Never Seen It #327: Princess Mononoke

These days, there are angry blogs all around us—dead from wars, sickness, starvation, watching 500 movies they'd never seen before—and nobody cares. So you say you're under a curse? So what? So's the whole damn world.

Princess Mononoke

1997

Hayao Miyazaki

Thanks to all those who shared their thoughts about this Ghibli classic.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Allison

We're on a roll, folks. This was great! In the age of AI-slop, where everything looks like shit all the time, it's so refreshing to watch a genuinely beautiful, almost entirely hand-drawn animated film. People used to make things! With their hands! Despite being nearly 30 years old and set in the mythical past, Princess Mononoke's tale of man vs. nature is the perfect allegory for the modern-day data center debate. It's not much of a debate, though. Tell me you're pro-data center and I'll use my mystical rage to shoot your head off with a perfectly aimed arrow. Fuck, I'm tired of thinking about AI; I'm going to live with the talking wolves.

Question for the group: subs or dub? We watched the original Japanese with English subtitles, but I was intrigued by the English voice cast. I'm curious if version choice impacted enjoyment. 

Another question: I'm pretty new to anime, is it too late to make this my whole identity? Because I've been googling tattoo ideas so I can get one of me riding my dog in the style of San and Moro...

 

5/5

~~~~~~~~~~~

Sean G.

With Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki reaches a new high point in all of animation. Each frame is breathtaking, intricate, and awe-inspiring. The background art could be in a museum all its own. 

Mononoke also feels like a new phase of Miyazaki making more adult films. Mononoke still has some of the whimsy of Totoro in the little forest sprites (and their funny little buttcracks), but while Totoro and Kiki and Porco Rosso all have adult themes, they're definitely present here in less subtle ways. Mononoke is graphically violent, sad, and disturbing (see the unsettling and hard-to-look-at demon worms). 

Environmental protection, the threat of industry, and the negative effects of war are all here. We see the violence that war causes, we see the destruction caused by deforestation, and we see the senseless hate that only grows when the animal gods feel threatened by the humans and vise versa. Ashitaka is the voice of reason and of Miyazaki asking the question that may never be answered in our own world: why can't we all just get along? Hate breeds more hate and it spreads like a curse. 

Miyazaki lays out Mononoke's themes for us, but this is still a challenging movie that feels morally ambiguous at times. But I feel like really great art doesn't handfeed the answers or solutions to the problems it presents. 

Animation filmmakers like Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Paprika) and Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies) show us that animation is not just limited to films aimed at children. We're so lucky that they—unlike American animation studios—are willing to create dark, thematic stories usually only seen in live action cinema. 

5 out of 5 pukes. Among my new favorite animated movies.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Joe

"What is the lesson here" is probably not the lens that you should use to view movies, or at least not the lens that you should use to judge the value of a movie. There doesn't have to be a lesson, or a point. Something can, for example, just look beautiful. Something can be valuable because of what you are able to pull from it, even if what you pull is not the intention of the film. You can also like a film without even agreeing with what it is trying to say. I'm not saying Princess Mononoke is any of these things, I'm just vamping. I do think that this film was beautifully drawn, and I do think it was trying to say something, and I do think that I agree with what it was trying to say. But I don't know if I was able to connect with it. Too silly, at least from where I'm standing.

The problem, as I see it (so take it with a grain of salt, because I'm just one fucking guy without a broad experience with Japanese animated film), is that the motivations of each character aren't very easy to understand. If I find myself asking "why is this guy trying to do this" too many times, then I start to get confused, and then bored. Why the Billy Bob Thornton guy trying to kill a god? Why were the villagers of the dying tribe so quick to send their prince out to die? Was it realistic to say that Ashitaka and San were so motivated by a love for each other? I am NOT saying that it was nonsensical, this plot. I get what they were trying to do overall. I'm just saying that a lot of what happened in the details seemed to be happening just to move some pieces around. The cracks showed a lot.

This is a Studio Ghibli film, directed and created by the master himself, Hayao Miyazaki. Princess Mononoke was nowhere near as easy to love as Totoro and Ponyo and Kiki's Delivery Service, but I think I see some similarities still. And I am also currently speculating as to whether those similarities actually did Mononoke a disservice. The thing I loved about those other films were that they were so chill and kind and simple and beautiful. When Kiki moved to a new town, there was nothing complicated about her move. She met people and formed bonds and learned a lot about herself, because that's just what a character like her would do in that situation. There was no internal struggle. The kids from Totoro believed that a forest spirit was watching after them. There was no moment of questioning that, no conflict in which their father questioned their sanity or whatever. They just lived their life and occasionally had a dream/not-dream that Totoro was hanging out and helping them.

I think Princess Mononoke ends up working in the same way, but that sort of engine does not work as well when there's actual external conflict to worry about. Like, if Jigo is going to be following Eboshi so that they can kill the forest god, and Ashitaka and San are trying to stop them, then we can't just say "well, these are the characters, this is how they exist in this world" like we did Kiki or Sōsuke. We need to know why. There's too much at stake. And the fact that I really didn't get any sense of any of that (through my own fault or through the movie's) was what made me not be able to buy in completely.

Maybe at some point we get a sense of inner conflict with somebody, ya know? I thought Jigo's line about the whole world being cursed was a pretty telling line, right there at the beginning. I don't need to know why he feels that way, I'm not asking for backstory or whatever. I'm simply saying that there needs to be some sort of growth or change with someone throughout this story. There are some characters who are different at the beginning than they are at the end, like Lady Eboshi. But why? What motivated her to move from pure industrialization to a lighter version of that? That just feels like cheap growth because the plot called for it.

I guess I do appreciate the fact that there isn't a clear answer at the end of the film. Environmentalism vs. Industrialization doesn't necessarily have an easy answer. It might feel easy in 2026, as we have traveled so far down the path of the latter as a society that our earth is literally burning to death. But the ideological question at the heart of the matter is less simple. Mostly because humankind has advanced greatly because of industrialization and it's hard to imagine a world as complex and as beautiful as the one we live in now if we were all living with the Keith David boars in the woods. And note that Eboshi doesn't say she's gonna stop what she's doing, she just says she's gonna be more conscious of the needs of the forest. And even before that, she's out there saving prostitutes and lepers and giving them better lives, which means she's technically making the world better, or making her world better at least.

But I never got the sense of why she was doing any of that, or how her decisions affected her, or really became invested at all in what these characters were doing or why. It was all that mystical, magical shit that hits me in the heart maybe 10% of the time. I'm cool hanging out in such a world, especially because it was beautiful drawn and realized, and it comes from someone I truly consider to be a master. I just had a tough time caring all that much one the ball started rolling. I'd love to be told I am wrong, though. I'm hoping that someone is going to be able to change my mind on this one, because I really wanted to like it.

GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5

~~~~~~~~~~~

GROUP AVERAGE GRADE: 4.167 pukes out of 5

Quick, to the comments, before the curse spreads!

