I Guess This Is Growing Up

Let’s face it Mondays suck.  There’s no way around it.  The only day that I am guaranteed to hit the snooze button is Monday. The other days, there’s only a 90% chance.  In college I would stack my Monday schedule because I accepted the fact that Mondays blow, so I might as well make them worse and in the process, make the other days better. 

            You might say, “But Jeffrey, What about Monday Night Football? That’s something to look forward to!”  My reply: if Monday Night Football is such a great product, then why did a major network drop it and ship it off to it’s cable subsidiary?  (Also, Ron Jaworski does to football broadcasts what the Anthrax terrorists did to opening the mail.  Although hearing him swear so casually on National Television did earn him a few bro points.)  Seriously, if the Giants aren’t playing or if my fantasy team doesn’t depend on the game, I have ZERO interest.  Sure, I still watch the game, but that isn’t a great selling point for MNF.  If you put a TV in front of me, and it has football on it, I am going to watch it.  Don’t believe me?  I have been known to sit on the couch all day and watch the SEC marathon on CBS College Sports.  Doesn’t sound too weird right? Ok here’s where things get weird.  The marathon is of games that are, at the very least a year old.  Some date back as far as 2003, my freshman year in high school.  These games are my favorites because I start quizzing myself to see if I can remember the sequence of plays, even after all this time that has passed.  I have an absurdly high success rate.  Not convinced yet?  Try this on for size.  My dad came home this summer to find me watching a high school 7 on 7 tournament intently one night.  For those who don’t know what 7 on 7 is, it is essentially watching high school kids who don’t even go to the same school playing touch football.  I’m not kidding.  Yes, that kind of thing is on TV, and you better believe I watch it.  Why, because it’s football, and it’s on.  I respect the game way too much to not watch.  (Side note- Shockingly, I’m still single, ladies)            
       Seriously, the only aspect of Monday that I actually look forward to is my 22 minute reprieve of the suckiness, How I Met Your Mother.  (If you have never watched the show, do yourself a favor and visit http://www.watch-how-i-met-your-mother.ch/.  You’re Welcome.)  This show has reaffirmed my faith in the television Sit-Com with a laugh track.  Also, knowing there are people in the world just like Barney Stinson makes me feel slightly better about my whole outlook on life. But outside of my brief time spent hanging out with the gang at MacLaren’s tonight, I have something to look forward to.  Blink-182 will release (officially, not some bootlegged ish from Russia) its first record since November 2003.  Fact- In November 2003 the average gallon of gas was under $1.75.  To add further perspective, I compiled a list of events that have happened since then:

·      Sadam Hussein was captured in Iraq (December 2003) and hanged in 2006

·      Facebook was founded (February 2004)

·      W was still in his first term as President

·      Pope John II died (April 2005)

·      4 new US Supreme Court Justices have been appointed

·      2 Former Presidents have died

·      Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released, AS A BOOK! (July 2005)

·      4 Major Natural Disasters (The Tsunami in India, Hurricane Katrina, The Earthquake in China, The Tsunami in Japan)

·      All versions of the iPhone has been released

Geez life was hard back in the day.  Amongst all of my weird obsessions (and yes there are many), I think the one that my friends undoubtedly find to be the weirdest, is my obsession with Mark Hoppus, Tom Delonge, and Travis Barker, better known the to world as Blink-182. 

A few actual quotes from nameless friends: “Jeffrey, they weren’t really even cool in middle school; Jeffrey, they sound like a chipmunk getting run over by an 18 wheeler; Jeffrey, no one at this party wants to listen to that; Seriously, if Jeffrey sings another Blink-182 song at karaoke, I think I might punch a baby…(You better believe I called that bluff).”  

The truth is I have no idea why I like Blink, but I just know I do.  My first recollection of anything Blink was in the 4^th grade, spring to be exact, and I was on my way to school when this catchy little guitar riff song that said a “bad word” came on the radio.  To a 10 year-old suburban boy, this was as big of a discovery as the yellow line that marks the first down on TV.  The whole rest of the school day, the chubby new kid was going through the halls singing “nobody likes you when you’re 23, and (insert mumble for the next line), what the (pause) is a DVD , my friends say I should act my age, what’s my age again, what’s my age again?” (Side Note - I hadn’t heard of ADD because before this year I had gone to public school (Yeah I know gross, right?!?) where parents couldn’t really afford to send their kids to the doctor to have the doctor give the kid the wonder pill that corrects the fact that their idea of parenting is to put them in front of a TV while they go off to the country club for some much needed “personal time” with the other “stressed out parents”)

