500 Miles Is A Long Drive In A Car

Sweltering heat always calls for the musical accompaniment of Modest Mouse. There's something about the music that evokes this picture of people on roadtrips during the summer, with the windows down and enduring the intense heat of landlocked roads to save gas money. When I close my eyes, this is what I see, and it makes me smile. It makes me think, I'm going to do that one day.

The first roadtrip I want to take is up the West Coast, on the Pacific Coast Highway, snuggled in between ocean and cliffs. I want to take it all the way up, as far as it will go. We'll stop at IHOPs and Waffle Houses to get hearty, fattening meals and to consult our maps. We would take turns driving and controlling the soundtrack of our epic West Coast roadtrip. At night, we'll pull over, turn the music off and get out of the car. We'll lean ourselves against the windshield and look at the stars, listening to the Pacific Ocean continuously building and breaking on dark jagged rocks. We'll stay at hostels and meet eccentric international travelers with skewed perceptions of the American ideal, and we will prove them wrong. We will have a new selection of streets to drunkenly stumble around on every other night. We will remind ourselves that we are only 23 going on 24, and it's too early for a life crisis. At the end of it, where ever we are, we will stand on something and jubilantly raise our arms on a job well done and I might yell something stupid like I FEEL INFINITE.

I'm in a piss water daze. There are just certain things I realize with clarity.

I just don't want to be here.

So the most fucked up thing is that Seth Rogen has a cute girlfriend. Why is that fucked up?

Seth Rogen... was never really that attractive. I understand he might have a killer personality, I really do. But you know what... an average, or even totally less than average, girl does not get by on her personality. A less than average girl does not end up with a hot boy. Because guys are inherently more superficial than girls. And all these Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen movies are just further fueling this double standard. All these meh dudes ending up with ridiculously hot women.

Goddamn.

Clarissa Explains It All is the best show for a young, impressionable girl to watch. Ever. Regardless of the '90s cultural references. The character of Clarissa, herself, is the best role model a young girl could have. She was the most self-assured, independent, marches-to-the-beat-of-her-own-drum, "boys? who needs 'em?" kind of girl. She is the only female character on television who didn't define herself by a boy she liked. She wore little make-up and never had body issues. She created her own video games and used big words like "objectivity". She made her own trends. She stood up for herself and eloquently fought for her rights (to dress how she wanted for picture day, to drive, etc). She showed that boys and girls could, in fact, just be friends.

I can't think of any other female character on TV who is like that. Whoever worked on her character development was an amazing person, and I am glad I grew up watching that. I wish I had remembered the show more in high school. Even now, even at 23, she's a great role model. If I have kids, they are totally watching the DVDs.

Thanks to Netflix, I have now checked off the last film left on my Rated R movies list from middle school. My parents were crazily adamant about not letting me watch Rated R movies, so I started a list of them and vowed that when I turned 17, I would begin the process of renting them all. The last film left was The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, a prime example of pre-Entourage Adrian Grenier flick. I can't really remember how I found out about it, as it came out in 1998 and was an "independent movie". And I lived in a small town called Cape Coral, on the coast of southwest Florida. Which was culturally depraved.

Ain't it interesting that most of my cultural exposure back then came from Seventeen, Rolling Stone and MTV? I'm pretty sure I read about this movie in Seventeen. All of these things used to be so cool during my childhood. Then the boy-band, pop-slut movement took hold of the entertainment industry, and it all went to shit.

I blame everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, on that phenom...enon. The situation this country is in now, culturally, socially, economically, environmentally - it's all linked back to this boom in bubblegum pop. Paris Hilton made it worse. Miley Cyrus is making it worse-er. And God, I hate this wasteland.

Can You Still Feel the Butterflies?

On February 23rd, I experienced nearly two hours of pure joy. One of my favorite bands in the world performed one of my favorite albums of all time in its entirety, and oh boy, did they perform. It was flawless. You couldn't tell it had been 10 years since they played most of those songs. I can't imagine how intense their rehearsals must have been.

But yes, witnessing Jimmy Eat World play Clarity cover to cover (yes, even Goodbye Sky Harbour) is on my list of "BEST NIGHTS EVER". I have only ever been so wholly satisfied with a show once before - Explosions in the Sky on April 13th, 2008, Variety Playhouse in Atlanta, GA. Actually, I take that back. I have only ever been so wholly satisfied TWICE before. I have to add Owen and Caithlin De Marrais on December 6th, 2008, at Mercury Lounge in New York, NY.

From Jimmy Eat World Clarityx10

I wish my friends could have been there with me. You would think that I could have befriended a Jimmy Eat World fan in New York by now, but no. Meeting people at concerts never works out, either, because they're all there with THEIR friends.

...I don't think I have ever used that many homophones in one sentence.

Anyway, to answer the question: yes, I definitely still feel the butterflies.

Smog

I have never been much of an environmentalist. It's not because I don't care. I just see pollution as the natural evolution of things. Global warming and cooling are natural phenomenons; humans just sped up the process. Extinction is natural. Life begins and ends with a big bang; this is our big bang.

Besides have you ever really looked at a city nestled in a bit of smog? On an exceptionally clear day, you have a pale blue sky bordering the brown haze settled over the city, and it's actually beautiful. It's like an aged photograph or a typical polaroid.

As you zoom in, kids are playing in the city streets and they're breathing all that brown in and they're growing up and surviving and having children who breathe more brown in. And THAT is amazing, that is beautiful, that we can survive breathing all this dirty brown air.

My point is, I guess... humans can't always play God. This is what caused the problem in the first place. We have to accept ourselves as the viruses that we are and move on; let Nature take its course. You can't reverse what is happening. We were doomed ever since we started walking upright.