I miss being in a band.
intensely.
I remember in tenth grade, when I was in the same chemistry class with James and Matt and Aaron, and we all sat in the back on the first day and we were like a cool little gang, because we were in a fucking band together.
I was like, "this is what it felt like to be Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt in high school. fuck yes."
Friday night band practice was my salvation, no matter how shitty the week was.
and in tenth grade, there were a lot of shitty weeks.
we honestly thought we were going somewhere for a while.
James and Tom and I wanted to, so badly.
of course we didn't. nobody wanted to sing. we broke up.


and we got together senior year, again.
January. God knows, I needed some kind of salvation, some kind of escape in January. and it was perfect.
I never liked Blink-182 until this year. I still don't like them, per se, but they've been making me nostalgic in a weird way. nostalgic for hating them so much in junior high, I guess.
Matt Wagner stepped up to sing. he's not exactly a virtuoso but fuck, neither was Joe Strummer, you know?
I just remember playing "Dammit," which I had never played before, which I learned from James in about thirty seconds. bless you, Blink, for being terrible musicians.
it was exactly what I needed.
a year ago I'd have never admitted it but there's something true in a lot of music I used to write off. there's something true in that song, and it's so simple that I could absolutely let myself go and shout the words along with everyone and be completely absorbed in it.

debate my word choice here, I certainly won't blame you, but there's something about that, about punk music, that I'm addicted to. you can commit to it in a way I've never been able to with many other kinds of music, you don't have to think, you don't have to get tripped up in your brain like I always do, you just thrash out your three chords and let the catharsis happen.


naturally, the band mk. II lasted about three practices. we were all going to college anyway.

i have climbed the highest mountains, i have run through the fields

I underestimate Bono sometimes.
somehow, he manages to make music that makes pretty much any location seem ridiculously cinematic and beautiful.
(I tend to think early-ish, Joshua Tree stuff is meant for the desert and the mountains and the great outdoors in general, as I found last year when I was out West, while anything after 2000 was written specifically for walking through a city.)

messing around on picnik

took that driving around Latrobe a couple months ago. decided to mess around with photo editing today to see if I could do it better than Cara does. XD

what IS that. apocalyptic shit.


kinda like that one

the words might be a little hard to read unless you click/make bigger.
I feel easily amused, I might do this for hours.

this happened a couple months ago, but it keeps coming into my mind for one reason or another.

a bunch of my friends and I used to always talk about how we'd live in New York together after college. Kaitlin and I, being the only ones motivated enough to actually get jobs, would support ourselves and pay for Eric and Cara to not starve to death until they miraculously landed jobs in the film industry. I would presumably be a rock star in my spare time, that or write for the Colbert Report. Hannah would live across the hall and yell at us if we were too loud after 9 PM. I think we had Jayna in there somewhere as the Kramer-like neighbor who would burst into our apartment and shout ridiculous things from time to time, but I don't quite remember.

obviously, this wasn't meant to be realistic, but I kind of thought at least part of it might happen. I mean, a running theme with Eric and me since junior high has been New York, how much we love it, how we're going to go there and live in the city we've been in love with since we were kids. I knew I wanted to go there, at least. that's why I applied to NYU.

I'm not going into the whole process of how I ended up in Boston instead (it was by choice - let me make it clear for my own ridiculous pride's sake, I did get into NYU) because this post is already going to be too long. but on Easter Sunday this year, I told my family I was going to Boston. and by that point, everyone else had already committed to their respective schools in the greater Pittsburgh area. etc etc.

so we were talking in July, Kaitlin and Eric and I, who were always the main ones going "NEW YORKKKKKK I NEED TO GO TO THERE." we were talking about where we most want to live. and Eric was on about Miami and Honolulu and the Florida Keys because he wants to be a beach bum and have summer all the time. Kaitlin was saying she really wouldn't mind being in Pittsburgh for a while, or living anywhere between here and North Carolina, really. and I honestly haven't a clue where I want to end up - Boston's great, Pittsburgh's the motherland, but I want to see the whole damn country, and after I've seen it, I'll decide where I want to stay. (or maybe I'll go back to Ireland. which is indeed tempting.)

