To begin with, everything...
- Cameron Crowe, Almost Famous
"Songblog"
I'm about to make a decidedly un-college admission to you: I hate going to concerts.
I love music. I really do. But I like music in the background for the most part. I like listening to that mixed tape someone gave me when I'm writing them a letter. I like listening to Radiohead when I'm reading Mark Millar or Paul Jenkins. I like to put on the Kill Bill soundtrack when I'm playing Smash Brothers. It's rare that I say to myself, "You know what? It's time to just sit and listen to some music," and when I do, it's usually something maudlin I listen to in the dark while sprawled out on my bed wishing I could weep properly.
So no, I don't like concerts. I don't like people jumping around me and screaming. And while I can appreciate the novelty of hearing some of my favorite songs sung a little differently, there's a little voice in the back of my head that's always saying "Whoa... he sang that wrong." But what really gets me is that a concert is two or three hours of your life that you've set aside specifically to just listen to music, and honestly, I wish I could just bring a book.
If that makes me boring, it's a distinction I'll accept. I'm not music guy, just like I'm not movie guy or book guy. (Honestly, I'm not even really good at being comic book guy, but there's so few of us, you probably can't even tell -- unless, of course, you're Prewitt.) I'm not a cultural imperialist, in as much as I ever feel that I've got a CD you've just got to hear, or that I'm reading a book that's just so great you've got to drop whatever you're reading and read it, or that I've seen a movie the whole world must see to believe. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just saying that my taste is my taste, and I'm not under the impression that anyone's under any obligation to share those tastes.
All this to say... um, that...
Crap. I totally forgot where this was going.
Um, I only have one CD to listen to for the next couple of days because there wasn't room in my sister's crappy car for both all my laundry and any decent part of my album collection, so these are the 21 songs I've got in my head for the time being (until I make my inevitable trip to Best Buy tomorrow) with a few reflections a la Nick Hornby's Songbook which I thumbed through yesterday at my office in Borders:
"Friend of the Devil"
Set out runnin' but I take my time, a friend of the devil is a friend of mine.
If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight...
If you find yourself becoming more and more like your demons, does that mean that you're becoming a monster, or that they were never as monstrous as you thought?
"Wait Up"
Guess I'll let you go, even though I don't want to...
It's been suggested to me that I consider staying in Columbia past the summer, and now I'm not even sure if I'm going to stay the few months after I graduate.
Perhaps it's time to discover who I can be without all of you.
"Hurt"
...and you could have it all, my empire of dirt...
I can accept that sometimes you've got to get hurt just like sometimes you're going to end up hurting other people, but what's with this sense I have that you're not allowed to acknowledge that you've been hurt, less you hurt the one who hurt you? Why are you expected to make it easier for them? And is this an actual obligation, or one of those weird things my warped sense of honor has just made up? And what about those truly monstrous people who want you to hurt forever or they'll feel hurt that you're not hurt. Yikes.
"A Wolf at the Door"
...let me back, let me back, I promise to be good...
I have no love for Wolverine.
Sometimes when you're reading comic books out in the open, like at the office or in some computer lab, someone'll come by, see what you're reading, and begin to regale you with tales of when they used to read X-Men and how cool the movie was and how great Wolverine is.
I'm just not impressed with the character. I'm not into this warped mix of Canadian samurai hunter man-beast what-the-fuck that's been steaming like a turd in the comic book community for a quarter-century. Dullsville.
My junior year in high school, I spent a month coming up with storylines I'd like to write for all the major Marvel Comics titles. You know what I came up with for Wolverine? Having his head chopped off by a fairly determined 16-year-old kid, followed by five issues of two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents transporting his severed head to the Shiar homeworld so he could grow a new body.
That's how unenthused I am with Weapon X.
What I do like about the character, however, seems to have been captured in Fables character Bigby Wolf. All the fun, gruff, abrasion, none of the tired, cliche monologue about his messed up memories and all that crap.
Yeah. I know... Let's move on...
"Good Woman"
And this is why I am lying when I say that I don't love you no more...
Every night at 12:30, I watch Recess on the Disney Channel. I used to tape Fillmore! every Saturday morning until it became clear to me that I'd seen every episode. I miss Dream Job every week because that's the time Brent Jones, Part II and I have set aside to watch Teen Titans.
I should be able to converse with kids. I should be able to bond with them over yesterday's episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog. Instead, I get the distinct feeling that kids don't like me. That they've got some disdain for me, or something. Like they're mocking me.
I get that same sense of mocking from the kids singing in the background of this song.
The rest is too ridiculous and depressing to get into right now.
"Dirty Man"
You're a dirty, dirty man. You and that other woman, you're two of a kind...
I'm serious about that becoming a monster question. I need help.
"At Seventeen"
The valentines I never knew, the friday night charades of youth were spent on one more beautiful at seventeen I leanred the truth...
Three things to consider under the banner of "At Seventeen"
1) I'm not sure I would have been friends with the people I became friends with when I was eighteen that I became friends with when I was seventeen. High school and college are just that different to me.
2) "El Viaje Misterioso Nuestro Jomer," which gives "You Only Move Twice" a serious run for the money as my favorite episode of The Simpsons ever.
3) The way Tuttle would shudder in disgust whenever I tried to convince her I was only seventeen sophomore year.
"Melissa"
Crossroads, will you ever let him go? Will you hide the dead man's ghost, or will he lie beneath the clay, or will his spirit float away?
The last time I was a senior, there was an ugly little incident about this story I wrote. i don't want to get into the specifics, because no matter how many times I try to explain this story, it always ends up sounding way worse than it actually was, but the basic moral of the story is: be very careful when you put people you know in a story you're writing.
So I try to be very careful when I make up character names for the most part. I try not to use the names of anyone I know (we're not talking about the stick-figures. That's different). But I got to tell you, it's a little annoying. Do I have to go the rest of my life without using names like Brent or Justin or Kate or Adam or Erin or Caleb or Danielle or Jo(h)n or Melissa or Andy or Joe or Jake or Charlie or Steve or Michael or Scott or Kristen or Dan, etc., etc. just because some jackass I used to know's going to think I'm talking about them?
Oddly enough, there was this one girl in high school who always complained that I never put her in any of my stories, and she complained enough that I eventually started feeling guilty about it -- not that getting me to feel guilt is all that hard, really -- so I told myself that I would try to work her name into any and everything I ever got published.
So Jeffries, when we do write a screenplay, you're character's name has to be Melissa Stuvall.
"Meanwhile, Rick James..."
Meanwhile, Rick James takes her nude and there's nothing I can do and there's nothing I can say to you. I've got a lot of work to do. I guess I'll leave it up to you.
"Meanwhile, Rick James..." is not my favorite Cake song in the least, but I'm surprised by how often I end up putting it on a mixed tape. It's one of those songs I don't even understand. Usually, I like to map out a song in my head, capturing the meaning of every line, but until I looked it up today for what has to be the tenth time since I got Comfort Eagle, I thought the chorus was "Meanwhile, Rick James takes a new." What's the significance of swimming in a kidney-shaped pool? I've got no idea, and I'm not sure I ever will, or ever want to...
I'm not as into burning CD's or making mixed tapes for people as I once was -- and I was never that into it to start with. When you make a mixed tape for someone, there's this sense that every song has to really matter, and you've got to put them in that magic order that both tells a linear story, as well as matches a sense of mood from song to song. To my mind, at least. Maybe there are some people who can put ABC by the Jackson Five right after "Colorblind" by Counting Crows, but honestly, I think these people probably have emotional problems, and if I'm burning someone a CD, I don't want them to know I've got emotional problems.
You don't have to follow those rules when you're just making a compliation for yourself. You don't even have to make a lyric booklet for yourself, because you don't have to think about the words. You can put "Meanwhile, Rick James..." on a CD for no other reason than you and your roommate spend your lazy Sunday afternoons asking each other "What'd the five fingers say to the face? Slap! I'm Rick James, bitch!" over and over again.
That's the secret splendor of living for yourself and no one else.
"Take Me As I Am"
I wanna send this one out to my vanilla ice-cream chocolate pudding pie, that stayed with me in the hood, do or die...
I get a little tired of being told not to have low self-esteem by people who are not only preoccupied by what other people think of them, but sideline in worrying about what other people think of other people.
I get tired because this belief that I have low self-esteem is motivated by a false idea of self-esteem. Having self-esteem does not mean that you assume everyone will like you. If anything, having self-esteem is recognizing that there will in fact be times in your life in which people will not like you for one reason or another (or perhaps no reason at all) and somehow managing to keep your shit together. Having self-esteem does not mean that you're never self-deprecating, because having self-esteem is not assuming that you are some faultless paragon of the human experience as much as it is acknowledging and even embracing your faults and foibles (not to say that acknowledging said faults and foibles somehow excuses them).
