Sandbox

So I’m sitting alone because I got a free ticket to the Aziz Ansari show, and my phone’s probably broken, so instead of Grindring I’m half-reading The Order of Things and half-listening to LCD Soundsystem play over the loudspeakers. My initial thought is, “This is rad,” followed by the self-pitying thought that most of my fellow classmates don’t even realize this is happening, and then I realize what a dickhead I am.

Aziz Ansari is like your friend who’s really entertaining in person, but whose jokes don’t belong in the quotes section of your Facebook. Watching his young-life crisis play out on stage was a little uncomfortable. Talking about adultish things always is, and I get where he’s coming from. Marriage is super lame, and it’s going to suck watching once-cool friends who used to make bongs out of Hold Steady ticket stubs get married, leave you in the dust and make you think—maybe it’s you that’s the square.

Maybe I got intellectual because I wasn’t good at sports. It’s hard to say for sure because I only ever tried one, one of those grueling 20 hour per week, mentally abusive coach sports that’s basically been abolished from the U.S. on grounds of conscience.

And now? I traded in Kerouac for Proust, masturbation is a time-saving solution instead of a last resort and I am the only person I know who can cook kale perfectly. So with that marriage-baby horizon looking more distant and tenuous, there are few sure things left in my future. Although I will be living within walking distance of a Whole Foods.

It was no accident that Aziz Ansari, outspoken lover of hip-hop and indie rock, wanted LCD Soundsystem cued up before his shows—James Murphy epitomizes the hipster descending into self-conscious early middle age. But this adult-ish stuff is pretty serious-sounding on paper, which is why comedy’s actually a better artistic medium—it’s good form to do it with dead baby jokes.