33 Things I Know

Tomorrow I turn 33.

At this point in my life I don’t know everything there is to know- I only know some things. Things you know are absolute- they are facts as far as you are concerned. They are bases of discussion, conversation starters, conversation enders, and possibly points of contention. But ultimately they are simply enough, just the things you know.

Here are 33 things I know as of today, the day before I turn 33.

1. I know you can’t beat flip flops when it comes to foot wear.

2. I know the Red Sox will always be the team I care about the most, although this has been less rigid in the past couple years- with the Patriots & Celtics sneaking in there.

3. I know the difference between a $15 haircut and a $25 haircut.

4. I know the Wire is my favorite television show of all time. Arrested Development is second and the Office (prior to season 7) is third. Notable mentions are Lost, Madmen, Seinfeld and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. In the next couple years I could see Boardwalk Empire and/or Game of Thrones cracking that list.

5. I know the best hat I ever owned was a green fitted Michigan State hat.

6. I know that after a while, you can get sick of drinking only water.

7. I know that the only state not on an ocean I could live in is Colorado.

8. I know the best job I ever had was being a deckhand at Casco Bay Lines.

9. I know I will always look fondly upon Isuzu Troopers.

10. I know I prefer black ink to blue ink, but I’m not entirely sure why.

11. I know that I really came to appreciate the city of Philadelphia.

12. I know my favorite baseball player of all time is Ryne Sandberg.

13. I know that I never thought I’d have a nickname with more staying power than Burns.

14. I know Life cereal will always be the best cereal there is and if you mix it with Honey Nut Cheerios, it’s a work of art.

15. I know beer tastes best in a cold bottle.

16. I know that sporting a handlebar moustache makes me look angry and troubled, regardless of what my mouth is doing.

17. I know the five best concerts I’ve been to are (in no particular order):
- Pearl Jam at the Spectrum in Philly
- My Morning Jacket at the Mann Center in Philly
- Phish’s midnight set on 1/1/00 at Big Cypress Indian Reservation in Florida
- U2 at the old Foxboro Stadium in Mansfield, Mass
- From Good Homes at the Recher Theater in Towson, Maryland

18. I know that life got easier when I stopped caring what everyone else thought.

19. I know that mix tapes are better than mix CD’s.

20. I know I wish I was five inches taller.

21. I know 75 to 83 degrees and sunny is where it’s at.

22. I know playing music for people is one of the best feelings there is.

23. I know Goucher College might not be for everybody, but it was for me and I have no regrets.

24. I know I actually do have one regret about Goucher and it’s that I wish I had done a semester abroad. I really wouldn’t have missed as much as I thought I would.

25. I know that at weddings I drink Gin & Tonics.

26. I know my favorite place I’ve been to in California is San Diego.

27. I know that someday I want to go to Europe and do the following: fly to London, travel to Ireland and then over to Scotland, then on to Norway & Sweden, followed by taking a boat to Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Holland, France, Portugal, Spain and finally taking another boat to Italy. If Greece was included, that’d be dope. But if not, it’s not a deal breaker.

28. I know that I can’t wait to have a dog.

29. I know that for me, coffee just does a job. Taste is secondary.

30. I know Portland, Maine is the greatest place in the world July through October.

31. I know that my next vehicle will be a SUV or a truck. Cars aren’t for me.

32. I know patience isn’t my strong point, but everyday I’m working on it.

33. I know I’m a lucky dude because I met Kim and I had to be lucky for that to happen.

That’s what I know.

Go Pats.

Kick out the Jams: a Mix Tape retrospective

For the most part, they are all gone.

There were probably over a hundred of them. Could of been more, but a lot of them, they had been re-used. White out changed everything.

Mix tapes.

Not hip hop mix tapes (although there were literally mix tapes made of hip hop,) but straight up mix tapes- collections of songs; a mix of songs on a cassette tape. They were everything from age 10 to age 27. My whole world was based around mix tapes- the playing of them and the making of them. But then one day, just like with the dinosaurs, they were all gone.

Maxwell made solid blank tapes. Ninety minutes was standard, 110 for something special, and 120 for serious business. A block of them- maybe a pack of ten, was consistently one of the most reliable gifts I would recieve in regards to how happy I was to get them. The problem was never filling them. The problem was always what should fill them. Sometimes there were themes or sometimes for someone. Always a treat was taping an album and deciding what to fill the blank space with. Should it be old songs of that band or something that sounded like them; something along the same lines? I don't remember using fast forward all that much. It was all about pressing play and then pressing eject. When they made walkmen that would flip 'em automatically, it, like White Out and duel tape decks, changed everything.

A favorite reason to make a mix tape was a road trip. It started when I was younger as a passenger and continued up to when I could drive and rocked the Escort to and from Baltimore. This included plane trips; making a mix or two for the plane ride to Florida. One of the most important things I always needed to pack was batteries. If batteries were to go dead, shit went south quick- unless you had back ups. So always remember extra batteries. And always pack one more tape than you think you should, because you never know.

