Nostalgia Pie - Music and the Places It Takes You

Music and the Places It Takes You

Smash Mouth’s Astro Lounge will always hold a special place in my heart.  It was one of the first albums I actually went out and purchased with my own money.  If I think about that album I don’t think about how bad the songs were.   I don’t think about bleached hair or Jennifer Love Hewitt.  Instead, I’m reminded of sitting at home somewhere in my middle school years, listening to the album through the disc drive on my family’s PC.  I used to own these terrible headphones that were made out of rubber. They were like earbuds, except the ‘bud’ part was molded to the outline of my earlobes.  They would wrap around the back and then somehow fit smugly into my ears.  The sound had an awful, tinny quality to it.  But I thought I looked really cool as I sat in my desk chair and sung along to ‘walking on the sun’.  

To every person there are those songs where the song doesn’t matter at all.  It’s about how that old music takes you back to a very specific time in your life.  Good times or more often than not, the worst times.  It’s one of the most personal and unique feelings in the world.  You could be having dinner with a group of friends and hear something come on and be filled with an indescribable feeling of nostalgia while the others around you don’t think twice.  

Putting on Boxcar Racer’s self-titled album takes me back to a summer love during my freshman year of high-school.  I think everyone has that one summer with that one person that just makes them feel good when they think about it.   I would sit with it playing on one of those tacky, gaudy boom-boxes that were all the rage back then while me and this girl would talk on the phone.  For hours and hours every night we would talk, and unknown to her I would almost always have that album playing in the background.  Sometimes it would switch to one of the other four discs that were in the CD-changer.  Inevitably, however, I would always bring it back to Boxcar Racer It was a good time in my life, and that’s where that music takes me.  If I hear that album now, even for a second, it really brightens my day.  Not becuase of the music, but because of what I relate it to.  


On the other hand, most of the time we wish that we didn’t relate that once great album to a long-lost love.  Because after things go bad that music is ruined forever.  Nobody ever realizes they relate those songs to that person until its too late.  

If I close my eyes and listen to Alkaline Trio’s Good Morning I can see so clearly me and a girl sometime during my junior or senior  year..  We’re lying in bed and we’re watching  the dawn illuminate my room.  That same gaudy boom-box is now playing ‘fatally yours’ and I can hear my parents moving around downstairs.  At some point this girl had snuck over the night before.  We had spent the night really just hanging out.  We talked and joked and were somehow more thrilled because we were doing something we weren’t supposed to be doing.   And now I would have to sneak her outside only to have her magically appear at my front door a few seconds later, ready to be given a ride to school.  It’s a good memory tainted by life, and what happens later on.  Because of that, to this day I have a difficult time making it through the opening tracks of that album.  Instead, I find myself making excuses to put something else on.  Nobody really knows why but me.  All because of what I instinctively feel when I hear it.

Then there’s the music that makes you truly long for something.  It doesn’t cheer you up or bring you down.  What it does instead is fill  you with regret knowing you took for granted something you couldn’t get back.

For about six months I lived in a run-down duplex with me and three friends.  It was the lowest point in my life but something that I would give anything to go back to.  It was a time where I was liberated and without fear because I’d reached rock bottom.  I had nothing to lose because I knew that if I failed at something it really wouldn’t matter. I could not feel worse than how I already felt.  What got me through it were the friends that lived in that duplex with me.  If I felt terrible I always knew at least someone would be there.  Night after night we would get drunk and insane.  After about a month of this my place resembled something that looked like a large, two bedroom two bath garbage can.  

My roommate and best friend, as his ring-tone he had The Draft’s ‘Lo Zee Rose’.  I’m not sure if it was the entire song, or just the first few seconds, but I would constantly hear that familiar song about five times a night coming from his phone.  This was a guy that saved my life.  He was always there and made me realize that there were actually people that truly cared about me.  To this day, when I hear that song I wish I could go back to that duplex and feel completely terrible.  Not because it was fun, but because it put everything in my life in to perspective.  The people I love are the ones that matter the most.  More than a job, or money, or anything.  

I was talking to a close friend recently and told her how Fleet Foxes’ ‘Helplessness Blues’ was ruined because of a failed relationship.  

“What you need to do is take a trip and listen to that album while you make new memories.  That way you can relate that music to something else”

I understand what she’s saying.  But am I really willing to give up those summer loves, or dumpster duplexes?  If I overwrite those memories with something else I’m afraid I’ll lose something forever that I'll never be able to get back.  I’ll lose the places that music takes me.  

