Okay, so I couldn’t think of a decent title today.

Watched a very cool documentary yesterday called Mortified Nation. It’s about this event where people get up on stage and read from their childhood/teenage diaries.

It’s one of those genius simple humanist ideas that make me so happy about the current generation. Us Gen X types would never even think to do this. We are all too sullen and defensive. We’re the generation that took irony into our hearts as our great defense against the world and paid a heavy price in terms of atomization, isolation, and fear of sincerity.

Our kids, thank goodness, are embracing sincerity and emotional connectedness, and I could not be happier about it. The world desperately needs it. We have taken individualism far past its absurd conclusion and it is high time we start realizing that we are not alone, that we are in fact more connected and interdependent than ever before, and that together, we can do anything.

But enough rhapsodizing. Back to the documentary.

What happens when people read the diaries of their youth to an audience is quite magical. For starters, obviously, they are hysterically funny. The pretentiousness and lack of perspective of youth is prime grade A comedy fuel, and hearing these people read them in their own voices makes it even more magic.

They are choosing to reveal themselves like this, and thus they are giving permission to laugh. But they are also giving you permission to relate, and that is the real genius of the project. It gives people a glimpse into other people’s lives in order to show them that no matter who we are or how weird and isolated we thought we were as a younger person, everyone else was going through the exact same thing, and we are actually all more alike than we are different.

That is a basic humanist message, and it is wonderful to see the children of my generation reaching out to one another like this and finding connection on their own.

Because God knows, we can’t teach it to them.

It makes sense that this is the connection generation, of course. They grew up with the Internet in their pockets. They are the generation that is obsessively interconnected with their tightly knit group of friends, something incomprehensible to my generation. Every time they check their email or text a friend, they are strengthening their ties to one another and making community for themselves.

I could not wish for a better next step.

I don’t have any kind of teenage diary. I started one a bunch of times but never developed the habit. I kept my thoughts to myself when I was a teen, which in retrospect was probably a bad thing.

If I had been able to put it all on the Internet like I do now, maybe I would have pierced my sense of isolation and kepts me from becoming so emotionally ingrown.

I did write poetry when I was a teen, which I am sure would be quite hilarious now. One of the performers read out some of his teenage poetry and it was magnificent. A lot of stuff about “the tormentors” and “the head coward” and such. It was a marvelous distillation of teenage rage and pretentiousness. I was in awe, and a little jealous.

I could never take myself seriously enough to be that emo.

But my fave, the guy directly after my own heart, was the dude who created this heavy metal band in his head called LIVE EVIL (hey, that’s a palindrome!) and created posters, tour schedules, magazine articles, and had their whole career plotted out without ever trying to learn an instrument or even asking anyone else to join the band.

But what he DID do was write, get this, 120 songs for his imaginary band. And this was happening in the eighties and he was getting his knowledge about women from Motley Crue, so the songs are all horribly, humiliatingly misogynistic.

And thus hilarious, of course. Of all the performers, I think he showed the most courage because the songs are just awful. Totally politically incorrect. And he was reading the lyrics out loud to an audience which was presumably half women, so I could see him thinking they were going to string him up on the spot.

Instead, they pulled major awesomeness and got him an actual band so that, for just that night, he WAS the lead singer of LIVE EVIL, the rock star he had always wanted to be. A pair of cool shades transformed him from nebbishy little nerdy dude to guy who could totally be from the record label, and he rocked out.

That is pure fucking gold, there.

I should mention the nature of the house band. The producer and creator of the event decided it needed a band, so what he did was get together people to play the instruments they were forced to learn as a child, but to play the music they wish they had been allowed to play back then.

That fits perfectly with the nature of the event. I love it.

There are Mortified events all over the world now, because that is just way too good an idea to stay in one place. I would love to attend one. They seem like totally my kind of scene.

But being the ham that I am, I would be kind of jealous of the performers because I don’t have a diary or poetry or atrocious heavy metal lyrics to share. I would want to be the person on the stage being candid and hilarious.

That’s just me though. Part of me is a frustrated stand-up comedian. I have loved performing every time I have done it, and what the heck, I am a funny guy.

Speaking of stand up, I am going to Stand Up For Mental Health tonight to watch the comedy debut of my friend Ray Seredin. It’s an event that encourages people with mental health issues to learn to do standup as a way to build confidence.

Truth be told, it is something I am kind of interested in doing myself. So I have multiple motives to attend.

Well, that’s all for me for today, folks. Talk to you tomorrow.