(NEXT TIME: The other half of Film Club checks out Carol.)

In My Place 217

August 5, 2026. 39.00394, -74.82789. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Oh god, there are so many clichés that I haven't lived out yet. I want to experience it all, every hokey sitcom plot that's ever existed, I want to know it. Like, this is a thing, right? Sneaking out the bathroom window? During a bad date? I want to do this one sometime. Step one would to find myself on a bad date. Step two would be to feel scared in some way of what would happen if I bailed on the date with her full knowledge, so much so that I felt the need to sneak out. Step three would be for this to all happen at a bar where there were no other options beyond sneaking out the bathroom window. You might think step one would be the hardest to manufacture, but it would actually be step two. What could possibly make it so severe that I needed to sneak out, instead of just saying "Sorry, not for me, have a good night"? I have no idea.

I wasn't on a date tonight, it was just a spare thought that crossed my mind at the exact same time as the other daily thought of "I need a picture." I was at a dive bar in a part of Wildwood I had never been before (West Wildwood), and I was with seven other people around my age in my family, as the younger generation and older generation were all doing some grandparent/grandchildren bonding on a pirate ship or some such, and we (the middle generation) used that as an excuse to grab some seafood and drinks at a dive bar. No reason to try to sneak out, not even when we're trying to split the astronomical bill, since people were (under)paying me and I was dropping my card, so what would even be the point of that.

Ralph Malph probably snuck out a bathroom window at some point. I should do some research.

A Year of Blind Spots: Autobahn

Joe is working through a list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die:

Though it is their fourth album, Autobahn is widely considered to be the true beginning of Kraftwerk. Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider had met in 1968 and formed Kraftwerk and their experimental electronic Kling Klang Studio in early 1970.

After years of playing the university, club, and art gallery circuit, where they developed their music, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider composed and recorded the symphonic synthesizer track "Autobahn" together with poet and painter Emil Shult. Inspired by the long road journeys on the German motorway system, the title track marked the band's definitive separation from their "Krautrock" peers.

On Autobahn, joined by new percussionists Wolfgang Flür and Karl Bartos, Hütter and Schneider crystalized the pristine sound and deadpan four-man image that would define Kraftwerk. The album contains sublime pieces of wordless and ambient "Electronic-Volks-Musik" in the tracks "Mitternacht," "Morgenspaziergang," and "Kometenmelodie," but it was the symphonic title track that became symbolic of the international breakthrough of Kraftwerk.

A chart success on both sides of the Atlantic, the album became a landmark in avant-garde pop minimalism. As Ralf Hütter commented in 2003: "In Autobahn, we put car sounds, horns, basic melodies, and tuning motors. Adjusting the suspension and tyre pressure, rolling on the asphalt, that gliding sound when the wheels go onto those painted stripes. It's sound poetry, and also very dynamic."

Autobahn is cinema for the ears.

Joe:

Here we are at our second sojourn with Kraftwerk, and it's immediately clear that this is a matter of discography chronology. I spent a lot of time discussing Trans-Europe Express as "pioneering," and now listen to Autobahn, which came out three years earlier. If I'm not appreciating Autobahn as much, then it's simply a matter of it coming out earlier, and then the band having a few years to define their sound and sharpen it. It's okay to say that Autobahn is instrumental in shaping progressive electronic music while also sounding a little weak compared to what comes afterward. It can be both. It probably should be both, since this blog column cherry-picks albums from throughout the long story of famous bands, and so of course you're going to be telling multiple stories at once. Kraftwerk were revelatory and yet they obviously did not arrive fully formed.

So yeah, I didn't like this one as much. I thought it was neat, and I appreciated what is said about this being a new sound and about Kraftwerk breaking away from their peers with this new sound, etc., but I just didn't find the hooks to be compelling enough for me to enjoy it fully. "Kometenmelodie 2" is the one that probably sounds the best, or has the brightest melody or something, I dunno. But it doesn't have any vocals and it feels slight, being tucked into the back half of that album after that beastly title track.

Let's talk about "Autobahn" then. It's 22 minutes long, which means its length comprises more than half of the album total. It is unavoidably the centerpiece, being that long and right at the beginning and the title track to boot. The song is thus too dense to do anything but pull focus from the rest of the album. The other four songs amount to nothing. They are low-key, ambient, wordless, and occasionally driftless. They are toss-offs that create an illusion that this is a full album, as opposed to a one-song EP with bonus tracks. I don't like it. I think that this album would be better served making its centerpiece Side 2, and the final song.

None of this would matter if "Autobahn" was flawless. It unfortunately has flaws. At 22 minutes, it doesn't do nearly enough to maintain one's attention. It changes it flow a few times, but mostly keeps coming back to the monotone chorus of "fun fun fun at the Autobahn." Obviously, it gets stuck in your head, but not in a pleasurable way. I appreciate—as I have often in these past few years, through an intense effort to view art in a fresh way—the repetition of this song. I get that it's supposed to emulate the long, sometimes droll drives on the German freeway (much in the same way that the repetition on Trans-Europe Express emulated a train traveling down a track). That it's on purpose makes it art, but that the boredom is on purpose does not make it very fun.

I'm just speculating as to why I thought this album was just okay and the last album I listened to was a lot of fun. My hypothesis remains that it's just an earlier album, and that Kraftwerk would eventually get a beefier, stranger, and catchier sound. For now, it was enough to just do something different. They did that with Autobahn. Different is good, even if the actual results vary. I would be more inclined next time to see what they did after Trans-Europe Express, to see if they kept improving, or got even weirder, or what. Autobahn stands as an important piece of the puzzle, even though I can't sincerely recommend it.

In My Place 216

August 4, 2026. 38.97764, -74.82316. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here. Click the picture to see a version that doesn't look like shit.

