no wolf, uh...no part?

Yesterday, in the sock drawer, one of my beloved dogs of war left me a link to a youtubed newscast about the gangs or ‘packs’ of werewolves that are cropping up around San Antonio, and presumably elsewhere. That’s right; werewolves. Wow.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, these kids out there, presumably inspired by Taylor Lautner and his ilk have taken to fashioning themselves into ‘werewolves,’ which, to the best of my understanding means that they dress like they’re in Kill Hannah and hang raccoon tails off the backs of their belts. Now, I know what those of you who are lucky enough to have watched the broadcast are thinking: what about the animal style contact lenses, the leashes and the fangs, eh? To that, I’ll respond: ‘um, I think the dudes in Kill Hannah do that shit already too.’

So, anyway, here we are, beautiful San Antonio, just going to school with a bunch of kids who align themselves with werewolfdom. Whatever. I mean, when I was a kid there were vampires all over the fucking place, and they dangled vials of blood and shit like that off their belts. That’s gross. A fucking Daniel Boon hat tail is pretty fucking benign compared to some blood. Blood’s gross. The tails, while kind of gross, are really just more like those rabbit feet that greasers have on their keys: dorky, but likely not swimming with hep B.

The other thing: there are STILL vampires, and these turds are nowadays looking at the new jack Twilight vampires (who apparently don’t really espouse evil and all that, or some such nonsense) and calling them phonies.

Let’s pause to think about this for a second, eh? You identify yourself as a vampire, but of course, you’re not really a vampire, as vampires are, um…not real, but you’re calling someone else’s little dress up version of makebelieve playtime a phony? That takes balls, man. Big, incandescent, white, veiny balls that are doubtless pumping delicious blood through them…but I’m getting off topic. We’re not talking vampires. We’re talking werewolves. My point is just that the dorks that look like they’re standing in line at the My Chemical Romance show who impersonate imaginary characters are hardly new.

Okay, so there are some pretty great things in this little ‘expose’ like when one of the werewolves kind of outs his school’s science program as half-assed when he explains that everyone has a little animal in them, no one is just human. You just gotta look for it, man, or when the news team makes this wild sort of accusation by way of omission about a kid beheading his neighbor’s dog and keeping the skull. They never come out and say this, by the way. They say the dog went missing and then they say the kid was found with the skull, and then they show the kid holding a big ass ceremonial He-Man style sword (something he probably shoudn’t have posed for the news cameras with). They definitely don’t say the kid was arrested, but they let you think it. Crazy wolf kids! They’ll kill your pets (maybe)!

Oh, then there’s the part where the girl in the mall calls other people ‘posers’ while hanging out with a bunch of kids dressed like Metro-Station emulating wolves outside the Chik-Fil-A at the mall food court. That’s pure poetry.

In fact, that’s maybe the best part of this whole culture: the aforementioned decision to call people who somehow aren’t pretending to be part dog or part bat the posers. I mean, I generally hate the term poser. I’ve discussed this before. I think there’s nothing so toxic as mocking someone for their newfound enthusiasm for something that’s outside their realm of expertise. It’s the hallmark of the weak, uninspired, the jealous and cowardly, frankly.

However, when it’s a teenage girl pretending to be a werewolf or a vampire or a mermaid or whatever calling me a poser because I haven’t looked into my soul and found my half animal avatar, well, that’s when it gets awesome. It’s especially awesome because she just doesn’t know. I’m like her. I’m part Santa.

That’s right, kids. When I was in highschool, me and my fellow ‘gifters’ used to hang out behind the petstore and smoke cigarettes and dress up like our own unique brand of half mopey teens, half santas. We were pretty cool, but people just didn’t get us back then. It’s funny that we’ve come all this way only to be called posers by the werewolves. Oh well, you become what you hate, I guess.

And speaking of that, that’s the worst part of this whole newscast: the actual newscast itself. There’s nothing new or even terribly remarkable about these kids but the level of condescension on the part of these newscasters is outrageous. As in: (snicker snicker) ‘everyone needs to be part of SOMETHING, I guess.’ (Snicker).

I want to yell, “Hey asshole! You’re a fucking small market local tv ‘news’ man and you’re reporting about highschool kids following a trend. These are teenagers who have nothing to do and are cycling through their identity options before hopefully not winding up soulless narcissist talking monkeys who are qualified only to wear suit jackets, read off cards and wear makeup all while not-so-subtly mocking children (who are going through one of the toughest periods that life offers, mind you) on crappy local television.”

What’s with the attitude? These kids aren’t hurting anyone, at least according to their parents, teachers, and the pudgy kid with the cat eyes just chilling at the penny fountain by the Macys. They’re not a story. They’re, in the words of the broadcast ‘not emos, not goths’ but hey man, they’re not REALLY that different from that shit. They’re dumb kids who are into a movie. For me it was santas. For the next kids, who knows? Centaurs? Robots? Whatever. I’m sure it’s gonna be strange and newsworthy, whatever it is.

Yeah, in closing, I’d rather my kids grow up to be werewolves than tv ‘journalists’ any day of the fucking week.
That said, those werewolves are dorky as shit.