Chris Murton, a friend from high school, made one of my favorite mix tapes; a tape I listened to all through college. It was warm up music for our soccer team that year and was an amazing mix tape made up old school hip hop and funk jams. They were songs Murton had used when he took break-dancing classes at the Y. I don't remember when I last listened to that mix, but I also never remember taking a trip when I didn't bring that tape with me.

In the Mix Tape Hall of Fame, Kenny Smith, the Kenny Smith, would be in there. When we came back for sophomore year at Goucher, Kenny came back from his parents' house in central New Jersey with perhaps what was one of the most impressive collections of mix tapes- in terms of size, scope and attention to detail, I had ever seen. They were all Phish bootlegs. A lot of them. Kenny had spent the summer pumping gas and using the Internet to find bootlegs to trade for. I didn't know where to start, there were just so many. So many shows and set lists, that I didn't know how to pick one to listen too. But Kenny did. Impressively. He was like a librarian presiding over his own collection. He could match any mood or social setting with a set- frequently in less than five minutes. During those five minutes, I'd be playing Murton's Soccer mix tape.

Mix tapes, as I got older, became like scrapbooks and were retrospectively, very revealing and informational. I could follow relationships through what songs were on mixes and what bands had creeped in. I could see moods and speculate what was going in my life at the time of a certain mix's creating. Thinking back, the last times tapes were regularly in my life was when I lived up on the Eastern Prom in Portland with Obie and we used them in the bathroom for the Bathroom Boombox. The Bathroom Boombox, like mix tapes, was an essential part of every bathroom I regularly used until I moved to Philadelphia. Regardless of whose it was, the Bathroom Boombox was old, large, and had small splotches of paint on it. For my Bathroom Boombox, it was replaced by Bathroom Clock Radio and with that change, mix tapes all put disappeared. They either didn't survive the move off the Prom or didn't survive Mom's purging of the basement.

During those last few years in Portland, mix tapes were ushered out of existence by the progress of buring CD's. Soon mix tapes were all but completely replaced by mix CD's. For the most part, this was a good change. It made it easier and tape decks were becoming obsolete. Especially when I was playing with Sidecar, the burned CD became a major staple in all of our lives. We were constantly buring CD's; something to give away at shows. Put labels on 'em and they'd almost look professional. I-tunes came along and like the automatic side-changer on Walkmens before it, was a game changer. It made playlists easier to create, no scrap paper was needed anymore and mistakes easily fixed. And as a bonus, it was incredibly faster to burn a mix CD than to record a mix tape. I'm not a scientist. I don't know the ratio or percentage of how faster it was. I'm sorry. But you can see and probably know, it was faster.

But in some cases, the magic was gone. It was gone for a simple reason: skip. Skip was the new fast forward. Part of the magic and soul of mix tapes was the construction of them, the order of the songs. It was meant to be seen as whole. Mix CD's lost that because skip made it so easy to miss a song or two; ruining the intended flow of a mix. The hope that the mix would be listened to every time from start to finish faded fast. Burned CD's were shorter, easier to make, and slightly cooler looking and like raccoons replacing dinosaurs, they moved right in and took over the game.

So here's to mix tapes. Here's to the Head-Bobbin' Tunes mix and the Maine or Bust mix. Here's to the Reggae mix, the Hip Hop mix, and the Let's Get Wasted Loud Music mix. Here's to the Darkroom Jams mix, the Flight to Boulder mix, or the Jamtastic Tunes mix.

You are gone, but not forgotten.

What's the point, break?

Realizing that Point Break wasn't even half the awesome movie I remembered it was wasn't nearly as tragic as realizing Santa Claus wasn't real (last year was brutal,) but it was definitely close. On a scale of one to ten, ten being "it takes me three days to believe it" shocked and one being "dude, I already knew that" shocked, the Santa Realization comes in around a six, the Point Break Realization nudges a three.

Not having watched the movie unedited for a few years, I was initially pretty stoked it was on. Of course, this was Point Break, a defining movie of my middle school years. This was a killer movie with surfing, criminals in presidents' masks, Anthony Keidis of the Chili Peppers shooting his foot, and Lori Petty. As a middle schooler, I loved Point Break and I remember when we'd catch it on HBO on a lazy Saturday, for a couple of dudes from Maine, it made California look mythical. Shit, the movie made Keanu Reeves look like an actor and sleeveless shirts acceptable.

But several years later, Point Break just doesn't seem as gnarly as it used to.