I don't have low self-esteem. How could I assume that anything I have to write is important enough to go on about this long and have low self-esteem? I will never be take-charge guy, but that's only because take-charge guy is usually an asshole.
"Hey Ya!"
I'm just being honest.
Half way there... don't know if I'm going to make it...
"Bad Day"
We're sick of being jerked around. We all fall down.
I think that says it all, really.
"Under Control"
I don't want to do it your way. I don't want to give it to you, your way. I don't want to know...
I'm often disappointed to find that even when I'm succeful in my planning and plotting and scheming, in the end, there's a moment of decision I just can't follow through on. Perhaps through all these years, I've subconsciously come to embrace that old chestnut that the price of getting what you want is not wanting it anymore, and I'm afraid I can no longer see my self as the protagonist of my own life unless I'm driven by desire.
And maybe I'm a monster.
"Black Star"
I keep falling over, I keep passing out, when I see a face like you...
I once read an interpretation of this song that said it was about accepting that somethings just don't work out for reason we can't see or understand, because you can't see a black star in the night sky.
I like to take responsibility for the things that happen in my life when I can.
What's the point of denying the existence of God if you're not going to accept control of your life?
What's the point of having faith in God if you don't have faith in other people?
"Rory and Lane"
Left or right?
I can't tell my left from my right anymore. I'm one of those people who has to check that my thumb and index finger make an "L" shape on my left hand when I'm giving directions. It's weird, because I remember really knowing my left from my right as a kid... so much so that I'd mock other kids who couldn't. Maybe this is just a karma chameleon biting me on the ass.
"Fight Test"
I don't know where the sunbeams end and the starlight begins. It's all a mystery. And I don't know how a man decides what's right for his own life. It's all a mystery...
I really did think that time would prove you wrong, but here we all are now, aren't we, and -- dare I say -- far better off than we would have been.
Great for us, right?
"Imitation of Life"
Water hyacinth, named by a poet...
I'm afraid I've become one of those people who thinks that poetry just has to rhyme. Of course, I've done the stream of consciousness words-on-a-page beat thing in my day, and I've certainly been moved by a poem or two without that old ABAB pattern or heroic couplets and what-not (Luis Llorens Torres' "Love without Love" is a favorite example), but I spent enough time on the staff of Purple Magazine to come to the conclusion that a lot of people think that since a poem doesn't have to rhyme, all they have to do is work out extended and mixed metaphors about their souls being shattered or torn or whatever, and they're the new Anna Akhmatova or somesuch. At least when a poem rhyming, you get the sense that it more than just someone babbling whatever nonsense that comes to mind on a page -- that's what blogging's for, for fucksake.
I'm not a poet, but I know it. You need that deep secret tossing inside you.
"There's Always Someone Cooler Than You"
Make me feel tiny if it makes you feel tall, but there's always someone cooler than you. Yeah, you're the shit but you won't be here for long oh, there's always someone cooler than you. Life is wonderful. Life is beautiful. We're all children of one big universe, so you don't have to be a chump.
Yeah, but back to what I was saying about self-esteem, I'd say that there's a fine line between not caring what other people think about you, and being rude. Self-esteem and civility are not mutually exclusive, but they don't necessarily mesh well at times.
And that is why -- to paraphase the great priest -- I, so meretricious in my conceit, am become the king of fools. That's how Mr. Sense of Himself ends up a chump so often.
"Magazine Called Sunset"
There's a magazine called sunset and a tape machine that won't let me ever forget this impossible longing for you...
I feel bad, because when I see my friends suffering with romantic dilemma's, I always want to tell them to just give up. The only thing I've learned over the last few years is that there is inevitable a point in which it's just better to move on with your life, because if you keep trying, you're going to end up playing the chump.
I feel bad, because while I believe this is absolutely true in some of the cases I've been presented with these days, this is something you can't tell someone, because it's just something you have to learn.
"Ode to a Superhero"
"With great power comes great responsibility." That's the catch phrase of old Uncle Ben. If you missed it, don't worry, they'll say the line again and again and again.
What? You thought I'd write an entry this long without making some reference to Spider-Man? That's crazy!
"She Don't Want Nobody Near"
Pretty white-washed lies, endless alibis, and reasons that need cleanin' every night. Half a world away, you can't wash away the stain of her deceivin' and the things that you could not believe...
I hate those dark and sinking feelings that creep up on you and that you can't get away from, even if you run really fast, but I love that someone took the song "Smoke" and made it a movie, probably without even realizing it.
And I still really like you, Mary Svevo...
