Tennis shoes

It's 3:40am on what promises to be a beautiful April Sunday and I have nothing better to be doing than reheating some General Tso's, putting on and half-watching Kingdom of Heaven, and thinking about things. And how crazy things always seem to get. This is the night and what it does to you. What it does to me. Makes me think and dream in impossible ways with a clarity, or cloudedness, uncharacteristic of day. I'll sleep through half of the beautiful Sunday today promises to be but what matters now is me and my General Tso's. My cherry coke zero. The backround noise and my wandering mind. This is the night.

Greek Week seriously interupted our Ultimate Frisbee equillibrium. I arrived at the field to discover it swarmed with Fraternity boys and Sorority girls. Their muscle shirts and big white plastic-rimmed sunglasses. Their uniform crew cuts and fucking sidebangs. We started our game 40 minutes late because of their potato sack races and inability to understand that their tug-o-war game could just as easily be conducted on the sidelines. That's 40 minutes to watch and think and realize that I'll never be one of those guys. I'll never have mammouth biceps or million dollar abs or chisled features or centerfold calves. I'll never be able to competetively throw a beer keg for distance or bench press a small horse. I won't. I will never be that good looking or have that certain collegiate air of superiority.

Is that what you want in a guy? Is that what I'm not to you?

Hilton hit one of them in the head with a disc. I laughed. Sometimes it's the best you can do. Laugh and be self-righteous in the face of everything you're not.

I took Casey's advice and wrote a song. I may be an asshole, but I listen. It's not bad as far as I can tell, but everything sounds better alone at 2am than when I finally get the balls to play it for someone or to record it. It's what I want to say, though. What I wish I could reverse but can't, it seems. It's not for lack of trying, but then again, it never is. It is now, though. It's something. I've got something to show for these 4am's, these dreamless nights, these unreciprocated gestures. It's the opposite of how it happened to Rivers. You've got my letter, I've got my song.

Just say something. Say fucking anything.

On Friday I went to the Ramashows concert. The bands were half-good, half-bad. I took a liking to the fun-loving Flaming Lips-esque Lima Research Society whose infectious melody and saccharine singwriting left me with "Magic Juice Box" stuck in my head all weekend. The show's headliner really made an impact though. I Am the Avalanche started as what I expected, a mediocre emo punk rock band. But they had two significant differences. One was that they closed with a Lifetime cover, which will always win me over (unless you do it poorly) and the other was the song "Green Eyes":

When she called my sneakers "tennis shoes"
I knew she was from the west coast
or the "best coast" like she'd say
and I had to disagree

I fell in love with a ship
A vessel with at least twenty holes
Yeah but she still floats
I fell in love with the sea
A brilliant tidal wave
She devestated me

It has to have been since my rediscovery of "Nothing Feels Good" that lyrics have shouted at me like these. We all fall in love with wild things, with beautiful things. We all invest ourselves in heartbreakers and the only thing that seems to ever be true to us is our roots. So continues my love affair with New Jersey. One day I'll go back to California. But I don't think anyone ever really leaves New Jersey.

At least not forever.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike