Probably not in the way you’re getting at. I went to a really small school (100 students in the entire high school) and I wasn’t very popular, but at a school this size, you know everyone. I played in a garage band which wasn’t really cool or cared about at this school, if anything it added to our strangeness and puzzled the others, I had 3 good friends, two of which were my band mates. My school had never done prom king or queen in the past, the year they decided to was my senior year. They never did it after that. I wasn’t planning to go to prom. I had no clue who to ask and no one was really interested (though I put little effort into finding someone). They did a preliminary vote to narrow it down to 3 candidates and I was somehow included, so I had to quickly find a date, I called my math teacher’s daughter from her classroom (she attended another school). She said yes and somehow, on the night of prom I won, which I hadn’t expected. Although I wasn’t very popular, I always tried to be nice to people. I guess that helped.
Whenever I hear this song I think of unfinished basements. I remember the Subway manager who gave me drum lessons in the lowest level of his house near the park, when I was in high school, beside his OK Computer poster, and the roommate of his that slept in a room near the drums that was only closed off by hung blankets. He was once offered a scholarship to Berkeley, but decided he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life playing jazz. Instead he played drums in local bands too good to remain local, but never lucky enough to do much more. He taught me this song and burned numerous cds for me, my introduction to Death Cab, The Postal Service, The Appleseed Cast, Ryan Adams, The Mars Volta, and Weezer’s Pinkerton. I hear this song and I think of his basement and all the basements my friends spent hours in, talking about anything, up too late. The basements with the sunken couches, the nights that were never too long. This level of the house always has a smell, never bad, just a little tired, but it’s a place you grow to miss. I think of all those basement parties, where I was the only one not drinking, but still managed to draw attention and mask how well I didn’t fit in with the right jokes. While they spoke of domestic brews, I played stealthy with a plastic ninja star found in my best friend’s car, I joked about my vast knowledge of Gilmore Girls and proved it. I found a way, always.
Best Author-on-Author Insults In History
Virginia Woolf on James Joyce: [Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.
Harold Bloom on J.K. Rowling: How to read ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’? Why, very quickly, to begin with, and perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do.
H. G. Wells on George Bernard Shaw: An idiot child screaming in a hospital.
Ralph Waldo Emerson on Jane Austen: Miss Austen’s novels . . . seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world.
William Faulkner on Ernest Hemingway: He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.
Ernest Hemingway on William Faulkner: Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?
W. H. Auden on Robert Browning: I don’t think Robert Browning was very good in bed. His wife probably didn’t care for him very much. He snored and had fantasies about twelve-year-old girls.
Mark Twain on Jane Austen: Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac: That's not writing, it's typing.
Twain's insult of Austen is always one of my favorites.
I had fun at the wedding of one of my best friends last night, but I have to admit, that sitting with one of my old classmates and her fiance and another and his long term girlfriend, in this room of so many in love, I was jealous of all of them, there in my tie, cleaned up, and nobody to introduce on my arm. I was almost ashamed of it.
la lune
How this moon makes her wild with slow dance, her every angle all ballroom and dark tide, her hair every dancer, this night will only make you fool, the kindest, and biggest you’ve ever been, the most restless and at ease.How this night is never dark enough and all too bright.
you and me, you and me, that is an awful lot
in rebuttal to 61% of North Carolina and those like-minded
Because faulting something for being unnatural is a failure to applaud the gold medal gymnast who bends her body into the arch of cathedrals, given the stiff bones of man to shape.
It’s pretending the platypus is anything less than adorable.
It’s ignoring the beauty of Bjork’s oddly packaged heaven hitting high notes.
It’s damning every sweet tea and sugar cookie.
It’s falsely assuming the adult onesie is less cozy.
It’s acting as though you’ve never enjoyed a makeup heavy monster mything Tim Burton production.
It’s an unreasonable hatred for unicycles, the sprinter with the artificial leg, man walking on the moon, man moonwalking, every experiment of flight by Orville and Wilbur Wright prior to 1903, all artificial intelligence, that strange thunderhead of bonfire and bee hive that builds in your chest the first time you hold her hand.
Nothing worthwhile and worth holding has ever come naturally. This practice of love has never come naturally. Your parents, your grandparents, your sisters, and sons, they have never fallen in love too easily, never normally. Love is unnatural. Love will always only be this way.
cup of coffee, you’re doing wonders this morning, you magic morning sun spit nectar, restore me
My best friend I have these simple text message chats and he always says the most encouraging things to me. Tonight, he reminded me to stop selling myself short, to know how talented I am and how much I deserve good things. We’re generally not too outward with our emotions, not because of that male condition of burying it, but because I think we usually understand where the other’s at without needing to show it. It’s nice to have someone think so highly of you, someone you can really rely on. I don’t have a lot of friends, but the quality greatly exceeds the quantity. That constant support is unrivaled.
Old school Taking Back Sunday lyrics were also quoted and used to explain certain situations.
When you go to a wedding where classmates you haven’t seen since high school are present, you shake hands when you greet one another. It seems all of them now have careers and are married or engaged or in a long term relationship which appears to be headed towards an engagement. Everything I haven’t figured out yet, essentially. It’s nice to know they’re doing well, though, regardless. The bride was a girl who I never spoke with much in high school, but had become one of my best friends in college when we were the only two to attend a small community college for a couple years. It was nice to see her so happy and with a man who seems like he’ll be a great husband and father to her young son. I had the chance to dance with her, which is the first time we’ve danced together since we were named prom king and queen in high school. I also caught the garter, so it would appear that I’m getting married soon. I wasn’t planning on tying the knot anytime soon, but wedding rules are wedding rules.
Man, it may not be for quite sometime, but I can’t wait til I get the chance to make some beautiful girl my bride
I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.
