East Bay Punk Mafia

This new year marks the 20th anniversary for American punk trio formed in 1987. Throughout the years, as I’ve spoken to my peers about the Bay Area band, and brought them up in light conversation, I have noticed that people either hate Green Day, or they love them: “Green Day can eat shit” “American Idiot sucked fat nut; they’re older stuff is better, they’re just not the same.” I, for one, love them. Green Day does not eat shit, they certainly released dookie, but in no way do they eat shit. American Idiot did not suck, it was a masterpiece. Yes, it was a definite departure from their earlier work, but they’re not the same guys they were 20 years ago, so they’re music can’t be expected to sound as though they were. I was very much happy to find out this last Sunday, March 29th, that American Idiot is going to debut as a musical this fall. If done right, this could be brilliant.

My history with Green Day goes back to the seventh grade, with their debut of their second single off their American Idiot album: “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”. Now, up until this point, my music library consisted solely of rap/hip-hop, and not all of it was good rap/hip-hop, come to think of it. But I loved music, and that’s all I knew. I grew up on hip-hop. My earliest recollection of this was watching countless MTV music videos with my older brother at the age of five. Puff and Mase complained about ‘Mo money,’ Red Man and Method Man did a remake of The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’d Delight,” Usher did it his way, and Tupac advised us to keep our head up. Back then Rock ‘N’ Roll was the enemy to me. Growing up, the closest I had come to “Rock ‘N’ Roll” was watching Korn’s “Freak on the Leash,” and guiltily finding myself liking the Vines’ “Get Free.” I was musically inept.

February of 2005 would change everything. Green Day released “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” and I was transfixed. I downloaded American Idiot. I downloaded 39/Smooth, Kerplunk!, Dookie, Insomniac, Nimrod, and Warning. For a long while, they were almost all I listened too. Back before I got my first iPod, Green Day was the aborigine of my CD player. In those days as my friends and I inhabited the school bus stop, every morning consisted of comparing the other’s music selection for the day. One friend would say, “What’re you listening to,” and before I could even respond, another would retort, “Probably Green Day.” And they were always right. I couldn’t even be mad.

There was something about this band that really struck a chord with me.

"Sometimes when I'm listening to music, when i Listen to the Pixies, I feel like I could scream. I feel like my skin's coming right off me or something. I feel like a whole bunch of bones. It's like some music's got a direct line to my insides, and when I hear it, I go crazy all over, crazy and turned-on and hysterical and so different from the way I look to everyone on the outside that when I look in the mirror, I don't really recognize myself. It's like I want to have sex of kill someone when I feel like that, and then I think I'm pretty crazy and I can't even tell anyone I have those feelings."
Brave New Girl; Louisa Luna

Green Day was the first band that resonated on an emotional level with me.

I spent a year absorbed in Green Day’s music, Green Day trivia, Green Day random facts, Green Day news, and Green Day quotes. Looking back, I still think it was a year well spent. The reason is simple: I would not be where I am culturally today without them. They opened the pathway to so many music genres for me: punk, hard rock, classic rock, heavy metal, thrash, death metal, funk, et al. I owe it all to them. And rest assure, once their new album releases in May, and they head out for a tour, I’ll be front row center.

A Beer Commercial Decided My Fate

A beer commercial has brought me clarity. Just recently I was watching television and a Samuel Adams commercial comes on. Now, I have always liked Samuel Adams commercials; they tap into an emotional cheesiness that many other products cannot obtain without losing its credibility. What can I say, I like the dude’s work ethic. As a point, or small inconsequential factor to this anecdote, I was undergoing some Kevin Spacey. I was zoning. But through that, I had retained one line: “Get a job you love, and never work a day in your life.” That line was loosely adapted just now, as I could not recall it word for word and my internet sleuthing skills have failed me. That singular line stuck. My noodle marinated in it.

Growing up I have always struggled with that relentless question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” When I was younger it ranged anywhere from a singer/songwriter to a mail carrier. In the second grade, I went through a bout where my career goal was to become a librarian. I was a library girl. I must have gone to the library at least once a week, and those would be the days I looked forward to most. I would painstakingly anticipate the trip all throughout math lessons, lunch, recess, and the bus ride home. And as soon as my mom got home from work, we were off. I was an avid reader, a bookworm if I may. I ransacked those shelves; I poured over those books. I braved the swings with Ramona Quimby, I stuck my nose up with Junie B. Jones, and earned my badges with the Pee Wee Scouts. If I were Jewish, the public library would have been my Israel. It only made sense to become a librarian.

That ship came and went. The idea of being a librarian and I just drifted apart. It was mutual. Musical differences. We were both going in different directions; it wanted to pursue a solo career, and I wanted to put together a synth-pop duo. From then on, my prospects started becoming more conventional: teacher, lawyer, et al. In the seventh grade, I started playing the drums. I didn’t so much as play, but dabbled. For a few years. Now, in those days, I dreamed of making it big time as a quote unquote rockstar. I wanted it all: sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. But with my lack of progress, and through the help of my therapist, I realized that I wasn’t so much interest in actually playing the drums, but rather the idea of playing the drums. Fame. Glory. Acknowledgement. This guy was good.