but - after we all discussed the pros and cons of these various cities - somebody, I think Kaitlin, was like, "I...don't really want to live in New York." and there was this sort of confused general agreement all around. and I was like...shit. when did THAT happen? and I still have no idea. it must have been sometime this year. a lot of things happened this year that I still am surprised by sometimes. the Pens traded Ryan Whitney. I graduated. my brother started high school. I didn't get into Northwestern. I went to London and Dublin. I decided somewhere in there that New York ranks below Boston on the "places I want to live list." I'd just love to know how and why that came to be.

I think I'm a know-it-all bitch about fandom sometimes. I really don't mean to be (usually), but I am. but I just think - if you're going to claim to be a massive fan of something, say, a particular professional hockey team based in Pittsburgh, then be a huge fan. know who we lost in free agency over the summer and why (well, as much as any of us know why. dsakfjaweoifs PETR SYKORA, COME BACK TO ME :( ). know who we signed and who we re-signed and who Bill Guerin is, for pete's sake. know when the season starts. don't continue happily under the impression that Sidney Crosby is the only guy on the team worth knowing about.

and I mean, it's fine if you want to ignore all that. I don't demand that everyone in the world care as much about NHL contract negotiations as I do, ffs, that would be unreasonable. but then don't SAY you do. SAY you're a casual fan. don't get offended, then, if I imply you don't know what the hell you're talking about, if you don't.

same goes for everything. casual fans of bands, etc kind of annoy me, because I can be an elitist bitch (who can't?) but not nearly so much as people who profess to absolutely love them/him/her/it and actually have no clue. and I don't expect that I'm saying anything controversial here, really, but I just have to rant sometimes.

"we're all tourists, sort of. life is tourism, sort of."

I wish it were socially acceptable to take pictures of everything, all the time. I was standing around waiting for the T today and there was a cloud in the sky over my dorm that I really wanted a picture of, and I had my camera, but I didn't want to look like a strange sort of tourist. so all I got was the cell phone picture you see above.

it's possible that I think too many things are noteworthy. I honestly think almost everything is noteworthy. but I don't think it's a bad way to be, really.

till the sun came up (or was it going down for the night?)

on the fantastic-things-to-do-in-the-wee-hours-of-the-morning list, I don't think anything will ever top watching A Hard Day's Night, then talking in British accents about university and Radiohead and Anderson Cooper until 5 AM. ever.

however, last night may have been a close second. I ended up sitting in the common room of somebody else's floor with a bunch of other people who didn't even live there, including a guy from Australia with THE MOST FANTASTIC ACCENT I HAVE EVER HEARD, I WANT HIM TO WALK AROUND WITH ME TALKING TO ME ALL THE TIME, and a kid who's lived in Vienna and Spain and I think perhaps Germany. and of course, upon hearing I was from Pittsburgh, both of them - who have NEVER LIVED IN THE US BEFORE - were like "ohhhh, the Steelers!" lord. Steeler Nation precedes me everywhere I go. hahaha.

but really. I haven't laughed that hard in weeks, for sure, maybe months. not at the Steelers thing in particular, just - watching people try to act out "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" is a fantastic way to spend the hour between 2 and 3 AM. I guess I'll always be a dork; probably at least half of this university was out somewhere getting drunk, or at least at a party (which I was, earlier in the evening, and it wasn't nearly as fun); I was playing charades and having the time of my life. I am pretty damn pleased with that.

for boston.

(click this to make it bigger, it's pretty spectacular.)

it's hard not to look down the street
on an evening like this
and think "damn, I've made it.
I'm here.
this is where I've wanted to be for years
and I finally did it right."
on a related note, am I the only one who really loves the sight of traffic lights at night (or very early in the morning?) I think it's absolutely beautiful.