Out of Order Signs on Things That Work

In May 2013 I was very confused about what I was going to do with my life going forward. There were many different things going on in my life and almost all of them seemed like they weren’t long-term things. I had the worst job I had ever had and was looking for the fastest possible way out of it. I seeing a girl mostly out of convenience and was planning to break it off with her at any moment. My future was pretty hazy and I had no idea at all about what I would be doing even in 6 months.

Amidst all of this, there were three constants in my life. One was my wonderful friends and family, who have steadfastly supported me, even when I was kind of stupid and not concretely aiming at anything. Another was Beat Noir, which was always important to me and always something that I valued being a part of. The last was my involvement at Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (KWAG).

Up to this point in my life, I had been volunteering at KWAG as much as possible. Of particular importance was a week I had spent working with their March Break Camp earlier in the year. I think the gallery was kind of taken aback that I volunteered every single day of the camp, as most people wouldn’t come in for that much time, but I had nothing else going on at the time, so I really threw myself into. As cliché as it is to say this about working with kids, that week profoundly touched me and was something that I really needed in my life at that point. A 10 year-old kid doesn’t care that you work overnight shifts stocking grocery shelves and can barely afford to take the bus to the art gallery; they just think you’re cool and funny. The great part about being adored like that is that it makes you try harder to become the person that those people see you as.

I took literally every volunteer shift available at the gallery and told the people there that I was going to keep volunteering that much until they gave me a job. I came to everything. Family Sunday, Open Houses before concerts, an art show put on by all of the elementary schools in the area, I did it all.

The next opportunity coming up was KWAG’s Annual General Meeting, in which the board of directors would discuss the gallery funding, how much they made, attendance, the shows, etc.  In order to keep up my routine of giving them as much facetime with me as possible and to learn about some of the inner workings of the gallery, I decided that I would attend the meeting.

In the week prior to the meeting, I received an email from someone with whom I worked with at the gallery saying that they had a few positions open at the gallery for the upcoming summer, with the one caveat being that they must be a student returning to school in the fall. Upon reading the email, I knew that this was something I absolutely had to pursue, regardless of how much work it was.

Sometimes it can be easy to quickly dismiss something because you don’t think that you will qualify for it or deserve, but that is also what the bastards want you to think. My parents had asked me about grad school, but I always quickly dismissed it, thinking that I was far too stupid to ever continue my education.

My thoughts process went as follows:

“Okay, so it is only open to returning students. I am not one of those.”
“Yes, but how can I become one?”
“By applying to grad school?”
“Maybe I will qualify for this job if I tell them that I have applied to Master’s programs.”
“Okay, then let’s email Sally. She’s always had your back and even sent you that really nice email after that presentation.”

Then I did all of that, which was a small start down the path towards me applying for my master’s program. It was a sunny afternoon and I was sitting on my bed in my bedroom at the Shanley house.

My new plan was to attend the Annual General Meeting, which I figured would surprise the people at the gallery in a good way. They would be very impressed. Then I would run into Nicole and tell her that I applied to the position and ask if it was okay that I had my applications out (there was only one application, in reality), but hadn’t heard back yet. This would put me in a good position to get the job, which would help me out a lot in my life.

The Annual General Meeting was on a hot night in late-May. I went through my clothes and tried to pick out something to wear. I ended up picking my pair of “nice shorts” and a short-sleeved button-down plaid shirt because I am very stupid sometimes. I thought I looked pretty good though.

When I got to the meeting, I quickly realized that most people there from a different tax bracket, as they were in nice suits and I stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn’t even have socks on for Christ’s sake.

I sat through the whole meeting, despite none of the material pertaining to me even slightly. Upon entry, I received a copy of KWAG’s Annual Report, which was sort of a published version of the meeting. Most galleries make them because they’re an easy way to present everything that the gallery does over the course of a year to potential business partners. I scoured the report throughout the entire meeting, flipping through all of the pages many times over while suits talked about the need for more funding.

It was thrilling and new for me to experience all of this. At the time, KWAG was a paragon of achievement to me and it seemed like everything would be okay if I could work my way into the place somehow. If volunteering at the camp did that much for me, how much would working there do? I still wasn’t part of the gallery, but I was now more than a visitor and that was exciting.

