Having Your Dreams Crushed Publicly - An American Idiot 20 Year Retrospective
The year was two thousand and four. I was sitting at a stand still in my recently purchased green Ford Focus, stuck in an endless quagmire of traffic on the 405, or 101, or one of those forsaken highways in Los Angelas, California. I was trying to make my way from Long Beach to the Staples Center in order to attend the annual Siggraph convention, a weekend-long gathering of big name Hollywood special effects companies, video game developers, and animation studios. See, I was approaching the end of my final year at the Art Institute of Colorado, working on my Bachelors Degree in "Media Arts and Animation," and it was impressed upon me by my professors and "guidance" councilors that to "make it" in this industry I'd have to head west, and what better time to do so than that summer during Siggraph, where I could take my shiny new portfolio, press some flesh, and secure myself a lucrative position as an animator at Pixar, Industrial Light and Magic, or one of those fancy places that burgeoning animators dream of working at.
So, I did just that. I piled myself, three acquaintances, my portfolio, and my dreams, into the Ford Focus, and made the fifteen plus hour drive straight from Denver to Los Angelas.
In the year two thousand and four, cars didn't yet come equipped with direct connections to smart phones, satellite radio, or even MP3 players. For the long drive we were at the mercy of local radio, and the large, zip-able, compact disc booklet I had stuffed full of my favorite punk rock chestnuts. Variety is the spice of life. It was quickly decided by my car mates that not a single one of the discs from my faux-leather cornucopia of punk rock would ever enter the Focus's stereo. No accounting for taste, I suppose, and we were left with no other choice than the obnoxious, loud, shrill wailings of local rock radio disc jockeys as we cruised westward, through the jagged peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the endless wastelands of Utah, and the empty, dusty sprawl of Nevada, before reaching Las Vegas, the only sign of civilization we'd seen in ten hours time. However, we were not to stop in the proverbial "City of Sin." I was due in the "City of Angels" to meet my destiny, and there was no time for the excess and frivolity offered by Las Vegas, relegated to gawking at it's flamboyant and gaudily lit main strip as we sped by, local rock radio blaring out the same ten or so uninspired, cookie cutter hits of two thousand and four, as the city's luminescence faded in the rearview mirror and we careened into the dark, four hour stretch of road that would lead us to our final destination.
We arrived in Long Beach, California, late in the evening, at our previously secured location, with enough time to get a few hours of shut eye before we had to be up and out to make it to the Staples Center on time that morning. One of my acquaintances, who'd previously spent time in Los Angelas, assured me we'd need to leave early "because of traffic," the understatement of the century.
Pulling on to the aforementioned freeway we were greeted by a complete traffic standstill. An infinite amount of cars stretched into the distance, across multiple lanes, all not going much of anywhere. The Californian experienced friend suggested we listen to the local Rock radio station "KROQ," which she described as vastly superior to Denver's. So I turned the dial to the appropriate frequency to supply us with a soundtrack for our gridlocked situation.
About forty seven hours into the commute, having barely moved three inches, the KROQ disc jockey came shrieking through the speakers to inform us in radio land that he was now going to premiere the new Green Day song titled "American Idiot." I should have been happy for a reprieve from the same ten song cycle they had on rotation, however, I was not. As much as Green Day had meant to me as a burgeoning Punk Rocker, and how their album "Dookie" had fully blasted me, and seemingly the world, into the second coming of Punk Rock way back in nineteen hundred and ninety four, I had since "matured" as a punk rocker, eschewing any bands that didn't meet my rigid definition of underground, or anti-authoritarianism, which Green Day, at that point in time, did not, having committed the unforgivable crime of "selling out" by having their ballad from a few years prior, "Good Riddance," featured on the finale episode of nineteen hundred and ninety's hit sitcom "Seinfeld," catapulting the song into the stratosphere, resulting in my having to hear it every five minutes, or so. How dare they! I let the opening punk guitar riff pass through me as lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong proclaimed that he didn't want to be the American idiot, while I focused on the steady, slow paced crawl down the dreary Los Angelas highway.
