Nobody Knows How to Have a Good Time Any More

I'm serious, take a look around you. Do you see anybody having a good time? No fair answering if you're in Cuba or some central-American country. You people live life on a whole different level, and it's easy to have fun 24-7 when the value of a human life is on par with a bag of Cheetos. I'm talking about folks here on the white side of the world, the one noticeably light on the conspicuous enjoyment of not being dead.

When's the last time you saw some happy motherfucker tearing down the Vegas strip with the top down, firing a machine gun randomly into the air while the X-ed out girl scout behind the wheel struggles to keep it on the road? Not size last July, I don't get to Vegas as often as I used to.

But answer me this, when's the last time you saw a married father of four welding runners to the bottom of the minivan, and taking the whole family out for a sledding ride down the biggest hill in town and across the lake that may or may not be frozen all the way across? Hardly ever happens any more. My dad used to pull that shit constantly, one time it wasn't even winter. Back then people knew how to make a game of life and death. You ever see films from back then? Everybody smoked, they didn't care if they lived or died. When you were pregnant you smoked more, because you were smoking for two. And the cars back then! Seat belts? Why would you want to be strapped down to a flaming hunk of metal when the family in the other car got the ride of their lives, finally seeing what it's like to fly? Cars back then were awesome, they drove fast, idled heavy and stopped infrequently. Their idea of a safety feature back then was making the cigarette lighter hole narrow enough a kid could only fit two or three fingers in there. No need to burn off all a kid's fingers just to teach 'em a lesson about curiosity, you know what I'm sayin?

Hell, back then a windshield was an option. If your parents were cheap it meant you got an unobstructed view of the road, and it was like having a dashboard that was four feet deep. Do you have any idea how much shit you could fit on a dashboard like that? Lunch, dinner, a toaster, entire battalions of army men, and more than enough bottle rockets to shoot at any oncoming cars you might see on the drive. The hood was like a wonderland for kids back then. Nowadays what do kids get? A GameBoy and some motion sickness pills. Pardon me if I don't keel over with envy.

You know what people did back then if they were depressed or had emotional problems? They sure as hell didn't piss away the hours in some hazy Prozac twilight like they do now. No, back then if you had a problem, you hit the bottle, and you hit it hard. You ever hear stories about somebody's dad getting ripped on Prozac and tearing around the neighborhood in reverse, all four doors open, lassoing stray neighborhood dogs just for the shit of it? Of course you don't. Doesn't happen. But that kind of shit was happening nightly in my house growing up. Those were the days.

Nowadays if you want to have a good time and not spend the weekend in jail over it, you practically have to go down to Mexico with a trunk full of stun grenades and one of those guns that shoots nets like they use on Rush Limbaugh when he goes on one of his painkiller sprees. Down there, they don't give a shit. It's like a throwback to simpler times here in the States, back when people were too busy keeping the family alcoholics from getting everybody killed to worry about what you were up to, with your sneaking around at night and painting crosswalks on the freeway and whatnot.

Have we really made progress in all these years? Are you shitting me? Mexico's a reliable supply of drinking water away from overtaking us as the place to live for free-thinkers and the bold of heart. Don't say I didn't warn you when you're seeing whitebread families from Iowa on the news, getting caught trying to sneak across the desert into Mexico in the dead of night. I give it about five years.

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