After the meeting, my plan went off without a hitch. I talked to Nicole, mentioned the job and my plans for grad school and she responded enthusiastically that that would be fine. It was all very exciting. I still didn’t know what was going to happen in the near future, but now there were some very positive possible outcomes for the first time in a long time and that felt really good.

This night has been one of those times that sticks to your memory since it happened. For a few different reasons, that I’m sure I could parse through if I took the time, it has taken on a certain significance and I still think about it often.

It’s been especially present in my mind lately because preparing the Annual Report for the gallery I currently work at has been one of the main tasks in my employment here. Last week while I was editing the text for it, that hot night in May popped into my mind and I had a moment where I had to stop and collect myself. I never would have thought that a glossy magazine would be such a crucial link to the past for me, but here we are. What was once this interesting key to my future is now something that I actually make. It seemed so exotic and important to me at the time, but now it’s a bullet point on my weekly “To Do” list. When I was at KWAG’s meeting, I really wanted to know how a gallery works on the inside and insert myself into that. It used to be this ideal situation that I could maybe one day attain, but now it’s just work.

The purpose of this post is not for me to draw attention to any successes I have had or for me to smile encouragingly upon my past self while he was going through a hard time, but to draw attention to how much I have changed over the four years since that night. I think it’s important to reflect upon who you used to be, who you are, and the space that exists between those two people. If you look back to the things you used to make and the person you were and think “Yes, that was awesome”, I think it’s more than likely that you are ignoring a few flaws and are probably doomed to make the same mistakes you always do. If you can look back and separate the good from the bad and appreciate both, then it can give you good grounding to continue growing as a person and be somebody that people like to talk to.

And hell, maybe I do need to draw upon a little more of the doe-eyed optimism that I had towards the art world back then, because I’m sure it would help.

Everybody Wants Some!!

A recent trend on Facebook has been users posting statuses which list "10 Albums I Loved During My High School Years", with the focus appearing to be that the albums listed were no only enjoyed at the time, but also instrumental in leading you to find later music that you loved. This isn't the first time a trend like this has popped up on the website, as I remember a version called "10 Albums That Have Stuck with Me Through the Years" being pretty popular maybe two or three years ago, but this is the most recent and I think that the high school stipulation has made this one the most popular, as more or less everyone I know is posting their own version, as opposed to just my punk friends, which is the crowd that the old ones appealed to. So popular that even Pitchfork posted a version!

My first reaction to trends like this on social media is to reject them and think that I am above them and that posting them is lame and that's exactly what I thought when this one started to catch fire. But then I caught myself reading ever single version posted and, to be honest, I found that I enjoyed reading the versions by the, for lack of a better term, normies than those by my punk friends, as the latter were mostly the same (blink album, Taking Back Sunday album, Lawrence Arms album, bad hardcore album).

Once I realized this, I came to the conclusion that me hating this trend, or even devoting any energy towards thinking of reasons why I hate it or think it's lame, is dumb and a waste of my brain. It's fine! Why should I care what benign things people do on social media? People are just talking about music they enjoy. I do that almost constantly on here, so why judge people for doing it on a different website.

It's silly, but I caught myself before I ranted about it to anybody. I've tried to be less jaded and less of a hater lately and I guess this is a small sign that I've been succeeding to a small degree.

Anyways, here's my ten.

Operation Ivy- Energy
The Arrogant Sons of Bitches- Three Cheers for Disappointment
The Suicide Machines- Destruction by Definition
Bomb the Music Industry!- To Leave or Die in Long Island
Big D and the Kids Table- How It Goes
Less Than Jake- Losing Streak
The Flatliners- Destroy to Create
Catch 22- Keasbey Nights
NoFX- Punk in Drublic
blink-182- Dude Ranch

You could also make a case for albums by The Specials and, more embarrassingly, Sublime and Reel Big Fish. Probably also a greatest hits collection by Mötley Crüe and Iron Maiden.

A thought I've had all morning, while learning early Van Halen songs, is that I wish I could say that Van Halen II was listened to enough for it to qualify for the above list, but it wasn't. My hot take for the day is either of the two following songs are the best songs in Van Halen's oeuvre:





You would think that David Lee Roth being maybe the world's worst live singer would lower my opinion of the band, but it actually does the opposite. Van Halen is so good.

