The 5 Year Plan

In college, I had a friend tell me about how they and their significant other had this huge plan on how they were going to support each other through med school and law school respectively, and get married when it was all said and done. I'm a hopeless romantic, but I gave this elaborate and convoluted plan a 0% chance of success. There're just too many variables and too many things change over a 5-10 year block of time, especially in anyone's 20s. About a year later, my friend's grand plan came to a halt when their relationship ended.

Unfortunately, things didn't work out for my friend. I didn't gloat that I was right. In fact, I used to think I had things all figured out. I thought I would be writing and director films/TV shows by the age of 25. So if anyone was naive about how life worked, it was obviously me more than anyone else. So perhaps, while my friends were settling down and getting married, I veered off course and toiled in oblivion for a while. I didn't have a plan on how to be a responsible working adult, but perhaps life had it all figured out for me.

2006 was a terrible year where I was emotionally gutted like a fish at the beginning of the year. I eventually recovered and surprisingly found myself in a relationship near the end of the year. I started my ascent from starving artist to someone who didn't necessarily have to live from paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet. At this point, I thought "okay, end of story. We live happily ever after. The end." Unfortunately this was not to be.

We ended our relationship a year later and 48 hours after that, I was out of a job. Earlier in the year, I had a falling out with a friend who I was supposed to move in with, but he ditched me and I had to scramble to find a place to live. Finding a new roommate worked out in the end, in a way, I felt like I was basically back at square one. I wouldn't say I hit rock bottom, was able to keep it together more or less. It felt like 2007 was a reboot year. The progress in 2006 wasn't going to cut it, so I needed to wipe everything clean. I didn't like my job nor was I happy in the relationship, so there wasn't a whole lot of regret, just bad timing.

That is probably why I felt like 2008 zipped by really fast. It was a year of getting a new job (actually 2 part time jobs), and spending a lot of time in LA with friends. I definitely started to distance myself from the city of Irvine even though I lived and worked there. I started shifting from screenplay writing to writing short stories and having friend read these stories via a blog. It was a year where I rarely found time to catch my breath as everything around me was changing and was changing fast. It was definitely a year of transition. It was also the year my friend advised me to start finding an outlet for my creative projects. Apparently, having a direction in life is important. Why that took me so long to figure out, I have no idea.

So 2009 finally rolled around and there's a little story about how I went to go watch a couple kids from my church do a theater production of The Music Man and how I spent the rest of the year starting a blog and doing a show in said theater with the aforementioned children acting as my assistants (more accurately, acting as my assistants). I spent months stressing out and practicing and I think it's safe to say that my show was a success. I didn't sell the place out, but I had a decent size crowd and the response was overwhelmingly positive. People have asked me if there's a chance that I'll be doing a second show or if I'll be recording my music any time soon, so I feel like I have some direction of what I'll be doing creatively. I wouldn't say that doors have necessarily opened, but it seems like I've been given support to continue down the current path.

After investing so much time into the show, I'm glad that it turned out the way it did. Though now that the show is over, I'm kind of wondering "what's next?" The past four years have been a crazy wild ride and I would've never guessed I'd be doing a show in a theater in Brea. I feel like 2009 has been a year of laying down groundwork and setting things up for the rest of my life. It's been exciting and scary, and I feel like it's really crept up on me. 2010 feels like it's going to be a big year, whether it means blowing things up and rebooting again or perhaps I'll finally move onto bigger and better things. All I know is that I've spent the last few years growing up into a responsible adult and no matter how the next year turns out, no one can really take that away from me, reboot or not.

Love is a Battlefield

This was going to be the first time that I'd be meeting Bruce's girlfriend.

This was going to the first time that Bruce and his girlfriend would be meeting each other's parents.

Bruce's brothers were not going to be there.

You would think that Bruce would've given me the head's up about these things (like when he told me about the weather for the weekend), but other than knowing that I'd be meeting Christina, I had no idea what was in store for me once I touched down in Pittsburgh - it was kind of a rude awakening. I already knew it was going to be a fast paced weekend since I was in town for graduation, but if I had known the weekend was going to be this intense, I probably would've tried harder to fall asleep on my red eye flight than sitting through the abomination known as National Treasure.

I found out Bruce's brothers weren't in Pittsburgh as I got off the bus from the airport. He told me as I was being rushed pretty much straight to the ceremony. He didn't divulge the part about the families meeting until after the ceremony. I felt perpetually in a state of motion the entire day so I don't even think I really reacted when he told me. I felt like I was watching Black Hawk Down, where at the beginning, the view just gets dropped in the middle of battle with no backstory preceding it. Not to say that there punches thrown or people yelling at each other in this meeting of families, but to say things were a little tense would be a gross understatement. If Bruce's brothers had been there, it would've made things a lot more comfortable for me. I would've had friends to talk to, since I knew that Bruce was very preoccupied dealing with the anxiety of getting to know his girlfriend's parents. Bruce's brothers being there would've also made my presence seem normal, but since his siblings weren't there and his best friend from across the country was, it seemed a little odd, I suppose. (Insert Brokeback Mountain joke here).

While Bruce's brothers weren't present, Christina's siblings were. The oldest of Christina's siblings was her sister who I believe was 16. This gave me someone to talk to so I could distract myself from the scene at hand, but at the same time there was a new level of discomfort. It's not easy to make small talk at a lunch with a teenager you've just met when you're 22 and their whole family is at the table, but it sure beats having to be part of the other conversation. "Ryan, do you have any stories about Bruce?" "Yeah, he didn't tell me that this lunch was going to happen and this is super uncomfortable. That's the kind of stand up guy that he is."

Awkward conversations aside, it seemed like the families were getting along and there wasn't going to be any drama. That was, until, Bruce's nose started to bleed. While I'm positive that there was no judgment passed on Bruce for this (no one thought he had a cocaine addiction), I'm sure Bruce was freaking out by this unwelcome little event. Ever since Bruce was a child, when his nose would bleed, it wouldn't clot as quickly as most nose bleeds, so it's not like he could run to the bathroom for a few minutes and be fine. Obviously, Christina's parents weren't going to hold this against him, but when anyone is in the middle of a situation like this, anything that goes wrong will undoubtedly make them feel like the whole world is crumbling to the ground.

Fortunately that was the only hiccup that we encountered at lunch. The check came and parents from both sides playfully argued over who was going to foot the bill. It was a relatively tame argument compared to the ones that my mom and his mom would get into back when we were kids living in Minnesota. Those arguments would often spill into the parking lot with one mom trying to stuff mom into the other's pocket, purse, and whatnot. While those arguments were never heated, they were embarrassing and drew way too much attention to us. I took the gentle sparring over the bill at lunch as a positive sign that the two families liked each other.

I would be asked throughout the weekend how I thought things went. While I knew this weekend was going to be a momentous occasion for Bruce, I didn't know the half of it. I knew Bruce would be taking his first step into the "real world" that weekend but Bruce had plans to take a much bigger leap that weekend. Though Bruce did shed some blood, he survived, and now he can share this story about how ballsy he was at his college graduation. He's got a witness and he made a believer out of me.

My Very First Metal Show

When I was in 5th grade, I had to be lab partners with a guy named Colin. He was a bigger, taller kid who had red hair that wasn't quite wild enough to be a mullet. We didn't hang out during recess or at lunch but it's not like either of us were disgusted by our pairing, at least not until he told me that his favorite band was Metallica. Like the good Christian boy I was, I told him "I don't listen to devil worshipping music". Not that I listened to Christian music as a kid, but Metallica seemed to be the opposite of Kris Kross, and that's what I was listening to at the time, so Metallica and Colin had to be evil. After all, Colin did pour vinegar into his test vial of sugar to ensure that whoever his lab partner was, they wouldn't want to sneak a taste.

Little did I know that Kris Kross would not withstand the test of time and that Metallica was the horse to bet on, but fortunately Colin and I never kept in touch after I moved to San Diego so he can't point that out to me. He also can't make fun of me that my first metal show ever was just a couple of weeks ago, at the ripe age of 27 years old.

You might expect a fascinating story of how I went from "Metallica is satanic" to "I'm going to a metal show", but honestly it's not much of a story at all. In fact, I still don't like Metallica. I like two metal bands, Mastodon and Dethklok and Mastodon is considered "metal for people who don't like metal" while Dethklok is a cartoon, though their music is actually well respected by the metal community. (Dethklok consists of Metalocalypse creator Brandon Small - who went to the Berkelee School of Music, Steve Vai's bassist, Frank Zappa's guitarist and a drummer known as the "Atomic Clock.)

No one can really take credit for getting me into either of these two bands. No one made me listen to these bands in the car, or slipped me a burned CD. For Mastodon, it was the critical buzz and the fact that they had Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) sing on their song "Colony of Birchmen" on their album Blood Mountain. For Metalocalypse, I had been a fan of Brandon Small's previous (and super underrated) cartoon, Home Movies (remember I'm a film major), so checking out Metalocalypse was a no brainer for me. When I found out that both these bands were going tour together, it was clear to me that this was a sign to go see my very first metal show.

I found out about this show on a bus trip from Minneapolis to Chicago. Surprisingly this isn't the only concert I ended up getting tickets to on this trip (Jon Brion + Nels Cline = mind explosion). I didn't have wireless for my laptop on the bus, so I called Sherlan and he happily picked up the tickets for the metal show.

