Emotional Milestones in the Life of a Postmodern Boy, and a Farewell to Stranger Things by Ross Thompson
	I'm not great with goodbyes. Saying farewell has never been easy for me. By that I do not mean that there are tears -- I am made of sterner stuff than that. But I feel comfortable enough with my masculinity to embrace, if not shake hands with, my feminine side, and admit that I have been misty-eyed on a few exceptional occasions. Now, for the first time, I shall write these emotional moments down in true Desert Island Discs style: When My So Called Life was cancelled. Don't get me wrong -- I am not one of those freaky television obsessive types, Buffy, Chicago Hope, and Seinfeld notwithstanding, but there was something about My So Called Life that really got stuck under your skin. Call me crazy, and well you might, but I never tired of seeing Clare Danes' lip wobble before she cried -- this was something that seemed to happen every week, ranking right up there with the Dukes Of Hazard jumping a broken-down bridge. By all rights, the programme should have been outlawed along with mescal and marrying your cousin: Jordan Catalano's tireless 'It hurts to breathe' posturing; Rickie Vazquez's 'I've got issues, you know' sexuality deal -- all these things nearly pushed the programme into the realms of painful cliché. One need only take a gander at Brian Krakow's cumbersome afro hairdo for further proof. Despite these setbacks, My So Called Life's heart on the sleeve honesty appealed to all those poor souls ensconced in the throes of teenage angst. It was not afraid to name-check such disparate references as Billie Holiday, The Grateful Dead, and French cinema -- "You took him to see the Bicycle Thief," whinged Brian, incredulously. It was one of the first programmes to deal with the tricky issues of drug use, homosexuality, and big hair, and did so with as much kudos as the network would allow. Recent television and cinematic treatments of such matters have nearly buckled under their oh so clever postmodernism. In contrast, My So Called Life just begged to be taken seriously, and perhaps I foolishly believed that it was made just for me. And, like all good things, it was not to last -- cancelled after just one season, it slipped away as quickly the month of July. I still haven't gathered together the guts to watch the last episode. When Kurt Cobain took his own life. Every generation mourns the death of an icon. People still ask the perennial question, where were you when JFK was shot? Anyone and everyone could have been the third man on the grassy knoll, if you believe the conspiracy theory. A similar moment in time was the violent death of Princess Diana, an event that fell on the world as hard as a ten tonne acme weight in a Roadrunner cartoon. Perhaps people found the loss so hard to accept because they did not get a proper chance to say goodbye. Or perhaps it was because the world turned a further notch to becoming a darker, crueller place. Music history is similarly marked by the sudden deaths of revered figures: the world stopped dead on a sixpence when John Lennon was shot by unhinged fan Mark David Chapman in 1980. Elvis Presley shuffled off this mortal coil in an equally tragic fashion -- the King dethroned, if you know the unsavoury story. After a few false starts, or false endings, the grunge icon Cobain succeeded in taking his own life, the details of which are shrouded in conjecture and popular myth: Kurt went home, took a bunch of drugs, wrote an enigmatic farewell note, and shot himself in the head. It doesn't get much uglier than that. Kurt's death was pathetic, in the true sense of the word, for a few reasons: it struck a fatal blow to the burgeoning grunge genre; it was further proof that fame is not all it is cracked up to be; and it told a sad tale that youth culture was trapped in a very dark place. Most tragic of all -- another one of God's children had slipped through the net. When I finished Zelda on the Gameboy. I realise that I am in grave danger of sounding incredibly rare at this point, but I shall bite the bullet and confess that I am a videogame junkie. I hear that there is a twelve-step self-help program for such an affliction, but all would go out of the window when I hear the call of the joypad. If you are in a similar situation, my friends, try not to admit that you are stuck on the spiked room in the latest installment of Tomb Raider -- such a conversation topic does not go down well with the ladies. However, it is no small fact that the videogame medium is fast becoming the most popular and commercially viable entertainment form in the world. If you want hard evidence of just how fantastic software can be, then you could do a lot worse than