Four or Five Ways to Play These Chords

A while ago I wrote a post about the Ontario Punk scene at the time that I was most involved in it and going to a lot of shows. Consequently, that was also when I wasn't in an Ontario punk band. Funny how life works that way.

So, yesterday I was wearing my !ATTENTION! hoodie and listening to the whole !ATTENTION! discography, as well as Our Fathers by Wayfarer and This Month's Rent by The Decay and I was filled with the same feeling of nostalgia and and local pride that I was when I was writing the aforementioned post. It just seemed like every band who formed in that time and every band that I saw was just amazing and had this knack for writing songs about exactly where I was from and exactly what I was doing.

No song better fit this mold than "Basements" by Junior Battles from their Self-Titled EP, which is one of my favourite releases ever.



This is the first song I can remember hearing from Junior Battles and is the one that stuck out most when I saw them for the first time, opening for Shook Ones, Make Do and Mend, and We Are the Union. They immediately became one of my favourite bands and this song kind of became the Ontario song. Now, to be sure this song is much more about their group of bands/friends at the time, that was mostly made up of the bands that I linked to above, and I knew that, but still felt that I was part of all of that by going to shows. It really felt like I was part of something and I'm not sure that I really feel that way anymore. Maybe I just need to go to more shows? Who knows?

But this song remains as the signifier of that time. This song is that time in Ontario and I know that I'm not the only one who thinks so.

I saw Junior Battles in April of last year (shameless plug, Beat Noir opened that show) and they played a ton of older deep cut songs, highlighted by "Basements", though they still usually play it. I spent almost all of the set in the embrace of Erik of The Decay and that feeling I was talking abour came back in spades. It's cool that this whole thing; the bands, the songs, the people, the feelings, the experiences; are still there, if they aren't always there. Sometimes you just need the right thing to stir them up.

Don't Give Yourself Away

I, like many people I have met, feel a little bit like I was born in the wrong era. I feel as though I was mean to be a teenager in the 1980's. Maybe because it's I because I watched a lot of John Hughes movies. Maybe it's because that is my favourite era of skateboarding. Maybe it's because Fast Times at Ridgemont High has both the character of Jeff Spicoli, a bit of an idol of mine, and Phoebe Cates' pool-exiting scene. Romanticizing the past is a very common thing among people and I know people think it's awful, but I just really love the aesthetic of the decade and a lot of my favourite things happen to come from it.

So yes, I feel like I was meant to be Spicoli or Stiles type. Maybe I just like wearing short shorts and Hawaiian shirts? Who knows. A result of this mindset is that I really late 70's and 80's pop rock because I associate that music with these types of characters. It seems like the perfect music to accompany those characters, with just enough rebellion to give it an edge while still being poppy as hell. The Outfield, The Raspberries, The Knack, I eat them all up . Well, maybe not The Outfield. They're pretty corny, but I love them just the same. The biggest one by far though, is Cheap Trick.

This article is what got me thinking about all of this: The AV Club on Cheap Trick's "Surrender".

It's a great read and sums up a lot of my thoughts on Cheap Trick. And man, "Surrender" is a fucking jam, lordy. Of all the bands in today's revered pantheon of "classic rock" my favourite is Cheap Trick by a fucking mile. It all comes from one place: The use of "Gonna Raise Hell" in episode 3 of Freaks and Geeks, "Tricks and Treats" in the "Freaks" play it in their car and then the song plays while the "Geeks" get their costumes ready:




The band was something that just "existed" before this, but for some reason this song really struck a chord with me when I heard it in this context and suddenly the band became this symbol for teenage delinquency in the 70's and 80's and drinking beer underage and going to bush parties and smoking poorly-rolled, dirt weed joints and staying out late for the first time and trying to impress girls for the first time and it all made perfect sense to me. I love all things "coming-of-age" to death and to me Cheap Trick is a "coming-of-age" band.

Also, there's also all the guitar solos. That helps too.

Like I said, I tend to romanticize the past a lil' bit, so whenever I hear "Dream Police" I picture cruising around in something that resembles this with the radio turned up and it seems like a perfect situation.