A couple of friends voiced their concern about my safety regarding this show. I didn't really think it was warranted since these two bands don't have a typical metal following. Sure, since they're metal bands, they'll have some metal fans, but they're also two bands that reach non-metal audiences, with Mastodon reaching the hipsters and Dethklok reaching cartoon-loving nerds. Of course, that didn't prepare me to see a guy wearing a Bathing Ape button down shirt when we got to the show. (Also we parked next to a car with a license plate that read M. Bison)

The show itself wasn't a disappointment, but I would say that it was pretty much the same as a regular concert except for the fact that kick drum is mic'ed to be intentionally ear drum shattering loud and that the bands take little break after a few songs from all the intense shredding and drum beating that they do. Also, the Dethklok soundcheck might've been the only soundcheck ever that has amused me, as their roadie went up to each mic and growled a monstrous "HEYYY!" into each mic before walking off stage. Check one two, one two, this surely was not.

There was a mosh pit, there was some crowd surfing, but all in all, it wouldn't be that different than going to a Foo Fighters show. There were no animal sacrifices or prayers to satan. Nothing was harmed during the concert (except in cartoon form, lots of things die in the world of Dethklok, including mermaids), but more importantly my ears weren't ringing and no one made me bleed with their spiked bracelets or whatnot. I know that while this was not a typical metal show, and that most shows aren't as violent and grotesque as I was led to believe as a child. So while I do feel bad for being so judgmental as a child, what happened happened and I can't change that, nor can Colin change the fact that he put vinegar in the sugar. Dick.

The Only Thanksgiving that Mattered

I don't remember many Thanksgivings from my childhood. In fact, the earliest Thanksgiving I remember was from freshmen year of college. The plan was to spend Thanksgiving at my sister's place in LA. I was having a hard time reaching my parents and finally when I did, I was informed that I would have to find a way to get to my sister's place since they were taking care of my grandmother in LA and wouldn't be able to swing by to pick me up since they weren't coming from San Diego. I scrambled to find a ride and was finally able to find one via a dorm mate of mine named Fred.

Fred was a foreign exchange student from France but his English was pretty good despite his accent. Fred was studying music at school, I often would seem him playing the piano in the dorm. He was also a Rastafarian so he, his room, and his car always reeked of weed. There was also the one time where he tried to fit himself into the dorm fridge, but I think that was a result of alcohol, not marijuana. I liked Fred a lot and we got along really well, he and his friend once opened a show I was playing by rapping in French. Having previously established a friendship prevented the following conversation from sounding as hostile as it probably reads:

"So Fred, I know you're French, but are you going to celebrate Thanksgiving since you're here in the States?"
"I don't celebrate cultural genocide, man."
"So what are you going to do for the time off?"
"Party. I'm going to LA and I'm going to party."

So, that is the earliest Thanksgiving I remember, and I remember it because of my car ride with Fred, not because of the food or the people I actually spent the day with. Perhaps, that's why, since then, my parents and I have quickly bypassed the traditional turkey meal for whatever we feel like eating that day. We've gone from having Thanksgiving meals with a family of 8 down to a family of 3 since my sisters have married/dispersed throughout the United States.

A couple of years ago, Bruce's mom had a brain aneurysm in the Spring. I remember getting the news from Bruce and then relaying it, first to my mom, and then to all my sisters. The relationship between Bruce's family and my family doesn't end and begin with the boys (Bruce, his brothers and me). Bruce's mom and my mom are very close, my mom says they are "like sisters". On my first trip back to Minnesota in 2004, Bruce's mom welcomed me back by saying that "one of my sons has finally come home" (NOT in reference to the prodigal song story). We're as close to family as can be without actually being related by blood.

This is why, later that year, my parents and I jumped on a plane and flew to Minneapolis to spend Thanksgiving with the Lee's. I was unemployed at the time but that wasn't going to stop me from making the trip. Not to compare my situation with the level of tragedy that Bruce's family was facing, but I must say it had been a pretty crappy year for me as well. I lost my job and got out of a long-term relationship in a 48 hour span. I wouldn't say I was really stressed out at the time, but just being in Minneapolis helped put my mind at ease and helped me focus on what was more important, and that was being there for Bruce and his family.

We kept our visit low key. We didn't tell a lot of people we were making our triumphant return to Minnesota (first time I was going back with my parents). My parents did end up visiting a couple of friends (once dragging me along), but for the most part, we kept the focus on spending time with the family. I went to a hockey game with the boys, my parents went to lunch withe Bruce's dad, and there was time spent at the nursing home. Thanksgiving itself was a nice low key affair; some people from church dropped by and ate with us, but no one that knew my parents or me. It was definitely a bittersweet time for all of us but we were glad to be there.

On the night we left back for San Diego, we made one last visit to the nursing home to say goodbye to Bruce's mom. My mom sat beside her bed and held her hand, and while she couldn't speak, I know that she knew what was going on in the room. My mom started to get emotional, which immediately started getting me emotional, while my dad did his best to be a calming presence in the room. Finally, it was time to leave the nursing home and to leave Minnesota.

By no means did we want this to be the circumstance that finally brought us back to Minnesota, but it did redefine Thanksgiving for our family. I don't expect this holiday to be this impact on us every year but it is a reminder that it's about togetherness, even if Fred is right about the cultural genocide aspect of the mythology. When I have kids and they ask me about Thanksgiving, I'll have to tell them the lie about the Pilgrims and the Indians, but then I'll tell them about the time the Paks left California to break bread with the Lees in Minnesota and I'll be proud to tell them all about that story.

Reminder

Buy tickets for my November 15 show at 7:30pm here.

$15 presale, $20 at the door.

How the Flaming Lips Saved My (Spiritual) Life

It's weird to go to the same church for 8 years and then one day decide "Maybe I should just stop going here." There was no life changing event, I was just bored. I was showing up late, if at all, and was leaving the minute service was dismissed. I realized that if this was going to be my routine for Sunday mornings, I would be better off sleeping in or watching TV.

So I decided I would check out a couple of different churches and then I would decide if I should find something better to do on my Sunday mornings. I didn't feel like I owed it to anyone (or to God) to check out some churches, but since I've been going to church since I was born, I wanted to make sure I wasn't making any rash decisions. So I called my friend, Paul, and asked him if he knew of any places in the area. He gave me a couple of suggestions and I decided that these would be the churches that would tell me where I was going to be on Sundays, if I would be going anywhere at all.

I wasn't going to set the bar too high. I didn't expect to be speaking in tongues or have a spiritual awakening. I just wanted to go to church for more than the need to satisfy a routine or keep myself from feeling guilty. My sisters have stopped going to church and they seem happy enough without it. So I went to one church, and while the people were friendly enough, something just didn't click with me. I liked it, but wasn't sure if I liked enough to want to return every Sunday morning. So the next week I headed off to the next suggestion, which Paul thought was ideal for me even though he had only been there once and the only person he knew that went there was his cousin's best friend who was also an "artsy fool like [me]".

I went with a couple of friends to this recommended church in Fullerton, which is about 20-25 minutes north of where I live. When I saw that it was a 20-25 minute commute on Google Maps, I secretly hoped I would hate it. (Un)Fortunately I enjoyed it and decided that I would give it a shot and that I'd re-evaluate later. I wanted to throw myself into the fray to get a good feel for the people and the place, but also didn't want to act like I owned the place. So after a couple of months, I started to integrate, and then I decided to test the mettle of the people in my age group. I didn't want to go to a church where I didn't have to alter my interests to fit in. I wanted to talk about my artsy film, indie rock, and under the radar comedians. I didn't want to debate whether Michelle Branch was a Christian so people wouldn't feel guilty that they liked listening to her music.

About a month before I showed up at this church, my friend Phil had informed me that he went to a Zaireeka Party on Record Store Day (Approx the 3rd Saturday in April) in Chicago. Zaireeka is a 4 CD set by the flaming lips where you are instructed to play all 4 CDs at the same time and to spread out the 4 CD players you are using so you can discern what sounds are coming from where. I was fascinated by this concept in high school, except when I had learned about it, the box set was out of print. Fortunately it was back in print and my friend telling me about the party inspired me to grab a copy so I could have a party of my own. This would be my formal introduction to this church.

I partnered up with a couple of other church Flaming Lips friends (who conveniently were roommates) and we sent out an e-mail about the party. We had a decent amount of people show up (none, who had heard of the Flaming Lips previously) and we had a good time. After it was over, we grabbed dinner and went to go see Burn After Reading. While it's is not the greatest Coen Brothers film, it's still a Coen Brothers film, and I was satisfied with how the night turned out. There wasn't any sort of spiritual pretext for the party. It was pretty self-indulgent, if anything. I was inviting people who I'd only known for a couple of months into my world and was unapologetic about it. Luckily, people thought the Zaireeka idea was cool and appreciated being invited.

From that point on, I felt a lot of freedom at church, which is probably how church should be, but I've never felt that way. At the last church I was at, there was a lot of clearances you needed to receive since that's how things work at big churches (organizations). Here, it's much smaller and relaxed. For once, at a church, I didn't feel like I needed to compromise my interests. Whether it be planning events or playing guitar, I've been kind of left alone, and I mean that in the best way possible. I grew up in a church where there was a debate if the electric guitar was evil. Now I'm encouraged to make evil sounds with my electric guitar.

I've been at this church for about a year and a half now. My friend told me "At the 18 month mark is where you get sick of something or not." As it stands right now, so far so good. I haven't found myself bored of this place nor have I thought about leaving. A couple of months ago, I saw the Flaming Lips in concert with a couple of friends and my pastor. I invited him to the show and he really enjoyed it. As we watched Wayne Coyne come out in his plastic bubble into the crowd, it confirmed the notion that I'm in the right place, and I definitely have to thank the Flaming Lips for making sure I stuck around.

E-Dissonance

I'm not sure how long this has gone on for, but every week when I talk to my Dad on the phone, he asks me if I have any good news. So I tell him "I still have a job, that's good news, right", but I know this is not the good news that he's looking for. My Dad wants to hear that I've found the girl of my dreams, his future daughter in-law, and that she can't wait to start to pumping out the grandchildren. Like I said, this has been a recent addition to our phone conversations and it doesn't look like it'll be going away anytime in the near future.

I think when these conversations began, I was amused by the fact that my Dad was talking to me about girls. I embraced being a bachelor, using the cliche "I'm happy being single" whenever anyone brought up dating and quickly dismissed the "good news" question whenever it came up. Over time, that happiness of being single started to dissipate, and the itch to find a significant other started to show up to my chagrin. It's not that I don't want to be in a relationship, it's that I usually get stuck in the "friend zone", and it's not because I can't "initiate", I'm just not the type for the girls I chase.

So after doing some chasing and being shot down, I turned my attention to a certain popular dating service. I found a deal for a 3 month trial and decided to give it a shot, since 3 months of this service would only cost me the equivalent of a video game purchase. I often found myself frustrated. I didn't have a problem with the service, I ended up talking to people who only checked the site once in a blue moon. I can be a bit of an anxious person and I like to be in a rhythm, so perhaps this dating service doesn't really fit with my personality. I don't expect to hear responses every day but I think waiting a week for people to answer some basic questions is also too long.

Then I was able to find Whitney. Whitney's very cute, very smart, and has a sense of humor. Even the fact that she's in the midwest wasn't going to deter me, especially since I grew up there and would consider moving back at some point. We found a nice rhythm and I didn't find any red flags with her. She didn't seem crazy, she was just sick of the bar scene and wanted to find someone serious, and I guess didn't care if that guy was across the country. We only knew each other's first name's and at a certain point, I gave her my personal e-mail address, which has my full name in it, hoping to move things along to where we would actually talk on the phone or even fly out to see each other, but I guess this is where I messed things up.

I have a blog. It's not a personal blog where I talk about my issues or my exes or anything like that. I write short stories about my life, like I'm doing right now. My most recent post is about how my friend thinks that this little kid at church looks a lot like me and that they could be my kid. It's become an inside joke between a bunch of people so I decided to write about it in a creative way. I wrote about how I think she's my kid from the future and then wondered why my wife from the future would send her back to me. It's definitely an comical piece that really breaks down the perils of time travel, but I could understand why this piece in particular might scare off someone who is interested in dating me and doesn't know me very well.

I know Whitney visited my site because I have Google Analytics and no one from area ever visits my site. You could call this stalking, but she stalked me first by looking me up and visiting my site, so I think we're even. She never wrote to me again, so I can't be sure this is the reason that we stopped talking, but since I'm a writer and she's left the ending to our online relationship open ended, I'd like to believe that she was scared off about the story of the future child. And do you know what? If she can't accept that kid as our future child, maybe I don't want to be with her anyways.

I Left My Identity in El Segundo

It's weird to visit a city for the first time as an adult. It looks familiar, but there's a certain freedom that you feel since you're their san parents. I was recently in Chicago for the first time since my childhood. This meant two things. One, I didn't have to follow my parents around doing touristy things like visit the Sears Tower. Two, since I wasn't with my parents, I would have to use public transportation to get around. I've used public transportation before, but never on a regular basis, so it can be kind of intimidating for me. It's not second nature to me like it is for someone who lives in the Bay Area, New York, or Chicago, but I wasn't going to let that stop me from getting to the places I needed to go. I wanted to get the best hot dogs (a 45 minute wait in the middle of the day on a Wednesday) in Chicago and all it required for me was a ride on the train and a hop on a bus, it was pretty simple.

I was visiting my friend Phil and his fiancé, so I didn't have to labor too much about finding the fastest and easiest ways to get to places. I needed to take a transfer trains at one point and then hop on a bus, but I was assured it wouldn't be too difficult. I wasn't so worried about the complexity of the transfers as I was about my ability to zone out while listening to music on a bus or a train.

The train ride was a breeze. I just listened to music and stared out the window as we whizzed by Downtown Chicago and the bus ride was pleasant enough. I didn't have as much time between spots to get lost in my surroundings as I did on the train, so I was much more aware of the people around me than when I was on the train. There was an old lady seated across from me. I didn't talk to her, but she seemed nice enough. At one point of my bus ride, a large wo(man) sat down next to me. The old lady shot me a smirk and I quickly realized that this wasn't a woman, but a man dressed as a woman. They had gone the whole nine yards wearing a dress with a wig and a lot of make up. Sure, I've seen transvestites before, but to sit next to one was a brand new experience to me, and like I mentioned before, this transvestite was particularly large, probably at least 6'4.

I'll admit that I wanted to ask them a bunch of questions, but I chose not to because I would probably just come off as ignorant and judgmental. I was simply curious about their story, but understood that the general public's reaction to their lifestyle might make them slightly agitated when being asked about it. I think, because they were particularly tall, that they piqued my curiosity more so than if they were a transvestite of a normal height. I just assumed it was probably more difficult of a transition for them and would have loved to hear their story, but it ended up they weren't going to be on the bus for long and they weren't very talkative so I didn't even bother to start a conversation.

We got to my stop, I got off the bus and ended up at my destination, Hot Doug's, which had a 45 minute wait in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon. I saw down with my meal and just enjoyed the amazing food in front of me, my mind consumed with only the food I was about to consume. Sitting next to the transvestite was a distant memory and I had almost forgotten about it until my friend brought it up later that night.

Meanwhile, back in California, Lancaster to be exact, someone was committing identity theft with my credit card. I didn't lose my credit card, so it somehow someone got my information and they managed to spend $304 at a Jamba Juice with it. A couple of days later they spent $300 at a Panda Express in Palmdale, CA. I've obviously reported these charges to my credit card company as fraudulent and they've been taken care of since.

I wasn't so worried about the fact that someone had been using my credit card as I was curious about what the people at my credit card company thought about me. The Jamba Juice charge actually appeared on my statement and the Panda Express purchase was a pending charge. That means, the Jamba Juice charge wasn't suspicious enough for them to see something shady was going on. It was the Panda Express purchase that finally set off the red flags.

I wonder if the person helping me with the dispute or if anyone at the company saw the charge and wondered what I looked like and what I would do with $304 of Jamba Juice and $300 of Panda Express, like if I was like that Subway Jared guy and was trying to lose weight by only eating food from these two food chains. Perhaps they thought of me as an incredibly confused man who wanted to make up for the nutrients I wasn't getting in my orange chicken with nutrients from a fruit smoothie, I don't know. Perhaps they had all these questions they wanted to ask me, but didn't want to ask them out of being polite, and maybe that's why the transvestite sat next to me on the bus. There were surely other open seats on the bus, but maybe the transvestite saw something in me, that I didn't seen in myself, that people were leering and jeering at me and that I could be empathetic to their pain.

Human Canonball

During freshmen year of college, a lot of my friends from high school became devastated that a lot of their "friends" from high school weren't keeping in touch with them. I tried to explain to them that sitting next to someone in a class and getting along with them does not count as a friendship. This would usually get my friends pretty bent out of shape. "Are you saying that this friendship was fake?! We had so many deep conversations!" I would respond by telling them that if they weren't having these deep conversations outside of class, they were merely acquaintances, or (gasp) just classmates. This usually just added to the betrayal that my friends felt, but I thought it'd be better that they hear it from me than waste hours trying to hunt down people that were just "classmates". People just lose touch. It's a fact of life. I wasn't trying to be a downer. I even suffered this same betrayal after college. Even with the technological advancements in recent years like Facebook, Twitter, cell phones, and e-mail, people have still found a way to not keep in touch. It's almost harder not to keep in contact with someone than it is to keep in contact with them.

My friendship with Bruce (BFF!) is kind of anomaly. Not only have we kept in contact despite being in different states for the past 16 years (California for me, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New Jersey for him), we didn't live that close to each other when we both lived in Minnesota. We didn't live in the same neighborhood, not even the same school district. So while most kids see their friends every day at school, and often after school as well, I saw Bruce on Sundays at church and sometimes that was it. Occasionally I would go to his house after church or vice versa but there were never any spontaneous "Hey are you done with your homework? Come on over!" phone calls since it wasn't worth it to our parents to drive us over and pick us up after only a couple of hours.

When we did get to go over to someone's house, we usually got a pretty substantial amount of time to wreak havoc. Usually this consisted of a lot of video game playing. There were other toys (train sets, Transformers), but typically we were more interested in Tetris and Rampage. Occasionally we'd wander outside but once the sun went down, we were usually crowded around the Nintendo. Dinner would be served and then the parents would come to pick us up. We learned that we could buy a couple extra hours of play time if we could convince the arriving parents to stay for tea. This was a gesture offered every time, and almost without fail, we were able to get our couple of extra hours.

At one point, my Nintendo started acting up to the point where it was kind of hit or miss whether it would work. This caused me to later "upgrade" to a Sega Genesis (hindsight doesn't necessarily agree with that). This problem caused us to be creative and come up with an alternate activity that we could do if the Nintendo wasn't working. We came up with something that we called Human Canonball. It was an activity that consisted of jumping off a ledge in my room, trampolining onto my bed, and then into a pile of pillows onto the ground. Bruce recalls this as being terrifying, but if he was truly terrified, he definitely wasn't against participating. Not once did someone get hurt, which is probably quite incredible with the amount of danger involved. We were like 8, so we didn't really think about any potential ramifications.

