pistachio gelato: an elegy for garrett steel
I was eating pistachio gelato when I felt a vibration in my pocket. I was in no great hurry to see what this vibration was alerting me to; after all, it was likely just a notification that Rakuten was giving 2x cash back on Nike purchases, or Robinhood telling me that the Dogecoin I impulse invested in last year has become even more worthless. Compared to the frosty treat I was consuming, such things had little urgency.
Still, just in case it might be an emergency, I lazily withdrew my phone. Oh, a text message from my friend Matt! Undoubtedly this would be something amusing, a hilarious surprise just as delightful as my dwindling gelato. As my wife and I pondered aloud where to spend the next portion of our Saturday afternoon, I skimmed the text. Then, suddenly silent, I slowly read it once more. I lowered the phone into my lap, blinking. My mouth was suddenly dry, and I turned to my wife, forgetting to take a breath before I spoke. The words came out nonetheless.
"Garrett's dead."
***
I first met Garrett in Advanced Drama class at Monta Vista High School, during my senior year. I always enjoyed drama class, not because I was an especially good actor (I'm not), nor due to any particular passion for theater. No, I derived enjoyment from the fact that drama class allowed me to do what I fancied myself best at: entertain. It gave me a forum to perform for people, to make them laugh, to shock them-often to the dismay of my teachers. Amid the drudgery of a typical school day, drama class allowed me a few minutes to seize the spotlight and shine in my own weird way. My choices may have been somewhat unorthodox, but I carried myself with confidence. I felt like a star.
So imagine, during that first week of class, when I bore witness to a stranger suddenly occupying my niche. He was a year younger than me, with much nicer attire (I never even owned a puca shell necklace) and a certain joie de vivre about him. What's more, he was funny. Like, threateningly so. He did what I did best, just as well as I did, if not better.
I didn't like him.
Who was this guy, anyway? His presence felt like a usurpation. I was used to people looking better than me, being more likable, being
more popular with the ladies. But I was not used to someone being more
charismatic than me. And so, when he performed, I laughed along with everyone else, but I didn't feel good about it.
It was under these circumstances that, a few weeks into the school year, Garrett unexpectedly approached me. We were doing some activity or another, and needed to find a partner.
"You're pretty funny," Garret said. "We should work together."
That's not an exact quote. Regardless, my point of view immediately changed. Perhaps, rather than an adversary, this guy could be a collaborator!
With this, our partnership began, and never really ended.
We worked together in class as much as possible, and began hanging out outside of school. We discovered that we had a mutual fondness for eating crap, which was facilitated by the fact that a Jack in the Box was just a quick stroll from his home. It was there, in a booth by the window, that we would order a cornucopia of value priced items and kvetch about our lives. We'd discuss television, music, movies, but mostly we'd complain about girls. Between mouthfuls of two-for-one-dollar tacos that were somehow simultaneously crispy and translucently soggy, we laughed, we sulked, we bonded.
As the end of the school year approached, our class was tasked with writing short plays. The finest of these would be performed in front of the audience as a sort of denouement to Advanced Drama. Garrett and I each attempted to write plays that would go the distance, but we each fell victim to our individual Achilles heels. My play was disqualified for being overly disturbing, and Garrett's...well, he never finished his. Instead, we ended up performing a script written by the esteemed Matt Blank, in which we played delusional suburbanites just trying to survive on the so-called "mean streets."
When it came time for the live performance, Garrett and I killed it. We challenged each other to reach ever greater heights (despite our aversion to anything more than the bare minimum of rehearsal), and the end result was nothing short of a true crowd-pleaser, a fitting finale to my high school experience.
Speaking of which, the soundtrack of our lives at the time heavily featured a couple classic rock albums of the era, A Perfect Circle's Mer De Noms and White Pony by the Deftones. The latter album had been available in as a limited edition release with a special bonus track; half of them were in black cases, the other half red. Garrett purchased the red version, and I the black. As I recall, he let a girl he had worked with at Marie Callendar's borrow his copy, and she shortly thereafter vanished. Garrett was always bitterly annoyed by the loss of that album, which was at the time essentially impossible to replace, and he would randomly bring it up in conversation for years to come.
As summer wound down, Garrett returned to Monta Vista for his senior year, and I began my term at nearby De Anza College. Despite our scholarly separation, our greatest adventure was about to begin.
***
I've already expounded at length upon the phenomenon that was Steel & Marsilio. Rather than do it a disservice by attempting to summarize it here, I humbly request that review my exhaustive retrospective of the series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
Having said that, with the benefit of further hindsight, it's hard not to look back on that period with a certain melancholy. Garrett and I truly loved creating that show, and I believe that if we could have profitably done so, it would have likely continued to be our life's work. Alas, we were just a few years too soon for YouTube, and by the time that became a viable platform, we found ourselves in a vastly different situation that made video production substantially more difficult. In later years, we often mused about what might have been if the timing of things had worked out a bit better.
But there's little use of dwelling on what-ifs. It's best, I suppose, to cherish the memories of what was rather than speculate on alternate realities. Better a bittersweet remembrance than none at all.
***
So many Garrett stories. So many encounters, incidents, excursions. To wit, a mere sampling of Garrett Steel's extraordinary life and times:
-Garrett's overwhelming love for electronic music, which led us to a number of extraordinary shows, including a performance by BT with a live band in San Francisco that remains one of my favorite concerts that I've been to, and the overwhelming Together As One rave at the LA Coliseum on New Year's Eve 2001, which I somehow survived while remaining completely sober. We even went to a few shows in Sacramento on weeknights, leading me to get roughly two hours of sleep before rolling out of bed and going to my morning classes. Garrett, ever sensible, rarely had a class before noon.