Yesterday's Gone

Today has been a very weirdly nostalgic day for me. Like much more nostalgic than I usual. And powerful nostalgia at that. But in order to explain how this came about, I'll have to backtrack a few days:

Last Friday I recorded all the bass parts to Beat Noir's forthcoming full-length album. Hey! Wait a second! That's big news! Yep, we're in the process of recording our debut full-length! In fact, drums, bass and guitars are already done! Hot damn! I'm sure that I will update you on the process again soon and will also fill this blog with links once it is actually put out. Until then, sit tight.

So yeah, last Friday I recorded all the bass parts to the album at our friend Pat's home studio. After recording, Duff drove us back to Kitchener so we could resume our lives and I could head home for Thanksgiving. As we were getting ready to head out he said "Ah no, fuck it. We're listening to Jackson Browne" and put on For Everyman. Jackson Browne was an artist who was constantly being played in my house while I growing up, so any time I hear his music, I'm instantly hit with some crazy nostalgia. The reason for this is that Running On Empty is one of the ten or so albums that my mom has owned throughout her life and they never left her car. Anytime that I went with my mom to run errands, there was a pretty good chance that I would hear Jackson Browne*. A lot of critics see Running On Empty as "Jackson Browne lite", or the point when he started to lose his integrity/credibility, but up until about two weeks ago, it was the only one I had heard, as I had never put in the effort to go back and see why my parents fell in love with him in the first place. So the overwhelming nostalgia of hearing something from my youth combined with the "Holy fuck! This song-writing is SO GOOD!" moment of realization upon hearing For Everyman for the first time really hit me square in the feelings.

I mean, this is the real shit:



Any time that I think about Jackson Browne, I immediately think about Fleetwood Mac as well because it was another album that never left my mom's car. I always associate the two because they existed at the same time and also made at somewhat similar sounding music. When I was younger I was really resilient with my music taste and always thought my parents listened to crummy, old person music. Then you get older and realize that your parents had great taste and being around good music like Jackson Browne or Fleetwood Mac, or all the Motown and Stax that my Dad put on, during your childhood does a whole lot for your skill as a musician as an adult than they stuff some other kids parents listened to.

Anyways, back to Jackson Browne. The funniest part of driving somewhere with my mom while listening to Jackson Browne is when "The Load Out" and "Stay", the last two songs on the album, come on, because they bleed into each other and are more or less one song and that is my mom's favourite song. She doesn't even wait for the big "Oh, won't you stay..." break by Rosemary Butler, she just belts out the entire thing and lord, is she ever tone-deaf. But because of this, it's impossible to think of anyone other than Mom. This song IS my mom. Even though both my parents are a picture of health for their age, they are starting to get older and I've started to think about their mortality a lot more. What in the world am I going to do when they're gone? Will I be able to deal with it? Will I be able to function as a person without them? At the bare minimum, I know that my mom will always exist for me through this song. Any time I listen to it, it's pretty much inevitable that tears build up in my eyes throughout the entire thing. Love you Mom.



Now, after having listened to nothing by Jackson Browne and Fleetwood Mac for two or three days straight, I thought "Wow, I need to lay off the melancholic pop music for a little bit, for my own sake." Because it was actually to starting to get me pretty sad, despite the fact that I don't really have that much to be sad about. I was talking with a friend about our favourite music videos and I came to the conclusion that no matter how silly or stupid some people may view it as, "First Date" by blink-182 is hands down my favourite music video ever.



When I was in 8th grade, this was all I cared about when it came to music. Poppy (though I didn't realize that's what I liked about it at the time), silly and the main statement behind the band seemed to just be having fun with your friends, and I could really get behind that. Hell, I can really get behind that now. While I do really enjoy the direction that Beat Noir is taking and I like adding new things and seeing what we can do with our "art" (pretentious enough?), I'd be lying if I said that hanging out and joking around with Duff, Mark and Colin wasn't one of the things I enjoy most about the band.