- Cameron Crowe, Almost Famous
"Songblog"
I'm about to make a decidedly un-college admission to you: I hate going to concerts.
I love music. I really do. But I like music in the background for the most part. I like listening to that mixed tape someone gave me when I'm writing them a letter. I like listening to Radiohead when I'm reading Mark Millar or Paul Jenkins. I like to put on the Kill Bill soundtrack when I'm playing Smash Brothers. It's rare that I say to myself, "You know what? It's time to just sit and listen to some music," and when I do, it's usually something maudlin I listen to in the dark while sprawled out on my bed wishing I could weep properly.
So no, I don't like concerts. I don't like people jumping around me and screaming. And while I can appreciate the novelty of hearing some of my favorite songs sung a little differently, there's a little voice in the back of my head that's always saying "Whoa... he sang that wrong." But what really gets me is that a concert is two or three hours of your life that you've set aside specifically to just listen to music, and honestly, I wish I could just bring a book.
If that makes me boring, it's a distinction I'll accept. I'm not music guy, just like I'm not movie guy or book guy. (Honestly, I'm not even really good at being comic book guy, but there's so few of us, you probably can't even tell -- unless, of course, you're Prewitt.) I'm not a cultural imperialist, in as much as I ever feel that I've got a CD you've just got to hear, or that I'm reading a book that's just so great you've got to drop whatever you're reading and read it, or that I've seen a movie the whole world must see to believe. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just saying that my taste is my taste, and I'm not under the impression that anyone's under any obligation to share those tastes.
All this to say... um, that...
Crap. I totally forgot where this was going.
Um, I only have one CD to listen to for the next couple of days because there wasn't room in my sister's crappy car for both all my laundry and any decent part of my album collection, so these are the 21 songs I've got in my head for the time being (until I make my inevitable trip to Best Buy tomorrow) with a few reflections a la Nick Hornby's Songbook which I thumbed through yesterday at my office in Borders:
"Friend of the Devil"
Set out runnin' but I take my time, a friend of the devil is a friend of mine.
If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight...
If you find yourself becoming more and more like your demons, does that mean that you're becoming a monster, or that they were never as monstrous as you thought?
"Wait Up"
Guess I'll let you go, even though I don't want to...
It's been suggested to me that I consider staying in Columbia past the summer, and now I'm not even sure if I'm going to stay the few months after I graduate.
Perhaps it's time to discover who I can be without all of you.
"Hurt"
...and you could have it all, my empire of dirt...
I can accept that sometimes you've got to get hurt just like sometimes you're going to end up hurting other people, but what's with this sense I have that you're not allowed to acknowledge that you've been hurt, less you hurt the one who hurt you? Why are you expected to make it easier for them? And is this an actual obligation, or one of those weird things my warped sense of honor has just made up? And what about those truly monstrous people who want you to hurt forever or they'll feel hurt that you're not hurt. Yikes.
"A Wolf at the Door"
...let me back, let me back, I promise to be good...
I have no love for Wolverine.
Sometimes when you're reading comic books out in the open, like at the office or in some computer lab, someone'll come by, see what you're reading, and begin to regale you with tales of when they used to read X-Men and how cool the movie was and how great Wolverine is.
I'm just not impressed with the character. I'm not into this warped mix of Canadian samurai hunter man-beast what-the-fuck that's been steaming like a turd in the comic book community for a quarter-century. Dullsville.
My junior year in high school, I spent a month coming up with storylines I'd like to write for all the major Marvel Comics titles. You know what I came up with for Wolverine? Having his head chopped off by a fairly determined 16-year-old kid, followed by five issues of two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents transporting his severed head to the Shiar homeworld so he could grow a new body.
That's how unenthused I am with Weapon X.
What I do like about the character, however, seems to have been captured in Fables character Bigby Wolf. All the fun, gruff, abrasion, none of the tired, cliche monologue about his messed up memories and all that crap.
Yeah. I know... Let's move on...
"Good Woman"
And this is why I am lying when I say that I don't love you no more...
Every night at 12:30, I watch Recess on the Disney Channel. I used to tape Fillmore! every Saturday morning until it became clear to me that I'd seen every episode. I miss Dream Job every week because that's the time Brent Jones, Part II and I have set aside to watch Teen Titans.
I should be able to converse with kids. I should be able to bond with them over yesterday's episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog. Instead, I get the distinct feeling that kids don't like me. That they've got some disdain for me, or something. Like they're mocking me.
