What up? It's been a while since we rapped. Maybe that's because I've been spending all my online time at this awesome Saved by the Bell site! I read this entire blog way faster than I should admit. It is the "Catcher in the Rye" of blogs. Uh...if Catcher was about making sarcastic comments about an early '90s show.*

The great thing about Saved by the Bell, besides the fact that they learn Driver's Ed using a golf cart in the gymnasium, is that I loved the show to the point where, if no one was at home after school and it came on, I would dance on the coffee table and play air guitar to the opening theme music. I thought these people were the coolest and the funniest, and it was pretty much what high school was like. High school was cool not because of popularity, but because everyone did really rad things, like, all the time! The show couldn't depict popularity, because there were only like seven extras at the most at any point. But I attribute this sense more to the set: it always seemed like Zack and the gang were hanging out in one tiny little corner of the school. You know, the stairs were in the background, leading down, and that was where the cohort was. And they had a crappy corner of the school too, since it was right next to the principal's office. I always had the sense that in all the other corners of the school, other rad stuff was happening, and we the viewer were only exposed to the radness of this one section.

So the real joy of SBTB to me was this cohesive unit that stayed together...er...except when the cast changed without explanation. But they went and got summer jobs together, they went to college together, they hung out at the Max all the time, they were there for each other when Jessie got hooked on caffeine pills.

I really thought there was some brilliant way to tie all that in to the nostalgia I've been feeling lately, but I don't think I'm clever enough. Point is, lately I've been really wanting everyone I know to live in the same city. I know we all have our own lives and grad schools and jobs and children (!) and dreams to attend to, but it really is inconvenient that the world is so large and so many of the people I know and love are attending to its different corners.

Right now, I am "Seattle Matt" and when I want to go visit friends in Ballard, I am Seattle Matt, and when I go to Rainier Valley, I am Seattle Matt, and when I go to Capitol Hill, I am Seattle Matt...With A Little Bit Of Gay. When I'm back in Indiana, I can be High School Matt. When I am in Pittsburgh, I can be College Matt. There are so many Matts out there, but I have to drastically change my geography in order to be any of them!

But really what I want, rather than just a manual transmission to shift to any Matt I feel like, is to touch different points of time in life as much as possible. My friend Roselyn recently visited, and there was a moment when we and some others were walking through Discovery Park in the drizzly evening, when, just like that, we could have been at Ox Bow or Shanklin back in Indiana. There are so many bitter and sweet moments in the history of our friendship, and I cannot stand to be so far from them. I wish I could group us all up and put us in a city...I don't care which one. Even Tacoma.

So, I guess my point is, no one should be allowed to move and all the cities should have walls around them.


*Which it sort of is? I mean, "Catcher in the Rye" is basically a guy making sarcastic comments about all those goddamn phonies out there. Substitute "goddamn phonies" for zany plot contrivances and you pretty much have the sbtb blog.