 So this was my introduction to the band that would spend the better half of the next 13 years as my favorite band (I had a solid 2 year period in like 8^th and 9^th where Something Corporate was my favorite band because I was getting Emo, and that was pretty much SoCo’s target demo).  Blink’s next two albums would be releases in 2001 and 2003 respectively.  The former’s title being a play on masturbation, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, so yeah that was right up my 7^th grade self’s alley and obviously resulted in being my favorite CD that I owned (Yeah that was how long ago this was, I actually had to BUY THE CD, which I had to do stealthily because of that pesky Parental Guidance sticker, DAMN YOU EMINEM! YOU ALWAYS HAD TO PUSH THE ENVELOPE AND RUIN EVERYTHING FOR LITTLE WHITE KIDS, THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY BOUGHT MUSIC!).  Then there was the 2003 release.  This was the “serious” release.  It contained no joke songs and even had an acoustic song released as a single.  I had no idea what I was listening to.  I remember stopping the CD player to look at the label to make sure I was indeed listening to Blink.  As I “mahtured” though, my taste in music also “mahtured”, and this was a new “mahture” Blink.  I still have no idea how many times I have listened to that album, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a good number to post. 

The truth is, I don’t think there is a specific reason for why we like the music we do.  Some might say it’s environment, but I grew up in Memphis, the home of blues music and really bad rap.  (Side note- We also are the birthplace of rock-n-roll, so you’re welcome.  Also, Cleveland sucks.)  My mom had/has the worst taste in music of anyone I’ve ever come across (Seriously she liked Culture Club, that awful “Love Me, Love Me, Say that you’ll love me” song, amongst many other breathtakingly awful songs), and I still have no idea how to define my dad’s taste in music (one day he would listen to Smooth Jazz 103.5, the next day it would be Rock 103, another day it would Soul Classics 98.9 or some station called “The Pig”; basically, you had to come prepared with headphones just in case when riding in Dad’s car).

So how did a punk-pop band from Southern California that sang about skateboarding and other topics that I hadn’t the slightest bit of understanding of become my favorite band?  For those who want to psychoanalyze me, stop because even a Psychiatrist couldn’t figure me out, OK? My decision making process makes little sense to anyone, even me, but I can tell you as a 10 year old, I was no rebel.  Conformity, that was for me, perfect attendance, straight A’s, perfect conduct marks. 
Throughout my many phases of life, one thing has remained constant.  I have and will always love the music created by Blink-182.  I truly believe they were a band that grew up just as I personally was growing up, and we both did so pretty slowly if at all.  But the truth is there are a bunch of people my age that feel the same way.  When Blink broke up, it was tough for me.  I was a big fan of live music, and I finally came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t ever be able to see the band that affected me the most live.  I would be forced to live vicariously through old YouTube videos of concerts.  The way the guys talked about each other in the press made it seem like I had a better chance of playing live in front of 20,000 people than they would, together at least.  Like most Blink fans, I listened to Angels & Airwaves and +44, hoping to capture maybe the glimpse of what was blink, but the truth is while both of those bands have/had their moments, still something was missing.  Neither project had the same impact that Blink did.  Sales and concert numbers prove that.   But time went on, and I guess they did actually grow up a lot (or they looked at those aforementioned new projects' financial data) and realized it was time to bury the hatchet.  Barker survived a small plane crash, which saw 4 others die, and the rest is history.  I finally saw them play live in September 2009, and yeah I went back-to-back nights to the same show. You know just in case they changed the set list or something.  And. It. Was. Awesome.  Tom was hammered out of his mind speaking obscenities that would make a 17 year old the funniest kid in school. Travis solidified his position as one the greatest drummers in his genre ever, and Mark was just happy to be there.  All in all, it was everything I hoped for and more. Now after countless delays and speculation as to whether this album would be made, it has finally arrived.  Maybe they won’t be able to capture the essence that made them so famous, maybe they will.  Either way I don’t care.  I have finally found another CD that I will actually buy; you know to support them financially, so they don’t toy with my emotions again by breaking up, going broke, and doing this all over again. 

My name is Jeffrey, and these are my thoughts