in the side of a hill. Seemed like a good idea at the time. We lit it and it got pretty big. Kinda too big. And not only that, but just when it was blazing in all its glory, then one of my sisters appeared and saw that we had lit an extremely large fire and immediately ran back to tell my mom.
MUSIC UP: HIP HOP BEAT
When I got back home I was confronted by my mom with this incendiary accusation. All of a sudden I was like Shaggy in that song. Did you light a fire? Wasn’t me. Your sister saw you with a fire. Wasn’t me. She said it was a big fire. Wasn’t me.
Anyway, my mom bought it. And I was not punished. Should be the end of the story right? Wrong. I forgot to mention. We were Catholics. With a Capital C. That lie lay heavy on my heart, like an anvil in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
MUSIC UP: CHURCH ORGAN
I felt so bad about it, a few weeks later I actually confessed it to Father Reagan, our parish priest. I’m sure it wasn’t in Father Reagan’s top 500 most interesting sins of the week. But I did feel better having told him. I always found it curious that priests never told you that you had to come clean and tell your parents whatever it was you were telling them. If I had been told to, I absolutely would have told my parents. Priests were authority figures, you did what they said. But luckily all Father Reagan ever said was say ten Our Fathers and Ten Hail Mary’s, and boom. You were absolved.
My point being that going outside was really fun. We’d play games. We’d practice arson. We’d learn how to lie. We’d take advantage of unearned absolution. But for the most part, my kids know nothing of that kind of freedom. There is a stream behind my house. I have four boys. Not once has any of them ever fallen into it. How is that possible?
MUSIC UP: EMOTIONAL FILM SCORE
We do have fun outside. As long as I go with them. Pushing them on the swing is still a big thing for my ten-year old twins. We have a long rope swing on a tree in our yard and the twins still love it when I push them so they go soaring up into the sky. It makes me impossibly sad to think that one of these days, not too far in the future, I’ll push them for the last time. I’ll always remember the look on their faces though. Screeching and giggling with delight. “I’ve got tingles in my dingles Daddy.” That’s how they describe the feeling of swinging up in the air. I feel the tingles in my heart when I see them flying at the end of that rope, not a care in their heads. Knowing their Dad is right there to catch them. And push them again. As long as they want.
I’m gonna take a quick break now for a word from our fake sponsor. The Nerf company.
MUSIC UP: ACTION ADVENTURE FILM SCORE
When I was a kid the only Nerf thing we had to play with were these rather odd purple foam rubber footballs. But these days Nerf is all about forming an army of your closest mercenary friends, heading out into the yard and fighting the roving band of zombies that blacken every suburban neighborhood. When we lived in Decatur Georgia, all the houses on our block were close together and our doorbell would ring pretty much every day. And one of my sons, the self proclaimed Nerf warrior would answer the call. To vanquish zombies from all corners of the neighborhood. Keeping our neighborhood safe and preventing it from falling into a dystopian chaos. Thank you Nerf, for enlisting our nation’s youth in the valuable public service of imaginary zombie extermination while at the same time giving them a safe, foam rubber based outlet for their aggressive and militaristic urges. When’s the last time you did that much for society Lego?
Nerf, giving kids a reason to actually go outside for five minutes for God’s sakes. Hey if you like this fake ad Nerf corporation, feel free to make it a real one.
And now onto our next meander. A trending topic in our strange new world. Zoom meetings.
MUSIC UP: 70’s KID’S SHOW THEME.
When I was a kid, Zoom was a show on Channel Two with groovy kids in tie die speaking Ubby Dubby language and solving Fanny Dooly riddles. These days, it’s the ubiquitous video chat app that every single person in America is on all day long.
I recently recorded a Zoom meeting I had with some clients. I haven’t listened back to this, but I thought it would be fun to hear what a typical Zoom meeting sounds like. I was wearing headphones, so you’ll only hear my voice, but I think you’ll get the idea. I think it is pretty representative of the experience most of the country is having right now.
SFX: Static
Hello! Hello! Are you there. Oh wait, I’m on mute. Sorry, hi everyone, sorry I’m late, I actually thought this was just gonna be a conference call so I had to shave, stick my head under the water in the kitchen sink and then put on a shirt that I have not recently slept in.
What’s that? Oh behind me? Yup that’s a giant potato. Sorry about that, my son was using this for his class zoom. Lemme just change that background real quick. Just gotta figure out how to do this. There, how’s that? Oh, ok, I’m in outer space now. Ok, let’s try again. There we go, how’s that. Up now I’m in Sponge Bob land. Weird how we can breathe underwater. Anyway, I’m gonna just go back to the potato and keep going.
