APP is proud to present the first installment in a continuing
column: Crash McCartney's Views on the Meaning of Life. We recognize that
the answer to this epic question changes during the course of a lifetime. This
column will chart the changes in Crash McCartney's answer over the next few
months...
Crash
McCartney's Views On The Meaning Of Life
9/27/99
Well, I just turned 27 and I was kind of depressed,
because I don’t have TOO much to show for it.
I mean, let’s face it, at 27, anything you accomplish will be expected
of you. You won’t be a phenom or a
prodigy or a spunky, youthful starlet.
And I think that my quest to be America’s Sweetheart has officially
ended, but I do live in a great city with great friends and I have a great
husband and the best dog, so I shouldn’t complain. Anyway, the point is, for my birthday, my husband took me out for
dinner at this WAY classy restaurant called THE BLACKHAWK LODGE here in Chicago,
and I had an Orange Martini and a big Caesar salad and a steak with horseradish
potatoes and coffee and cappuccino ice cream pie for dessert. It was so good, and I didn’t look at the
prices even once. I just ordered what I
wanted to eat and that was that. After
we went to dinner, we drove up Michigan Avenue and looked in all the windows of
the stores and listened to music loud with the windows down (I didn’t even kill
any tourists, that’s the kind of mood I was in). Afterwards, we met about 15 of my friends at a bar near our
house, where I played 5 songs on the jukebox ? AND GOT TO HEAR EVERY ONE! It was so much fun, then I realized, we
spent a lot of money. More money than we should have spent…BUT, it was worth
it. This week, we’re going to have to
eat a lot of pasta, stay home and watch t.v. and stretch the kool aid until
Friday, and I don’t care. Because I’ve
realized the MEANING OF LIFE.
PLAN FOR THE
FUTURE, SO YOU CAN HAVE FUN TODAY. I
don’t have a ton of money, at all. My
friends don’t have a ton of money, but when the time is right, we splurge on
things and refuse to feel guilty or irresponsible. I COULD have taken the two hundred dollars I had on Saturday and
sent it in to my loan payment and then I would have been out of debt two months
earlier than I will be now. That would
have been responsible and proactive.
Wow. Super. I’d rather maintain a modest savings
account, pay my bills on time, have a retirement fund chugging along and a
modest pace, and enjoy my twenties while I have them. People, hear me…you’re
always going to owe somebody SOME amount of money or time. Once you pay off your student loans and your
credit cards…you’re going to have children and houses and car payments…it’s a
fact of life. We owe. So you can either live under the burden of
everlasting debt, constantly denying yourself movies and drinks and CDs and
dinners out…OR, you can suck it up, and realize that you’ll always have bills
to pay, and once you pay them, you go to the mailbox and three more have popped
up, and you may not even live to pay THOSE off, so you’d better smell some
roses now.
I don’t know about you, but I’ll take B.
7/21/99
I'm so tired.
I'm tired physically, emotionally, mentally. There's been a lot of crap going down here in the Windy City that
just...makes me sigh. I've been sighing
an awful lot.
I mean, I've been dealing with Ameritech, first of
all...and if that's not enough to make you revert to the telegraph or jump
ahead to exclusive e-communication...I don't know what is. And then there's Office Depot, AT&T, New
City, The Performance Loft, my husband's views on my haircut (present and
future) and my last healthy Tiger Barb that seems to be swimming erratically
and quite near the surface these past couple of days -- these things have made
me sigh a lot.
I'm living in a city filled with cultural, artsy,
smart, literate people and I can't get a damn one of them to come and see the
play that I've worked so hard to produce.
What is the sound of no audience clapping? I know it...it sucks. I mean, what do I have to do people? Hold you hostage? Entertain you at gunpoint? I swear you'll enjoy yourself.
Frankly, I'm just to tired and ambivalent to hold hostages. They'd ask if they could be released and I'd
fall asleep before they wrestled the gun from my hand.
So
what's the meaning of life? Hell if I
know. But I'm guessing that we were put on this earth to learn some really
harsh lessons and therefore teach the younger generations how to avoid
them. You can bet I'll be telling my
children to avoid writing a play at all costs...it brings nothing but
heartache.
6/18/99:
This is a great question.
REALLY GOOD QUESTION. You know, it was never discussed in my house
growing up. I remember when I was 12 or so, and trying to be a sullen pre
teen or what have you.I asked my mother "What is the meaning of life,
REALLY?" and she looked at me and said, "We were put on this earth to
serve the Lord our God with all of our hearts, minds and souls and to tell the
good news to others in hope that they'll follow Jesus Christ." How
do you counter that? Especially when you're twelve and your counter
argument was GOING to be some fab Duran Duran lyrics of the Seven And The
Ragged Tiger album?
Then, I thought I found the meaning of life when I read some Bloom County
cartoons and Opus said "You're born, you grow up, you go on some diets,
you die." It's like the Occam's Razor or life theories. I've
done three out of the four items listed! That just might be it!
Plus, how cool would it be to say, "Kant, Plato, Goethe, bah! I
think that Opus the Penguin said it best."
But.BUT.I honestly think that I found the meaning of life last week.and it
happened in my living room. I was doing yoga and I couldn't find any good
"YOGA" music in my CD collection, so I said, "For the love of
God,
I'm going to listen to A-Ha! and Rammstein while I do my yoga!" It
was the best work out I ever had, because I did what I enjoyed and loved every
minute, finally, FINALLY not caring what other people would think. Ever
since I moved to this city I've been concerned about what "the city people
think". Do I have the right purse? Am I reading the right
magazines, do I eat the right lunches? It's driven me to near
insanity! But now, it's all behind me.because I've done The Downward Dog
while listening to Wollt Ihr Das Bett In Flamen Sehen.
So! The meaning of life, as of 6/18/99 is:
To take in as much of what is given to us as we can stand. To enjoy
everything and enjoy it with vigor and in any number of combinations. I
believe in God, I believe in Jesus, and I think that they gave me a world full
of great and wonderful things to explore and experience and by God, I'm going
to try and enjoy EVERY SINGLE ONE of them... except calamari... I don't like
calamari.
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