For some reason, I never introduced Human Canonball to any of my other friends. Perhaps it's because my other friends and I would play sports and wouldn't need to find some mindlessly dangerous activity to kill time. All I know is that I never invented anything like Human Canonball with any of my friends from school. This is not to say that they weren't as smart as Bruce or that I didn't have fun with them. I had a lot of fun with my neighborhood chums, but some reason I just slowly started losing touch with them when I left Minnesota. It definitely stung, these people that I used to see everyday, were no longer in my life at all, not even by snail mail. I'm not even sure many of them would remember who I was if I showed up at their door and introduced myself. I probably spent a lot more time with them but perhaps Bruce and I were just much more efficient. We had inside jokes (tea!), a game we invented, and we shared many many meals of great Korean cooking together. Maybe the cliché is right. It's not about quantity of time as it is quality of time. We've had plenty of great memories, and luckily at least once of us remembers it all.

Handshake Deal

"Do you want to take my hand?" and the girl said, "Take it where?". And although he afterwards thought he should have said, "Everywhere", he only just mumbled. - Looper "Impossible Things #2"

It was a Friday when Dave called me. I was surprised when I saw his name come up on the called ID of my cell phone. We had kept in touch sporadically since college but we hadn't actually intentionally hung out in years. He had recently been trying to get me to intern at the company he was working at, but I had to decline since I couldn't fit an unpaid internship in LA into my schedule. He asked me if I was willing to help out with a shoot on Sunday in Orange County. He needed me to film an opening of a church center and the idea was met with a great deal of resistance. Operating a camera wasn't one of my strong suits, and working for free on a weekend wasn't a very appealing idea either. He told me that the shoot was going to be in Fullerton and since I was going to be there anyways, I decided to help my friend out.

Dave told me I was going to be working with his co-worker Cynthia and that he'd be passing my phone number along to her. While I knew that I'd be working with her on this Sunday, I didn't know that Dave wasn't going to be there. That made this shoot that much more nerve racking for two reasons. 1) I had never met this girl before, let alone seen her. 2) We were filming a live event which means that there's no chances for reshoots. This was a total recipe for disaster and that is exactly what we got.

Cynthia was very nice to me throughout the shoot, probably seeing that I was totally stressed out the entire time. She told me that she had heard stories of how creative I was from Dave and praised my choice of shots. At the end of the shoot, she told me that even though it didn't go according to plan that she believed that we had met that day for a reason and that we should keep in touch. Apparently her boss had lost her phone during the shoot, but she told me she'd get my contact info from Dave.

I didn't hear from Cynthia again until a couple of weeks ago. I was down in San Diego visiting my parents. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was receiving a call from her and was even more surprised by the fact that she didn't know she was calling me. She knew she was talking to a "Ryan", but then asked me who I was. I had to explain that I was "the Ryan that filmed that video in Fullerton" before she was able to identify me. Instead of apologizing for calling the wrong person and hanging up, she asked me how I was doing, what projects I was working on, and proposed that she, Dave, and I grab lunch sometime. Some of my friends think this was not an accident and that she was looking for a reason to call me. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt for now.

On Saturday, a couple of friends and I went to a show that Dave's company had organized. He had asked me to go even though he wasn't going to be there. When we arrived, I took a quick peek to see if Cynthia was there (the staff were wearing t-shirts) and she was nowhere to be found. During the intermission, as I walked to the doorway, there she was (she wasn't wearing one of the staff t-shirts). She was happy to see me (opposed to not knowing who I was), and stuck out her hand for a handshake. We shook hands, but there was something odd about her handshake. It's not that I noticed her hand being hot, cold or her handshake being limp, or firm. It was just a long handshake, kind of in the same way that Irvine has long yellow lights. It's just long enough where your brain goes out of "auto pilot" mode and you start to think about what's going on but not long enough where it's super awkward. When driving in Irvine, you can actually think "Should I go? I'm kind of in a hurry, so I'll go" and still make it through. In the case of Jennifer's handshake, I started to think "So when is she going to let go?" It's not that I necessarily wanted her to let go, it was just so unexpected that all I could do is feel confused.

We chatted for a bit and I returned to my seat for the second half of the show. After the show was over, my friends and I headed for the door to leave. Cynthia was there, once again, and I said goodbye and we shook hands again. This time around, the handshake wasn't as long, but there was still something about it. I couldn't explain to my friends until the next day where I finally found the words to describe it. Her handshake was affectionate. I could feel all this endearment during the exchange and I've never felt anything like that in a handshake before. While I don't remember any of the small talk that we had that night, there was another conversation that was happening simultaneously between her hand and mine.

She asked "Do you want to take my hand?" I asked "Take it where?" with the anticipation that the answer was "Everywhere".

Stop Following Me

There's the corner office. That's what you aim for when you work in an office. If you can't get that, then you shoot for some other sort of status symbol to show that you're superior to others. For some, it's their own office (versus a cubicle), or an office with a lot of windows. For a certain co-worker of mine, it's having computer speakers. This probably doesn't sound like a very big deal, but it is. The issue here is not jealousy, it's the fact that my co-worker has one of the worst tastes in music of anyone that I've ever met.

There's a difference between a bad taste and music and just a different taste in music. My co-worker listens to ethnic techno music. I don't really care for it and if this is all he was listening to all day, I would consider this a "different" taste in music. This is not the reason I consider their taste in music bad. I consider their music taste bad because they like to listen to the equivalent of the "NOW! That's What I Call the Worst Songs of the 90s mix". When Kurt Cobain unexpectedly passed in April of 1994, not only did he leave a void in the hearts of his fans, but he also left a void in the playlists of radio stations across the country, leaving programmers to scrounge around for sad and sometimes angsty music. That's the only sound logic for the sudden rise and fall of bands like Live and Collective Soul.

If my co-worker had decided to listen to headphones while listening to these songs, I wouldn't care, but I don't blame him for taking advantage of his speakers. I just show a little more tact for my co-workers in earshot. This is why you don't hear prog metal being blasted at 11 from my laptop. (Yes, that's right. I'm finally cool enough to listen to metal.) As critically beloved and awesome as Mastodon is, I don't expect it to be accepted in a work setting. It might just be considered a bit distracting.

Unfortunately for some reason, these songs do not affect my co-worker like they would a normal person. Usually upon hearing a song like "Lightning Crashes", I feel like someone is taking a dentist's drill to my ear drums, and then to my brain. From what I've surveyed from my friends, that song elicits similar reactions for them. So, I must understand that my co-worker doesn't find these songs offensive. The best I can do is to throw on my headphones and try to not let this affect my working relationship. Music, aside, we get along great.

A couple of days ago, his playlist of music gave me a grand idea. I asked my friends on Twitter to help compile a list of terrible alternative rock songs from the '90s. Most of my entries came from what I was hearing from my co-worker's computer, so one of my entries happened to be "December" - Collective Soul. My friends helped me get to about 20 songs before we stopped, and then I noticed that I had some new followers. I used to have my privacy settings set to have me verify all new followers but I decided to relinquish that since I don't really talk about anything all that private on Twitter, like my social security number and PIN numbers. So now when I get new followers, I am not informed who they are until I check on them. Somewhere during this list making session, I started being followed by a band, and not just any band. I started to get followed by the official Twitter of the band Collective Soul.

So somewhere during my list session, my mention of Collective Soul popped up on the public timeline, and I guess they thought I was a fan, which I'm obviously not. At least I hope that's what they thought. If not, I guess I should watch my back at all times, since I'm probably public enemy #1 on the list of Collective Soul, the most beloved band of all time. Hey, if I could survive them at the height of their powers as an awkward adolescent, I'm sure I'll be fine now. Bring your worst you inoffensive emotive band, I'll be ready.

Molly Want a Cracker?

I occasionally hang out with Molly a couple of times a year because we have a mutual friend, a mutual friend who I think was trying to hook us up at some point, since we both consider ourselves writers. Alas, we are not Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, unless Dave Eggers' feelings for his wife fall somewhere between contempt and pity. I don't blame my friend for thinking it was a good idea, eHarmony thought the same thing.

The last time the three of us hung out, we went to a restaurant for happy hour. It was sometime after my trip to New York, where I came back with the first pieces of what is now known as my technicolor wardrobe. So I was sporting one of my pastel hoodies and wearing a couple of shiny rhinestone rings to match my hoodie. These rings don't look like real jewelry and I wear them unapologetically.

I never thought a $5 ring (which was bought for me as a gift) could stir up so much controversy but it did. Molly would just go on and on about how "gay" it made me look. It definitely made me look silly and I was and am still clearly aware of that. I didn't mind the teasing for the most part, it was Molly's crudeness that took things way too far. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised since most of my interactions with her have been unpleasant at best, but I figure at some point I'm going to have to see something positive in her since my friend must have some sort of positive opinion of her.

Molly decided to cross the line when she flagged down our waiter to ask him his opinion if my ring was "gay". He looked at me, looked at the ring, and said "no, it matches his hoodie." Instead of thanking him for his time and letting him go back to his job, she persisted by once again asking "are you sure that you don't think that it looks gay? It looks so gay!" He was confused and I just felt embarrassed, not because of self doubt, but because I had some sort of relationship with this girl. This girl who didn't realize that she wasn't going to get the answer she wanted to hear no matter how many times she asked, who didn't realize that this waiter was not going to risk losing his job by insulting one of customers even if he did feel that way. She had turned the restaurant into a school yard and was doing her best to bully her way to popularity but no one was biting.