This is the best image I could find.
Before reaching the Staples Center another sixty seven hours later, KROQ had played the song at least fifty more times, each instance meeting my dismissive and unimpressed, punker-than-thou ears. Grateful to have finally arrived at my destination, and to be free of these American idiots, I grabbed my soon-to-be dream-job-winning portfolio and bounded from the car to meet up with some fellow Art Institute classmates, and professors, who had secured us portfolio reviews with some heavy hitting, Hollywood industry studios. This was it, I was mere moments away from a bright and sunny future in California as an animator. Sure, the traffic sucked, but fuck it! I was to be made in the shade, as the cool kids say. I approached the first reviewer, portfolio anxiously grasped in my eager mitts, surrounded by a throng of equally nervous hopefuls that would be going home empty handed as I would inevitably be securing this position. I handed over my portfolio to the reviewer who flipped through it at light speed before looking me directly in the eyes, and proceeded to point out how each and every piece in my portfolio was substandard. I was aghast, my head sent reeling. I gathered up my portfolio, shakily, barely muttering a flimsy, breathless “thank you” before moving on to my next review. I composed myself. “Surely, that was a fluke,” I convinced myself. “The next one will go better.”
It did not.
That’s how my day proceeded. Review after review, my hard work and soul captured in that portfolio repeatedly tore down, criticized, nitpicked, and dismissed. Some reviewers were kind enough to offer suggestions, things they were looking for in a new artist, aspects of my work I could improve on, or showed me examples of artists’ work they currently employed, which was entirely superior to mine. In hindsight, they were right in their appraisal of my skills, but at that time, hopped up on the smoke being blown up my ass by my school councilors, my young ego took a fucking flogging as my dreams came cataclysmically crashing down around me. I secretly suspect my professors knew this would happen, and were more interested in us getting a hard dose of reality to thicken our skins in preparation for joining a ruthless industry, and now, I appreciate that because it did the trick, but then, not so fucking much. At least I got a pretty rad t-shirt from Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects studio responsible for a few minor movies like “Star Wars”,”Jurassic Park”, and “Terminator 2.” It was a bright, eye-scorching orange shirt with the cartoon visage of Darth Vader emblazoned on the front, and the phrase “who’s your daddy,” on the back, albeit, I’d come to find later, it was a size too small. Go figure.
It was much more orange in person.
I sulked back to my car to go and pick up my fellow travelers who were taking in the L.A. sites while I was being publicly executed. Exhausted, I collapsed into the driver’s seat, discarded my ravaged portfolio, out of sight, out of mind, in the back seat, and turned the keys in the ignition.
The stereo screamed to life as the now familiar opening refrain of “American Idiot” blasted through the car: “don’t want to be an American idiot!” That’s me, I thought, an American idiot, completely unawares of my own amateur work, convinced of my artistic greatness, enough so to drive one thousand and sixteen point five miles to sit in an endless expanse of unyielding traffic and smog, only to summarily be completely dismantled, shunned, and discarded, over a dream I’m not even convinced I totally believed in. I hated this fucking town. It sprawled out into infinity, congested and grimy. I wanted to leave immediately, and never return.
Unfortunately I had committed to being there for three days, but after the first day’s humiliation, I couldn’t bring myself to return to the convention, so I opted to spend the next day on the beach, where a young and reckless me didn’t practice proper sun safety, neglecting sunscreen, and incurred the worst sunburning of my life, leaving me on the third day, laying motionless in a dark room, covered head to toe in aloe lotion, watching the movie “Hellboy” over, and over, a film made by far better artists than myself, as I writhed in pain.
Fuck L.A.
A few months later, back in Denver, safe and sound from the caustic traffic and hateful Californian Sun, I was diligently working on wrapping up my college degree, refining, honing, and retooling my portfolio to be less animation focussed, and more illustrated, with an emphasis on graphic design, (both would end up being the focus of my future careers) after the brutal thrashing I took at Siggraph.