And you know, people like to rip on blink and they like to rip on me for how much I like blink, but goddamn are they one of my favourite bands ever. I definitely wouldn't be into punk if it wasn't for them. This was also the first time I watched this video in a long time and I had an odd moment of realizing that the way I dress today is 100% and amalgamation of the three characters in this video. I didn't do that consciously, it just sort of happened. Anyways, "First Date" kicked off a giant blink binge that lasted several days and brought on a whole new type of nostalgia, much different from Jackson Browne and Fleetwood Mac.

Bet you thought you'd never see those three bands tied together, didn't you?

*For the record my mom's music collection: Running on Empty by Jackson Browne, Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, Bat Out of Hell I by Meatloaf, the soundtrack to Mamma Mia, the soundtrack to  Grease, Jive Bunny: The Album by Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers (my mom may make up the entirety of their fanbase in 2013) and Greatest Hits by the Beach Boys.

Gordon Street

Whenever I fall completely in love in an album, and that happens pretty frequently, I find that there is almost always one particular instance of listening to it that always does the trick. It's a weird coincidence where life events and the content of the album link up in some weird awesome way to hit me square in the feelings.

I bring this up because this morning I was thinking of when this happened with the album Awkward Breeds by The Sidekicks. During Reading Week of 2012 I went on a trip to New York with a bunch of other Fine Art students at Guelph. I did have a few good friends coming along on the trip as well, but for the most part I didn't really know most of the people coming with and was a little nervous about it.

Our bus left from the university at 5 AM, which required me to get up at 3 in order to walk to the stop in time. The night before I had hastily packed up what I needed and didn't have time to dry all my laundry, so I left the house looking like a royal mess, in daze from lack of sleep and in damp jeans. I smoked a hastily rolled joint and tried to power walk to the university to both warm up my jeans and fight off the cold. I didn't have a proper winter jacket, so I tried to compensate by wearing my denim jacket over a hoodie over a flannel, accompanied by a scarf and toque.

I got to the stop in time, took my seat beside Candice and we were off. Around this time in 2012 On The Impossible Past by The Menzingers, the aforementioned Awkward Breeds and Giant Orange all came out around the same time (officially all on the same day, but y'know, internet) and I was really eager to listen to all three. I didn't sleep much on the way to the border, since it was only about an hour and I didn't want to fall asleep, be woken up right away and then have trouble getting back to sleep after.

So once we were over the border I settled into my seat, still slightly feeling the effects of that mornings joint, and put on Awkward Breeds while I slowly drifted off into sleep. It was the best music I could have chosen for the time and the lyrical themes of the album were absolutely perfect for the mental state I was in at the time. During the remainder of that drive and the drive back 4 days later, I listened to the album another 5 or 6 times and that was all it took for me to love it.

Goodbye Old Friend

It's no secret that I can be an overly-sentimental and emotional person, so of course the event of me getting a new back pack is going to evoke a long post in which I get all steamy-eyed and nostalgic. I mean when have I ever done that, right?

As I said in that previous, snack-sized paragraph, I replaced my old backpack yesterday. The reason I poked fun at myself getting emotional about my old Dakine bag is that because for a long time it was one of my oldest possessions. It accompanied me through the latter half of high school, held my skateboard on numerous trips around the city looking for places to hang out and skate, was on my back all through university, came with me on multiple trips to New York, was my partner during every Pouzza Fest and was put to use during all of my summers at Ontario Place (Christ, I always come back to that, don't I?).

So obviously this backpack was something that I came to attach tremendous sentimental value to, as it was (is) put to use during a real coming-of-age time in my life. I thought I would list a few of my favourite times with this bag, just as I ran through a few of my favourite memories in that post about my favourite t-shirt linked above.

So here it goes:

I bought the backpack in 11th grade, because my old one was really hurting. Dakine bags were all the rage at the time, as even people who had never stepped on a skateboard were buying them. Getting a bag upon which I could attach my deck was of the utmost importance to me because skating all over the city was, and still is, one of my favourite activities. I attached the Suicide Machines patch shown above right away and it didn't come off the entire time I owned it. As you can see in the picture, there is a big rectangle outlined by weathering right in the middle of it. In the words of Damien Stillwell: "I don't think I've ever seen it without it." Honourable mention also goes to the Operation Ivy patch on the side and the blink-182 patch on one of the straps, both of which were attached not long afterwards and stayed there until the end.

