This Old House and various other amusing things…
So,
I was initially going to try and make a slightly less angry and much more
thoughtful blog, but that got sidetracked right off the bat. This morning, right as I was ready to
leave for band rehearsal, I had to poop.
Normally, I would squeeze it in and just head out but it felt like one
of those “eight thirty in the morning,” “quick and light” shits. It was not. I hate being blindsided by my own bodily functions. It threw my whole morning off kilter. Now, I was fifteen minutes behind
schedule, had to carry my guitar eight blocks in the rain to my car, which some
drunken asshole, presumably a fucking Timbers fan, had decided to kick multiple
times and put several dents in my drivers side door for which I now have to
call the fucking cops about(there was a police officers business card on my
window, I don’t know); and, worst of all, I still had not had a cup of
coffee. I currently have a pretty
nice headache from my lack of caffeine intake this morning but that’s my
problem I guess. And so is the
pooping and the door dents. Well,
not really the dents unless you count living in sort of shitty neighborhood my
fault. But anyway, there goes the
less angry and more thoughtful. I
now want to punch a person that I have never met, in the back of the head,
Homer-style, for kicking my fucking car and have already mentioned bowel
movements. Hot dog, we’re off and
running… But, on a more positive
note, I just found out that the entire series of “Duckman”is on YouTube. So, peaks and valleys. Some people go out and have fun with
other human beings on a Saturday night.
Others have no money, hate everybody anyways, sit at home and watch “Duckman.” I, sadly, and to my girlfriends dismay, fall into the latter
category…
What
I wanted to talk about, before the unexpectedly large shit and the door dents,
was memories. Specifically, their
subjective nature and the romance that we, as imperfect humans, project onto
them. So, where might a thought
like that come from? Well, if
you’ll be patient, I’ll tell you.
Last night, I was getting drunk and playing guitar(one of my favorite
hobbies) and started playing some songs I haven’t played in a while. Songs that I had written that never
really made the cut or songs that the band hasn’t played in a while; which is
most of them. BWC(Bradley Wik and
the Charlatans, for the uninformed) has been busy getting ready to record our
second full-length album, tweaking and obsessing over the same twelve or so
songs for the past two or three months.
It’s fun… If you could see
my face, it would reveal the necessary Seinfeld-like look intended and widely
used for indicating sarcasm. But,
in all seriousness, it isn’t all terrible. It is kind of fun to see how far you can push a song before
it sounds stupid and you throw out all the changes that you just spent six
hours pursuing and implementing.
Its all part of the process for people like us. That is to say, people too neurotic and
anal to just leave it alone without first proving that any other way is just
terrible(see: Billy Joel’s
alternate, “Reggae” version of “Only the Good Die Young.” Just thinking about it gives me the
shivers). Basically, that’s been
our band rehearsals for a while now.
And, because of that, we haven’t played hardly any of the old songs in a
long time. So, I dusted some of
them off last night and played “This Old House” for the first time in
months. I forgot how good of a
song it was. Man, I’m so fucking
talented. So wise and full of
insight as well. I was so taken
aback with myself that when I finished, I paused for a moment of
reflection. You want to know the
first thought that popped into my head?
Probably not, but I’ll tell you.
I immediately thought of that episode of Wings, also entitled “This Old
House,” where Brian and Joe find out that the house they grew up in is about to
be demolished. They go
through the myriad of emotions that a lot of us do when confronting a large
block of memories all at once.
It’s a really good episode.
Brian and Joe’s first reaction is to be angry that the house is being
torn down, regardless of the fact that the soil around it is eroding and soon
the house will plunge into the ocean.
Their next thoughts are of all the good times and happy memories they
shared there. They, along with
Helen, their childhood friend, decide to take a cooler of beer and head to the
house to reminisce and pay their final respects. After a few beers and some good memories, the boys head
upstairs to their childhood room.
Within a few minutes of talking about how much they love and miss the
old place, they quickly realize that they also had a lot of terrible memories
at the house as well. From trying
to sleep through parental arguments to the eventual divorce of their mom and
dad and so on and so forth, they slowly see that they also hate this
place. They then decide to start
the demolition of the old house on their own. The cathartic smashing of the house allows them to keep only
the memories they want to and let the rest fall into the sea with the decrepit,
abandoned house. But the joke is
on the Hacketts because Fay, unbeknownst to Brian and Joe, and clearly for our
amusement as the watcher, has convinced the historical society that the house
be preserved as a landmark, forcing them to deal with their anger towards it
and all the bad memories it encompasses.
That’s a lot of bang for your buck in a scant twenty or so minutes of
network television.
On a personal note, it was not even
one year ago, so it’s still quite fresh in my mind, that the bank repossessed
the house that I grew up in from my mom.
I have to say, I went through the same series of emotions as the
Hacketts. The anger, the fond
reminiscing and eventually wanting to destroy the house with my own hands. Unfortunately, I did not get the pleasure of smashing the
house to bits nor do I have the satisfaction of knowing that it will soon fall
into the sea. The hardest
part of going back to the house was knowing that it would be the last time that
I would. It’s nice to be able to
keep those chapters of your life open because sometimes you need the comfort of
nostalgia and the remembrance of simpler times. I lost that.
And I miss it. I really
do. And, since the house still
stands, whenever I go back to visit Wisconsin I see it; and I still remember
all the bad stuff. When I was
going through all the old shit that I had left there, I found a bunch of old
notebooks wherein I had written terrible song after terrible song, from when I
was still trying to figure out how to write a song that wasn’t a total piece of
shit. Needless to say, almost
every song was a complete failure on that end. There are only a few songs that I wrote in High School that
aren’t completely unlistenable.