I didn't see or talk to Molly for a very long time after that. I wasn't avoiding her or angry, she just has a tendency to disappear for months at a time. She usually reappears after she's been mistreated by some guy and then subsequently dumped. Then, she finds me and tells me that she's going to write some sort of masterpiece. This has been her cycle for as long as I've known her, and it's a cycle that I even recognize even though I don't know her very well.

First there was the screenplay she wanted to write and then it was a book. The screenplay was going to be "like Garden State" and then to book was going to be "like Life of Pi, because I think my style is like the author of that book". After realizing that she always wanted to write something like something else, I told her to find her own voice. I told her that it didn't matter how well she wrote (let me be on the record that I haven't seen enough of her writing to have an opinion), she needed to have a voice. She would counter my argument by telling me things she learned about writing. "A lot of stories are pretty much the same, but they're just told differently" was her big epiphany that I subsequently deflated, since that's what kids learn in English class freshmen year of high school*.

I tried to help her without discouraging her too much. It wasn't my place to tell her whether I thought she should pursue writing or not. It would be a moot point since she lacks any sense of self-awareness. Her problem with my rings didn't stem from homophobia or because she thought she had encountered a fashion faux paux, her problem was her inability to accept someone being so comfortable in their own skin. This is not to say that I don't have any or less insecurities and hang ups than anyone else, but perhaps it magnified how insecure she was, because I wasn't trying to dress like anyone, I was just being me.

*(http://changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/plots/conflicts.htm)

A Difference of Opinion

Unfortunately, I don't travel much. I'm hoping to rectify this in the very near future. When I do make a trip, it doesn't seem to be so much about the sights, as it is about the food. Perhaps it because of all the Food Network that I watched when I was unemployed, or because I'm a stuck up foodie in general, I don't seem to care so much about the tourist traps and really tall buildings, as impressive as they are. I rather photo document what I've eaten opposed to where I've been, which is strange since I do appreciate fine art and architecture, but I guess the best way to get a feel for the local color, is to find the best local food around.

Now with the TV (Food Network and the Travel Channel) and the internet, especially with sites like Yelp!, it's easier and easier to find the best local diners. Of course nothing trumps getting a word of mouth recommendation. Sometimes a restaurant will have a high rating because they make a particular dish well, and that dish, no matter how well made it is, might not be your cup of tea. It's nice to have someone that can tell you exactly what's good and what's not so you can get a better feel for why it's rave-worthy.

Of course, sometimes, you'll get advice from people whose opinions you find suspect and it's hard to shoot down their opinions because food is something that people seem to be very passionate about. That is why you often hear "you have to try this!" opposed to "yeah, it's good but whatevs." Conflicting foodie views have caused friendships to dissolve and have probably caused wars between nations, probably. You know, they're the ones who'll request steak sauce for their steak at a high end steak house or they don't like avocado egg rolls because they lack meat. It's usually not too difficult to separate the foodies from the fakers but it takes a delicate touch to let them know. Unfortunately it's a touch that I don't have.

When I was working retail, a few of my co-workers had returned from a trip to the Bay Area. They weren't guys who I was especially close to or even friendly with, but when they found out that the girl I had started dating lived in the Bay Area, they had no issue with soliciting opinions about where I should go eat. Though I wasn't particularly fond of these guys (one was kind of whiny, one was a brat, and the third one just kind of creeped me out: he once poured out his heart to me saying that the three things that make him happy in life are chocolate, sex, and sailing - good for him), we were at work and I typically put up with these type of conversations to help pass the day.

They raved about one place, and one place only. It was a Chinese restaurant. I don't remember the name of the place, but I remember them giving me a card. To give them credit, it was not a card for PF Changs. I told them I'd talk to the girlfriend about it, but she'd probably knew of some good Chinese restaurants as well, since she was... Chinese. Unfortunately that was not sufficient reason for me to not go to this restaurant. It annoyed me since I was willing to try this restaurant if my girlfriend wanted to, but since this was a new relationship, and she didn't live in San Francisco, I didn't want to demand things. Of course that doesn't matter. We NEEDED to go there.

The fact that my girlfriend was Chinese should've been the biggest tip off to these co-workers that their advice wasn't needed, and I tried to explain this to them. She lived their her entire life, her family and extended family are all in the Bay Area, and the Bay Area has a huge Chinese population, if not the biggest in the United States. Couple this with the fact that my co-workers weren't from the Bay Area and most likely found this place on accident doesn't really help matters. "There was a line going out the door" would be their rebuttal, but isn't everything in downtown San Francisco like that on a weekend around dinner time?

I'm not sure how the discussion ended. I just know I ended up taking the card. We never went to that restaurant and I'm sure I took a lot of flak about it from my co-workers. I'm sure we had discussions about food after that, even though no particular conversations come to mind. I'm sure they still remember the fact that I dismissed their idea, even though I had total justification to do so, since everybody's a critic, even if you they're not.

Chris and Ryan go to the Wiltern

I'm a pretty religious man, while Chris is pretty much on the agnostic side. Well, Chris is just kind of apathetic towards life in general, so I'm not quite sure he believes anything exists these days, but what I am sure about, is that he would agree with me that God has quite a sense of humor. If he didn't, why would The Wiltern be smack in the middle of what is now known as Korea Town?

The Wiltern is a historic theater, and even if it wasn't surrounded by all things Korean, would still be one of my favorite places to see a show. Everyone from Brian Wilson to The Streets has performed there and it's always been a great experience. What enhances the experience even more for Chris and myself is the fact that we get to eat a pretty delicious meal beforehand. In a way, I feel like the Wiltern was made for us, a couple on Korean-American indie rock loving kids, and since we don't live in Los Angeles, don't get tired of either The Wiltern or the Korean food that Korea Town has to offer. It's our home away from home.

Unfortunately for the hipster crowd, Korean food isn't really in vogue (with the exception of the BBQ, which is always in vogue for the gluttons). So when they arrive to the Wiltern early, they're usually searching for the nearest Subway or McDonalds. They're easy to spot with their confused looks, plaid shirts, unkempt hair, and skinny jeans. It's understandable. I'd never go into a place where I or and the rest of my party couldn't read the signs or the menus. Plus with all the smelly cabbage and spicy tofu, I'm not sure that's what a Korean food first timer wants to eat right before bouncing up and down to Animal Collective.

Chris and I usually eat at BCD Tofu house (spicy Korean tofu soup) and now there's Mr. Pizza Factory, a Korean pizza place. What's makes the pizza Korean? Sweet potato paste in the outer crust and some gourmet combonations (seafood, baked potato theme, etc). It's definitely not for the health conscious, though probably healthier than eating pounds of short ribs in one sitting.

The last time Chris and I were at the Wiltern for a show was for Death Cab for Cutie on the Transatlanticism "victory lap" tour. We went to BCD and ate tofu with a side of short ribs. This was the 2nd time I had seen Death Cab for Cutie, but the first time at The Wiltern. This was almost 5 years ago, we barely still qualified as student (Chris was finishing up, I had one class to complete), and Death Cab for Cutie was just starting their ascent to the mainstream. This wasn't the last time that I saw the band in concert (Bridge School, 2006), but it's the last time that I've been to the Wiltern. Chris and I will be going back there tonight to see Grizzly Bear for the first time. I can't promise that we'll be blown away by the band tonight (but I'm sure we will), but I can promise that after 5 years, we will go through the same routine of eating a hearty Korean meal before heading to the show, and it will feel just like it did 5 years ago, and that's what a home is all about.

Roger Wilco

It's weird that your car always breaks down on the day of an event. It never happens the day before. It's always the day of. Matt called my house at 8 in the morning to let me know the bad news. He was going to try to take it in to Sears so we could still go, but at this point, my parents didn't want me to go at all. We were 16, we were going on a bit of a road trip (an hour and a half drive), we were going to the This Ain't No Picnic Festival unsupervised. To say my parents were a bit apprehensive about this, would be a gross understatement.

Luckily, Matt's car got fixed up and we headed out to Oak Canyon Ranch, whose closest major city is Irvine, ironically enough. This would be our first festival experience, and why it was a far cry from a Lalapalooza (Coachella didn't exist yet), it was still an exciting and, at the time, life defining moment. Unfortunately, it was the day Sonic Youth had a bunch of their gear stolen, but we didn't find that out until much later. We were excited to be seeing a bunch of bands that we usually couldn't see because they usually had to play 21 and up venues in San Diego, so this would be our only chance to catch the likes of Superchunk, Sleater Kinney, and The Boredoms for a few years.

It was a torrid day. The only way we could survive was repeatedly taking the Pepsi vs Coke challenge over and over again. We perched out front of the stage and caught Mike Watt's opening set. As hot as we were, no one could've been suffering under the hot California sun more than San Pedro's pride and joy, Mike Watt. He was decked out in his signature flannel long sleeve shirt and overalls, rocking his thunderstick (bass). I'd been a casual admirer of Watt, and felt a need to catch his set because the festival was named after a song of his (well, The Minutmen). He was a punk rock icon, and plus his first solo album had all the coolest rock stars make cameos on it (Eddy Vedder, Dave Grohl, Thurston Moore, Mike D, just to name a few). His set changed my life forever. For one, I became a Mike Watt fan for life that day (and I would interview him the following year at the festival), and two, I was introduced to the guitar stylings of Nels Cline.

They mostly played songs from Watt's second album, Contemplating the Engine Room, an album that Watt recorded as a 3 piece band. It was just Watt on bass, a drummer, and Nels Cline on guitar. Through the set, Nels did some serious guitar shredding, and for good measure, used a Doritos bag and a toy ray gun to showcase his guitar playing skills. His guitar playing, while intricate and impressive never seemed to get in the way of the actual songs, and it immediately connected with me. This man was, for a lack of a better phrase, my guitar hero.

