"Trendy Games"

While most of my high school friends went to college, graduated, and got real jobs, I enjoyed being different. I’ve long struggled to resolve an inner conflict of wanting to stand apart from the crowd but also wanting to fit in and be accepted. Near the beginning of Woody Allen’s great movie Annie Hall, he quotes a Groucho Marx line: “I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.” I sometimes feel like that. Most often, however, I feel that the only club I would ever want to join is one that has ONLY people EXACTLY like me for members. I think I hear Narcissus calling…

Trendy Games

© 1986 Brian Hutzell

I know it's light

Cause I just looked outside

No, I don't know the time

But we've been here all night

So you find me fascinating cause I'm not like your friends

Do you think it's stimulating being here?

The thrill escapes me.

Oh no, don't drag me in there

Won't go, don't like the way they stare

Please don't put me on display

I'm not involved in those trendy games

I've seen your crowd

I've seen 'em look so proud

In daddy's graduation car

They'll never look like me

So they find me an interesting curiosity

I'm the painted bird, the outcast

For my self, they couldn't care less

Oh no, don't drag me in there

Won't go, don't like the way they stare

Please don't put me on display

I'm not involved in those trendy games

First impression, second it's done

Left with depression

Influences, affluence runs

With your friends and their families

I know you like the sight of dollar signs

Lighting up in your eyes

You like to hear the sighs

Of the poorer people pressing pennies to their palms

And the price of pride's the alms

You almost always try to give me

Oh no, don't drag me in there

Won't go, don't like the way they stare

Please don't put me on display

I'm not involved in those trendy games

"4 Me"

Brian Hutzell