By this point that Green Day song had become a full on phenomenon, and more singles had been released from the album of the same name, “American Idiot,” all to massive popularity. The album had just been released, and I, resound in my punk convictions, continued to ignore it, in favor of the new Social Distortion album “Sex, Love and Rock ’n’ Roll,” released the same day as Green Day’s new album. I was lost in countless late nights, toiling away on my graduate portfolio, and the crooning, heart broken vocals of Mike Ness was just what I needed to help keep the midnight oil burning.
My longtime friend, Desirae, and ardent Green Day fan, was overwhelmingly taken with “American Idiot,” and enumerated its virtues to me as I repeatedly rebuked them.
“Not only is it fantastic,” she sincerely told me, “it’s also a rock opera.”
“I don’t know,” the dismissal heavy in my tone, “doesn’t sound very punk to me.”
She asserted that if ever I was a Green Day fan, this would be the album that would bring me back into the fold. In the end, she likely couldn’t have cared less what I did, but the enthusiasm and joy in her voice when she talked about it swayed my stalwartness, and on my way home from her place, I stopped at my local Target Superstore, the obvious place to buy punk rock albums, and purchased “American Idiot” on compact disc.
Arriving home, I set upon working further on my portfolio, and popped my newly acquired purchase into my old and true, three-disc-changer boom box, and hit play.
As I began my work those opening chords of the song “American Idiot,” the same ones I had become so well acquainted with while trapped in Los Angelas traffic, and subsequent dream crushing, played out in my freshly, purple painted studio/second bedroom. This time I payed attention. This time, they fucking got me.
What I managed to somehow entirely miss the first fifty times I’d heard this song was the obvious political commentary and scathing critique of the then President George W. Bush’s administration, and its regressive, political stranglehold on a post 9–11 America. Believe it, or not, as a young, art school punk, I was no fan of “Dubya,” and, as the song lyrics stated, his “redneck agenda.” I could feel the vim and vigor of my rebellious nature come swelling back into me.
I listened to the whole album, transfixed. I couldn’t bring myself to focus on the work at hand, only this developing punk rock opera. As soon as it ended I pressed play again. And again.
Desirae was right. She’d known that if I’d only listen to it, that my disdain for authority and the current administration would find kinship among the themes and lyrics of this album, as she is also a hard coded anti-authoritarian. She was spot on.
Aside from the commentary on the Dubya era of America, and the loss of identity we felt as a nation, what really struck a chord with me, and inevitably is why “American Idiot” is one of my most cherished works of art, was the main story of a character who felt lost, suffocated by his home town, and misled by a false prophet, struck out to the big city, only to be chewed up, spit out, and returned home a different person. Maybe I was the American idiot? My recent Californian heartbreak now had its very own soundtrack.
I played that album night and day. It was the permanent audio in my studio, as I worked studiously on my portfolio, in my headphones as I haunted the dimly lit computer labs of my school, and in my car as I sped around town delivering pizzas by night, it’s music a constant reminder that some dreams don’t work out, and maybe, they never should have. It was the constant reassurance I needed to stay on my new path.
20 years later in Berlin. Picture, much more grey hair.
Twenty years later I’m on yet another path I wouldn’t have considered in two thousand and four, married to Desirae for almost five years, after nine years together, living in Prague, Czech Republic, the end result of a shared dream. Recently we took a trip to Berlin in order to see Green Day perform all of “American Idiot” for its twentieth anniversary (as well as “Dookie” for its thirtieth). As I sat in this beautiful, forest entrenched, German amphitheater, I wondered how that album, one so uniquely about a very specific time in America resonated with a European audience, but its ideas of missing identity, needing to break away, and heartache, are global, and we all felt that at once, as the rain gently swept down, thirty thousand of us singing our hearts out. Maybe we’re all the American idiot.