I was able to accidentally run into Nels a few months later at a show down in San Diego. I had booked an interview with Low, and he was opening up for them in his band Scarnella. I was able to ask him some guitar questions, like how to use the ray gun with a guitar, and was just impressed in general with how nice of a guy he was.

It made me kind of sad to see that he was such a nice and talented guy, well respected by more successful artists, but not necessarily making it big. I'm not saying that he needed to make Van Halen money or be hugely popular, but it seemed like he was getting the short end of the stick somehow. So I was absolutely thrilled when I found out he joined Wilco a few years later. He joined the band after the band had broken through, maybe not to the mainstream, but to a place where bright days were definitely ahead. Part of me was afraid that the marriage between Nels and the band would be brief, but when I saw them live, I was happy to see him having a great time, incorporating his sound into the already robust and eclectic Wilco sound.

I've always loved Wilco, but I have extra incentive to see them everytime they're in town to see Mr. Cline, finally appreciated on a larger scale. Every time I see him out there, I don't just see a rock star, or a sell out (oh, puleaze), I see the guy with the ray gun and the doritos bag, teaching me how to play the guitar.

No Place LIke Dome

A few years ago, I went to an Angels game with my friends. We got cheap seats, since it was a pretty last minute idea. They were playing the Oakland A's that night and since I'm not originally from California, I didn't really care about the outcome of the game. I especially didn't participate in the Nor-Cal vs So-Cal debate between the hometown Angel fans and the Oakland (or just Bay Area, in general) fans. My friends and I were stuck in between the two groups of feuding fans, and to throw a monkey wrench into the whole discussion, I screamed "May the better team win!"

The game was entertaining enough but not very memorable. It was a September game, and one of the two teams (my guess, the Angels) had already clinched the division. Neither team was really playing for anything. They were just trotting out their September call ups to get some big league experience, but this game will always have a place in my heart. Why? Because it was my first baseball game in an outdoor park.

I've been to many baseball games before, but they were all in the Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dome's aren't very popular these days, but they looked really cool... back in the 1980s. The Twins played there and used all of the Dome's quirks to their advantage. There was the super bouncy astro turf, the "Big Baggie" in right field, and the whiteness of the dome itself which replaced the sky, day or night. Looking back, it was unnatural as baseball could be, but it's really all I knew, as far as professional baseball was concerned. It was almost like a perk of being a professional. Instead of having to play baseball in the gross Minnesota humidity with gnats and mosquitos buzzing about, a professional gets to play in a nice temperature controlled dome.

I never went to a Padres game at Jack Murphy/Qualcomm Stadium. (I've been to Petco, to watch the Twins whoop on the Padres.) There was a huge sports void in my life when we moved to San Diego. Actually, it was a giant void, period. I stopped playing baseball, playing piano, going to church, and I stopped begging my parents to go to games. After a couple of years, the piano playing and the church going started up again, but baseball was kind of dead to me. Then the lockout happened, and I stopped caring until my Twins started to become competitive again at the turn of the millenium.

I'll always identify with the Twins. They were such a huge part of my childhood. I got to live during a time where they won 2 World Series'. I have the Homer Hankies to prove it. Actually my childhood in Minnesota was all kinds of awesomeness. The North Stars went to the finals in '91, The Mighty Ducks was released. It was a good time to grow up loving sports. I miss the ice skating, the sledding, the snowmen building and biking around lakes. I believe I left at a good time. The North Stars left (but were eventually replaced by the Wild, who I love), academic scandal broke out with University of Minnesota Men's Basketball team, the Twins almost got contracted, and will soon be moving out of the dome (not that I object to that). My Minnesota childhood was a pretty amazing experience, and for me to think that moving back one day will provide the same experience is pretty naive. It's not that I believe Minnesota has lost its luster, it's just that I'm not prepared to experience it full time as an adult yet. I may never have that opportunity to, and I'm okay with that. I may not be able to root root root for my Twins as the home team, but I'll still love them as the villanous visitors.

The Wide World of Racist Sports Casters

I cheer for Korea at the following events (not to say that I ever boo them):

1) The World Baseball Classic
2) The World Cup
3) Speed Skating at the Winter Olympics

Why do I only cheer for the motherland during the following events?  Because these are events where they're usually pretty good (they're wishy washy at the World Cup).  I know that make me seem unpatriotic since I'm sure there's plenty of Koreans out there who will cheer for the team when they're getting blown out by Kobe and Lebron in International Basketball competition, but you know what?  I can only support one terrible team and somehow the Minnesota Timberwolves have taken that spot in my life.  

The World Baseball Classic was only introduced a few years ago, so I can say I've been on board with Korean the entire time.  I've been rooting for them against everyone, even the Americans, because most of my favorite American players tend to sit out.  I'm fine with this especially since I rather have my Minnesota Twins go far in the playoffs, then have Joe Mauer break his foot chasing down a pop fly against... well any team in a exhibition.  The other appeal with the Korean National team is the lack of Major League Baseball players, so I don't have the dilemma of cheering for a player from a team that I hate (like the White Sox).  I can cheer for Korea without having any conflicts of interest!  대한민국 indeed!

I'll admit that I can probably be classified as a band-wagoner when it comes to soccer.  It really wasn't until the Japan/Korea World Cup that I became engaged in Korean soccer.  Before then, I wasn't really sure they had a team that could qualify for the tournament, but once I did, I woke up at the crack of dawn and flipped the TV to Telemundo so I could watch the games broadcasted live.  I even did that for the sad 3rd place game where the totally phoned it in within the first five minutes.  I was in San Diego at the time, and I watched the game with my dad.  He was surprised that I knew that the game was on at 3AM and was understandably disappointed in the team's lack of effort.

So that brings us to speed skating, and short track speed skating which means we'll inevitably need to to talk about Apolo Anton Ono.  He's an Olympic superstar and a Dancing with the Stars champion!  I didn't even know about the latter until I looked him up on wikipedia!  Honestly, I have nothing against the dude and I think it's ridiculous that he needs extra body guards when he competes in Korea.  I do think he's a bit of a whiner, but so is Sidney Crosby, Kobe Bryant, and I don't wish death on either of them.  I understand speed skating is a big deal in Korea.  My dad has speed skates.  He taught me how to ice skate on said speed skates.  

Unfortunately short track speed skating has a lot of grey area controversy.  Not because of steroids or performance enhancing drugs, but because it's the NASCAR of Winter Olympic sports.  There's a bit of contact, there's some blocking, and apparently American announcers think that the Koreans use a bit of "shake and bake"-esque strategies which complete the whole Ricky Bobby analogy.  I'm no expert on exactly how short track exactly works, but I usually have to watch these races on mute because I can't stand how one sided the commentary is on these races.

As a child, I never really questioned the objectivity during a televised sport.  Obviously if it's a local broadcast, they'll share more about the team they're covering, but I never ever thought "hey they're being really unfair about that call."  You would think with the Olympics, that commentators would even try to be more objective, but apparently short track speed skating really riles up the blood for the commentators at NBC.  

At the 2006 Games, I don't think I remember hearing the word "cheater" so often during an Olympic broadcast.  It was pretty despicable.  "The Koreans cheat, they've been accused of cheating before, and poor Apolo Anton Ono isn't going to win because the Koreans are going to cheat and destroy him.  If only he could bring his bodyguards on the ice with him!  The Koreans are going to sacrifice each other just to make sure Apolo Anton Ono doesn't win!"  I think that sums up how the race commentary went.

Let me say this.  If these Koreans, who've trained for 4 years, decide they're going to throw away their own hopes at winning a race just to screw over Apolo Anton Ono, that's totally their prerogative.  In my opinion, that's a waste of time, and you're costing yourself an opportunity to something great.  I don't care if that's what your coach taught you.  It's an individual sport and the idea is to win, not to block.  If you want to block and you're fine with being the John C. Reilly to your teammate's Will Ferrell, go ahead.  Just don't expect yourself to be on the Korean Wheaties box.  Unfortunately because of all this blatant anti-Korean sentiment, it's hard for me to respect Apolo Anton Ono.  I know it's not his fault.  

Hopefully I can make it to Vancouver in this winter so I can enjoy the Olympics in the only objective way possible.  By being there.

Technicolor: Salvation

So one day after rocking out at church, I was hit with a revelation. Becky came up to me and told me that Chloé looked like she could be my child, like she came from my seed. I took this revelation as a compliment since Chloé is pretty much the epitome of adorable. She's a Korean kid so it'd make sense that their might be similarities between her and I, but that is not where the similarities end. She also has a flare for fashion, or at least I've been able to derive that from her pink shoes. Sure, it might be her "mom" who's dressing her, but I'm sure she has plenty of input on the matter since she seems to be quite the diva, just like me.

I've yet to talk to her "parents" about it because I don't know them very well and it'd just be a very creepy conversation. Saying something like "Becky says that Chloé looks she could be my kid" just screams out "I'm going to a be a prime suspect if your kid gets kidnapped" and makes for a terrible first impression. I'm sure they're nice people and they'd probably find some humor in it, but it's just kind of an unnecessary conversation to have, since they probably don't understand that she's my child that's been sent from the future. I mean, it's the only way this all makes sense.

Obviously there's a lot that I'm still figuring out about all of this, so I've written a letter to my wife in the future to get this all squared away.

Dear Wife in the Future,

How are you? I hope you're doing well. I apologize for not knowing your name, or what pet names we go by. It's possible that I haven't met you yet, though it's also possible that I already know you. I can't be sure since our daughter who you sent to the past (or for me, the present), looks EXACTLY like me. I'm not sure how time travel works, since it hasn't been invented yet, and I also have a very poor knowledge of how the Terminator universe works, so excuse me for not knowing how I should react to all of this.

