alas and alack, it’s been ages since last I graced these hallowed pages, perhaps my return shan’t be as well recieved as i’d prior thought... anyway, sorry I haven’t written in a while mom, see i’ve been really busy my band, my studies, my depression, and my zine. i’ll try harder to keep in touch. in other news...
I HAVE A DATE ON FRIDAY!!! FUCKIN’ YEE-HAW!!!
that’s right, I, Nathaniel David Theloneous Sugar Ray Holdren, have a date with an ACTUAL GIRL this coming Friday. (shocks of dismay cries of protest “but nate! what about the patented holdren ‘Run And Hide’ method? what about being a pathetic loser when it comes to... you know... girls and stuff? how on earth did *you* get a date with a girl?!”) let me allay your fears mine acolyte, the bygone days of moping, loneliness, and If Only’s aren’t all that far gone and yes, I admit I have had several premonitory visions/hallucinations in which the evening crashes and burns with my scrawny vegan ego being a casualty BUT I gotta try right? and if my I instincts are right and I do go down in flames, then there’ll be lotsa sulking and bitching and moaning and believe you me, there’ll be plenty’a column written about it. and now, the twenty thousand dollar question is... how did I meet this captivating but kinda-a-little-still-scary-to-me specimen of femaleness? the answer is quite simple:
i’m in a band.
(shameless self-promotion: and we got a homepage too! go there right
now!) see we played two shows
this weekend and I was talking to her before the second show and she
gave me some of her pizza (it’s love, i’m telling you, any woman who
feeds me has got my eternal loyalty... now if she’ll just pet me a
little and take me for walks i’ll even fetch her slippers and learn to
be housebroken) and after the show she went out to eat w/ a bunch of us
and we hit it off pretty well. THEN on Monday, after much deliberation,
I called information for her number and called her up. this is the
scenario that ran through my head as the phone rang-
me: uhh... hi! this is nate... remember me?
her: nate... umm... nate... no doesn’t ring any bells.
me: friend of brian’s, you came to our show Saturday night?
her: oh, it's you! buzz off creep! *click*
me: umm, great, then i’ll see you Friday at 6! hello?
but, much to my surprise, I did NOT meet with immediate and unflinching rejection (I think she’s stringing me along, building up my hopes so that i’ll comPLETEly crushed when she does decide to shoot me down...), she actually talked to me and we had a fun conversation. after a while I says “so you wanna get together sometime?” and she says yeah and I says rad and we decided on Friday. so I says “so is this like a umm a date?” she says “I dunno, is it?” I says “umm well err umm i’dkindalikeitifitwas...” and she said YES!!!
HIP HIP HUZZAH! CALOO! CALAY! O BEAMISH BOY, O FRABJOUS DAY!!! I have a date on Friday nite! I knew this whole punk rock thing’d pay off some day!!
in other news, I regret to inform everyone that I... regrettably... have started to really dig Earth Crisis in a big way. I hated ‘em at first, but they’ve really grown on me, like a vegan straightedge fungus. it gets worse... I also like the new Kevin Seconds acoustic album, the new Chumbawamba album (I know, I know, just leave me alone), and the new Southern Culture On The Skids album (come on, cut me some slack! SCOTS rule! the album’s called ‘plastic seat sweat’ and it’s so amazing, a white trash youth like myself can’t help but love it! SCOTS are the B-52’s of rockabilly/country and if you tell me you don’t like the B-52’s, then you’re a damn liar. next you’ll be trying to say you don’t like Oingo Boingo or Dexy’s Midnight Runners [everybody now! too rah looh rah ay... come on eileen...] and I just won’t believe it.)
as long as we’re making embarassing revelations here...Simon and Jim like the Promise Ring-Around The Collar! so THERE!! i’m not alone in liking bands that by rights I ought to be ridiculed for liking! NYAH NYAH! (Unfortunately Jim brought that Promise Nose-Ring cd over to my house and yeah I sorta thought it was a little groovey [GROOVEY?! did I just say GROOVEY?! NOOOO!! what’s happening to meeee!?! {*sigh* this is how it always goes... you stop eating meat... you start to diversify your musical interests... you set aside a lot of your teen-angst and start trying to be constructive... you start reading buddhism and marxist theory and if you’re not careful the next thing you know you’re wearing tie-dyes and saying “that’s BYOOtiful man!” all the time and you turn into a washed out ex-punk neo-hippie.}] even though it wasn’t half as cool as the emo kids I know said it was. it wasn’t great, merely good.)
I guess as I get a little older and (dare I say it?!) a teensy bit more mature it all becomes just music instead of Anthems By Which I Live My Life. it’s also kinda disheartening cuz I find I can’t keep up with all the young whipper-snappers in them new-fangled Mash Pits at the shows. I was at a show a few days ago (watching the very excellent Modocs) when some kid bumped into me hard from behind and on instinct I spun around and almost socked him in the face! i’m turning into one of those types who goes to shows and reads between bands! who watches the band with his hands in his pockets, tapping his foot! who sometimes doesn’t go to shows even when the opportunity presents itself! who grumbles when stage divers and sweaty punks kick and elbow him in the head while Testosterone Youth is playing!
i’m a geezer!!
old at 19.
that’s me.
fuck.
i’m so jaded...
love,
nate
ps- your homework is as follows: read A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn, Love In Action and Being Peace both by Thich Naht Hahn (pronounced TICK NOT HON), and the Marx-Engels Reader edited by Robert Tucker.Then go visit http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/guest/radical/radchain.htm for, among other things, interesting discussions on why, to paraphrase schumpeter, we should all feel VERY VERY uneasy about our future survival and quality of life, necessating that we all become marxists.
