Watching The Foreigner again on TCM Underground. Yeah I know it’s awful, but so punk, so punk. God those were the days. I see these crazy asshole punk rock kids and I think damn, I was just like that. There’s a scene where the main guy’s watching a news report on the English punk rock scene and the horrified newsman describes in his broadcast voice what a bunch of destructive worthless scary incoherent morons we all were. All we want to do is wreck everything. We’re artless and nasty and a menace to society. The Damned are playing, the music is raw, hard and fast and the electricity shot through me. again, just like it did the first time. You’ll never hear that again. Never feel that again. The new happens only once, and after that it’s all history and nostalgia. So sad. You spend the rest of your life watching people who don’t realize what they’re missing when they don’t try to change everything. Sometimes everything is so fucked and compromised all you can do is tear it down and start all over. I’m useless to society and society is useless, the lead character says. Sometimes that’s a good thing.

You can’t be a rebel at 56, but you still don’t have to collaborate. Sometimes all you can do is tell the world to fuck off and get on with your lives. I beat the hell out of an old drum kit then, but now all I can do is write. So I write for me.

I’ll post this now before I have safe, middle aged second thoughts. Ha!

Oh yeah, Deborah Harry was gorgeous. Stunning. And not like Joni Mitchell at all.