I'm actually not sure if Chloé knows what she's supposed to do either. From my understanding, she should be sent to the past to save me, her father, right? She seems quite pre-occupied with protecting this baby Cole, who she claims is her "brother". I realize she's a very bright kid so I assume that maybe something got messed up during the time travel or that she was supposed to get sent back farther into the past when I was a baby. I'm not sure. I haven't seen an episode of Quantum Leap in ages. Would it have been too much to ask to have sent Chloé to the past with a note taped to her back or something? Also, while I know I've been broke since getting out of college, I think I'd appreciate taking care of my daughter instead of tricking some couple to take care of her, but perhaps she and I are not supposed to interact or be cognizant of each other. I was pretty in the dark about the whole deal until Becky (I don't know if you know Becky, but I play electric guitar for her in the present) told me about the similarities between us. Don't worry, I haven't told Chloé about that. She's obviously on some sort of mission from the future and I don't want to confuse her.

Of course, I'm very very confused about everything that's going on right now. Is she supposed to stop someone else from the future from assassinating me? How many years away is this event? Isn't she a little young for this? Do they still sell Bathing Ape clothes in the future? I always want to yell at the other kids when they play too rough, but I still keep my distance from her. There's too many movies and shows about time travel so I'm not sure what rules I need to adhere to. I'm just going to assume that we're not abiding by Time Cop's rules, or we might be royally screwed.

Also, when you write me back, can you tell me when we start dating? While I have friends who are "happy to be single", I'm quite miserable. Also, please tell me that I finally found a way to get out of Irvine. Thanks.

Love,

Ryan

A Hairy Situation

My oldest sister (41 years young) asked me why I'm starting to get so many grey hairs already.  I told her it's because I have 4 older sisters.  She then proceeded to tell me how well I've been treated by the aforementioned sisters and how I should be grateful to have grown up with 4 older sisters.  I rest my case.

In all fairness, my sisters have been pretty nice to me (though the constant nagging could be reduced), and I don't mind my grey hairs.  In fact, I believe with every new grey hair that sprouts on my head, I become one step closer to being Ira Glass.  Unlike my parents, who dye their hair (my dad stopped a few years ago after embracing his grandpa status), I will not be ashamed of going grey.  I look pretty young as it is, and I think the grey hairs will bring me a sense of class that you can not buy.

For some reason I've yet to understand, my family is obsessed with hair, specifically my head of hair.  My parents have accepted the fact that I will wear pink polos, rhinestone rings, and hoodies with monkeys on them, and drink scotch with the brother-in-laws, but every time I cut my hair really short, my parents act like I've taken up drug dealing.  Perhaps it's because I never had a vice like smoking that they could come down on, but for some reason how I get my hair cut is a hot topic of discussion on our household.

I've never come home with an outrageous hair cut, like a mohawk, and I've never had words or pictures buzzed into the side of my head.  I've had blue hair before, back in college, but my parents never actually saw that.  So it's not like we're talking about Madonna-esque changes here.  There is no cone-bra era hair style in my life and there hopefully won't be some sort of last ditch Hard Candy attempted renaissance.    Honestly there's been very little evolution in the hairstyle of Ryan.  It's been "okay", "too short" , or "it makes your face look fat".

The main issue with my hair is the difference of opinion on what makes me look good.  As much as my parents appreciate cool things (Nirvana's Unplugged in New York, Jack Black movies, and mp3s), they also think I should wear a suit to church and that I should be wearing my pants to my belly button, so perhaps I have good reason to be skeptical whether my hair should be "their way" or "my way".  Really, this shouldn't be a big deal at all, since my hair grows back and it grows pretty fast, so if it looks bad, in theory, I can just wear a hat for a month and give it another try, but to my parents it's a big deal.  They don't just tell me they don't like my hair, it becomes the focal point of conversation for the weekend.

Not to say there's a huge rift between my parents and me.  We get along great.  This is why I find it so fascinating that my hair can be such a polarizing force, while they've been fine with so many of my perplexing choices in life (film major, wardrobe, spending habits, refusal to move back to San Diego).  This debate about my hair has been on going for the vast majority of my life.  I got in trouble as a child for cutting my own hair (I had gotten paint on my bangs) and my parents and my oldest sister have made attempts to cut my hair at home.  My sister accidentally cut my ear with the razor, which prompted me to snap at her "now you need to cut the other one so they'll match."  This haircut at home experiment must've been an epic failure since it was extremely short lived.

Since moving to Irvine, I've been looking for a good barber/hair stylist/whatever the politically correct name, and my search has been pretty fruitless.  My friend recommended a salon to me the other week and the haircut went pretty well for the most part.  I was pretty happy with the length of hair but then he decided to style my hair and spiked it all up, which is not really the look I was going for.  He himself had his hair spiked up, so perhaps he was going with the only look he knew.  His hair was also bleached so he looked like a Super Saiyan, so I guess I can't really be surprised that he did what he did with my hair.  I'll probably go back there again and just have someone else cut my hair, but I'm not sure if this is going to be my go to place for hair cuts yet.  I also haven't seen my parents yet, not that their opinion truly matters, but it would be nice to finally find a salon that makes both parties happy. 

Rave and Rant

"I imagine that one day I will have children. I also imagine that I'll be a super hip dad who's still on top of the music and art house film scene. My kids will envy my vinyl collection and hate me for going to sold out shows that they couldn't get tickets for or afford. I'm not going to turn into an old crusty parent who doesn't understand "the kids of today". I'm going to age gracefully."

This was my plan for the future and it seemed completely feasible, but then I found out, that at the age of 26, I'm already out of touch. My dreams of being super cool dad went down the toilet at a rave.

Now to clarify, if someone asked me "Do you want to go to a rave?" I wouldn't even need a second to think about my answer, which would be an emphatic "No!" So how did I end up at a rave? Easy. You call this "rave" a festival, and you advertise that The Roots, Reflection Eternal, and Chromeo are all performing. I've seen The Roots live more than any other artist and tend to catch them whenever I can.

So this festival is called Audiotistic, and I did know beforehand that it was considered a rave, but I figured that if we stayed in the hip-hop room (which was actually an outdoor stage, which was a pleasant surprise), we wouldn't really have to deal with the raver kids. Not that I expected any trouble from anyone, I'm just not part of the scene. The could enjoy their techno and glow sticks, and I could enjoy The Roots.

So my friend Beverly and I arrived in San Bernardino and saw a flock of people heading toward the venue. Some of the kids were dressed pretty normally (for going to a concert) and then there were some kids, who were dressed a little more festively, which is a gross understatement. I thought I kind of knew what to expect wardrobe wise from these raver kids. Bright colored clothing, perhaps some colorful jewelry, (you know, things that I wear on an daily basis). To my surprise, ravers these days (guys and girls) prefer to wear as little clothing as possible, except for their boots with the fur (minus the apple bottom jeans).

To be more specific, girls would show up in bikinis, with huge pink furry boots, and Hello Kitty backpacks, along with the aforementioned glow sticks and jewelry. Guys, likewise, would show up in nothing but speedos, backpacks, but without boots. Now, I've never been to a rave before, but I've been told this new wardrobe ensemble is a fairly new thing to rave culture. These people looked young, like in the 16-20 year old range, so it wasn't exciting for me to see these scantily clad girls prancing around, it just made me feel creepy and dirty.  Obviously these kids didn't leave the house looking like that, or least I hope not.  No sane parent would be okay with their kid dressing like that and heading out to the boonies for a "concert", right?

The fact that I'm thinking about this has shown me the reality that I've already become the old parent that I thought I'd never become, and I don't even have kids yet.  I thought by going out to this festival that I'd show everyone that I'm still young and hip, but when I returned, I realized that I'm quickly becoming an old man.

Just Like the Real Thing

I haven't had regular access to a turntable since high school, so the vinyl that I collected back in the mail order days have been collecting dust for almost 10 years now. I never intended that to happen but since I move every year or two, I've never been able to convince myself it was the right time to buy one. In those ten years, I've kept my vinyl spending to a minimal (exclusives only), but I'm missing be able to have a turntable at my disposal more and more these days.

I know there's the audiophile argument for vinyl: less compressed, crisper quality, warmer sounds, etc and while I do notice those nuances, I mostly miss the idea of sitting in one room and listening to music. I bump my iPod in the car so when I get a new CD, I have to go home, rip it onto my computer, and then transfer the songs onto the iPod, before I listen to it. Then I put the CD on a shelf, only needing it when a friend wants to borrow it. Vinyl doesn't seem as disposable and cheap, it's something to be cherished. It's almost feels like you have the real thing, opposed to some mass produced CD (obviously vinyl is mass produced as well).

A couple of months ago, I was notified by Josh and Sherlan that they had acquired a turn table for their apartment. I was especially excited since I had just gotten an exclusive Pavement Live LP in the mail a couple of months earlier and I had failed in my attempts to find a friend who had a record player. Unfortunately the needle was in poor condition and needles not in high demand or supply, so I was left back where I started, with an unlistened to Pavement LP.

This past weekend, I showed up to their apartment with the sole intention of hanging out and grabbing dinner with Sherlan. Dinner was good, perhaps too good. "When can food be too good?" you might ask. It's when you get fried sweet potatoes lathered in butter. That is the answer. It's always amazing when you go to one of your favorite places and still find new things to dazzle your taste buds. These are the surprises in life that I wake up for every day. To my surprise, this surprise was just the appetizer to the main course.

