T2: Trainspotting and Selective Memory

My love it kills me slowly,
Slowly I could die...

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Caught up with the sequel to Trainspotting (officially: T2 Trainspotting) over the weekend. The movie will probably appeal to you if you saw and liked the original. If not, enh, it's probably fine as a standalone, but you might want to see the original first.

I loved the original, and watched it over and over again on my friend Esteeb's couch back in 1997. Partly because it was both hysterically funny and very grim, and that suits me right down to the ground. Also partly because I was pining over a girl who, in the parlance of the time, kicked me to the curb. That girl was fun while it lasted, but the fallout was severe. Back in those days I was not very well balanced at the best of times, so the breakup sent me into a tailspin, and I spent a few months drinking myself to sleep with 40s of Magnum and trainspotting on the TV. If Esteeb was bothered he never mentioned or showed it, and eventually I got my shit together. Mostly together, anyway. Ish. Together-ish.

The latest Trainspotting movie is very much an examination of what the four central characters have, or haven't, done with their lives in the past 20 years. So: if the original resonated with you at all, and if - just to choose an example at random - you are a middle-aged man that feels like reflecting on what became of his youth, his successes, and his failures, then the movie might speak to you in very interesting ways. Depends where it finds you, I guess.

The song above is an extended-ending remix of a Wolf Alice jam that appears at the end of the movie. The original is great, but the best part is the final chorus, so stretching that out gives it some extra. I loved it. YMMV. Download the MP3 here.

Bringing things up to the present day: Esteeb remains one of my closest friends, all these many years later. A couple months ago he asked me over lunch, 'hey, do you remember that girl with the reddish-blonde hair you dated in college?'

I said, 'the one that I was all bummed about for a while? The hot one?'

He said, 'yeah, that one - I see her at church sometimes.'

I laughed and said, 'Oh yeah?'

'Yeah, I see her, and all I can remember about her is that you shagged her.'

And thus sometimes friendship looks like ignoring my lame drama from back in the day, and focusing on the positive. Esteeb remains the best.
Thanks for reading.