checking out Zelda: Link's Awakening on the Gameboy. The great thing about the Gameboy was that it was portable and was small enough to be hidden behind a textbook or beneath a jacket, thus concealing your addiction from the public. I spent a whole summer ploughing through Zelda. The aim of the game was simple -- a lot of running about, hacking up monsters with your trusty sword and saving fair maidens from pitfalls and perils. So far, so Conan, but what made Zelda more like Mario the game and less like Mario the movie was its completely involving atmosphere. Marooned on a strange island, our hero is rescued by a bumbling yet well meaning man and his daughter Marin. Was this the world's first computer game single parent family? There followed some prattling on about eternal darkness yada yada; it transpired that it was your destiny to save this tiny world. And of course, the daughter begins to fall in love with you. Cue tearful monologues that would put Gwyneth Paltrow to shame. But as you slowly fall for the girl on the tiny handheld screen, it slowly transpires that you are not destined to be together. As you head towards the final battle with the human incarnation of total darkness, you are warned of what you will discover if you defeat him. And as you do defeat him, after numerous attempts and numerous frustrated swear words, you discover the ugly truth You have been dreaming all along, the island and all its inhabitants are part of that dream. But, the girl tells you, her love for you is real, and you will remember it when you wake up The screen blurs and then comes back into focus, and you are left holding a Gameboy and sniffing because of some silly kid's game. Marin - I shall never forget you. When I left for University. It is often said that your University days are the best days of your life. I certainly do not doubt that this is true, but I shall never forget how utterly alone in the world I felt when my dad left me sitting in the car park of Dundee University. The halls of residence on one side, the Student Union on the other, I was a stranger in a strange land, friendless and completely out of my depth. It is at times like this that one realises the true wealth of family. Unfortunately, my dad, my family, was heading for the train station to embark on his journey back to Northern Ireland. I sat in my car trying not to cry, and turned the key in the ignition -- it refused to start. And thus I learnt that loneliness is a peculiar beast. It completely alters your view of the world: buildings look bigger and more oppressive; the sky is duller and the ground is dirtier. It seems that people around you are moving at a different speed. I guess this was a small insight into how utterly alone in the world Christ felt when his friends turned tail and deserted him. Unlike me, however, he could not call his dad on a mobile phone -- his father had turned his face away, and for those three painful, dark days, was forced to forget his son's name. When you look at it that way, loneliness does not seem that bad after all. When I split up with my girlfriend. Picture this: my girlfriend and I are on the beach; it is a sunny day; the sea is merrily lapping at the foot of the beach -- all the elements of a romantic scene are present and correct. Except for the small fact that I was in the long process of being dumped. It's not you, it's me.... I'm just not ready for a relationship just now... blah blah blah blah blah.... And as I felt her slipping out of my life like an icicle too difficult and too pretty to hold, I looked across the sea to the headland, where the clouds were playing games on the green ground. And what did I see but little Tetris blocks, maniacally falling down towards earth. This always used to happen when I was stressed. Bye, she said. Yeah, bye, I replied. So, this is the last issue of Stranger Things webzine as we know it, and it is time to say goodbye to another friend. I have told of a few difficult moments in the life of Ross Thompson, but some things have a habit of returning. Claire Danes may not have come back in My So Called Life, but she did wobble her lip in a few movies. Rickie Vazquez, for his sins, turned up as a transvestite in Ally McBeal. Some things never change. But, I hope that this farewell is fond. And who knows, we may meet Stranger Things again, some sunny day, though hopefully not as a transvestite on... You know what I mean. So, here comes the hard part. After all the rambling, it is time to say the dreaded word: May nothing but good things fall through your door. May the road rise to your feet. May your path be straight and free of stones and broken glass. Raise high the roof beams, carpenter. Goodbye. There, I said it. by Ross Thompson