I get that same sense of mocking from the kids singing in the background of this song.
The rest is too ridiculous and depressing to get into right now.
"Dirty Man"
You're a dirty, dirty man. You and that other woman, you're two of a kind...
I'm serious about that becoming a monster question. I need help.
"At Seventeen"
The valentines I never knew, the friday night charades of youth were spent on one more beautiful at seventeen I leanred the truth...
Three things to consider under the banner of "At Seventeen"
1) I'm not sure I would have been friends with the people I became friends with when I was eighteen that I became friends with when I was seventeen. High school and college are just that different to me.
2) "El Viaje Misterioso Nuestro Jomer," which gives "You Only Move Twice" a serious run for the money as my favorite episode of The Simpsons ever.
3) The way Tuttle would shudder in disgust whenever I tried to convince her I was only seventeen sophomore year.
"Melissa"
Crossroads, will you ever let him go? Will you hide the dead man's ghost, or will he lie beneath the clay, or will his spirit float away?
The last time I was a senior, there was an ugly little incident about this story I wrote. i don't want to get into the specifics, because no matter how many times I try to explain this story, it always ends up sounding way worse than it actually was, but the basic moral of the story is: be very careful when you put people you know in a story you're writing.
So I try to be very careful when I make up character names for the most part. I try not to use the names of anyone I know (we're not talking about the stick-figures. That's different). But I got to tell you, it's a little annoying. Do I have to go the rest of my life without using names like Brent or Justin or Kate or Adam or Erin or Caleb or Danielle or Jo(h)n or Melissa or Andy or Joe or Jake or Charlie or Steve or Michael or Scott or Kristen or Dan, etc., etc. just because some jackass I used to know's going to think I'm talking about them?
Oddly enough, there was this one girl in high school who always complained that I never put her in any of my stories, and she complained enough that I eventually started feeling guilty about it -- not that getting me to feel guilt is all that hard, really -- so I told myself that I would try to work her name into any and everything I ever got published.
So Jeffries, when we do write a screenplay, you're character's name has to be Melissa Stuvall.
"Meanwhile, Rick James..."
Meanwhile, Rick James takes her nude and there's nothing I can do and there's nothing I can say to you. I've got a lot of work to do. I guess I'll leave it up to you.
"Meanwhile, Rick James..." is not my favorite Cake song in the least, but I'm surprised by how often I end up putting it on a mixed tape. It's one of those songs I don't even understand. Usually, I like to map out a song in my head, capturing the meaning of every line, but until I looked it up today for what has to be the tenth time since I got Comfort Eagle, I thought the chorus was "Meanwhile, Rick James takes a new." What's the significance of swimming in a kidney-shaped pool? I've got no idea, and I'm not sure I ever will, or ever want to...
I'm not as into burning CD's or making mixed tapes for people as I once was -- and I was never that into it to start with. When you make a mixed tape for someone, there's this sense that every song has to really matter, and you've got to put them in that magic order that both tells a linear story, as well as matches a sense of mood from song to song. To my mind, at least. Maybe there are some people who can put ABC by the Jackson Five right after "Colorblind" by Counting Crows, but honestly, I think these people probably have emotional problems, and if I'm burning someone a CD, I don't want them to know I've got emotional problems.
You don't have to follow those rules when you're just making a compliation for yourself. You don't even have to make a lyric booklet for yourself, because you don't have to think about the words. You can put "Meanwhile, Rick James..." on a CD for no other reason than you and your roommate spend your lazy Sunday afternoons asking each other "What'd the five fingers say to the face? Slap! I'm Rick James, bitch!" over and over again.
That's the secret splendor of living for yourself and no one else.
"Take Me As I Am"
I wanna send this one out to my vanilla ice-cream chocolate pudding pie, that stayed with me in the hood, do or die...
I get a little tired of being told not to have low self-esteem by people who are not only preoccupied by what other people think of them, but sideline in worrying about what other people think of other people.
I get tired because this belief that I have low self-esteem is motivated by a false idea of self-esteem. Having self-esteem does not mean that you assume everyone will like you. If anything, having self-esteem is recognizing that there will in fact be times in your life in which people will not like you for one reason or another (or perhaps no reason at all) and somehow managing to keep your shit together. Having self-esteem does not mean that you're never self-deprecating, because having self-esteem is not assuming that you are some faultless paragon of the human experience as much as it is acknowledging and even embracing your faults and foibles (not to say that acknowledging said faults and foibles somehow excuses them).