-Garrett delivering a rousing speech at a city council meeting in defense of funding public access television, using inspirational quotes he plagiarized from a pro-anorexia website.
-The Roast of Garrett Steel, in which all of Garrett's friends joined together for a tremendous comedy bonanza celebrating his birthday. It was recorded, but the tape seems to be lost media at this point. This is admittedly for the best, all things considered.
-Taking Garrett to karaoke in mid-June, where he sang Elton John's "Step Into Christmas," to the bafflement of the crowd. Later, the two of us somehow did a duet version of "Batdance."
-Garrett's affection for the dearly departed Fresh Choice buffet restaurant chain, and his eternal bafflement that for a brief period, the Westgate branch displayed the slogan "Where nothing is taboo" in their window. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he would ask.
-The time Garrett asked me to return to the Monta Vista drama department for an afternoon to assist him in performing a skit. The concept: we were the only two remaining members of the Kris Kross fan club. Fortunately, the fashion at the time was optimal in terms of pants that were big enough to comfortably wear backwards.
-The incident with the man in the tiger SUV.
-Our trip to Vegas with a group of our friends, during which the two of us splintered off due to our refusal to sleep on the floor of someone else's hotel room. We decided to attend a performance of Bite: The Erotic Vampire Musical, during which a performer, while spinning on a curtain, accidentally kicked Garrett in the head, sending him sprawling out of his seat.
***
It's too bad Garrett and I never got a shot at making Brokerage. Of course, the very idea of a major network choosing to give our sitcom pitch a chance was such a long shot that it was ridiculous to even entertain the notion. And it's entirely possible, even probable, that had we somehow beaten the odds and developed a pilot, it wouldn't have gone anywhere. But it certainly would have been an experience.
Do you know that Garrett had a different idea for our pitch? He initially wanted to do a show named Chappie (no relation to the robot movie of the same name). The concept was that it was about an alcoholic chaplain who...well, that was about all we had. But Garrett was very fond of the name.
In terms of projects that actually happened, I'd like to take a moment to address Steel & Marsilio: The Drinking Game. The only true S&M project fully developed in the YouTube age, Garrett and I were profoundly proud of this one, and though it's not perfect, in many ways it remains our crowning achievement. If you haven't seen it, here it is:
This idea was Garrett's baby, and though our goal was first and foremost to make people laugh, he insisted on the undercurrent of sadness that runs throughout. It was important to him that the video, despite seeming to be a goofy lark, dealt with the challenges of alcoholism, and particularly that it had a somewhat bleak ending. Anything else, he maintained, would be dishonest.
My father, an alcoholic himself, watched The Drinking Game. He never much liked anything that I was involved in creating, and seldom had a kind word to say about any of it. When he watched this video, it brought him to tears.
He's dead now.
***
Garrett's move to Colorado had long been something he was looking forward to. He had been suffering from health problems for some time, and perhaps the mountain air would do him some good. Besides, he didn't care for the Bay Area, feeling culturally out of place, and doubted he would ever find much reason to return. And indeed, he did not; once his family moved out there, he never again graced the Golden State.
Before he left, though, we were able to go to one final BT concert, a bookend to BT's San Francisco performance we had so thoroughly enjoyed years before. We hung out at my apartment for hours before the show, playing a Ghostbusters board game while listening to the soundtracks for the two films. Regardless of the passage of time, it felt like we were back in our high school days, exchanging pop culture references at lightning speed and excited at the prospect of the evening to come.
***
Obviously, we never made Steel & Marsilio: The Movie, though we did talk about it from time to time. We even wrote a script for a prospective sitcom pilot based around the S&M premise, a small indication of the direction we may have gone had one of us somehow fallen backwards into an absurd amount of disposable income.
The movie, of course, would have been much grander than any pilot, inasmuch as the term "grand" could apply to a couple of jerkoffs just having fun. There was one element, though, that I always envisioned would be a part of the final film, should it ever materialize.
The opening credits would be Garrett and I, driving down the streets of Cupertino, CA, with interior shots of us in the car interspersed with footage of what one could charitably call the "landmarks" of our city, such as the "Welcome to Cupertino" sign, the Taco Bell, and of course the now-demolished Vallco mall. The song that would play during all this, I was absolutely certain, was, "Never Let Me Down Again" by Depeche Mode.
I'm taking a ride with my best friend, it would say, as slow motion shots of Garrett adjusting his Oakley sunglasses and me pursing my lips in the passenger seat filled the screen.
I hope he never lets me down again.
It would have been a splendid introduction to what was sure to be a unique tale of our own particular brand of adversarial camaraderie. Even if we ever filmed it, though, I knew I'd have to fight to preserve my vision. Garrett, after all, hated Depeche Mode.
***
Back around the dawn of the new millennium, during one of our Jack in the Box kvetching sessions, I bemoaned to Garrett my overwhelming fear of death. Pondering my own inevitable non-existence, I said, was keeping me up at night.
“I’m not afraid of dying,” Garrett responded nonchalantly. “It’s
basically just sleeping forever. I love sleeping, so I don’t really see the
problem.” And with that, he went back to putting way too much hot sauce on his taco.
To my friend, my rival, my partner, Garrett Steel: enjoy your sleep, brother.
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