Aging & Wisdom Quote by Thomas Lennon

Nostalgia usually arrives dressed up as destiny; Thomas Lennon drags it in wearing a name tag and apologizes for it. The line about meeting at theatre camp at 16 "which is pretty lame" is doing two things at once: it punctures the myth of the fated origin story, and it signals the specific comedic sensibility Lennon helped popularize with The State - self-aware, slightly embarrassed, allergic to grandeur.

The context matters. The State came out of late-80s NYU, a pipeline moment when campus comedy could mutate into a professional identity, then into 90s alt-comedy’s mainstream crossover. Lennon’s framing resists the usual band-formation narrative: no talk of genius, no talk of "chemistry", just an almost bureaucratic timeline and a confession that the relationship is more friction than fireworks. "Most of our adult lives have been spent bickering with these people" lands like a punchline, but it’s also a pretty honest job description for long-running creative collaboration.

Subtext: the friendship is real because it’s messy. He’s telling you not to romanticize the group as a chosen family of kindred spirits; it’s more like a stubborn, affectionate union held together by shared taste, shared history, and the kind of petty arguments that only happen when you’ve built a life together. It’s a love story, but one that insists on including the annoying parts - which is exactly why it feels believable.