I don't have low self-esteem. How could I assume that anything I have to write is important enough to go on about this long and have low self-esteem? I will never be take-charge guy, but that's only because take-charge guy is usually an asshole.
"Hey Ya!"
I'm just being honest.
Half way there... don't know if I'm going to make it...
"Bad Day"
We're sick of being jerked around. We all fall down.
I think that says it all, really.
"Under Control"
I don't want to do it your way. I don't want to give it to you, your way. I don't want to know...
I'm often disappointed to find that even when I'm succeful in my planning and plotting and scheming, in the end, there's a moment of decision I just can't follow through on. Perhaps through all these years, I've subconsciously come to embrace that old chestnut that the price of getting what you want is not wanting it anymore, and I'm afraid I can no longer see my self as the protagonist of my own life unless I'm driven by desire.
And maybe I'm a monster.
"Black Star"
I keep falling over, I keep passing out, when I see a face like you...
I once read an interpretation of this song that said it was about accepting that somethings just don't work out for reason we can't see or understand, because you can't see a black star in the night sky.
I like to take responsibility for the things that happen in my life when I can.
What's the point of denying the existence of God if you're not going to accept control of your life?
What's the point of having faith in God if you don't have faith in other people?
"Rory and Lane"
Left or right?
I can't tell my left from my right anymore. I'm one of those people who has to check that my thumb and index finger make an "L" shape on my left hand when I'm giving directions. It's weird, because I remember really knowing my left from my right as a kid... so much so that I'd mock other kids who couldn't. Maybe this is just a karma chameleon biting me on the ass.
"Fight Test"
I don't know where the sunbeams end and the starlight begins. It's all a mystery. And I don't know how a man decides what's right for his own life. It's all a mystery...
I really did think that time would prove you wrong, but here we all are now, aren't we, and -- dare I say -- far better off than we would have been.
Great for us, right?
"Imitation of Life"
Water hyacinth, named by a poet...
I'm afraid I've become one of those people who thinks that poetry just has to rhyme. Of course, I've done the stream of consciousness words-on-a-page beat thing in my day, and I've certainly been moved by a poem or two without that old ABAB pattern or heroic couplets and what-not (Luis Llorens Torres' "Love without Love" is a favorite example), but I spent enough time on the staff of Purple Magazine to come to the conclusion that a lot of people think that since a poem doesn't have to rhyme, all they have to do is work out extended and mixed metaphors about their souls being shattered or torn or whatever, and they're the new Anna Akhmatova or somesuch. At least when a poem rhyming, you get the sense that it more than just someone babbling whatever nonsense that comes to mind on a page -- that's what blogging's for, for fucksake.
I'm not a poet, but I know it. You need that deep secret tossing inside you.
"There's Always Someone Cooler Than You"
Make me feel tiny if it makes you feel tall, but there's always someone cooler than you. Yeah, you're the shit but you won't be here for long oh, there's always someone cooler than you. Life is wonderful. Life is beautiful. We're all children of one big universe, so you don't have to be a chump.
Yeah, but back to what I was saying about self-esteem, I'd say that there's a fine line between not caring what other people think about you, and being rude. Self-esteem and civility are not mutually exclusive, but they don't necessarily mesh well at times.
And that is why -- to paraphase the great priest -- I, so meretricious in my conceit, am become the king of fools. That's how Mr. Sense of Himself ends up a chump so often.
"Magazine Called Sunset"
There's a magazine called sunset and a tape machine that won't let me ever forget this impossible longing for you...
I feel bad, because when I see my friends suffering with romantic dilemma's, I always want to tell them to just give up. The only thing I've learned over the last few years is that there is inevitable a point in which it's just better to move on with your life, because if you keep trying, you're going to end up playing the chump.
I feel bad, because while I believe this is absolutely true in some of the cases I've been presented with these days, this is something you can't tell someone, because it's just something you have to learn.
"Ode to a Superhero"
"With great power comes great responsibility." That's the catch phrase of old Uncle Ben. If you missed it, don't worry, they'll say the line again and again and again.
What? You thought I'd write an entry this long without making some reference to Spider-Man? That's crazy!
"She Don't Want Nobody Near"
Pretty white-washed lies, endless alibis, and reasons that need cleanin' every night. Half a world away, you can't wash away the stain of her deceivin' and the things that you could not believe...
I hate those dark and sinking feelings that creep up on you and that you can't get away from, even if you run really fast, but I love that someone took the song "Smoke" and made it a movie, probably without even realizing it.
And I still really like you, Mary Svevo...
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