So on page one of this deck you’ll see.
SFX: Cat
Sorry that’s my cat.
SFX: Cat freaking out.
Yeah my cat is, well, he’s killing and devouring what looks to be some sort of mouse or chipmunk, I don’t know, it’s got no head now. Ok, looks like it’s done, for now.
Anyway on page one.
SFX: DOOR OPENING
KID: Dad, can I have a Fluffernutter?
Mom said no more Fluffernutters, you’re all eating way too much sugar. Have something else. Just have peanut butter and jelly.
KID: Ok. Can I play X Box?
It’s ten o’clock in the morning buddy, let’s wait a little bit ok. Daddy’s on a work call now. Can you go find Mumma?
KID: Mumma’s outside smoking.
Ok, better leave her alone. Go watch TV.
SFX: Door shutting
So on page one.
SFX: DOG BARKING.
SFX: PACKAGES BEING OPENED
Can someone let the dog in? Hang on a second.
Stop opening the packages guys, we have to sterilize them. It’s not toys anyway it’s cat food and hand sterilizer.
Why are we feeding these cats when they just eat every critter they find in the yard?
So anyway, back to page one.
SFX: CAT AND BIRD
Oh boy, looks like the cat brought in a bird. Can we close front door please? Yeah it’s amazing what these cats will find. Don’t worry, he’ll decapitate the bird in just a sec.
There we go.
SFX: Door Opening
Honey, don’t look at…
SFX: Woman screaming
Sorry honey, yeah it was a Cardinal. I know you like Cardinals.
Lemme just shut this door.
SFX: DOOR SHUTTING
Ok page one. Did everyone just see my pajama bottoms? Yes Dan, those are space ships, my son and I have matching… could we, um, what? No, I’m not drinking a beer. Well Dan, the camera may have shown a beer can on the table, but that’s not from this meeting. That’s from a 2 pm I mean a 5 pm meeting yesterday. I would never drink during a morning meeting, what am I, some kind of a weirdo? Yeah, I think we should reschedule. I’m hearing the cats again.
SFX: Cats
Yeah I think the cats may have finally gotten into the tortoise’s cage. They’re supposed to live like a hundred years, these tortoises. But not our guy. Yup they got him. They certainly are very efficient killers. Bye bye Jeff, yeah that’s the tortoise’s name. I know, sounds like a person. Anyway, Jeff lived a short but happy, rather absurdly expensive life. Does anyone in the meeting happen to need a six-foot tortoise aquarium?
Good idea Dan, let’s pick this up tomorrow. Yes, I’ll be sure and lock it down for tomorrow’s meeting. I could lock everyone in the basement. You know like in Silence of the Lambs. It stays quiet for the Zoom or it gets the hose again. Yup Ok, bye bye. Stay safe everybody.
SFX: ELECTRONIC GLITCH
Stupid Dan, always making me look bad. King of the Zoom. With his stupid expensive headphones and the strategically placed background photos of him climbing Mount Everest and free diving with Great White Sharks. I hate you Dan.
What? Oh hi Dan. That’s funny, I thought I hung up. Ok, bye everyone.
I am so fired.
SFX: DIAL TONE
MUSIC UP: FUNNY VAUDVILLE THEME
Time now for our third meander. I thought it would fun to tell you about the summer I did not become a movie star. Although technically, that could be any of the summers I’ve been alive, since obviously I am not a movie star. But there was one summer in particular that in my mind anyway, it coulda happened.
I was always interested in the theater. I remember my sophomore year I quit the high school basketball team to try out for the High School musical, Anything Goes. The basketball coach wasn’t happy with me at all. I think primarily because I was tall for my small town, I’m 6’1”.
The coach scowled at me and said “God gives you gifts you should use them.” Ouch. And by the way, what gifts? I was the center on our five man Freshman team and didn’t win the tip off once the entire season. Another time a made an amazing breakaway play, dribbling all the way down the empty court to complete a perfect lay up. I looked over at my coach in triumph but he was frowning, then I looked at the opposing team’s bench and they were laughing hysterically. I had scored a basket in the visiting team’s hoop. And yes they did credit the opposing team with two points. No, I knew in my heart, my future lay in the dramatic arts.