Hatchet and Axe Outline

Amazing Outline I wrote for a friend taking English Comp 1

English Comp 1

Hatchet and Axe Outline

My essay will center around the art of throwing both hatches AND axes.  Many mistake the two for the same thing, however there are many differences.
In the following essay I will focus on what differentiates the two.  

1.  The first portion of my essay will focus on what it feels like to throw different types of objects.  I will include several different types of balls (baseballs, footballs, etc) and also random items.  is itmore difficult to throw glassware as opposed to hammers or even old compact discs?  It is important to discover how each of the objects will react after being thrown.

2.  after that I will move on to hatchets and axes.   both the weight and the girth will be explored.  Let’s say an axe is hurled at an innocent bystander.  How will the axe and hatchet affect the target?  It is probably very scary and I don’t blame someone for ducking out of the way.  

3.  finally I will discuss the psychological impacts of having both hatchets AND axes being thrown at them.  It can be a very traumatizing experience.  What type of person would cry?  Is it even possible that someone would laugh at being threatened by death?  This paragraph will also encompass the euphoric feeling one feels when throwing both hatchets AND axes at innocent bystanders.  The feeling is something that cannot be matched.

THE END

Chapter 4: Never Stop Moving

Chapter 4: Never Stop Moving

At this point you should be well on your way to making a billion dollars.  You may even be feeling a little fatigued.  This is a normal feeling and shouldn’t be dismissed.  In business, you don’t want to be satisfied with what you have.  You always want to be a forward thinker, constantly making moves.  Don’t ever stop. After all, what kind of people stop moving? Dead people, that’s what kind.  Do you want to turn out like one of those dead people? No? I didn’t think so.  

Close your eyes and imagine this if you will: (Note: Make sure you don’t close your eyes for too long.  It may lead to falling asleep, and many people lie completely still why they’re sleeping)  You are standing in a room with a billion ants.  You have one of two choices:

1) STOP MOVING - Making this choice will cause your body to be completely still.  At this point the billions of ants will begin to crawl all over your body.  Because there is nothing else to eat the ants will eat your flesh.  First your skin and then your muscles and then whatever is beneath your muscles.  Please consult my book Ouch! I’ve Stubbed My Toe: Your Body and YOU for a more detailed description of the human body.  After about three days you will finally be totally consumed.  Your family will open the door to this room only to find a trillion ants because after all that feeding the ants have obviously multiplied.  They will not mourn your loss.  Instead they will think of you as an illiterate because obviously you couldn’t read the fourth chapter in this book.

2) NEVER STOP MOVING - Making this choice will cause the ants to never become attached to your body.  In this scenario you do somersaults around the room, squashing the tiny insects.  Not only does this kill every single bug and save your life, but you also gain an amazing amount of strength thanks to the hundreds of somersaults you just did.  Your body morphs from a fat, ugly, flabby thing into a toned, sexy, athletic type of build.  After you leave the room hundreds of attractive men or women surround you.  I don’t want to get too explicit in case there are any underage entrepreneurs reading this book. But you get the idea.

I know what you’re asking yourself. “But Jonathan, this really doesn’t seem to make any sense.  At first I thought you were using moving as a metaphor to explain the intricacies of business.  But now it seems that you have taken it a step further and are actually telling me never stop moving my body. I’ll probably drop dead from exhaustion after a very short time.”  

Well that’s exactly what i’m telling you.  But remember, if you never stop moving, then you will never die.  If you’ve purchased the Deluxe version of my book please look in the attached goody bag.  In there you will find, among other things, a pair of black rubber gloves. This is a little invention I came up with.  When you slip the gloves on you will notice your hands will start flapping uncontrollably.  This is a way to never stop moving, and you don’t even have to do anything!  The gloves do all the work.  It may be extremely painful and annoying at first, but you’ll get used to it.  

From "Classical Fairytales and Life Lesson" by Jon Miller

(Originally published in "Classical Fairytales and Life Lessons" by Jon Miller.

