My life is less punk rock and more Tron everyday. See as evidence a list of birthdays I can recall throughout my life:

7th – The year I got the dinosaur cake like I wanted instead of that rose covered bullshit PLUS the Easy-bake Oven.

8th – Skating party at the Fort Wayne Roller Dome including a special dedication of Disco Duck.

11th – Jennifer, a former co-girlscout and notorious paste eater, got into a slap fight with Melanie, another former co-girlscout, over some issue I don’t recall. Melanie was a crier so it didn’t last long but it sure broke up the festivities.

17th – A co-birthday with my best friend who’s mom was out of town, including; punk rock boys, a hot tub, a keg of beer and lots and lots of Boone’s Farm, Strawberry Hill flavor I think.

21st – The VIP treatment at Red Dog off the Milwaukee Ave. alley (when it was still an illegal after-hours joint and you couldn’t walk through Wicker Park without a true fear of getting shot) Scott Song was spinning and we got chased out around 3:30 a.m. when the place was locked down by Chicago’s finest.

22nd – 24th – Various house parties, gifts included: a limited edition William S. Burroughs book titled “The Seven Deadly Sins” which featured a wood cover with bullet holes that Burroughs himself had shot, several bottles of Jack Daniels' & Jose Cuervo’s finest, a cake that said “whoooo boys” and a red plastic devil’s trident among other items.

25th – The surprise party in the Pope Room where everyone ate off of a gigantic lazy Susan and everything was oversized and made me look like Alice in Wonderland.

26th – I was in Spain. Laura, Kim and I were drinking Sangria and trying to avoid a group of guys we called “the dirty boys”, smelly, scruffy backpackers from Southern California who kept trying to get us to share a hostel room with them in Barcelona and/or take a ferry to Morocco.

27th through Last year – Nice adult affairs at various restaurants thoroughout the city. It was heartwarming to walk in and see a whole group of friends waiting to celebrate. Gifts included: a gigantic bag of cookie cutters of every imaginable shape, at least three tiaras, Kali candles and a platinum ring with my birth date inscribed inside.

Last year – At work. All night and all day. I worked all but 7 out of 72 hrs on a financials presentation for a major electronics manufacturer in a design studio somewhere. The worst part of the whole birthday was the pity doughnuts and the sad Mylar snail balloon that the project manager bought in a desperate attempt to cajole/convince me to keep working on a financials presentation on my birthday instead of sleeping or getting really really drunk on really really fine tequila.

So the bell curve of not punk rock is pretty clear. If, hypothetically, some mad scientist turned me into just a brain in jar with two baseball sized eyes and one gigantic muscle-bound index finger to click with it would only change my lifestyle on any given day by maybe 12%, 15% tops. And to top it all off Mr. P, in preparation to teach a class in modern media, was home reviewing Tron and I realized that I am actually at a point in my life where I can understand the subtext of the giant I/O tower and it is more relevant to my life than Roger Corman’s ode to misspent youth released the same year Suburbia.

I think it's time for a drink.