Watching The Hobbit While Still Paying Bills

My son and what appears to be the real Sauron at the Portland Comic-Con.

I just wrote a few paragraphs a week ago about how the nerd and art community can embrace sports if they just got their noses out of the air.  Another aspect of this seems to be popping up more and more out there.  Some adults are strident in their lack of acceptance toward anything in the culture merely childlike; even if it is aimed at an ‘all-ages’ crowd.  So silly.

I think I understand the point.  We have entered into a new era of extended adolescence.  Adulthood and responsibility have been pushed back at least ten years, and the American twenty-something is more of a big kid finding his way through life, rather than a young upstart at the bottom an organizational ladder.  Every trend has a pushback.  I get it.  This is a larger point outside of TV, movies, books, and games, to be sure.  All I will add is that life expectancies are rising with this generation and could continue past the age of 100.  Everyone will live longer, so what’s another ten years of fucking around, really?  Why are some people in such a hurry to acquire debt, responsibility and worry?  It’ll happen eventually.  It’s the American way.

This pushback exists outside of the political world and lies squarely in the cultural world.  It has been twenty years of “pull your damn pants up” and beltless kids still let their business hang out.  The cranky adult needs to shake his fist at something, so he’ll be damned if he’s gonna take part in any fantasy-wizard-vampire-dystopian-dragon crap that’s for kids.  I didn’t see that because I’m not nine-years-old.  I don’t read kids’ books.  I have better things to do, I’m an adult.

Shove it.  Really.

There is plenty of time and room for all of these things.  I feel for those stiffs out there who can’t find that imaginative spark inside that enjoys superheroes or Katniss Everdeen.  It says something special about a grown-up that knows a handful of good Italian wines, where to find the perfect coq au vin, and also embraces Frank Miller.  Food, as I write about it now, is an apt metaphor.  We are so lucky to have an abundance of fun and enjoyable items at our American cultural smorgasbord.  There is equal weight in a plate of fried chicken and osso bucco.   It should be just as acceptable to sample biscuits with red-eye gravy and chateaubriand.  

Now I’m hungry.

There is also the problem of limiting possibilities. Our minds are meant to expand and absorb new experiences and pastimes. To resist this is an attitude as old as humanity itself, and it has its place.  But the reason it always crumbles in the face of reality is that it neglects to consider the changes in society.  You can’t shut your eyes on imagination of any kind.  That’s just crazy.  Science benefits from science fiction. Stories, even fantastical ones, bring people together and explore the human experience. How much lore out there that used to be for kids and the sci-fi fantasy crowd is now also aimed at adults?  Would you call Neil Gaiman a kid’s author?  Stephen King?  Not for a second.  But all the ingredients are there: Monsters, magic, epic struggles, possessed cars… So why is JK Rowling strictly kids’ stuff? 

Chock it up to self-importance.  Try and convince me that following baseball isn’t as childish as The Hobbit.  Sports are just games created to pass the time. We watch them on TV and enjoy the competition. In that grand scheme of things is it really that different than holding a controller and blasting zombies?  (If you were a real pro you could do both at the same time!) You are sitting in your home enjoying yourself.  Lose the attitude.

Finally, I am always in favor of accepting more, not less.  Yeah, some of these quasi-adult activities weird me out.  Cosplay is the strangest pastime I’ve seen in a while. But if I’m honest, I wish I had the balls to dress up like Bib Fortuna and have a good time.  LAN parties and Larping may seem dorky to your average polo-wearing stiff out there, but truthfully these guys have more friends than I do.  Please explain why golf is acceptable and D&D is not.  Narrow views of what adulthood should mean to all people are thankfully falling by the wayside.  This is okay.  We will change, grow, adapt. 

We should avoid pissing on each other’s hobbies. As long as no one is getting hurt, have fun.