Shortly after Sherlan and I returned to the apartment, Josh came home, and for some reason the turntable discussion came up again.  It turns out that Josh had acquired a working turntable and had also brought a box of various records from home.  Though I didn't have any of my vinyl with me, there was plenty of good stuff.  Sherlan had his Talking Heads debut album, which he had picked up on Record Store Day (I picked up a second Pavement Live LP and a Flight of the Conchords 7"), and Josh had everything from John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band to Van Halen's 1984.  After a brief spin of Plastic Ono Band and Talking Heads, 1984's and Queen's Greatest Hits' A-Sides were listened to in their entirety.  Everything sounded clearer, crisper, there was a larger discrepancy between the soft and the loud, the guitar solos had more of an edge.  And then, everything just came together.

First we fired up the Tetris arcade machine they had, thinking Tetris and rock and roll would work.  It was alright, Rush combined with Space Invaders probably would've been a better choice (see Futurama).  Then we decided to do some Wii Bowling while listening to Sports by Huey Lewis and the News.  All of a sudden, their living room had magically been transformed into the coolest virtual bowling alley (I understand the oxy moron here) that could ever be imagined.  Sure Daniel Plainview had a bowling alley built into his mansion in There Will Be Blood, but to me, that didn't feel like a bowling alley.  A bowling alley isn't about solitude and class, it's about League Night, loud music and friends.  Bowling is awesome in the same vein as karaoke.  It's about disregarding tact and the limits that we place on ourselves daily.  This was not a night to quietly listen to Animal Collective while drinking scotch.  It was a night of the Tetris Soundtrack, Van Halen's "Panama", Sports, and a healthy dose of trash talk, just like the real thing.

You Can't Spell Recession Without Recess

In the Osseo Area School District, a child enters elementary school in kindergarten and graduates after sixth grade, where they move on the junior high school. In the San Diego Unified School District, elementary school ends after fifth grade, and then students move on to middle school. It's a subtle difference, one that parents probably don't really worry about. It's probably one that children don't really think about much either, unless they are like me, where they moved in the middle of 6th grade and miraculously went from elementary school to middle school within a week. That's right folks. I never graduated from elementary school.

While it's easy to make the argument that 6th grade is 6th grade, I'd beg to differ. There is one huge difference between elementary school and middle school: recess. As a 6th grader at Palmer Lake Elementary School, we had time to eat, and then time to play. At Wangeheim Middle School, there was time to eat, and if you wanted to eat fast or not eat at all, time to get about 10 minutes of four-square in. The grassy playground and fields of Palmer Lake also were replaced by pavement and some lines for four square. During PE, we had to wear school shirts and shorts with our names stenciled on them. I felt like I was placed in a prison.

Obviously I managed to survive the shocking adjustments of middle school life. It's now 16 years later, I've gone through high school, college and have landed on my feet in the "real world". I face much larger issues now: a crumbling economy, paying for rent and insurance, and bracing myself for a potential layoff. My morale has been surprisingly high in such a dire time with unemployment rates rising. Maybe it's because I've survived unemployment before, maybe it's because I'm anticipating it opposed to being blindsided by it, or maybe it's because I'm just worn out.

I'm definitely grateful that I'm employed, whether I'm working my dream job or not. I'm fortunate to have made it this far in the recession, but I'm going to be able to live comfortably for a while, and I will believe that things will have happened for the greater good in the end. I may no longer be in the market for a black velvet blazer or a brand new guitar, but I also won't have to sit in an office trying to figure out how to make it through another week.

I first tasted unemployment a couple of years ago. It came 48 hours after the ending of a long term relationship, so in a way, you could perceive it as me hitting rock bottom. So by that logic, since I'm single now, unemployment can only be half as devastating this time around. I survived unemployment the first time around by playing Super Mario Galaxy all the way through. This was my entertainment, opposed to going out with friends. I lived off of cans of soup and whatever else I could get on the cheap. The days were spent trying to find a job back in the film industry but that proved fruitless so eventually I ended back doing IT work. I became anti-social not because I wanted to, but because I had to. Hanging out with friends usually leads to spending money. It was a miserable time to say the least.

This time around will be much more different, not because I have a huge savings waiting for me or because I'm going to be reckless with my credit cards. I don't have any crazy plans to go backpack through Europe or hit up grad school, and I have no plans to move back in with my parents. I know I will have to put a lot of my future plans on hold, but there are always going to be things that force you to put the future on hold anyways. Maybe this will be a blessing in disguise. It's not good to live too much in the future and being unemployed really forces you to take a close look at the present. It's a time where all you can do is look inward, since the hustle and bustle of the work grind is no longer there to distract you.

For me, I'm just going to revel in the fact that, for the first time in 16 years, I'll be able to enjoy my lunch and go outside for recess.

The Resurrection of the Get Up Kids

So the story goes, on the third day, Jesus rose again from the dead, and this marked history's first reunion tour. Like many of his ideas, they were ahead of his time, so it wasn't really until Coachella started paying bands boatloads of cash to get back together that people realized that you're usually more popular when you get back together than when you were in your prime. The Pixies played small clubs broke up and when they got back together, started playing filled amphitheaters. Other than licensing "Where is My Mind?" for the Fight Club soundtrack, they did very little directly to make themselves popular. Like a chia pet, they just let their legend grow.

The Pixies aren't the first band to cash in on the reunion circuit, but they're probably the first band that saw their fan base exponentially grow the second time around. Groups like Simon and Garfunkel and Fleetwood Mac have been cashing in for years, but they had huge followings, the Pixies did not. So recently a lot of not-so-popular bands have been cashing in, like My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr. and... The Get Up Kids.

If we were playing a game of "One of These Things is Not Like the Other" with a hipster douche bag, and I listed The Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr., and The Get Up Kids, the hipster would immediately single out The Get Up Kids. The Pixies influenced Nirvana, and Nirvana in turn changed the modern rock landscape. My Bloody Valentine's Loveless has inspired everyone from Radiohead to the Smashing Pumpkins. J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. is revered as one of the great guitarists of this generation and Nike gave him his own shoe. Unfortunately, The Get Up Kids don't have a glorious resume. Fall Out Boy seems to love them, but I'm not sure that this is something the band is proud of. See, The Get Up Kids unknowingly helped usher in the emo craze even though they themselves weren't a big fan of the genre. When they tried to become more artsy, all but two of their fans revolted. Those two fans were Chris and I. (Actually it's 3, my old roommate Patrick also didn't mind the new direction, but it's a better story if it's just Chris and I). We caught them on their last tour (they unfortunately played their last show the day before my birthday) and we begrudgingly moved on.

Then they decided to get back together 5 years later. Was their rejoicing? Not really.

I didn't even check on the dates of the tour. I wasn't upset, I just felt like I had closure with the band. It wasn't until Chris called me asking me if I wanted to head up to LA to try to catch them, that I even considered trying to catch them. I was on my way down to San Diego to see my parents, and it was reported that the LA show was sold out, so I told Chris we should try to catch them the next day at the Bamboozle Fest in Irvine. They would be playing a shorter set but the LA show was sold out, which in my mind made a potential trip to LA not worth it. Also, the added fact that Chris could get us into Bamboozle for free pretty much sealed the deal.

Chris gave me the set times Saturday afternoon, and luckily, The Get Up Kids weren't scheduled to hit the stage until 8:30pm, so I had plenty of time to make it to Irvine from San Diego. When I arrived, Chris and I started our trek out to the stages, which were side by side. A band by the name of Metro Station was in the middle of their set while The Get Up Kids were setting up on their stage. There were about 30 people already waiting for The Get Up Kids. I would say they were in their mid to late twenties and even possibly their early 30s, and much better dressed than the fans on the other side, dancing to Metro Station in their Hot Topic clothes, spiked belts and skinny jeans. Also while The Get Up Kids fans had rimmed glasses, they were not wearing any mascara.

Have you heard of Metro Station, the band that is fronted by Hannah Montana's brother and her co-star's brother? They even say they're from Hollywood, not from LA. Classy. After dropping a slew of F-bombs, they ripped into their Myspace hit "17 Again". While this train wreck was going on, we saw Matt Prior take pictures of the fans waiting from the stage, and we saw the rest of the midwestern rock outfit, The Get Up Kids, get ready for action.

They came out in t-shirts, flannel shirts, jeans, just like they did 5 years ago, looking like normal people, probably a little shocked by what "emo" looked like today. Bassist, Rob Pope, was the best dressed out of the bunch, Chris and I attribute that to him now being in Spoon, a much more profitable band. Actually, Chris attributes this to Britt Daniel dressing Rob, but as of now, this cannot by confirmed by the band's publicist at press time.

The band opened with "Holiday" and the set went according to plan. They played the fan favorites, they told the Fall Out Boy fans to shove it, and us older fans sang along, as did most of the people watching from the side of the stage. Their set was a bit shorter than if they were playing a club (about an hour opposed to an hour and a half), but they played long enough to make us remember why we loved them so dearly. The band seemed to be enjoying themselves even though knowing that a lot of the kids at the festival had no idea who they were, and were perhaps amused that they indirectly were responsible for this emo explosion. They probably didn't really win over any new fans, but they reminded the few and faithful fans that had come out, why everyone thought they were going to be the next big thing around the turn of the millennium. I would use the cliché that they brought us back to a better time, but that would be false. Adolecense was a very bizaare time.

To see them now was a nice bonus, as they sang in their song "10 Minutes", "all good things have endings." So whether this is their final goodbye or not, I wish them the best, and I just hope Rob Pope stays in Spoon.