The good old days

When I was barely 21 I saw the movie High Fidelity starring John Cusack, which prompted me to immediately go out and buy the novel of the same name, written by Mr. Nick Hornby of England, and was pretty much like the movie except with some additional material and a change of setting from Chicago to London. I bought the book at Borders in Madison, WI, in the week after Memorial day, year 2000, while I was staying at my Aunt's house about a half hour outside of town. I was there because I spent most of the week in one of the Madison libraries, trying to turn an Incomplete in Comm Arts 250 into an A/B. So I would wake up and take a shower and eat breakfast (My Aunt always had the best bread, which of course made the best toast!) and drive the Buick owned by my parents into town, and go to the well-lit library and surf the web for 8 hours. I was also on crutches at the time. It was pretty uneventful, except for one day after 'working on my paper' that I met a female acquaintance for dinner, for which I wore cologne and gave her a mix tape (!) and earlier had toyed with the idea that I would sleep with her if I had the chance, but of course I didn't, but that's not the point. So then I went home to my parents' house for the rest of the summer, and didn't have a job, and went to knee rehab three days a week, and drank too much and then drove occasionally home from my friends' houses or certain bars, and was present at several bonfires, and swam on hot days in swimming pools, and heard "The Real Slim Shady" by Eminem about 2394872 times, and tried pot and got arrested for it in the same night, and grew my hair the longest its ever been, and basically spent the entire summer getting into the passenger seats of friends' cars filled with complete excitement and hope, and my heart was like a hummingbird after a double expresso. Now, I know this is all nostalgia, and probably the first time that I ever have been so, but it just occurred to me what a great summer that was. I've had long periods of unemployment since, but never during the summer, and never with so many friends around to hang with, and never with such a sense of 'this is where it all happens' as then. Granted, it could have been better, I could've not gotten arrested or have actually come into physical contact with a girl who wasn't giving me a shot of alcohol, but it was the last summer that actually felt like 'summer,' as in summer-vacation, instead of 'when it's hot outside.'

So, this all began by writing about Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, which is a fantastic book that I read about 9 times, and seemed even better the last time I read it, when I was finally in a long-term relationship. Nick Hornby has also written a book called Songbook, published by the folks at McSweeney's, which is basically like the liner notes to a mixtape. I never read the book, but I think initial pressings came with a CD, and then you could listen to the songs and read an essay written about it. I think Badly Drawn Boy and The Replacements were on there, but I could be wrong about the latter. Anyway, the reason I was thinking of that is that just now I was sitting at my laptop and listening to my stupid yahoo radio station for the first time in a month and "Heroin" by the Velvet Underground came on, and while that song has really nothing to do with any of the events listened above (I had that record as a college freshman) I hadn't heard it in at least a few months, and when I heard those first few guitar notes I immediately was filled with such a sense of 'Oh this song is great, it feels like a warm blanket,' that I started thinking about the effect songs can have on people, and somehow that translated into all of the nonsense written above. You should know that while I was writing this, I also heard Pavement's "Unfair," the Pixies "Gigantic," "Fluke" by Mates of State, and "People" by the Silver Jews, whose 1998 album American Water was the best released in that particular year.