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I know I blogged about this at least in passing regarding Kevin Smith's Clerks 2.  I'd be watching Clerks at work almost every day in a row at work, since I feel my job is little more than a new version of being a janitor.  Watching Clerks gives me humor and strength to put up with the little crap the office throws at me, especially the character of Randall Graves.

Fast forward to their later movie, Clerks 2, where Randall and Dante now are burger flippers working at the fast food joint Moobies.  Here, about 10 years have drifted by for the pair, when about a year before their home away from home Quickstop burnt down from Randall leaving the coffee maker on.

While the humor for the most part is classic Kevin Smith, there's some efforts to mature the characters, especially at the end, that really struck me.  The part in particular is where Randall talks to Dante in the cell about how Dante is trying to escape New Jersey because he seems to have found something that would allow him to improve his life.  Randall has some great quotes.  One thing he said that made me relate to him was how he can't make friends at his age and that he feels everything is stupid. 

His character and myself are the same age and I've shifted towards his viewpoint (I used to sympathize with Dante).  Making new friends these days is getting harder because I've become so cynical.  People who are still my friends understand me.  However, most are getting married, having kids, working and in general just far too busy for me.  I respect that and don't have any qualms about their personal lives.  It's just a phase we all go through.  But for myself, it's just getting lonelier each year.

Unlike Randall though, I don't have a perfect best friend to be the "ying to my yang."  Instead, I've been making younger friends, but it's harder to relate to them because of the age gap.  I don't mind younger people, but it's hard to reflect on one's life and interests when there's anywhere between 5-10 years difference.  It's really tough finding people who understand me, especially in a foreign country where people barely can understand your cultural references.

Seeing Randall pleading to Dante really affected me because I feel like I should've done the same with my friends.  I really don't have that much left that's reliable.  I don't have a good counterbalance to set me straight and make me listen when I need to.  Instead, like Randall everything just "seems stupid to me."

It's funny how a foul mouthed comedy can capture what I think is a huge generational point within 5 minutes.  Most of the movie seems like toilet humor, but there's a lot more that builds to those 5 minutes, which describe my generation, imo.

Reflecting on this movie, much in the same way that Randall and Dante would revert to their high school references, makes me think about what would happen if I was able to gather up the people from my past and put them in the same room.  I think it would just be like a high school reunion.  Nice to see people, catch up, but once the last drinks are done, the cake is eaten and the music stops, it'd be time to go back home and handle our  lives once again.  Now, most of us just have our own lives, responsibilities and experiences that would prevent such a thing from rejuvenating the innocence of being in high school or college again. 

For myself, I think these past 10 years away from school were just brutal for me.  Seeing reality for what it is in finally breaking away from the shielding veil of academics is like emerging in the desert during the day from a deep cave that one lived in for all his or her life.  The intense light is more than one would be able to handle.  Myself too seeing and realizing what people really are had wiped out all the hopes propped up by humanities.