Foxy and Thumper

Once upon a time there lived a fox named Thumper.  He lived in a forest with all of his friends.  Every day of every year the fox and his friends would play in the woods.  The sun would shine down as they threw acorns back and forth.  The dragonflies usually watched in anticipation waiting to see who would drop it first.  The deer and the antelope cooked three daily meals and all the animals were fed well.  All was as it should be in the forest until one day a curious creature appeared in the field across the way. The two worlds were divided by a line of trees.
 

It was an animal not a single one had ever seen before.  The creature had long ears and a bushy white tail.  It moved strangely as it hopped to and fro, without a care in the world.  Thumper was intrigued and went to the edge of the forest to greet this peculiar being.

“Why hello there, my name’s Thumper.  What’s yours?”
 

“I’m Foxy,” replied the animal.

Thumper was always anxious to make a new friend so he immediately opened up to this thing.  “Well Foxy, I’m a fox.  I’ve never seen an animal like you before.  What do others call you?’

“I’m a rabbit.  You all don’t have rabbits in your forest?” Foxy asked.

“Nope, but you’re welcome to come join us.  We’ve just begun playing acorn toss.  It’s the greatest game ever!” Foxy and Thumper trudged over to the woods where the rest of the gang was just beginning to play

“Who’s this?” One of the dragonflies replied.

“Well this here’s Foxy, she’s a rabbit.  And she really wants to play acorn toss.  So lets show her some good old forest hospitality!”

The animals and Foxy all played acorn toss.  It was a lovely day, however Foxy was surprisingly good at this game.  So good in fact, that none of the other animals got a chance to even touch the acorn.  Foxy tossed the acorn over and over again and eventually won the game.
 

“Hey, what’s the big idea! This game is for everyone,” yelled the dragonfly.

“I’m sorry,” Foxy said apologetically, “I guess I’m just good at this game for some reason.”

“Well that’s not how we play here,” said the dragonfly, “we SHARE here!”

Foxy was beginning to feel uneasy.  She slowly hopped away as the other animals began to laugh.
 

“I’m hungry! Let’s eat Foxy!” all the animals chanted at once.

“Wait what?” Foxy said

The animals circled around her. “Yeah, We’re going to eat you because that’s what we do to animals we don’t like.”

“Nooooooo!” screamed Foxy.   Thumper looked on in horror as the animals all pounced on Foxy the rabbit.  One of the bears ripped off her tail as blood streamed from the open wound.  Another took a bite from one of her long, pointy ears.  Several others grabbed at her limbs, pulling in every direction.

“Ohhhhh, Ahhhwwwww!” Foxy screamed in pain.  “Please, I didn’t know the rules of acorn toss, I’ll never pla-” but just then a swarm of dragonflies engulfed her face.  As they streamed down her throat and up her nostrils Foxy became suffocated by the furious insects.   

Thumper had stopped watching, not because he couldn’t bear to see it, but because he had noticed a frog hopping around on a lilly pad, and he thought it was the cutest thing.

A pool of blood seaped out from the animals piled on top of Foxy.  She had stopped moving and now only the sound of chewing could be heard from the group.  “We are full,” replied the animals, “I guess we should go to bed.”

As they began to trudge off Thumper stopped them in their tracks.  “Ok guys, just because someone is different from you it doesn’t mean you can treat them like that.  From now on we must treat everyone equal regardless of what they are!  She was my friend and she will still be my friend, in memory.”

“You’re right Thumper.  We’re sorry,” replied the animals.

Full of pride, Thumper nodded his head and hurried away.  As he neared his foxhole he tried to remember the rabbit's name, but he couldn’t.  
 

“Whatever,” Thumper muttered as he let out a long, wet fart.  

THE END

Chapter 3: You Are What You Eat

Chapter 3: You are What You Eat

One day in the fourth grade I brought a stick of butter to class to snack on during silent reading.  It came wrapped in gold-colored foil and smelled of freshly stale cheese.  I considered purchasing one of those tubs of spreadable butter  but preferred the ease and portability of the sticks instead.  As I sat down with my copy of Atlus Shrugged in hand Mrs. Smith peered over at me and let out a deafening roar.
“Mr. Miller what in the world are you eating?”

Startled, I dropped my stick of fatty goodness onto the ground where it rolled off my denim jeans and onto the dusty old carpet.  Its golden exterior now a light shade of gray, covered in dirt and short strands of hair.

“Mrs. Smith it’s a stick of butter, the golden kind,” I said as I picked my treat back off the ground.  I examined it for a few more seconds trying to decide if it was fit to eat.

