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In 1970, Elton John came out with this awesome, awesome album. I forget what it was called, but it was just numbers,
like a date or something. He had like four or five really great albums, Madman Across The Water, Don't Shoot Me I'm Only
The Piano Player, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy. Even the mellow songs like
Daniel, and the stupid ones like Crocodile Rock were still good.
Then after about 1975, he changed. He started wearing huge glasses and feather boas and enormous platform shoes,a nd
singing crap like Philadelphia Freedom and Island Girl. And then it even got worse because he started writing
all his own lyrics, which might not mean anything to you, except that lyrics and music are so totally different, thinking
that you can do one because you do the other really well is almost kind of like thinking that because you can cook you can
also play football. And so for like five years Elton John was barely a blip on the radar. If you doubt me, the next time you're
at a record store and you see in the bargain bin any album by Elton John from 1978 to 1982, go ahead and blow the fifty cents
and you'll see what I mean. And then, in 1983, Elton got back with his lyricist, Bernie Taupin, and started making some good
tunes again, like In Neon, I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues, Nikita. I mean it was still all
just Top 40 pop crap but it wasn't bad. Then came his "Adult Contemporary" phase with all that "Circle of Life" crap. Yawn.
And so, now, he's a bajillionaire, but still he's just this bloated, half-blind alcoholic muppet with a bad hairpiece.
That's why it's so bizarre to hear him, after all these years and going through all these phases and image changes, try
to sing Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting.
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Like this guy would ever get in a fight. A sissy-boy slap-fight, maybe. But then, come to think of it, dressed like he
did back then, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that he got in a lot of fights, but just that most of them ended with him
stuffed face-first into trash cans. A lot.
Anyway, the point is, it's weird to see this freaky old dude sing a song about kicking ass. Just as weird as it would
be if they made a new movie, now, where Anne Bancroft seduces Dustin Hoffman. Just weird. And icky. Or having Marlon Brando
play a boxer, now. I mean, is he dead? Then nevermind. But you get the idea.
I just think that most folks reach a point in their lives and careers where certain things, even things that they may
have done really really well at some point, are just out of their reach.
It's what I always think when folks start trying to talk to me about dating again. It just seems so pathetic and stupid
and wrong. My biggest obstacle to dating again is the thought that I'll look like the 2004 version of Elton John trying to
sing the 1973 version of Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting. Even just the word "dating" at my age seems so bizarre,
I still think of it as like going to a girl's house to meet her parents and them telling me to have her home by midnight.
Something I did (and did well) a long long time ago, but now just seems weird.
If you still don't get it, let me draw you another picture. I would feel just as ridiculous if someone started trying
to get me to play freeze tag. Seriously. I mean, if you took every conversation with every well-meaning doofus in the past
six months, and substituted the phrase "playing freeze tag" for the word "dating," then maybe you would begin to get an inkling
of what I'm saying.
"So, you're finally divorced, huh?"
"Yep, I'm divorced."
"So have you been out there playing freeze tag yet?"
"Uh....no, I haven't played freeze tag in a very long time. I wouldn't even know how anymore."
"O, it's easy, just find a game that's going on and join in."
"Yeah, I know, but....I just really don't want to."
"You never know, though. There's another game out there for you, the right game for you."
"Yeah, but....no."
"You also have to think about your kids. Who's going to teach them to play freeze tag?"
....At this point I usually scream, or throw something.
It's interesting that most of the people trying to push me into it are women. And while they all seem very anxious for
me to get out there dating again, none of them seem to want to date me themselves. They're kind of like saying "I really think
you should get out there and start dating.....someone else." And come to think of it, maybe that will shut them up, if the
next time one of them tells me to start dating, I'll ask her out.
Not that it bothers me, really. Don't get me wrong, I do find it personally insulting, or I should say that I would
find it insulting, if I cared at all. Which I totally totally don't.
Besides, it's not just me anymore. It's me and two full-time kids. Folks tell me that's a lot of baggage. Or at least,
for a woman kids are baggage; I'm told that single women look a guy with kids much differently than single men look at a woman
with kids. Or something like that. As soon as someone starts looking at me, I'll let you know.
Until that happens, all my time is really taken up by my kids, and the only time I ever even think about dating is sometimes
when I'm up late at night and those "Girls Gone Wild" commercials come on. I'm not saying that I'm looking for a nekkid 19-year-old
and want to go wild (note to nekkid 19 year olds: It also doesn't mean I'm not. Call me.) It's just that, after the divorce
and the custody order, all my priorities changed. Like, yeah, now I'm divorced and I can shave my head and pierce my ear and
take up kickboxing, but at the same time I have more responsibility than ever.
It's what folks call a dichotomy. Like how, on the one hand, I'm more free than I've ever been; on the other hand, all
this responsibility really limits a lot of the choices that I can make. But even so, I'm free in all the good ways, the ways
that count, and all the limits on me are totally worth it.
The thing is though, even if I wanted to, I can't just start dating anyone I take a shine to. Like I can't just start
going after a 25-year-old Atlanta Falcons cheerleader just because she's totally totally hot, because now I have to consider
how she'll take to my boys and how they'll take to her. For her it'd kind of be like joining a secret society or something,
except without all the weird hazing and paddling. Unless she was into it, I mean.
It's weird. You're supposed to date and then get married and then have kids. This is all backwards.
And right now, having to consider what's best for the boys, and what's best for me, and even what's best for this imaginary
Atlanta Falcons cheerleader who exists in a far-away hypothetical future, it just all seems like too much of a hassle. So
I'm not really considering it. I mean, obviously, since I just wrote all this out, I can't say that I'm not thinking about
it, it's just that I won't even consider actually doing anything about it for a long long time.
And if I did it would probably be all weird and I would cry or something. Shut up.
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