Welcome to the Land of the Deadbeats. The 1970’s TV show, Land of the Lost, pitted the American family against dinosaurs, carnivorous vegetation and the dreaded Sleestack. Much in the same terrifying fashion, here twenty-somethings do battle against the ever-present threat of paying rent, the electricity bill, and taking out the garbage. The twist – and all good television shows need a twist, is that you have to do all of this while smoking a lot of marijuana (and possibly other drugs).
As it turns out, when you smoke pot you don’t actually want to do anything anywhere near the word “productive”. You are the anti-thesis of productive: chillin. Before you know it, “chillin” has become your life mantra. When someone pops by your crib and asks what’s up, you respond: “chillin”. When your parents call you asking when you’ll pay the $500 back and what you’ve been doing with your life, you respond: “chillin”. When your roommate asks you what you’ve been doing that’s more important than paying the power bill after 3 days of no lights, cooking apparatus or hot water, you respond “chillin” – but seriously, you also complain about how cold it is in here (can’t a homie get some heat in this bitch?).
When you’re a deadbeat, all roads lead to the getting high. The only reason you rent an apartment or have electricity is so that you can see well enough to pack another bowl at night. God only knows rookies roll joints with a flashlight, and god also only knows that deadbeats sleep 14 hours of the day, which, surprise, happens during daylight, when everyone else is working. Working, having a job, creating legal income; these are all things that conflict with the nature of a deadbeat. It’s true, the sweatshirt you saw the guy at Walmart wearing, the one with the bold red letters “I’d Rather Be High” on a black background, stamped with one too many marijuana leaves. He’d truly rather be getting high than shopping for diapers and frozen dinners at Walmart (and wouldn’t we all) but I guess that’s what happens when you don’t wear a condom.
Sometimes I’m convinced the zombie apocalypse has already happened, and I’m living right in the middle of it. Running errands you can see them walking the streets. Their blood curdling coughs, moans and audible withdrawal symptoms fill my ears with terror. They wander from tattoo shop to tattoo shop, always in search of the next random animal to get inked on their calf or forearm.
In zombie movies it always starts as a biological infection, but I worry this plague may spread simply by association and proximity. Am I slowly becoming one of them, one Lil Wayne song at a time? Is the second-hand pot smoke making me less responsible, more likely to get a DUI, or pawn my car for a new pair of Limited Edition Nike Jordan’s? Why do I only care about Kanye West’s Yeezus album, and why is this shit so ratchet? When I wind up living in someone’s basement you’ll know, and that’s because deadbeats only live in basements: they don’t own them.
Twenty Something Nightmare 