My teacher was horrified and disgusted.  “Mr. Miller if you eat that one day you will grow up to be a fat bald sad old man.  You are what you eat you know.”

I looked at her and then back at the golden stick staring back at me, and then smashed the stick of butter into my mouth, enjoying every second of it.  

 

I spent the rest of the day migrating from time-out to the shit-stained bathroom stalls of Parmer Lane Elementary.  During one of the dozens of trips I made to the toilet I looked down on the ground and saw something magical staring back at me.  There, shining below my dangling feet and immersed in a thin layer of pre-pubescent piss lay a golden token.  And not just any token either.  No, it was a token to the wondrous land of Sega City.  A sprawling arcade previously located in the nearby mall. I squeezed out the last of my buttery shit and reached down to pick up the moist token.  I smiled and stuffed it in my pocket as I ran back to class. 

 

The next day after eating my daily turkey sandwich and green apple during lunch I ran out to the playground to beat my arch nemesis Billy Schrider at a game of tetherball.  As I trotted out to the slab of concrete I saw, to my dismay, a group of young boys standing alongside Billy.   

“Hey butterface!” Billy sneered as as his cronies snickered.

“Hey Billy, ready to play?” I said nervously.

He didn’t say anything else and instead walked over to me and punched me in the face.  I saw a flash of white and fell to the ground as the boys proceeded to kick me over and over again.

“Butt-er-face! Butt-er-face!” They chanted as they landed blow after blow.  I rolled into a ball and remembered the golden token I had found on the floor of the boys bathroom the previous day.  A smile spread across my blood-stained face.  All I could think about was how fun Sega City was going to be that weekend.    

Soon the kicking stopped and the pain seceded.  I slowly made it to my feet and stood face to face with Billy as I swayed to and fro. 

Billy was smiling devilishly.  “Take that you turkey!” He said as he punched me in the adam’s apple.  

I let out something that sounded like a wheeze and fell back again.  The boys quickly ran away and left me sitting on the ground grasping my throat.  As the oxygen slowly left my brain and darkness surrounded me it finally made sense.  “Turkey? Apple?  Of course!” I whispered with my last ounce of strength.  

From that day on I refused to eat anything containing Turkeys or Apples.  Instead, I mainly consumed foods the color of that glorious stick of butter.  And that, folks, is what I attribute most of my success to today.

Faux Pas

Right now I’m sitting in a coffee shop pretending to be productive.  Not Starbucks obviously because I need to keep at least some of my Austin cred.  No, I'm sitting in The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.  An establishment that I thought of until recently as being locally owned and operated.   I stumbled across it in the Detroit Airport and realized there were probably hundreds of these god-forsaken things all across the country..  It was later brought up in conversation and I nervously scoffed at the idea of anyone buying an overpriced coffee from the evil vendor.  “Oh, that place is like the new Starbucks,” I said.  My heart almost gave out when I thought of the praise I would have given it if I hadn’t passed it on my way to find a Burger King I’d seen in the airport directory.  These days favoring a food-chain is like wearing white after Labor Day.  
 

I don’t have any paper so I’m substituting my daily planner as a notepad.  This note is scrawled across the lines of Thursday, June 9th. Along the left margin are small numbers notifying me of the things I might need to get done today.  Right now I’m dumbfounded and horrified at the thought of someone actually needing two full lines for every hour of the day. I bought this planner about six months ago thinking that it would magically make me more productive.  After all, what’s a day if it hasn’t been planned?  Like maybe if I could see all the things I had to get done it would make it more fun.  Instead it did two things:

1) Overwhelmed me by placing all the obligations I had all week right in front of my face, (never more than two).  and...

2) Saddened me when I found myself going weeks at a time without writing down a single thing.  

The latter brought me to write down absolutely anything I was going to do for the day just so I could feel more useful. “Tuesday, March 22nd. 8:00 AM: Read.”  Read?  Read what? Maybe catch up on the current events in the New York Times?  Scour the insightful article on Yahoo!’s home page about what not to say on a first date?  Who knows.  I don’t even wake up that early.   The sad(der) part of it all is that I couldn’t even check that off my to-do list. Eventually my enthusiasm for my daily planner waned into nonexistence and it got stuffed into the bottom of my backpack, never to be seen again.  Besides, I prefer my days to be spontaneous.  

