No coke, Pepsi

So, Monday morning, huh? Anything happening out there? The baby is at baby school, the economy is still in the dumps and I woke up after only five hours of sleep because I thought (wrongly) we were going to have band practice. The real kick in the balls is that I had already made and consumed my first cup of coffee by the time I realized that I was entitled to go back to bed. Now I’m in the seventh level of hell, attempting to organize a rock show, write a blog entry, peruse some pornography, edit a movie script, contact my mother about picking up her grandchild, deal with travel plans, attempt to get food into my system and somehow work in a little bit of the perfect pushups. It’s one in the fucking afternoon! I’m stuck on a treadmill of precrastination. That’s like the build up before you start procrastinating, you know? Look it up, boorish masses.
I don’t even know where to begin. I want a cheeseburger. This summer started off and I was eating a cheeseburger for lunch and a steak for dinner every single day. It started to get gross and I was worried that I was gonna get gout, so I stopped and went back to my usual diet of chicken and fish and veggies, supplemented with fried shit and pizza whenever I’m drunk/hungover/busy/bored which is like eighty nine percent of the time. Anyway. It’s fall. I want a cheeseburger. Last time I had one it made me really ill. That was, you all may recall, my birthday. Fuck.
Look, I don’t need to explain myself to you people. I want a cheeseburger. It goes like this: Double cheese…no matter what you do, if you get the one patty or two, you MUST get two slices of cheese. It improves the whole thing so vastly. Not doing the double cheese is just half assing it. It’s like if OJ had left Ron Goldman alive and bleeding, or if Reagan had just talked a big game, but never actually built the strategic missile defense network of lasers that now protect us from Rogue regimes and their unlawfully acquired nukes. Right? Get the double cheese, people. It’s just good sense.
You know what I love? Those ads for old people that feature Wilford Brimley where he says DiaBEETus, and talks in a folksy no nonsense kind of way that grandpas can understand. It’s funny. Also sad. Cuz, you know, imminent death and all that.

When you’re a baby, you kind of like anything. My son gets super jazzed if I lift him up, put him down, hand him an orange peel, sing, rap, cover him with a blanket, whatever. It’s all fun. You get older and people get pissy and tell you not to be enthusiastic about things and call you names if you are. Calling someone a poser, ninety percent of the time is just the shittiest fucking thing you can do. You’re calling someone out for being enthusiastic about something that’s new to them, for embracing something. That’s so crappy. Anyhow, so, people call you poser and/or things wind up being less fun than you thought they’d be (God! Every day I’m burying a new hooker in this crawlspace! It’s really lost some of the luster, you know?) or other people keep improving and you stagnate and get frustrated and quit(like me with my passion for polo). By the time you’re old, almost everything has been ruined. The only thing left is the old Brimley/McCain style ‘straight talk express.’ Sitting around and vaguely reprimanding young people for not being prudent because you (the old person) suck at everything you don’t hate and hate everything you don’t suck at.
It’s a beautiful thing. I think that now, at thirty two, I’ve kind of crested the wave and maybe more things bug me than excite me. One of the few exceptions to this is enthusiasm. A kid who’s just getting excited about something new is really cool, be it dinosaurs, rock and roll, stand up comedy, basketball, textile manufacturing, whatever, is awesome and I love the vibe that comes with discovery, and genuine enthusiasm for learning/hearing stories. The jaded ‘I been there and seen that shit’ attitude bums me out quicker than almost anything. I can’t stand when I’m bullshitting with some bar patron and they, for example, mention that they love the Red Sox. (this very thing happens more than you’d expect) So I’ll say something like:
‘man, my friend is groundskeeper at Fenway and one time I was lucky enough to get this awesome tour of the park. I stood on the mound! I was in the batters box! I saw the clubhouse and sat in the bullpen and I even saw where ted Williams signed the inside of the scoreboard! It was awesome’ and they’ll look at me with this dismissive air and go ‘oh, right on, whatever.’
Dude! Fuck off. You JUST told me you like the redsox. Why is the fact that I’ve had this experience bumming you out? Because I don’t deserve it? Because it’s just not that interesting? Bullshit man, it’s because you’re a bitter, jaded dipshit who thinks that acting like an aloof douche somehow translates to ‘unflappable and confident.’ Well, here’s a fucking newsflash! Nothing in this world takes more confidence than being excited about something you’re not terribly familiar with. You know why? Because people are going to constantly piss down your throat for it as though it’s their god given right to do so simply because their own experience has left them bitter, pathetic fucks with nothing better to do than re-emphasize the exact same shitty hierarchical attitude that turned them into the cock trainers that they’ve become. Ugh. The worst (and most prevalent in my life) of these people are the ‘real punks’ who have ‘been there since the beginning’ and think that everyone owes them something just cuz they continue showing up. They hate the kids, they hate the new bands and they try to bond with me over this. “dude, what’s up with all these stupid kids and their crappy bands?” Um dude, I’ll tell you. They’re dancing and keeping this whole thing going by buying records and thanking us for coming to this town and starting projects that they think are cool simply because they have the energy and desire to do so. You’re pissing on that why? All you do is drink beer and attempt to get free shit, and smell like farts. I’d rather talk to someone with no idea and a ton of enthusiasm than anyone who feels like they run shit just cuz they showed up.

With that, I’m off to get a cheeseburger. Peace.