I may have to abandon my Paul McCartney project. I’ve listened to McCartney, Ram and part of Wild Life. Three albums in, and I’m trying to decide whether pills would be easier than taking a nap in the garage with the Buick idling. For every great song, there are at least eight that are either complete garbage or mediocre. I figured Macca’s career slide occurred sometime in the mid-80s. I’m starting to think it happened in April 1970 with the release of his first solo album.
I’m on a mission to figure out the precise point at which Paul McCartney’s music started to suck. In the coming weeks, I’ll be working my way through his post-Beatles catalog with the goal of determining the album that was the turning point between mostly great and completely embarrassing. I shall report my findings when I return from this important mission. Wish me luck.
A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from my high school alumni office requesting permission to give my contact information to a classmate. This triggered a chain of events that has pushed me into full-on reminiscing mode like you wouldn’t believe. Suddenly, for the first time in 15+ years, I’m in contact with several people with whom I spent the better part of four years. I’ve exchanged e-mails and Facebook posts with all of them and even had dinner with one. In just three weeks, the whole crew is getting together for drinks and dinner.
As a result of all of these voices from the past, I’ve found myself revisiting The Box, a collection of items I can never bring myself to toss—photos, notebooks containing bad poetry and other mementos. The most insightful glimpse into my past has come from a shoebox full of notes. As I comb through these gems I’m realizing my memory of high school is way different from the reality I was dealing with at the time.
Overall, I look back at high school fondly. I remember having some of the best friends a guy could ask for and enjoying the experience. Maybe it’s all relative. I have mostly bad memories of grade school, and although college started off OK, the last two years were a nightmare. So compared to the 13 years that made up kindergarten through eighth grade plus college, my four years of high school were a pleasant stroll through a field of daisies.
Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t want to relive my high school years, and I’ve never referred to them as the best years of my life. I’m not that guy. But I’m also not one to dismiss high school as a tragic, painful time. Maybe I’ve been kidding myself.
As I’ve been pulling random notes out of the shoebox, I’m finding that my friends and I were absolutely miserable. Many of the notes paint a picture of tortured boyfriend/girlfriend relationships (or lack of, in my case), petty disagreements with other friends and the agony of every tiny aspect of our lives. Holy shit! We were typical, overdramatic teenagers.
Despite all of this drama and misery, I still remember the high school experience positively. I think it’s because for the first time my friendships were based on emotional connections. We weren’t friends because we lived near each other, liked the same baseball team or needed someone to play catch with. We were friends because we understood each other. We cared about each other. We would have done anything for each other. My relationships with my best friends were built on endless hours on the telephone late at night, therapy via notes written in purple ink, and a shoulder to cry on whenever one of us needed one. I had never felt loved like that and had never cared so deeply for anyone before.
I guess having really close friends who meant the world to me supersedes all of the overdramatic teen angst because most of the bad stuff is confined to an old shoebox and has long since vanished from my mind.
I give you the video for the song that gave me the title for this blog, featuring some fine dancing by Jeremy Piven (with way less hair than he has 15 years later).
Last night, Michele and I got into a heated debate over the merits of candy corn. I proclaimed it one of the lowest forms of candy. Michele didn’t really disagree but defended it by insisting it can be mixed with peanuts and M&Ms to form a distant cousin of trail mix that tastes like a Salted Nut Roll. If you want something that tastes like a Salted Nut Roll, why not just buy a Salted Nut Roll? Candy corn be damned.
Anyway, this got me thinking about the worst common Halloween giveaways from my youth. People who have ever given away any of the following “treats” on Halloween should be banished to hell forever.
- Candy corn: See above.
- Pennies: If you’re one of those assholes who cleaned out his change jar every October by giving the neighborhood kids five pennies each, you’re a cheap motherfucker who deserved to have his house plastered with eggs.
- Fruit: Your good intentions of supporting healthy habits were wasted, hippie. I guarantee none of your tasty apples ever made it home before being discarded. Even though they’re packaged, raisins fall under this category. Nature’s candy, my ass.
- Anything homemade: Handing out something you took the time and effort to prepare may have been a quaint practice in the 1960s, but by the early ’80s even bad parents recognized the harm in letting their kids eat your potentially tainted cookies.
- Peanut Butter Chews: If you think no candy can taste worse than candy corn, put one of these chewy shit nuggets in your mouth. You’ll never want to trick-or-treat again.
This has happened before. I start a blog, write for two weeks and then get bored. Fuck it. I’m just not a good blogger. I may still use this space when I feel the need to babble, but for now I can be found on Twitter.