After flying from San Francisco to NYC to Raleigh, and driving for several hours, I am finally at my destination: Emerald Isle. Also known as the Crystal Coast, this is a fairly small island, but it’s also supposed to hold around 50,000 people each summer. This year, that is not the case. I guess people are still waiting for that Stimulus money to come through.
No one else seems to be here, but my parents are most definitely present (my brothers are coming Monday). In between telling me that I need to lift more weights, I can tell they are trying to stay calm and say the right thing. They probably feel they are treading on thin ice at times, expecting to slip in at any moment.
“Well, you know you need to get a job!”
No — thanks, Mom. I was totally unaware.
Statements like this have come out of nowhere and in multiple ways. However, I definitely expected them and expect more. Still, I have managed to be that dog barking at intruders. Please, stay away from my bloody, unemployed paw.
As I took my shirt off at the beach — Man, I really need to start lifting more — and I started to look around — Ugh, my body is white enough to be made of diamonds like that Twilight dude — I started to fantasize. I started to fantasize a lot…
Luckily for you, these thoughts are pretty SFW (should I even really care about labeling things SFW/NSFW, now that I am unemployed myself?)
Anyway, I started to think about Baywatch. Specifically, season 2 of Baywatch. You know, the one where Pamela ‘Denise’ Anderson makes her debut (before she got Lee’d). It’s the season where David Charvet speaks tons of French and rides his motorcycle and flips his hair. It may be my favorite simply because Summer Quinn gets kidnapped something like three times within three episodes. It’s fantastic.
Something else Summer Quinn does — fantasize via montage. I’m so jealous.
I am also jealous of Mitch Buchannon, Lt. Stephanie Holden, and Slade.
They just hung out on the beach all day, making God knows how much money, and Mitch still managed to have oceanfront property in Malibu. Yeah, Slade was kind of homeless, but Kelly Slater portrayed the character in the best deer-caught-in-the-headlights way possible. He still had that van he happily slept in and he clearly was going to make it into the pros with surfing.
But you know what? Their lives weren’t perfect. In between getting kidnapped, foiling terrorists’ ridiculous schemes, and perfecting chest sizes, they had real problems. And I’m not just talking about C.J. Parker’s gambling addiction.
Mitch (Hasselhoff), Matt Brody (Charvet), and Slade (Slater) all had issues with their parents in season 2. Slade’s military father was upset that all his ridiculously-talented-surfer-of-a-son wanted to do was ride the waves. Matt’s screenwriting father was just an all around nuisance, looking at Matt’s friends for new movie material, and wondering why Matt even wanted to finish up rookie school. Even Summer’s donkey of a stepfather locked her in a hot tub when she was four, causing horrible repressed memories that wormed their way into her adult life.
The story that probably touched me the most, however, was between Mitch and his father. Mitch, a lifeguard at 37 with no sign of changing occupations, was encouraged by his father to take over the family business. Mitch, in the end, stood his ground. He was to remain a lifeguard.
What made him stay was a very specific situation. His father saw him save someone, making it clear that lifeguarding is about more than showing perfectly coiffed chest hair and romantic entanglements.
I want that moment.
You know what would make this process so much easier for both my parents and myself? If I could just remove those Edward Cullen-esque diamonds from my body, I’d be all set. They look exactly like the ones that Slade found in his surfboard.