But, as I flipped through the pages, I noticed how much sixteen to
eighteen year old Bradley hated living in the tiny, redneck town he grew up
in. The anger, the depression and
so on was hard to read. I wanted
it all to disappear. I wanted to
remember it differently. I
might’ve thrown out all those old notebooks, but the house is still there as a
reminder of it all. Slowly, as an
adult, I have begun to accept and appreciate the childhood that I had. After all, a lot of kids aren’t allowed
to spend entire days going wherever they want, doing whatever they want with no
adult supervision. We left the
house in the morning and didn’t come home until supper and then went back out
til the streetlights came on. Not
too many of the people I know now were afforded the same luxury as kids. The places they grew up didn’t allow
for that. So I got that going for
me, which is nice. Hopefully, one
day I’ll be able to reconcile the bad with the good and realize I quite enjoyed
my childhood. Or, at the very
least, call it a wash. I don’t
know, however, if I’ll ever be okay with my teenage years. But, then again, who is… Also, since we’re on the topic of going
back to the shitty towns we grew up in, I recently re-watched “Young Adult” and
somehow, as if by magic, I have some pertinent thoughts on that as well. God, it’s weird how this shit comes
together… I must be a fucking
genius or something… On a
side note, I’ve realized there are actually three types of people in the
world: those who go out and have
fun with other human beings on a Saturday night, those who have no money, hate
everybody anyways, sit at home and
watch “Duckman,” AND those who have no money, hate everybody anyways, sit at
home and learn how to play “All for Leyna” between episodes of “Duckman.” I, sadly, and to my girlfriends dismay,
fall into the latter of the latter categories… The last one…
If you couldn’t tell, I’m going through a bit of a Billy Joel phase… Anyways, Young Adult…
This is a very strange subject for
me. There are a lot of conflicting
emotions and thought processes happening all at once. Most of the time, I’m not quite sure how to feel about
it. There’s a lot going on. But let’s see if we can sort it
out. First off, there’s my fairly
intense hatred of Diablo Cody. I
watched Juno for the sole purpose of being able to make fun of it and the
people who like it. People always
like to throw it back in your face if you haven’t actually seen the movie. I always hear “How can you hate it if
you haven’t even seen it?” Which,
is dumb. I know what I like and what
I hate by now. I’ve refined my
Tick-like abilities to sense this shit as it happens. Also, I wonder why whenever I think of an annoying person
they always have a Long Island accent.
“When is Jerry going to see the baby…” Anyways, with Juno sucking so much, I was unsure of how to
proceed with Young Adult. I liked
the blurb on Netflix. It sounded
like a movie I would probably watch.
It was depressing enough.
It was set in the Midwest.
The character was going back to the shit town she grew up in. And, best of all, it had Charlize
Theron in it. BUT, it was written
by Diablo Cody. So, that was all
kind of a wash. Then, I saw Patton
Oswalt was in it and that intrigued me.
Now, I’ve never watched him do his standup, but I have seen him in a
number of things that I like and he was always funny. I’m talking about Reno 911 as the weird, nerdy guy,
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee as the weird, nerdy guy, King of Queens as the
weird, nerdy guy… So, what the
hell. At the very least, if it
sucks, and I mean sucks my dead grandfather’s hairy, German nutsack, it’ll at
least add to my arsenal of Diablo Cody-themed hatred…
But, it really wasn’t that
bad. In fact, I might even venture
to say it’s pretty good. Not
great, mind you; let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It made fun of the fake superiority people gain when they
leave a small town for a big city.
It poked fun at the notion that those people still living there would
have to be miserable while everyone who got out is so much happier; which is
also not true. Most people who
leave places for other places seeking happiness are doomed to fail. Happiness is not a place, nor can it be
found in one. Now, to be sure,
this rule does not apply to people who are being discriminated against, in
shitty towns across this great country.
Like where I’m from, that would be a gay person or anyone whose skin is
not white. In that case, leaving
is definitely the right move and they will certainly be happier almost anywhere
else. But the happiness that most
people crave, when they leave a place in search of it, is usually a happiness
that they have denied themselves.
I’ve found this out the hard way.
I’ve put my theoretical “happiness” in a “lock box” where the only way
in is the loosely-defined “musical success.” It’s tortured me for years. I’m slowly, again, as I get older, beginning to reconcile
this with my actual life and what’s happening to me. Believe it or not, I’ve actually become less bitter and
angry over the years. My
girlfriend has a lot to do with that.
I’ve found a lot of lost happiness in her and the way she makes me feel
about me. It’s nice. Hopefully, someday, that will be all
happiness that I need… Whew, and
all this from a Diablo Cody-penned flick.
Who would have thought? But
the major takeaway from the film was that hardly any truly shitty people get
what’s coming to them. Even after
Charlize Theron’s character was terrible to everyone that she came in contact
with and was beaten down and hating herself, as she should, Charlize’s character
still gets an esteem boost from Patton’s character’s sister. Patton’s character’s sister tells
Charlize’s character that she is a good person and that they sort of idolize
her back in the shit town; and Charlize’s character gets to not hate herself as
much as she should. Which is,
oftentimes, the way things work out in real life. It’s bullshit and I should really pay more attention to
character names in movies… Also, I
really want to punch the asshole who kicked my car in the back of the
head. I’m kind of obsessed with
that. Oh, right, I’m less angry
and shit. This is my “less angry”
and “more thoughtful” blog.
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