I know some of my punk friends may roll their eyes at this, but living in residence during first year university was a huge learning experience for me. It was my first time living on my own and though one of my best friends lived in the same residence as me, I was mostly surrounded by complete strangers. So not only did this backpack carry my laptop so I could play Tetris in European History, but it also came with me pretty much every other place on campus. One of the catalysts in meeting one of my best friends, Brian, in first year was that he was 19 and could thus buy beer for all of us underagers. Pat, Brian and I would make runs to the LCBO every Friday it seemed so that we could buy liquor for almost all of our friends. We had no clue how to use Guelph Transit at the time (To be fair, back then the system was a total disaster.), so we would walk about 40 minutes each way to the store despite having a buspass included in out tuition. It was on these trips that I discovered my backpack could hold exactly 24 355mL cans of beer, and that is exactly what I filled it with almost every week while having a ball with a ton of new friends.

I've spoken about my old summer job as a lifeguard at Ontario Place a whole bunch on this blog and even now I still get pretty nostalgic about it because it was pretty fun and lead to a bunch of great stories and friends. Going to this job I had to leave early in the morning and would end up coming home late at night. Doing this required me to bring all of my uniform, enough food for 2-3 meals, sunscreen, water and well....y'know. It was almost like going to camp each summer and my old backpack was partner along the way.

The trip that I took last May with my brother to New York will forever be one of my favourite memories. The initial purpose of the trip was for me to see The Arrogant Sons of Bitches play a reunion show, but we quickly planned an exciting trip around it. We went to a ton of cool bars, caught a great start by Johan at Citi Field, ate great pizza, saw one of the best shows I ever have and showed my bro around the city, as it was his first time there and is a bit of a home away from home for me. For this somewhat lengthy trip I brought only my modestly-sized backpack, which my brother found completely astonishing. What can I say? I'm a light packer.

That's it I guess. It's hard to articulate the importance of something that you come to take for granted because you use it everyday. It's less that I did specific things with this knapsack and more that it was something I picked up and used almost every day of my life for about 8 years of my life, without really thinking about it. It's going to be weird not having the flattened shape of that backpack on my floor all the time; it was one of those things that you get used to because it's always there.

Fuck, if I'm getting this nostalgic about my bag, may God have mercy on you all when my skateboard finally eats it.

279 Cole Road

I like to think that I am not a very vain person, but that is just not true at all. I'm aware that I neglect this blog far more than I should. I used to write in it more and really found a way to properly express myself through writing for a little while, but I just don't have that type of motivation for it anymore and I have no explanation for that. It's not that I don't want to write anymore because I absolutely do, it's just that whereas I used to sit down with an empty screen and ooze out an entire passably coherent entry, now I cannot. I can't explain it. But then again I'm doing that right now, aren't I. Fuck bruh, I'm so meta it hurts.

Anyway, I'm sure you are wondering where the hell that non-sequitur paragraph came from, so I'll indulge you. Whenever I do log back onto this blog to write an entry there is a 0% chance that I don't read back through a ton of my entries. It happens without  fail every time. SEE THAT IS WHAT THE FIRST SENTENCE REGARDING ME BEING VAIN HAS TO DO WITH THIS!

Okay, so here's the rub: While there are many entries that I am still very proud of, there are a ton of older ones that are THE MOST EMBARRASSING. Like most people my first inclination would be to delete these posts because the first thought into my head is "Dammit Tim, is there actually a single person in the world who wants to read about how much you liked Bayside 4 years ago?".But shortly after that I consider the following question: What is going to give me more peace of mind; deleting old posts and maybe making it seem like I never had an awkward and uninformed stage of my life or leaving all the old posts up for everyone to see and not acting like I'm too cool to admit I've had some bad moments? The answer to this is always the latter.

So while there are certainly some heinous posts in the nether-regions of this blog, it makes me feel better to say "Yeah, so what?" and leave them there. I guess it's the same as when some people delete really old pictures of themselves on Facebook so they won't be seen. I think it's pretty uncool to be embarrassed about the person you used to be and it's a good idea to try and accept it.

But my life is generally a mess anyways, so what do I know?

Also, please stay away from old posts lololololololololololololol.