Tuesday August 23, 2005

Me and My Shadow

Things have been hectic, so I haven’t had a chance to acknowledge my birthday, which was last Thursday. As close readers will recall, Christian Slater (the actor) and I were born on the same day. Not just on the same date—a date shared by personages as varied as Robert Redford and Roman Polanski—but on the exact same day in history: August 18th, 1969—two days after Woodstock, a month after the first moon landing.

I have been living in his shadow ever since.

I didn’t even know this—that I was living in Christian Slater’s shadow—until 1989, when I was … I mean, when we both were … 20. That was the year Slater appeared in the cult film Heathers with the always lovely and permanently pixified Winona Ryder, while I spent the year changing my major from political science to psychology at an unremarkable Midwestern university and coaching a country club swim team. Slater’s shadow seemed very long then—chilly even. It was like that for years.

Slater appeared in Kuffs and I went off to graduate school. Slater turned up in True Romance—nailing the provocatively slack-jawed Patricia Arquette in a phone booth—and I got a job at a bookstore. Slater starred in Very Bad Things, I stopped smoking pot in the morning, and so on.

But last week, on our 36th birthday, I realized that the unthinkable had happened. After years of a narrowing gap—during which time Slater appeared in Windtalkers, and I stayed out of jail—and for the first time in our life, I had had a better year than Christian Slater. A much better year. Sure, 1997—when Slater was sentenced to three months in prison for punching his girlfriend in the face had been close, and 2003—when he was beaten in full view of patrons of the Hard Rock Cafe by his wife Ryan Haddon—was a near draw, but those years hadn’t been so great for me either. He, at least, was famous.

This year, however, I think I’ve pulled ahead. Last November, I moved into a great Park Slope apartment with my lovely girlfriend Alexandra, while Slater received mixed reviews in The Glass Menagerie at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Last week, I left my fulltime job to freelance from the same great Park Slope apartment, while Slater was recently pinched for “grabbing” and “squeezing” a strange woman’s buttocks on the Upper East Side. I win. Hands down.

Now if I could only have a better year than Ed Norton, my birthday would be all mine.

Posted by jim at 12:36 PM ||