TERMINAL LAUGHTER

In case you’re out of the loop, it’s a puh-retty big day in comedy. That’s right, Michael Cera turns 22 today. Now, we know, 22’s no big deal. Being the scrappy Ontario kid that he is, it’s the big one-niner that allowed Michael to snag his first legal drink. And at eighteen the C-Man could hit strip clubs and buy scratch tickets. As 21-year-old, Michael was able to buy brown pops and bourbon in his adopted homeland, Hollywood, as recently as yesterday. But 22 is almost more meaningful. Lacking any major milestone, 22 means that Cera has arrived. That he’s here and his inexhaustible sprit is here to stay. Forever. For good.

And the good-time gang here at Terminal Laughter Cera couldn’t be more excited. It seems hard to believe that Michael Cera really be 22. Has it really been 11 years since Michael first touched our hearts as Larrabe Hicks in the Canadian/UK kids’ show I Was In A Teenage Alien? Was it all the way back in 2002 when Cera starred as the plucky young Chuck Barris in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, leading to speculation that he’d be the next George Clooney? And man oh man, ain’t it hard to believe that it was waaaaaaay back in 2003 that Cera captured the imaginations of comedy fans everywhere, playing the fumbling, pleat-panted George Michael on Arrested Development? Time flies when you’re laughing, Mike, and thanks for ‘em. Cheers.

See, really, even though today is Michael Austin Cera’s birthday, isn’t it really all of our birthdays? Because isn’t there a little Michael Cera in all of us? We’d like to think so.

Which of has hasn’t suffered as a wallflower, awkwardly wringing our hands at the high school dance, wondering when was the best time to ask that nebbish-but-still-cute AV girl to slow dance to “Don’t Wanna Misss A Thing”? Which of us hasn’t holstered our teenage thumbs through the straps of our knapsacks, rocked back and forth on the balls of our adorable feet, and whistled choice cuts from Weezer’s Pinkerton while we wait for our mom to finish with her daily banking? Which of us hasn’t consistently palled around with a brash, loud-mouthed, likely chubby comic foil, our shenanigans outmatched only by the very chemistry of our camaraderie?

And if you haven’t managed to seduce the best looking girl in your high school or post-high school friend circle through charming hemming and hawing punctuated by a few well-placed compliments about her hair or band t-shirts then, well, you’re hardly the sort of reader Terminal Laughter Cera cares to court.

So celebrate: for the voice and svelte body of a generation is 22 today. Which means we are all 22 today. We here at Terminal Laughter Cera raise a cold Miller Chilled (or Bud Light Lime) in tribute, Mike. For we are all Michael Ceras, one and all. We are all Michael Ceras. We are all Michael. We are all. We are. We.

All hail.