It's not the ideal vacation, but it'll do. I don't know what the ideal vacation would be, honestly. I think generally it would look closer to "hanging with my core family" than "hanging with my extended family," but my parents pay for the house and my kids have a blast with their cousins. Doesn't mean we can't find excuses to get out of there, just the five of us, just for an hour or two. This is the third year that riding a surrey to the other end of the boardwalk and back has served as one such excuse. The kids enjoy it. Not sure they'll enjoy it as much when their legs are long enough to pedal. I'll continue to enjoy it, though. The Wildwood Boardwalk remains ridiculous, and well worth the workout.

Song of the Day: "Suddenly Everything Has Changed"

A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.

"Suddenly Everything Has Changed (Death Anxiety Caused by Moments of Boredom)"

The Flaming Lips

from The Soft Bulletin

1999

I am bored.

"You're not bored, you're just a boring person!" That's probably true. I think a lot about this whenever my kids express to me that they are bored. I get worried, as a parent, when they say it (or whine about it). Not worried over the fact that they are possibly boring people—my kids can be whatever they choose to be, and if they choose to be boring people, then I'll accept that—but more so worried that they aren't equipped to handle the very normal feeling of boredom. That's not just them, it's all kids their age. The technology that surrounds them has been designed to capture their attention and hold it tight, and during moments when they are not within that technology's range, and are thus not holding attention for it, they interpret the absence of that attention as "boredom." That's how my generation has fucked their generation, and I'm sorry for it.

I am trying. I don't think I'm failing completely. Yeah, sure, there are limits on screentime, but that's not really what I'm talking about. More importantly, I think that my kids are pretty decent about occupying their time with creative playtime and make-believe. It's not something I consciously did (ironically, the screen showing Bluey a lot of the time over the past few years was probably really helpful in this regard). It also helps that they are three women around the same age, and have similar proclivities during playtime. Also, their playtime sometimes (or more than sometimes) devolves into fighting, which makes me upset, so it's not all butterflies and rainbows over here. But I would say that, in general, when there is a feeling of "boredom" welling up within the hearts and minds of any or all of my children at any point, they are for the most part pretty good at pulling themselves out of that boredom, and coming up with some bullshit to occupy their time.

What about me? That's the question. This is a blog post and I'm writing about my life, and so the question turns inward. Am I ever bored? The true answer is yes, but the point I'm trying to make here is that there is a difference between being stuck in boredom, and meeting the boredom head-on. If the question is "Do I have the capacity to handle boredom when it arrives?" then the answer, I think, is also yes. And I believe, since you are currently reading these words right now, that you know the answer to the next follow-up question already. How do I handle boredom? Ummm.......

Today is an anniversary of sorts, here on Puke on Your Birthday. Five years ago today, I posted a blog post. It was a Never Seen It write-up about the movie Doctor Zhivago. August 4, 2021 was a Wednesday. August 1st saw a Sunday write-up about the RC Album of the Week, which was the DMB album. On Monday the 2nd and Tuesday the 3rd, Puke on Your Birthday featured no new content. Starting on August 4, 2021, with that movie post, PoYB has featured at least one blog post every single day. Today, that marks five years of posts every day, no skips.

There's no real answer to the "why?" question on the tip of your tongue. There's no goal here, no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There's not even a finish line to cross, it's just a continuous churn of writing and publishing and writing and thinking about it and writing and commenting and writing and keeping lists of what was written and writing some more. "It's just something to do" is the humble way that I've described it to people lately. If you want to assume there is a purpose, then that's helpful, but if you want to think that it's pointless, then that's okay too. I know that sometimes writing every day has caused me great pleasure and occasionally it places a great painful ugly boil on my ass. I'd also be remiss to say that I wouldn't have been able to do it by myself, and that there were more than a couple days in the past five years when there was one blog post published and that blog post was not written by me. 

So what, is community the purpose here? I don't think that's quite it either. Sometimes I pretend that it is, and of course no matter the answer I'm so goddamn proud and humbled by anyone who shows up here to read the words on the blog, or god forbid even write for this son of a bitch. But if I'm searching for community, then blogging is a tough sell. Brief flashes of togetherness surrounded by long stretches of time when it feels like I'm yelling worthless nonsense down empty hallways. Compared to the lives I see some of my peers living (and let's be honest, parents specifically), I do feel like I am able to get more of a sense of friendship wrung from some of the pieces of this blog than people my age and demographic might be able to find otherwise. Like, if I'm getting even two emails from friends with album reviews in any given week, then that's probably more friendly non-business emails from kith and kin than most people are receiving, right? If the blog brings together three other people on a Zoom about a film, then I am a lucky man indeed. I'm thankful for that.

But what I've been thinking about today, on the anniversary of PoYB as a daily endeavor, is that blogging is more emotionally beneficial if it's viewed as a personal quest. This can be considered in conjunction with the community stuff, which is lovely and similarly helpful emotionally, especially when it's clicking and people are involved and invested. Alongside that, I'd like to view writing as growth. I'd like to view it as a task that brings meaning to my life. And I'd like to view it as a legitimate way to address the boredom that comes for us all in adulthood.

I don't believe that blogging takes the place of anything important that would otherwise be present in my life. I believe that, were it not for blogging, I would be bored. Or else I would have found another way to handle boredom. Maybe I'd be reading more books or something, I don't know. But that's not the point I'm trying to make. I'm simply saying that there is boredom, and there is the way I have chosen to fill that otherwise boring time. Whenever I feel boredom creeping up on me, I start writing.

Boredom fills the gaps in between all the other important stuff, and the trick is to fill the gaps with something not-boring before the boredom can get there. The important stuff: family time, family- and home-related tasks, work obligations, social time with peers. Blogging doesn't replace any of that. But even if you add up all the time that all the important stuff takes up, then you're still left with extra hours in the day. And what do you do with those? You could do nothing, be bored, and complain about it. (You could scroll social media algorithms and be so bored that you don't even realize you're bored.) Or you could do something that whiles away those hours in ways that you can at least pretend are meaningful.

In a blog post nominally about "Sugar, Sugar" that I published four years and 364 days ago, the day after the Doctor Zhivago post that accidentally began it all, I laid out my reasoning then for starting Puke on Your Birthday as a daily website. The reasoning—or at least my retroactive understanding of that reasoning, five years later—was that I was anxious about school starting, and that I needed at least one thing that I knew had provided comfort for me, and hang onto that thing as hard as I could. (I was also drunk just fucking constantly, including while listening to "Sugar, Sugar" at the Foodery and writing the subsequent blog post about my experience, but that's neither here nor there, I suppose.)

But the underlying reasoning for blogging didn't actually change, even though my life as a whole was about to change significantly. I was adding, for the next two years, another "important thing," i.e. grad school. That was on the important things list from orientation to graduation, and then it wasn't anymore, and the list of important stuff changed again, and again when I got a promotion a couple years after that, and there will of course be many more changes to the important stuff in my life as the years go on, some I can predict now and some I could never. The fact remains the same though, that in between all the important stuff is a lot of time to fill. A lesser person allows boredom to infiltrate that space. I, instead, fill it with blogging. Which, for the record, is not all that important.

There are certainly moments in my life when I wonder whether this is all worth it, the blog. I've been feeling that way more and more lately, I'm not going to lie. But I haven't felt that way strongly enough to say fuck it and end the streak of five years and counting. This ritual that I've practiced for 1827 days in a row now, and for over nineteen years total, and for over 5000 blog posts total written by me, it's totally and irrevocably baked into my existence now. It's as natural as crawling into bed at the end of the day, or eating a meal, or taking the bus to work. These aren't things that I need reminders to do, no need to mark the calendar or make a to-do list. I just do them because that's how I live. Blogging is the same way. I feel boredom approaching, and so I look at the Blogger website, and I see what needs to be written, and then I write it. And as I'm writing, I do not feel boredom at all.

It is possible, maybe even probable, that I stop blogging every day in the near future. Not tomorrow (thoughts on Kraftwerk's breakthrough album Autobahn), not this week (whatever bullshit I can cobble together for Modern Baseball's Sports while in Wildwood), not next month (Record Club Week 400, featuring the dreaded Lana Del Rey; a Film Club Zoom discussion about, hmmm, I've been thinking Winter's Bone?), but I dunno, maybe next year. The trick will be to find another way to fill the boredom. The blogging isn't an "important thing," and so it's not going to be that big of a deal when I stop doing it every day. What would be a big deal is if I stopped blogging every day but didn't have any other way to address the boredom of a normal life. That's what I'm scared of. And since I haven't really come up with anything that sounds any more appealing than blogging already does, I might as well just keep blogging for now, and keep my eyes open for alternatives.

I am bored, but I have found that I don't have to be.

In My Place 215

August 3, 2026. 38.9869, -74.81713. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Now I get uncomfortable when a plan goes well in a family setting. Like today, I set it up so that we could rent out this little private theater, a twenty-seater for fifteen people, some random fucking thing I googled when I knew it was gonna be rainy, and it worked out, and the small talk of the day, in the PM hours, was "that worked out so well" and "we should do that next time it rains" and so on. People generally appreciative that I made it happen. I don't know why that made me uncomfortable. I think maybe it's an issue with small talk in general these days. I'm weary of doing the whole "what's new with you," but I also don't really know how to rope in big talk with certain people, my family especially. As if I'm mister big talk anyway. What the fuck do I even have within me that would require big talk. I'm just like anyone else, living a normal life, occasionally watching the musical version of Matilda in a small boutique theater in Wildwood, NJ.

Monday Morning Mixtape 081: Cool Cool Cool

Welcome to Monday Morning Mixtape, a PoYB Contributor-curated playlist of songs, made just for you on the first Monday of each month.

Welcome to our new monthly format! Regardless of what it does to participation, at the very least I don't have to put together Spotify playlists every week now, which is cool! Speaking of cool:

"Cool Cool Cool"

Give us the coolest songs you know (since we are bloggers, and are thus authorities on the concept of cool)

chosen by Joe

Spotify

YouTube

"Aching" by Mannequin Pussy

from I Got Heaven, 2024

I'm not gonna lie, this is the MMM that has given me the most stress since at least the Women's History Month one. The first problem is that I don't think that I am cool (the theme's explanation was sarcasm, obviously), and thus I get an intense imposter's syndrome when attempting to speak on what is cool. The second problem is that someone believing that they themselves are cool is the most uncool thing you could possibly do, and so I wouldn't dare even approach that line of thinking. The third problem is that I have a very narrow definition of what "cool" means, especially in the context of music. I can basically run every song through my head and come up with a reason why it's not cool. That's on me, though. And so I'm basically choosing songs that have the weakest arguments in my head. I couldn't think of too many reasons why Mannequin Pussy would be considered uncool.  —Joe

"Icky Thump" by the White Stripes

from Icky Thump, 2007

Here's what I'm speculating where my personal definition of cool comes from: grade school bullies. I use "bullies" extremely lightly, of course. No trauma, no hardship. But there were actions from me and reactions from others, and that trained me over time. The action was, uh, finding success, academically, in the small pond of elementary school. The reaction was "Joe is a fucking loser" because of that. I didn't bail on getting good grades (not until my last year of college, and even then, I got by), but I did build a protective layer. That layer looked something like "I will never show anyone that I care." Coolness isn't defined by what you do, but how you react to what you do, is what I found. I can get good grades but the crucial part is to pretend that I don't care. Cool is effortless and humble success. Uncool is having success and showing anyone that you're proud of it or that you tried really hard. And so I am trapped in this mindset, even though I realize how unfair it is. And so I apply it to music, within the context of this mixtape. What is cool? Cool is music from people who are really good at making music but don't ever show that they care.  —Joe

"Puppet to the Man" by Kurt Vile

from Smoke Ring for My Halo, 2011

I asked Pam what she thought of this prompt. Her mind was not twisted in the same way as mine was so her definition of cool was a lot broader. The first artist she named as an example of music that is cool was the War on Drugs. The first artist I had named was Kurt Vile. The dichotomy of those two answers is actually pretty useful in trying to explain what I think is certifiably "cool." I like the War on Drugs' music a little better, but I think Kurt Vile is cooler. The reason I like the War on Drugs' music a little better is because the care so fucking much about the craft, and the music is large and epic and feels like it's important, and that they are giving fucking everything when they make that music, and it makes my heart swell. That's what makes it good, but that's also what makes it not as cool. Kurt Vile has rarely, if ever, made music that felt epic. His music sounds like a stoner making the shit he wants to make while hanging out in his garage (that's because that's literally what the music is). He obviously cares about his craft, but the presentation suggests that he doesn't care. That's what the difference is! Not the action, but the reaction. He's cool as fuck.  —Joe

"expectations" by Olivia Rodrigo

from you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, 2026

This one finds me in the gap between knowing that the artist is cool and wanting to believe that the artist is cool. Besides, ya know, the whole idea of operating within the pop music industry that requires false pretenses for the sake of entertainment to the widest audience possible, Olivia Rodrigo feels to me to be the pop star most able to overcome those hurdles and present the truest version of herself that she can (again, understand the circumstances, which are trying for those who wish to present their true selves). She's working against the pop music grain in terms of music style (this being, what, an art rock song, post-punk, new wave, something like that? something that you would never fucking here from a banal Swift sort?) and in terms of play-it-safe PR shit (pretty outspoken about abortion rights; LGBTQ+ advocacy in a world that is actively trying to kill trans people; donations and forthrightness about UNICEF relief efforts for Palestinians who are currently being murdered by the Israeli government, in a culture that seems designed to silence such relief efforts). I believe that Olivia Rodrigo is working in an industry at a level that makes it impossible to make good art and act like they don't care, but I believe that Olivia Rodrigo gets closer to that cool ideal than basically any of her peers.  —Joe

"You're Gonna Miss Me" by the 13th Floor Elevators

from The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, 1966

So much of what's cool and what's not cool comes back to the reaction outside of the artist, that it makes it pretty much impossible for any well-liked artist to actually be cool. I'm still describing my own fucked-up brain, mind you, so take everything I'm saying with a grain of salt. But my reaction to something being popular is still, after all these years, "that's not cool." Again, this is completely separate from the "is this good" discussion. The Beatles are very good, one of the best to ever do it, but they are NOT cool. Way too popular to be cool! This took me so long to distinguish, that these were two different conversations, like an embarrassingly long time. There is so much great music out there that I love, despite the fact that it is popular. There is so much great fucking music out there that I love, despite the fact that it is so fucking lame. My love of music is vast, and is not strung up on whether it's cool or not. My love of cool music is small and narrow, and that's because my definition of "cool" was irrevocably damaged at a formative age. That's not cool.  —Joe

"What It Is" by the Cool Kids

from The Bake Sale EP, 2008

The exclusion of rap music from my own inner "what is cool" monologue has to do with the fact that I don't consider myself cool, and I certainly don't consider to cool to try to talk about what is cool regarding things I'm not knowledgeable about. I already said that there is a difference between caring and not caring, or at least the presentation of caring vs. not caring. But what would be a mortal sin would be the presentation of caring about something that you don't actually know jackshit about. The irony is that the very first rap album that I ever actually listened to of my own accord and appreciated and thought was cool because I grew to know it well and it became a part of my during my formative years was by a rap duo literally named "the Cool Kids." Do I think the Cool Kids are cool? Yeah, I do. Not every song on The Bake Sale EP is cool, but some of it is, because they feel like they are just fucking around, which is cool. I don't know if the Cool Kids think about coolness in the same way I do. Maybe what I think about cool doesn't matter. Probably it shouldn't.  —Joe

NEXT MONTH: TBA for the next MMM on Monday, September 7th!

In My Place 214

August 2, 2026. 38.99256, -74.79718. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Remember when they tried to ban canopies from the beach? This was in Wildwood, the backwards fucking shore town that I've somehow found myself visiting every year of my life. The jabronis who live here year-round love to bitch and moan about the beach, and I guess a few years ago they looked around and saw that the rapidly shrinking beach was being increasingly covered with large tents, and, ya know, instead of attempting any long-term change, like voting for responsible environmental policies, they instead kept voting for the pedophile and then attempted to just make sure people didn't have shade on the beach. That ban lasted half a summer (I think this was like 2023ish), and didn't even last until I finally got down here with my own cabana. As I type this, I don't have sunburn. I've only seen one pedophile flag in town so far, none on the beach, and also only one nazi flag (a.k.a. the thin blue line-style "American" flag). Maybe these people are starting to realize they fucked themselves. Or maybe they just don't care anymore, which is probably worse. Anyways. It was a good beach day.

Album of the Week: Sports

For the 38th summer in a row, I will be spending one week in North Wildwood, NJ. For the eighth summer in a row, the heavy pall of Record Club's music will hang over the week. Let's see how a week at the beach will affect how I feel about this album. There have been mixed results over the years. The Wildwood RC canon is: Fever Breaks by Josh Ritter, Watermelon Man! by Mongo Santamaria, We Are Not Your Kind by Slipknot, Don't You Fake It by the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, healing by In Love with a Ghost, Mindfuck Ultra by Yambag, and The Young and the Hopeless by Good Charlotte. All of these albums bring back specific Wild-Wild-Wildwood Days memories for me, even now. I appreciate you indulging me in some talk about vacation in this introduction to this week's album. If you're free, come down the shore. The beach is free, and there's room under my Cool Cabana for you. We won't listen to Modern Baseball though, the algorithm lovers in my family would never allow it.

Record Club:

archives | supplemental

spotify playlist | youtube playlist

choose | writing

WEEK 392 — August 2-8, 2026

Sports

by Modern Baseball

LISTEN:

Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp | Apple

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PICKED BY VOTE

CATEGORY OF VOTING: "Sportsball" — Mostly a joke category, and it grew from an observation I had made at some point over the spring of a band called Sports appearing over a decade after Remember Sports changed their name from Sports to Remember Sports because Sports was too confusing, but apparently not too confusing for Sports, the new band called Sports, not Remember Sports. Anyways, I added a few more artists and albums with "Sports" in their names, and Modern Baseball won. I don't think anyone is considering the fidelity of the joke when voting, their just voting for what is the most familiar. Proud to say that Philly hometown heroes took the win.

LOSING ALBUMS: Boys These Days by Sports Team; Colors by Sport; The Refrigerator by Remember Sports; Sports by Sports.

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ALBUM DETAILS

GENRE: Midwest emo, emo-pop, pop punk, indie folk, indie rock

RELEASED: November 27, 2012

LENGTH: 30:48

TRACKLIST:

1. Re-Do
2. Tears over Beers
3. The Weekend
4. @chl03k
5. Hours Outside in the Snow
6. I Think You Were in My Profile Picture Once
7. Re-Done
8. Cooke
9. See Ya, Sucker
10. Look Out
11. Play Ball!
12. Coals

LYRICS: Genius.com

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ARTIST DETAILS

PRONOUNS: he/him/his for Ewald and (from what I could find) they/them/their for Lukens

ABOUT: Modern Baseball had its genesis in the late '00s, when Ewald and Lukens met in high school in Brunswick, Maryland. They both went to school in Philadelphia in 2010 (Ewald at Drexel and Lukens at Chestnut Hill), where they met Ian Farmer, who attended Drexel, and helped them record their debut album using school equipment. They played house parties at Drexel at "The Michael Jordan House" (the cover charge was either $3 or a picture of Michael Jordan). They all temporarily left school due to the success of the band. Modern Baseball (sometimes shorted to MoBo) is known as an important band of emo's fourth wave, a.k.a. the Emo Revival era. The band went on hiatus in 2017, and this is most attributed to Lukens focusing on their mental health. The band is still on hiatus, though Ewald and Farmer still operate together in Ewald's Slaughter Beach, Dog, which was a side project at first but is not their main gig. Sean Huber joined at some point on drums, I should mention. He's not on this album, but he's on the other two. Can't forget about the drummer!

DISCOGRAPHY: This is Modern Baseball's first of three albums. It was followed by You're Gonna Miss It All in 2014, and Holy Ghost in 2016.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

READING SOME SHIT: an interview feature on a random Wordpress in 2016

WATCHING SOME SHIT: "The Weekend" live in 2012

WATCHING SOME MORE SHIT: Zach sent this one over a few days ago, a 26-year-old woman basically answers the question "what is emo" over the course of eleven minutes, including a bunch on Modern Baseball, and mentions of other artists we've covered on this blog. Watch for her intense knowledge of the scene, and try to maintain your composure as you continuously want to pummel the male interviewer in the face.

RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: A few name connections. Modern Baseball comes after Metamodern Sounds. It wasn't the RC album, but Huey Lewis and the News also have an album called Sports. Sports references abound throughout RC, with (off the top of my head) Little Big League, Johnny Football Hero, Footballhead, the Philadelphia Eagles, what else?

Any previous Drexel connections? It's been noted that I saw Dan Deacon perform at Drexel in 2008, but that's more happenstance than a true connection. A bunch of RC alumni have attended other City Six universities, including Hall & Oates and Tim Heidecker (both Temple). It was noted in their Wikipedia that Modern Baseball toured with the Menzingers.

We should also note that this is the second week in a row that we're covering a band slapped with the Midwest emo genre tag, though I don't know if I'd necessarily compare the Jazz June and Modern Baseball. They are different emo waves, to start (second vs. fourth). Some fourth wave bands like MoBo took things closer to the "pop-punk" end of the spectrum than the second wave. In any case, if you find them too similar, then that's my bad!

MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: I only learned about Modern Baseball in 2014, and You're Gonna Miss It All ended up at #5 on PoYB's Top Ten Albums of 2014. It was covered in The Albums That Matter in 2019, in anticipation of its ranking in the Top Albums of the Decade list, where it landed at #21. "Your Graduation" from that album ended up at #40 for the Top Songs of the Decade. Steady Hands, drummer Sean Huber's so far unmentioned side project, showed up in Summer Song Challenge at some point. I used a MoBo song to speculate about actual baseball last summer. A song from Sports showed up on a Monthly Playlist just last summer as well. Finally, three MoBo songs have appeared on three different Monday Morning Mixtapes ("Play Ball!" on MMM012, "Your Graduation" on MMM014, and "Wedding Singer" on MMM078).

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RECORD CLUB ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

This week's discography dive album: It's Alive by La Luz

This week's follow-up album: Tragic Magic by Mary Lattimore and Julianna Barwick

This week's keeping up album (probably): Music, Fashion, Film by Charli XCX

Listen with us! Keep your favorite Record Club artists in the rotation!

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COUNTDOWN:

69 Weeks Until Week 420

We are tracking and counting down every week from here on out till Record Club Week 420. We started this countdown 69 weeks out. During Record Club Week 420, we will be covering Donny Most by the esteemed Happy Days virgin Donny Most. The goal for Week 420 of Record Club is that it will feature 69 reviews from 69 different people. 

THIS WEEK: We are 28 weeks away from Week 420.

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Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!

In My Place 213

August 1, 2026. 39.03776, -74.83236. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

If you squint, you can see Wildwood, NJ. This is a follow-up to a blog post from seven years ago. We're still playing "Thunder Road" as we go into town. The kids are neither excited nor disappointed, it's just part of the sonic tapestry of their lives: we listen to "Thunder Road" as we cross the bridge. We hear the harmonica during those first moments of seeing our vacation town; we hear the drum triplets that bring us into the outro and we enter town in earnest. It's just something we do. Something we've always done. Something we'll always do, until something happens and we don't go to Wildwood anymore. A family tradition, but I swear there is very little fanfare. Sit tight, take hold.

Song of the Evening: "Mistakes (Too Many to Name)"

A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.

"Mistakes (Too Many to Name)"

The Reds, Pinks & Purples

from The Town That Cursed Your Name

2023

It's not really all that reliable, the number tracker. I suppose this is the 10,000th blog post published on Puke on Your Birthday, which is why I'm banging out a blog post really quickly, to note the occasion, so that the 10,000th post doesn't accidentally become a picture of a North Wildwood beach porta-potty or whatever the fuck.

But the number comes with plenty of caveats. Included in that count are the landing pages, like this one, which shouldn't really count. And then there are so many tiny blog posts littered around this stupid fucking blog that are just straight-up asinine, and probably should count either. Like this one, as just one example. We have 10,000 blog posts, but so many of them are lying in a landfill right now. And then consider all the blog posts that have been published and then since deleted. I'm mostly referring to all of Mike's posts, deleted in a pre-law school haze of regret, but there's been a few from my side of the fence over the years too. I recall a post from long ago whose premise was "here are all the other people on the internet who share my first and last name," which was deleted because there were just way too many redactions, now that I'm militant about not having my last name on this blog.

Anyways, you don't care about this. You shouldn't care about this. I'm just typing because I need to type something. I'm publishing late in the afternoon on a Saturday because I don't think you need to care about it, and I'm trying to make it easy to ignore. I could sit here and type all day about this fucking blog, but that would stretch the tolerance of our readership to its breaking point. No one thinks about this place in the same way I do. It's a nice place to visit for you, I hope, but it hasn't seeped into your bones and your blood like it has for me. You live your life and you come here when you want to.

I'm just realizing now that I wrote a long meta piece for our 1000th blog post. That was written toward the end of 2019, which means that, for the first eleven years of the blog's existence, we wrote 1000 blog posts, and during the 2020s, we've written 9000 blog posts. I think that post from 2019 is worth visiting if you want to know the origin story of how we got here. It misses 90% of the story as it stands now, of course, but that's what happens when you end up writing 9000 additional blog posts. In brief, here's where we've been since then.

In 2020, I blogged twice a day, with one of them being a blog post about whatever beer I drank that day, and the other being whatever I could cobble together. I learned that a blog-a-day habit was possible. I also learned (in retrospect, perhaps) that I was probably an alcoholic.

In 2021, I lost a sense of who I was as a writer, and found that maybe I still needed to blog every day. More on this discovery in a few days in another sappy anniversary post disguised as a Song of the Day, but suffice it to say now that this year, 2021, is when PoYB became its fullest form.

In 2022, I completed my only full calendar year of grad school, so the blog was kept burning but perhaps not as bright. Occasionally, I kept the lights on. I also got deeply into alcohol, more so than ever before, so you can start to see some of the cracks show if you read between the lines. Most importantly, the most satisfying blog project I have ever or will ever complete was worked through during 2022: Grannies Gone Wild. We peaked here.

In 2023, we had a good time through the year, but the summer yet again yielded another satisfying project: Summer Song Challenge. I already knew it was fun blogging every day, but it was cool to blog every day with other people. I felt a sense of togetherness through SSC that I hadn't felt before on this blog, at least not to that extent.

In 2024, we reached another peak, this time when we took the successful Song Challenge idea and blew it up to a yearlong project. By the end of the year, it felt like the ten of us or so had actually achieved something, a collective writing catharsis. It was deeply, incredibly satisfying. I don't think PoYB really ever recovered in the aftermath of Yearlong Song Challenge. The year also started with a bunch of individual weekly columns from some of our pals. Those all faded by the end of the year too, as they always do.

In 2025, then, we were basically hungover the whole year. Trying to find some sense of identity after losing so much. No overarching projects, just a diligent grinding out the blog on a daily basis. Oh, and Film Club too! Time will tell if this is something that will stand the test of blogging time, or if it'll fade like all other blog projects tend to do. If even one person still wants to watch movies with me, then Film Club will stick around.

In 2026, this year, I think I'm starting to get the sense that we're slowly petering out, losing steam, irreversibly. But maybe something will happen that will get us back and invested!

I don't think that we're going to end up with another 10,000 blog posts after this one. I guess you never know, but I think I know. There might eventually come a time when Record Club is literally the last thing standing, and so we'll still get at least two reviews every Friday, and a Sunday write-up for the new album, and those three-plus blog posts a week might eventually add up to 10,000 more posts. Theoretically. Realistically, though, the end of my life or the end of the world or the end of the internet is gonna get to us first.

Almost half of the blog posts published on PoYB so far were not written by me. With that in mind, I want to thank you for doing your part in making this website a cool place to be. At the very least, you made me happy, so hopefully you can feel good knowing that the arduous task of writing makes at least one human being's life better than it was before you wrote. I'm being sincere. Thank you.

Alright, that's enough for now. Let's get started on blog post #10,001.

Record Club Alumni Association — Minutes from Meeting #08: Fibulator, Melody's Echo Chamber, Menzingers

(Deeper Dive)

Fibulator

drankfromtheasphalt — RC Week 371 — 3.5 pukes out of 5

unhammerlike

1994 (unknown exact date)

This is the second week in a row that my Deeper Dive pick goes completely off the rails, after Gal. And to be clear, I mean this in a good way. Or at the very least an interesting way (which is what we're aiming for in Record Club anyway, you know). I suppose I'm technically less surprised about Fibulator, who were pretty weird to begin with, but I'm struggling to imagine what the collective consensus would have been if we had tried out unhammerlike first. drankfromtheasphalt was strange, but operate within the confines of the traditional rock 'n' roll structure. unhammerlike is, in comparison, unhinged. There are strange noises around every corner, creepy screaming throughout, someone squishing a dog toy throughout one song, basically no homages to any genre of music beyond freak art rock shit. This is the sound of a band playing like they knew it was the last time, and they had to go balls to the wall and include every single idea, even all the bad ones. Fibulator was right, this did end up being their last album. I just marvel at the idea of going out on this note, and letting this stand as your legacy. If that's true, Fibulator is one of the weirdest bands we've ever covered in Record Club. Again, in a good way.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

(Follow-up)

Melody's Echo Chamber

Emotional Eternal — RC Week 196 — 3 pukes out of 5

Unclouded

December 5, 2025

Pam saw this artist in concert a couple months ago, and I will say primarily that, after listening to her newest album, I'm assuming the concert was cool as fuck. Melody Prochet is basically doing everything that Tame Impala wish they could do, making this dreamy psych shit seem effortless and relaxed and homegrown. Like, there are artists that feel like they are doing it in effort to try to be good and well-liked, and then there are artists who are clearly just doing it for the love of the game. Melody's Echo Chamber falls most assuredly into the latter category. Something like "Eyes Closed" feels like it was made with love. It is propulsive and yet it calms. I don't know if this is necessarily "interesting" enough for me to dive deep into (I have no idea what she's singing about, for example), but I still appreciate the art, and what it's trying to do... or not trying to do, as it were.

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

(Keeping Up)

The Menzingers

Hello Exile — RC Week 36 — 4.5 pukes out of 5

Some of It Was True — RC f/u #23 — 4 pukes out of 5

Everything I Ever Saw

July 17, 2026

Here's something funny: I never realized that Menzingers had two vocalists until now. This isn't a new kind of stupidity for me. Just last summer, I figured it out way too late in the game about Goo Goo Dolls. And it's not like Greg Barnett and Tom May are that much different vocally. I mean, now that I know, I'll hear it all the time. But this isn't like when I didn't realize until embarrassingly late that Roger Waters and David Gilmour were singing different parts on Pink Floyd songs. ANYWAY, this little tidbit helped me find new depth in a band that doesn't necessarily seem all that interested in finding depth in their own sound. These dudes have a particular style, and they are sticking to it. Is it starting to become a little noticeable? Perhaps. Stale, even? Certainly not. I think we all need to take a step back and breathe in these types of situations. We need to be thankful that great rock bands are sticking to winning formulas. They could try to switch it up and fail, and we don't want that. Too risky. Let's stick to what we all know and love. Not every band should do this, mind you, lest we lose all chance of risks paying off. But some bands should just continue on and never change. There's a comfort in that. We need the comfort of the Menzingers to get us through these hard times.

