LUCKY AND HOOTIE AND THE ORIGINAL DUKE BOYS

When I drove by LUCKY BURGER (Cambodia's answer to McDonald's) on the back of a moto today, I realized, with one of those double-takes that I used to think were only found in the movies but now realize happen on an almost daily basis, that it was gone.

Well, the building was there, yes, but it was demolished, cracked open, a haven of soot and dust. (As are most buildings in Cambodia, come to think of it, but this time I noticed it.) It may be coming back in some way, shape or form, but for now, LUCKY BURGER, Cambodia's at least the one on Sihanouk road, is a memory. (At least there's another down the road a ways...)

Same thing happened to me in Japan. I went home for a two week break, came back to my apartment, went out to the variety store across the street, only to discover that there was no variety store across the street. The whole building had vanished. A parking lot was being put in its place. Only in Japan, I thought, can buildings go up and down like Lego blocks.

Now I realize that I was wrong. What happens in Japan, where pop stars come and go on a literally weekly basis, where most of the the longest running t.v. shows last six months, tops, is what happens everywhere else. More concentrated in Nippon, sure, but Japan is simply further ahead of everybody in almost everything, so why shouldn't they have the same approach to time and change? What's here today is gone tomorrow. Get used to, boys and girls.

Time is change and change is time. I don't know if time moves forward or backward or in some kind of mysterious loop; Stephen Hawking's been working on that for awhile, I think, so look to him for advice. Maybe there are multiple universes able to be accessed through black holes; maybe everytime we make a decision, another, parallel universe opens up, one in which we didn't make that decision, as some quantum physicists believe. I'm not sure.

But as a kid I resisted change, and now I realize that change is the only constant. When Bo and Luke were replaced by their cousins Coy and Vance on that old Dukes of Hazzard t.v. show(due to a contract dispute, I believe), I thought it was a travesty. (On a side note, what were their jobs, anyway? I realized recently that my childhood heroes were two thirty year old Southern boys who spent most of their time hanging out with their Uncle Jesse, drinking moonshine, running from the local sherriff and ogling their scantily dressed cousin. No wonder I turned out the way I did...) When the original Duke boys came back a year later, I remember being ecstatic, over-the-moon, as fulfilled as any six year old can be. The natural order of the universe had been restored. All was right with the world, can you say amen. The original Dukes had lived to see another day.

Ah, but the sad fact of life is, the original Duke boys don't always come back. Sometimes they head for the hills and the moonshine and are never to be seen again. Change is for good, for real, most of the time. If you try and fight it, you're going to whacked in the head, repeatedly, until the end of your dying days. Buildings go up and come down. People come and they go. Life goes on, until it doesn't, as Sydney Pollack said in Eyes Wide Shut.

Time is what it is. Best to accept it and get used to and use it to your own advantage.

"Tomorrow's just another day," sang Hootie, "and I don't believe in time."