For the past few years now, I’ve been stuck on this one vocational direction that I haven’t been able to shake: music journalist. And on that dreary night as I was first emotionally and verbally abused by my stepfather for something I was wrongfully accused of, and then sent to bed without supper, I had myself a grand realization. I had just received Almost Famous in the post from Netflix and since I was not left with many other options to spend the rest of my night, and I obviously wasn’t just going to go to sleep, I popped it into my portable DVD player. Almost Famous is a semi-autobiographical movie about a teen, William Miller who is assigned a story for Rolling Stone magazine. He tours along side a fictional band, Stillwater, interviewing them, all the while struggling with the conflict between the values he was taught by his mother, and the social values he is quickly learning from this band and its groupies and/or “band-aids.“ This movie hit me hard. I bawled. I tinkered on the edge of blubbering. The reason partly being events that unfolded earlier in the evening, but mainly because of the heart wrenching love fiasco that unfolded throughout the film. But within this emotional entanglement that I had quickly found myself in, I did take away from it something very powerful to me. The movie only further validated my desire to become a music journalist. A rock critic. The “enemy.” The thought of it put me in a sex-crazed frenzy (joking). But I was attracted to the idea of listening to new records, interviewing musicians, and bribing them to have sex with me in exchange for a promise of the cover. I was all set.

Somewhere along the way, I think I lost sight of what was really important to me. I gave in further to society's terms of success, rather than abiding to my own. I wanted the money, the cars, the ability to live comfortably. I wanted to be a pharmacist. Or so I thought. For the past six months I have tricked myself into believing that I could and wanted to become a pharmacist. The money is was attracted me to vocation, and I couldn’t tell you one other reason I wanted the job if I tried. Not even with a gun barrel to the back of my throat. I made plans. I was going to go to UW. I was going to complete 2-3 undergrad years. I was going to get into pharmacy school. I would become a pharmacist. And then what, be happy? I had it all wrong; I had let my morals be fogged my society’s views and perceptions. And the sad thing is, it took a class assignment to research our desired major for me to realize this. In the critically acclaimed film Little Miss Sunshine, the ever endearing Dwayne voiced to Frank, played by Steve Carell, “You do what you love, and fuck the rest.”

Kyle XY gets sent back to his pod

ABC Family recently decided to end the TV series, Kyle XY.

I distinctively remember the summer Kyle XY first premiered in 2006. Of course, I remember everything: names, faces, phone numbers, birthdays, dialogue, etc. The promotion was brilliant, intriguing, but admittedly a bit over-done. The teaser trailers had me at the snip of a gentleman’s hiked up shirt revealing his navel. Ah but wait, his lack of navel! The teasers contained nothing more than a shot of a male’s wet, extended hand, a curious lack of a belly button, a boy’s face, the aforementioned boy laying wet, and naked on the floor of what appeared to be a forest, and then.. “Who is Kyle XY?” It was the question of the summer. My close friend Katee and I, casually and frequently made this the punch line of many of our dry-humored jokes, but as much as I was poking fun at the promotional tools, I was sincerely interested in watching it.

The show’s cast, plot, odd humor, and artistic angle gave me everything I felt I had been emotionally lacking from television. At that point, television was oddly unsatisfying. It was much like in elementary school when you were expecting the next day to be Macaroni Monday in the cafeteria, but when you got to school, you realize that you had forgotten that this week it was Mashed Potato Monday. You hate mashed potatoes. You hate the way they are trying to impersonate real potatoes; manly potatoes. You hate the way they remind you of dinner at your grandma’s. You hate mashed potatoes. Let the disappointment ensue. Kyle XY was the first show since CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (the only legit one out of all three series) that got me to follow it religiously. And though Kyle’s identity is not revealed to us until the second season, the show did not skip a beat. I was compelled from beginning to end, almost like when you are given a mix tape where the track listing has been omitted, but you’ve come to find that with every song, you are unconsciously shifting further and further towards the edge of your filthy futon with anticipation and butterflies. Kyle XY does that.

I have come to think of Kyle XY as an extension to myself, to my personality. When I meet someone new, I never fail to use Kyle XY as an ice breaker. Works like a charm. I don’t do this purposely of course, I’ve got pod juice on the brain. Nothing some grapefruit couldn’t cure. My freshmen year of high school, I was enrolled in Honors English I. Good class, bad time. Well this particular day, the class had just been assigned a new seating chart. I was seated in the back next to Brian Bergsagel. I referred to him as Brain. I slay myself too. In the back of the class room, there was a black speckled bathtub. It was filled with pillows and other appropriate comforting accoutrements. I figured it was set up for sporadic reading purposes, though no one ever verbally discussed the existence of said tub. I swear I turned to Brian, and the first thing I said to him was, “You know what that tub reminds me of? Kyle XY!” And much to my surprise, he followed the sci-fi series closely as well. You would not be wrong in guessing that our friendship budded at that exact moment. Not true, but that’s not going to stop me from using one of my cleverly crafted human gestation pick-up lines at my local café.

Kyle XY isn’t just sci-fi fantasy; it isn’t just a drama; it isn’t just a comedy, and it isn’t just a romance. Kyle XY addresses the human condition; it tests viewers with each episode. It is the multi-faceted dynamic behind a revolution. Kids are getting into sci-fi! It was the ticket in. It is like hearing Judas Priest for the first time, and then the very next day going out to by your very first Priest album. Soon your CD collection is full of Iron Maiden, Van Halen, and Black Sabbath. Kyle XY has become that medium for many people. They’re starting to realize that, “Hey, science fiction is where it’s at.”

I just watched the series finale earlier tonight, and to my surprise, the episode ended abruptly like any other season finale would. It was no series finale. There was no real ending, questions were left unanswered, and viewers were left unfulfilled. I was under the impression that this would be the episode that summed it all up: Kyle would resolve ongoing conflicts with Latnok, Josh and Andy would miraculously end up together, and Jessi would rip out Amanda’s trachea. Frankly, there’s only one way to put it: Kyle XY is really boss.