I’m really not sure anymore.
I used to be Donald Duck.
No question.
I was the guy who never could deal with things rationally, try as I might. In the face of a challenge, I’d typically just melt down in a fit of rage and/or profanity.
I was, to say the least, irritable.
And like Donald, it wouldn’t take much to set me off.
“What do you mean the ’80s movie that best describes me is ‘Flashdance’?! What the?! I’m ‘Red Dawn’!! (Bleep) you, Facebook!!”
OK, so that never really happened.
Who would get that upset about Facebook, even if they did try to tell me, when trying to decipher what ’90s movie I am, that I was “The Crying Game” when I know I’m “Showgirls”?
My temper — hey, I’m Irish — for a time became my shtick.
When I joined the college newspaper shortly into my freshman year more than 15 years ago, my very first assignment was to go review a band.
I came back with a review so mean-spirited and so angry-sounding that the editors immediately bestowed upon me the nickname of The Disgruntled Critic.
They thought it was funny.
So it then became my job — now officially billed as The Disgruntled Critic — to go and say as many cruel things about an act as possible.
It was the journalistic equivalent of sucker-punching someone.
Maybe it was exploitative of the editors to sic this hot-headed freshman on unsuspecting musical and comedy acts, but at the time it was actually pretty cathartic.
Had I not been able to vent, who knows, I might now be in jail or have become a responsible journalist.
Like a former mob goon who tries to make things right, I’m admittedly not all that proud of what I did in the past.
Do I regret what I said about that ventriloquist?
Yes, actually.
He seemed like a nice man. His puppets were even kinda cute.
My short-fused, allegedly libelous ways followed me here to a real job, as longtime readers will attest.
Hey, remember that time I referred to the beloved Rosemary Clooney in a review as “a grizzled singer who’s lucky to still have a pulse,” or something like that?
I was edgy! Angsty!
I could flip on the radio or the TV and instantly become incensed by what was on. I must’ve devoted an unspeakable number of columns in the last decade to ranting and raving about how this or that sucks.
And then it happened.
It seemed like I went to bed one night recently an angry young man and woke up a mellow, 30-something dad.
Or as a co-worker just noted, “It’s been a while since you’ve knocked all the action-figures off your desk.”
The key to writing this column used to be, “OK, what’s been bugging me lately?”
But lately, I can’t think of anything.
There’s no longer an irrational emotional response in seeing someone like Justin Bieber on TV.
I no longer wish to harm myself or others at the sight of a preview for a live-action “Smurfs” movie.
Even outside the realm of pop culture, the thought of, say, paying more than $3 for a gallon of gas no longer sends me into a Hulk-like fit of fury.
I now just chuckle and think, “Those nutty Libyans!”
I always accused musical heroes of mine, like Pete Townshend and Elvis Costello, of selling out or something equally ridiculous because they no longer seemed able to write the kind of angst-ridden things that made them famous.
Now I think I now why.
They grew up.
Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.
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