Advice for Teens 4: Advice in Space!

If schoolgirls dressed like this I would still be in High School

Every year Rollingstone used to ask celebrities their advice for that year’s graduating class.  I don’t know if they still do, but I’ve been doing this for the last three years and I thought I’d keep up on the tradition. 

Keep in Touch

K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider

Invariably, every year of high school someone I wasn’t very good friends with would write their phone number in my yearbook followed by a note to “K.I.T” (keep in touch.)  I always thought it would have been funny to call them up a couple weeks later and awkwardly check in, just ring them up and tell them that my summer job bagging groceries was going “swimmingly.”  Assuming we didn’t have much to talk about I would have then repeated the process every couple weeks for the rest of the summer.  Basically, I’m saying you should do what I never did.  I will admit it would probably be a lot funnier if I did it now, 13 years later, “Hi Mrs. Johanson, is Stacy there?  Who am I?  This is Danny from sophomore English.  I’m calling because Stacy asked me, nay, COMMANDED me to keep in touch.  I’m kind of surprised she didn’t tell you- Oh...she’s dead?”  

Start smoking

It’s really hard to quit once you start, and cigarettes are really fucking bad for you. Under normal circumstances I would never recommend anyone start, but lots of people are miserable their whole lives.  More to the point lots of people seem strangely okay with their constant state of unending Hell on Earth.  If that describes you, and if you're okay with that, you might want to consider smoking three packs a day and having a grabber at the age of 50.  Aside from the gift of a slow suicide, smoking also makes you feel pretty good.  So there’s that.

 

Remember this guy?  If you just graduated high school you don't.  Joe Camel's was axed in 1997, about a year after the average high school senior was born.  Fuck I'm old. 

Breakup

If a relationship sucks, cash your chips and go home; maybe powerwatch Doctor Who or Battlestar Galactica?  I don’t know, just get the hell out of there.  It won’t get better.  If the person you’re with is great except for one giant flaw you can’t get past I guarantee you there is someone else out there who’s just as great, but isn’t also a compulsive liar, pyromaniac, teenage-vampire, or what have you.  Even if the flaw isn’t that big a deal or even if you're pretty positive it's just a figment of your imagination I’d still suggest you cut and run.  There’s a 50% chance you’re actually the crazy one.  Why take someone else down with you? 

 

Twilight

Van Halen & Guns N’ Roses are NOT Hair Bands

I guess this isn't really advice.  But if they're not teaching this kind of thing in school, or Rollinstone for that matter (ostensibly a Rock n Roll magazine) you should probably be learning it somewhere. For the record I actually likes some hair bands, but it’s important to set the record straight.  It’s bad enough that Twisted Sister and Def Leppard both fall under the broad "hair metal" umbrella, but seeing Van Halen and GNR lumped in with the likes of Winger is not something I can abide.  First of all, Van Halen formed in 1972 about a decade before hair metal even existed.  Admittedly, the Van Hagar era totally sucked, hard.  Like embarrassingly hard.  For that reason I can see why someone would try to put Van Halen in the hair metal camp.  They’d certainly be wrong to argue that, but it’s an almost understandable mistake; on the other hand the notion that Guns N’ Fucking Roses is a hairband is absolutely ludicrous.  Hairbands wrote about things like “girls, girls, girls,” “cherry pie,” or imploring a girl to “pour some sugar” on you.  GNR wrote songs about bum wine and heroin.  Appetite for Destruction is not only one of the best albums ever recorded, it was a very deliberate reaction against hairmetal about 4 years before Nirvana’s brand of depressing punk went mainstream. 

One more quick primer on the 80's: This is Stryper. They were a Christian metal band that sold MILLIONS of albums.  They were so popular in fact, that the LA Raiders covered one of their songs in an ill-fated Super Bowl Shuffle ripoff.  Even if you've heard of them before you probably forgot they existed.