Glass House Memoirs

Marc and I are watching Fat Kid Rules the World.  If you haven't seen it, it's a really funny movie about a fat kid who is about to commit suicide when a junkie punk rocker teen saves his life, in every respect of the word.

There's this club scene in it, where the fat kid is at his first show, and the band is of course pretty much just like every other garage band, but the kids in the club are jumping and cheering, because that's what it means to be young and love life.

And as I watched this scene, there was this great rush of memories of what it was like to be young and love life. Like those nights, where we'd drive around looking for parking for what seemed like hours and finally make it into the Whiskey (or the Key Club or the Roxy or the Glass House or the Chain Reaction or.... yeah.....) where we'd push our way as close to front as we could and stand shoulder to shoulder, waiting for (insert cool hard core band from 15 years ago here) to start playing. And when they did, we'd jump up and down and sing along because inevitably we would know every word (especially if it was Project 86... they usually started with "Stein's Theme," which I still remember lyrics to -- "You hate us 'cause we'll never go away. We're like some sort of fungus, growing every day." Classic hard core lyrics, if every there were any).  I'd check out all of the band members and decide which one I thought was cutest.  I'd get immeasurably excited if I was somehow close enough to feel droplets of his sweat as he shook his hair from stage. Those times when it happened to be AMR playing and I'd inevitably be tagging along with Marc, those were especially exciting times because I'd of course end up feeling like I was "with the band," and well... being "with the band" is pretty much the coolest thing ever.

Which reminds me of how markedly cool my husband was.  I will never forget how there was this band that was the super popular local band his senior year, "Needful Things," and they played  a concert for his 19th birthday party in his backyard, and that was like... awesome.  Which really speaks multitudes for how cool my in-laws are because, really... if I was somehow magically cool enough to get a band to play my party, my parents would never have said yes. My dad would be too paranoid that someone would call the cops.

I miss being young. I don't even know any small bands any more.  I only know the names I hear my students buzz about seeing at Warped Tour.

I'm Old.
:-(