Trying Hard Not to Smile

A friend of Rebecca's recently sent them a video of a Youtube Guy (and I mean "Youtube Guy") doing a blink-182ified* version of "One Week" by the Barenaked Ladies. I found the guy's voice and demeanor irritating and had to then admit to myself that I just really like the song "One Week".

*You eve notice that the "What if blink-182 wrote _____" videos on Youtube always just sound like All Time Low?

"One Week" is one of those songs tied to a specific memory for me. In January 2009, Brian, Pat, and I drove to Toronto from Geulph so we could see Streetlight Manifesto, A Wilhelm Scream, The Swellers, and The Stich Up play at the Sound Academy. We had recently gotten Brian into Streetlight and were excited for him to see them with us. I also loved taking from friends from Guelph back to Toronto. Everyone at school was from the 519 area and loved to shit on Toronto, so I felt smug that usually anything sick happening required us to go back to my hometown.

In hindsight, I think this show was also a turning point for me in my music taste. This was the last time that I was excited to see Streetlight and I never sought out chances to see them after this. I was just starting to get into, for lack of a better term, "Fest music" and couldn't wait to see both Wilhelm and the Swellers. About 95% of the crowd didn't know those two bands and were pretty indifferent when they played,* so it felt cool and like I was part of a secret club who knew how good those bands were. When we walked in, The Stich Up were covering "Deeper" from Dan Potthast's other band Mu330, and that was an early point in my obsession with that band too. I had been looking forward to the chance to pick up the Swellers' My Everest at the show, and it turned out to be everything I expected.

*Streetlight Manifesto kind of have "Slayer Fan (or NoFX fan or Dropkick Murphys fan) syndrome where they draw a crowd that only cares about the headlining band and are openly hostile to openers. No one cares that you know all the words to "Would You Be Impressed" bro. They're a huge band.

Pat drove us in Brian minivan, Mama Link, to the show because Brian was tired and wanted to just be high in the backseat instead. Whenever we did roadtrips like this night, I would make a playlist on my iPod that we could listen to on the drive into the city. I took making the playlist super seriously and was trying to prove how fuckin' sick my musical taste was, thinking that I would get a "yo, this sounds good" compliment each time a song they hadn't heard came on.

Obviously, that didn't happen. It's not like they disliked the music I put on, but mostly they were indifferent while we drove. The traffic into the city was bad and I was starting to get stressed about getting to the show on time, so that I could see all of those opening bands. The playlist ended as we got off the 401 near Scarborough Town Center and we debated about what to put on next. I turned around and looked at Brian, high as hell behind me and deadpanning, with the glow of his laptop screen light up his face:

"Iiiiittt's beeen"

Every time that I mention this song, I'm also required to mention the last line of the lyrics "Birchmount Stadium, Home of the Robbie" said instead of "It'll still be two days until we say we're sorry". BNL are from my neighborhood in Scarborough, and names and imagery from there are featured in a lot of their music. Shout out to the Real McCoy being in the "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" video. Birchmount is a high school/sports complex near my parents' house. I played house league baseball for the Birchmout Bulldogs and my first lifeguarding job was at Birchmount Pool. Each year, an big invitational soccer tournament is held at Birchmount Stadium called the Robbie. You always see this sign as you drive by on Kingston Road:

Not Going Down in this Town

I generally build posts off a small idea or memory I keep returning to. I had one the other in the shower, but didn't write it down after I got out and now it's gone forever. For some reason, I keep coming back to the idea that the post was going to be about the Crime in Stereo guy, but I've already written about that story. It was from that era of my life though, I think. Will it ever come back? Who knows.

I haven't gotten a haircut during the pandemic so far and my hair is now the longest it's been in 5 years or so. When I got a fade then, I was super worried about how long hair looked with my receding hairline and I conceded to myself that my glorious days of being a long hair were over. One of the times that I saw the Sidekicks, frontman Steve Ciolek's hair was doing similar things to mine and it felt a little like the Ghost of Christmas Future. I had seen a few unflattering pictures of myself where my forehead/hairline looked humongous and I didn't want to look like a washed up metal singer, still clinging to his long hair because it was integral to his identity, but looked like shit. I didn't want to be a huge forehead/long hair guy and even though I loved having long hair, I accepted that 1. I didn't need long hair to look cool. 2. Short hair cuts looked good too.

I got a fade the week that COVID hit, so I was good through March, but my hair quickly got to the point where I normally get a cut. I avoided the barbershop because getting a haircut seemed like a frivolous treat during the pandemic. I mean, it would have been totally fine, but I just never did it. I put off deciding what to do about my hair and then just accepted that it was long again. Some days I stressed about it, but some days I actually really like how I looked with shaggy hair again.

Now my hair is fully long again, in that's past my jaw, but not yet at my shoulders, and to my shock it is fine. All of my fears about looking stupid with long hair turned out to be dumb anxieties. I don't know if I'm going to commit to fully growing it out to the point that I used to be at in my early 20s, but at the same time I don't know that I'm going to go to the barber any time soon.

Some all of this long hair thinking has made me reflect on is how self-conscious I was about experimenting with my style when I was in university. When I started to wear skinny jeans, I felt the need to point out how tight my jeans were and make fun of myself for having girls jeans.* When I grew my hair out, I felt the need to say that I looked like a girl. I guess that in both cases I figured that if I said it first, then no one could say it to me. This urge died with time, and I stopped caring, but kinda weird that that was my first impulse, eh? Masculinity is a hell of a drug.

*TBH, I only ever had one pair of actual girls jeans and they were super uncomfortable because the crotch was super shallow and it hurt my balls, so I barely wore them. By the time I started with skinnys you could get guys ones everywhere.

Like a true IMU post, this one has no ending, so I guess I'll just add that it's NYHC week in the Humongous Brain Album Exchange. Duff gave me Born Against and I gave him Burn. One day I will get him to love the chug like I do.