It actually seems pretty dumb and really just another lame bank robber movie whose only redeeming quality is the surfing. Unfortunately the surfers are Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves, one a beach bum philosopher and the other is Johnny Utah!. One character is actually named Grommet and all the surfer dudes look like a bar band from Jersey when they're not surfing. Patrick Swayze, the buddah of the goup reminds me of every annoying lot rat at a Phish show or pseudo-beach bum constantly waxing his board as opposed to riding it I've run into. He doesn't make sense! He's a terrible leader! Sure he throws cool parties, but you can't trust a dude who rolls with a biker named Rosie and wears crew neck sweatshirts.

If you're left with only question after watching Point Break, it's probably why did Bodie go for the vault?

If you're left with a second question, it's probably- what happened to Lori Petty?

And Lori Petty, well yeah dude she's cute as hell in Point Break- but it's elf-girl cute. Elf-girl cute is a cruel and deceiving kind of cute. It's a kind of cute that doesn't have much of a life span because it involves elves- elves always have an evil side. It's science, hard to explain. Bottom line is that her cuteness isn't the hotness that seemed to be there in middle school. Instead, elf girl cuteness. I don't dance with that pony anymore. But still, what happened to Lori Petty? Is she still acting? Does she maybe run a dog-walking service in Minnesota? A few weeks ago, when I was wondering when Christopher Lloyd might make a new movie, someone told me he was dead. No way I believed that. But I think if someone told me Lori Petty was dead, I would probably believe them without hesitation.

California was probably a pretty cool and interesting place in 1991 and I suppose Point Break was meant to capture that spirit, that time in history. Now though, it feels exploitative, a movie cashing in on a fad. It feels cheap.

It feels simple.

There is always a time and place for the simple in our lives, when we need things packaged in a certain way- a way that makes it the most accessible. As a middle school kid, Point Break was a guided map to our hearts. There were even some boobies!

It was simple.

Watching Point Break made me feel old- it was made in 1991, which according to calculations is an eight because shit I didn't realize how long ago that was. But just old in the same way seeing 311 made me feel old. It's just seeing that the times are changing, things are happening around you now. Nothing big, nothing major or life altering. The only thing it will change is the next time around, when I notice that Point Break is on, I won't be as inclined to watch. I'll watch something else, like the World Baseball Classic or MSNBC.

Something grown ups watch.

But still- why did Bodie go for the vault?

Part 9: Don't turn the volume down, I'll just stand back a little bit.

That wet, drenching, just slippery and way too slick sweat last night was a special sweat.

It was summer concert sweat.

Specifically, it was a 311 summer concert sweat- the kind of sweat that changes the color of your t-shirt, makes rubber beer bottles slip out of your hand, creeps and crawls into your eyes, and causes you to think Gatorade is running out because of how fast you drink it.

But it's also the sweat of nostalgia. It's the sweat of familiarity and knowing that despite all the bullshit, some things are right in the world. P Nut is always going to roll out a killer bass solo despite what the cost of gas might be and Chad Sexton is always going to lead the most bad ass drum jam this side of the Mississippi regardless of the absurdity of Bush's Economic Stimulus plan. Nick Hex and SA, those dudes are always going to be bouncing around the stage, singing and rapping their hearts out despite the pretty sound economy and the guitarist will be shredding the shit out of Stage Right if those Mormon kids go back with their crazy families or not.

Although with that sense of familiarity comes the sure-footed signs of uncompromising reality.

I'm getting old, dude.

Not ancient or anything, but really, things just aren't what they used to be.

And I'm totally fine with that. If anything, I've grown accustomed to realizing my age at concerts. At Widespread Panic in Towson senior year, Paul and I got yelled at by some G D hippies for getting too close to the stage, making me realize that shit man, the party's over here. Time to move on. At It, the large Phish thrown down up in Maine, the apocalyptic lot scene and the vacant eyes of all those kids tromping through the mud hit me hard because none of it seemed real anymore. It was all happening around me, as opposed to happening with me. Now that party ship was setting sail too- and drug tests had become a symbolic change as well as very real one. Then last night at 311, where the kids walking by just kept getting younger and younger and someone was feeding all these little ninjas some might fierce jungle juice cause they were all absolutely wasted- gals crying and dudes all jacked up looking for the next fight- the disconnect was there again.

Yet at the same time, concerts have also been where I've felt the youngest and most at home. Spearhead, G Love, 311's show last year, Phish shows in '01, Beastie Boys just to name a handful.

So really I don't think it's as much about the band as it is some kind of crazy crash landing of fate and timing and high temperatures. Which really isn't that bad. Because if you're going to have a age-realizing moment, it might as well be accompanied by some good music.

It'd be a damn shame if it happened at the grocery store.

They play shitty music there- nothing to realize your age too. Good to buy milk too, but terrible to define yourself too.

All John Mayer is going to make me realize is that I need peanut butter.

Thanks for nothing, John.

ps. Thanks for the tickets Molly and Zack Attack.