Anyway, I went on to land leading roles in two High School musicals much to my Mother’s excitement and my Dad’s somewhat bemused acceptance.
MUSIC UP: HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION PIANO
And another thing you should know, I also actually sang “I’ve Gotta Be Me” solo at my High School graduation. I didn’t pick the song. It was chosen by our beloved if somewhat curmudgeonly high school music director Mr. Garabedian, or Mr. G. I have no idea why he picked that song. Had it been up to me I probably woulda picked, on I don’t know Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”, or Billy Joel’s “Only The Good Die Young.” You know, something appropriate for the occasion.
Don’t worry, I won’t be playing you a recording of me singing at my high school graduation. 1982 being long before every second of every day was shot and streamed by a hundred cell phones, I know of no video footage of my high school graduation ceremony. But you can use your imagination. I remember my mom cried when I sang. I’m pretty sure my Dad winced.
Anyway, I went on to be an English major at Boston College and my Junior year at BC I signed up for a summer study abroad program at the Abbey Theater in Dublin Ireland. It was an amazing opportunity. Six weeks in Dublin, studying right in the National Theater of Ireland, the Abbey Theater with the Director of the National Theater, Tomas Mac Anna. With classes taught by the major playwrights, directors and actors working in Ireland at the time. It was clear to me that these luminaries would immediately recognize my talent, put me in a play, which would launch my acting career eventually leading me to Hollywood where I would of course become a movie star.
MUSIC UP: HOLLYWOOD ORCHESTRA
Obviously right? All I had to do was get on that Aer Lingus flight and you know, as I sang in high school, where my mom cried and my dad winced, “be me.”
Tomas Mac Anna the Artistic Director of the Abbey Theater was a big deal. Nominated for a Tony award for his direction of Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy. And pretty much central casting for what you’d expect from a seasoned Irish man of the theater. He was as I remember him, a biggish man, slightly imposing, with longish grey hair. He was pretty much a doppelganger for Mick Fleetwood from Fleetwood Mac. He had the charisma and bearing of a celebrity and the usual Irish gift for gab. He was clearly the coolest person any of us in the class had ever met in our entire lives. He barely said a word to me for the duration of the six-week program.
Oh he talked all the time. Usually to all of us. And often to the cooler kids in the program. One of my fellow BC students was a girl who’d done some modeling and had actually appeared in a Wendy’s commercial. Acting royalty by our group’s standard. As I recall, Tomas talked quite often to her. And to the other, more extraverted or just more obviously talented acting types in our group. I was on the shy side. Shy is not a good thing for an actor.
So, when it came time to be cast in the culmination of our course, an actual performance on the stage at the Abbey Theater, Tomas went about assigning roles to us one by one. After all the meatier roles had been doled out I was literally the last man standing.
“Ah yes, William. You will play the part of “Old Man” in Riders To The Sea. Very good, I’ll see you lot tomorrow at half nine.”
My name’s not William, it’s actually Wilfrid, but I go by Wil. I’ll talk more about my weird name in a subsequent episode. There was another, more popular kid in the class named William. So not only had Tomas given me the worst possible part to play, he’d gotten my name wrong. Movie stardom here I come!
Riders to the Sea is a one act play about a woman, Maurya, who’s lost her husband and five sons to the sea. In the play, her son Michael has gone missing while out riding the horse. Of course, it turns out that Michael too has been taken by the sea, apparently washed off his horse while riding near the coast. You know, so it’s a comedy. At about the death of son two or three, this family really should have considered, moving, somewhere inland, like maybe Nebraska.
Anyway, the scene we did was the famous final scene when Maurya the matriarch does her big speech about the “white coffin boards” that she bought for her son’s casket. The boards are onstage for the entire play and I guess they symbolize death. Makes sense. It’s very dramatic and sad and moving, and I believe my fellow BC student Monica, by the way Monica had the most amazing 80’s haircut, sort of super short on one side and moussed out on the other side, but it looked great on her, anyway Monica played Maurya and she does a great job, mourning the loss of her sixth and final son to sea. And then talking about the coffin that she wants me “Old Man” to build. At the end of her monologue about her sons, and the sea and the white coffin boards and everybody’s crying, I say my one line. Are you ready? Here it is.
“Are there nails with them?”
MUSIC UP: DRAMATIC ORCHESTRAL STING
That’s it. “Are there nails with them?” That was my line.
She’s talking about the tragic deaths of seven people in her family. And I’m asking practical questions about the availability of hardware. What were John Millington Synge’s other lines? “Yes, the boards, but do you have a belt sander?” “Oh tis a terrible thing, but could you find me a wee extension cord for me power drill?”
MUSIC UP: IRISH ROCK
Lots of great stuff happened that summer in Ireland. We were in Dublin for god sakes. Earning college credit for having the adventure of our lives. We went to the Aran Islands where I drunkenly sang “Leaving On A Jet Plane” to a packed pub. From across the pond, my Dad, winced. Again with the singing this kid.
I went to an amazing concert in Dublin’s Croke Park featuring this line up: An Irish band called In Tua Nua, then Squeeze who were huge on MTV at the time, then a still not that famous REM, then another Irish band you may have heard of, U2. Croke Park is an enormous outdoor stadium and it was as I recall a beautiful July day. This was the summer of 1985 and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” album had just come out and was immediately a huge hit. And, of course U2’s new album that Fall was “The Unforgettable Fire” When U2 came out for their encore I’ll never forget Bono stepping up to the mike and saying this.
“We were just in New York City last week having drinks with our good friend Mr. Bruce Springsteen.”
The stadium went nuts. By the way, this was apparently U2’s first hometown show in Dublin for a year, maybe two, so the crowd was really enthusiastic. Bono continued…
“We asked him if we could sing this song. He said yes.”
No that’s not Bono here in the studio with me, that’s just my uncanny impression. Anyway, U2 then closed out the show performing “My Hometown” from Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” album. The crowd went wild. That song wasn’t a hit yet for Springsteen, but everyone knew it anyway. It was an amazing moment. To this day I think about that day in Dublin whenever I hear that song.
MUSIC UP: EMOTIONAL FILM SCORE
I arrived home to Boston’s Logan airport and was met by my proud parents. I remember we went directly to a restaurant in Boston called, ironically enough, The European, known for its amazing brick oven pizza and big plates of pasta. I’ll never forget talking a mile a minute to my parents about my trip to Europe for the last nine weeks. No cell phones, no internet and very expensive overseas calling rates meant I had only called them once a week for a couple of minutes each time while I was gone, so there was a lot to talk about. Imagine today’s helicopter parents dealing with that kind of communication schedule.
After the six-week course in Ireland my friends and I had bought Eurail passes and we bopped around Europe for three more weeks. It was lost on me then, but when I think about it now, I wonder how my parents felt about me going on and on about seeing the Eiffel Tower, or the Louvre or the Venice canals, or the tacky but hysterical Sound of Music tour that I went on while in Austria. Neither of my parents had ever been to Europe. I saw all those things before they did. If they felt resentful, they didn’t show me. They looked at me with nothing but unmitigated joy.
It was later that same year though that my parents did finally venture off to Europe. I was the youngest and my college was practically paid for at that point. So, they booked a bus tour across Europe and had the time of their lives. I remember my Mom absolutely loving the charming bus tour guides. She also took meticulous notes. Her trip diary was filled with entries like this:
“Tonight we ate in O’Connor’s, a traditional Irish pub. I had delicious fish and chips and Wil had Steamed Mussels. I had a glass of White Zinfandel and Wil had a Guinness, traditional Irish Stout. We both had raspberry trifle for dessert. And I had a cup of coffee.”
My mother quite liked to tell you about meals she’d eaten. And no matter what the description was she always ended with “And a cup of coffee.” My mom loved her coffee. Usually Maxwell House.
So, I went to Europe when I was 20. And I didn’t become a movie star. But I did make my parents vicariously happy. And likely inspired them to finally go themselves. And I got to see an amazing concert and the great Capitals of Europe
Years later I actually wrote a screenplay about my summer in Ireland. I thought it was pretty good. I never sold it. That would be the Winter I didn’t become a famous screenwriter.
That’s all for this week.
I’d like thank you very much for listening. Tell your friends Gen X and otherwise. I’d also like to thank this week’s fake Sponsor, Nerf Corporation. Also thanks to the amazingly talented Watt White for our show’s theme music. That’s Watt with two t’s, look him up on line.
If you like what you heard today, please do like us on Facebook or Instagram where you can find us @firstgenxman. It’s also where you can find exciting exclusive photos and a transcript of every episode. And if you really enjoyed this, please consider leaving a positive review on Apple Podcasts. My mother up in heaven will cry, tears of joy.
That’s all for now, and I’ll see you when we meander again.
MUSIC UP: Many Meanderings Theme Song.