It has taken me almost two weeks to finish writing this.  I’m no longer sitting in a coffee shop debating whether or not I should ask the attractive girl sitting across from me for a piece of paper from her notepad.  Now I'm sitting in my boxers at ten in the morning trying to decide if I want to take a shower now or go all day and take one at night.  Because if I’m going to wait I should probably put some clothes on.  But if I take one now then I should stay in my boxers because It would be too much work to dress and then undress and dress again.  My life is full of difficult choices.  

I realize now that professional writers probably don’t just write when they feel like it.  They likely have some sort of daily routine of locking themselves away with a typewriter and a pot of coffee for hours on end.  My daily routine is to think about how I should be writing something while I struggle out of bed sometime around ten.  I then sort out my ideas in front of the boob tube.  A few hours will go by and I’ll work through the conflict on the way to McDonalds.  My midday nap is a great time for me to figure out a climax while late night drinking is when I perfect the falling action. 

 It’s very important that I become productive at some point in the near future.  I just need to stop fooling around and get to it.  Unfortunately, motivation eludes me at every turn.  Or at least it would elude me if I actually tried to pursue it.  Instead, every day motivation looks at me and makes a B-line for the exit while I sit in The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf  Spiderhouse and wave it goodbye.  

My Life Through the Lens of Alcohol (a.k.a. forgive my grammar)

It's 2:30 in the morning and somewhere between the drinks and the drive home I decided to myself that I would figure out exactly what I'm doing with my life.  I can hear the murmur of some band coming through my speakers and there's the smell of mold or mildew trailing out of my kitchen.  I'm sitting at a computer I stole from my previous job and drinking some terrible rum I found in my pantry.  Because the only way I could face my life and reflect on it is by drinking myself into a stupor.  Are there worse things in the world? Sure there are, but when you feel scared to do anything but the safe thing, things look pretty bleak.

It's true though.  I am scared of taking any risks.  Upsetting the familiarity of my daily routine.  I'm scared of failing and maybe hurting my pride.  The biggest step I've taken in the past five years has been publishing my stories to a website that only my friends and familiars can read.  The next step I took was to create this blog where I'm vicariously living through a caricature of myself where I'm a self proclaimed billionaire.  And that's something I consider a big step.

Over the past few months I've come to realize that maybe an English degree wasn't the smartest career path.  Sure, I love to write.  I love literature.    The thing they don't tell you in  high school about college is how it's only a way to educate yourself for a career.  If you go there to learn you'd better be learning something that can help you succeed in life.  Hermin Melville and what makes a film noir aren't so helpful when someone is looking over your scant resume.   So I'm finally coming to the end of my long and torturous college career and I realize the road is essentially leading nowhere.

There's a time in my life that I would give almost anything to go back to.  A time where I was fearless.  I could try anything and not worry about the consequences because I was at the absolute lowest point in my life.  There's something about feeling terrible that is completely liberating.  I always try to tell people "if you ever find yourself at a place where it could not get any worse, you need to get out there and do what you want."  Because you see, if you fail at something you've always wanted to do what does it matter?  Your pride is the least of your worries.

Now it's three o'clock and this rum is getting watered down from the ice.  A softer sound is seeping out of my speakers and i'm starting to worry about the length of this blog post.

For once in my adult life I have a strong desire to make a change in my life.  No, it's not a change in the kind of person I am.  I'm not going to say "I really need to drink less" or "let's maybe try and save some money."  What i'm talking about is a change in everything that I know.  The people, and surroundings, and familiarity.  I've set my sights on packing up and moving out.  As soon as I can reasonably do so i'm out of here.  I need to get out of my comfort zone and experience something new and terrifying.  Some place where  I don't know the people or the streets or even the language.

This could be the biggest mistake of my life. I'm probably holding up another city or country on a pedestal.  Like somehow moving away while staying the same is going to completely change my life and steer  me to a path of success and fortune.  At this point I don't care.  Tonight I celebrated getting a job where I could potentially get paid minimum-wage by doing a job that a fifth-grader could conceivably do better than me.  Let's put this in perspective.  Take into account inflation and I was making more when I was seventeen than I do now.

So what does it matter.  Nothing could be worse than this. So I find myself again with no fear.  And this time I'm going to take advantage of it.  Move away and try to do something with this English degree I have.   If I fail I fail.  But at least I'll fail with some pretty cool scenery.