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

(Random RCAA News)

• The Noah Kahan pissing and shitting fiasco continues, with fans continuing to piss and shit in their seats during Noah Kahan concerts.
• boygenius member Lucy Dacus brought out two members of two other RC bands at the Newport Folk Fest—Hayley Williams from Paramore and Brandon Flowers from the Killers.
• Bon Iver played a full set of Bob Dylan covers as "Bon Dylan."
• BTS is boycotting the Grammys, as maybe everyone should.
• Black Sabbath's guitarist Tommy Iommi is releasing a solo album.
• FUCK DATA CENTERS says Willie Nelson, and pretty much everyone.

In My Place 212

July 31, 2026. 40.07308, -75.06954. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here. Looks like shit if you don't click it, I'm sorry about Blogger's limitations.

"Does it always have to be a building?" —the only photographer in my life who gives a shit about this blog photography project

She's right to question. I do default pretty often to "here's a picture of the building that I was in." Initial arguments might defer to the title of the project itself, namely the word "place," and how that should be considered the focus. But, like, there's also no reason why the picture can't be of, say, an object that is located within that place. There are no rules. If I want to capture an object outside of the place that I spend the majority of my time (home), then that's cool, I assume. It's a better picture than another pic of the backyard or whatever.

I also really look up to my photographer friend and want to take her implicit advice.

I'm skipping town tomorrow (Saturday), so I'll have more pictures of buildings coming up, except these buildings will be in a different state, by the beach.

Discussion — Week 391: The Medicine by the Jazz June

I gotta assume that most people didn't even realize that we switched this week's scheduled album less than two weeks ago. Fine Art by Fine Art exists, I swear. It just doesn't exist online. But you know the trite saying that god-fearing boomers usually say: everything happens for a reason. I would like to believe that the folks who reviewed The Medicine this week liked it a lot better than they would have Fine Art. I'm writing this before reading anyone else's reviews, so I guess that remains to be seen. How'd it work out? Did any of these reviews persuade you? Let's chat in the comments about emo, god, your weekend, really anything, I'll be there.

The Medicine, Sunny

Something about this album in toto didn't quite click for me this week. It's not bad, it just didn't quite hit a vein. The band name, the album art, the tonality, the memories of Jeremy Renner's album; there's a bit of discordance. How is the Renner App doing anyway? What I will say unequivocally (without going back to listen or check my write up) is that this is better than the Ren-album. I at least really enjoyed the "The Medicine" and somewhat "Get on the Bus" and found it all generally pleasant enough.

The Medicine, Nate

The words don't make sense but the sounds say "kindness." The shape the face makes tells me something is wrong but the sounds say "all is well." When I ride the teacups, I lose track of where the sky is and I feel like I've woken up late at night and my parents aren't home. I never used to get dizzy. I used to count the rows in the couch and imagine tiny canyons. The hands hurt me but the sounds say "don't be afraid."

The Medicine, Gloria

By the time most of you read this, I'll be at Newport Jazz Fest for the weekend—the Jazz Gloria. I was hoping this would be a jazzy week for record club, too, but alas. I've said it on other emo albums, and I'll say it here too. I used to listen to this genre so much in high school, but I just can't get into it when it's a new-to-me emo band I'm hearing in my mid-thirties. I've outgrown this genre. I still feel nostalgic about bands I once loved, but I can't seem to get into anything new. I don't know. I feel like this album has a sort of congested sound, like there is no space to breathe; it's just a wall of music. It doesn't feel very compelling or very interesting to me at this point in my life; maybe if I had heard it closer to when it came out, it would be a different story.

The Medicine, Tom

Like a great many of the underground bands from their era—late '90s, early 2000s—including Bright Eyes, Mineral, Rilo Kiley, Cursive, Modest Mouse, and At the Drive-In, these guys have an ambition that they really shouldn't have had the balls to display. Groups of their size and sound historically were relegated to under 30-minute records with hopefully one song catchy enough to make them cult acts in 20 years not the 50+ minute manifestos of the aforementioned, most of whom incredibly managed to deliver on their sonics with hooks and wit and poetry. The Jazz June have ambition, just listen to the rumbling drums under the title track, the subtle synths on the song that follows it, or peep the track length on the finale. And because they're a band that straddles the second and third wave of emo, there's finger taps and down-tuned post hardcore guitar (second wave) under a vocalist whose tenor voice sometimes sings and sometimes yelps about his pain from a breakup that hints at undiagnosed mental illness (third wave). Both of which can be heard on fourth wave standard bearers like the Hotelier or Modern Baseball. As for the record itself, it's melodic but murky, unclear in what it wants to get across except the desperation of an ennui that's so great it can't be fully articulated but that's not for lack of trying. Scan the lyrics online, and there seems to be quite of bit of leaning on the sauce (see: alcoholism) to get through the day-to-day fragments of frustration that manifest in endless accusation from the singer. If you were between the ages of twelve and 25 in 2000, I could see how that would be tonic to the rage of broken societal promises. But within a year or two, I'd point you to Is This It or The Execution of All Things or Lifted... and hoped for a better outlook.

Inspirational verse: "So let's dance in ideas / And make nothing seem impossible / Because who wants to know all the answers when we can sing and it's enough." 

3.0/5 Pukes

The Medicine, Joe

Have I ever written about this? I don't know if I have. Maybe, maybe not. It's hard to say after 10,000 blog posts. I'm sure somewhere amongst the dirt and debris of tossed-off writing is the factoid that I am afraid of slugs. You know, like the slimy, slow-moving things that you find in a garden at night. This is my fear. It's both true and also funny to say. A good addition to any otherwise trite conversation about fears. No one wants to be the dude who's saying something like "I'm afraid of heights." That's boring as FUCK. You gotta surprise 'em when you're giving a piece of yourself like that. You want the reaction to be a giggle: slugs?! Yes, slugs. I'm not lying. It's not as effective if it's a lie. The trick is to make them laugh through truth. And my truth is: I'm afraid of slugs.

Now, when I say the word "afraid," again, I'm not lying, but we do need to clarify what it means to be "afraid" of something. How would you describe it? It's an emotion, which are typically difficult to define. You know the emotion because you feel it, and you know that other people feel those emotions too and know what you mean when you say "fear" because you know they have felt "fear" too, and you can relate in the use of the word because you don't have to define it, it's common knowledge, that emotion. But what if you HAD to describe what being "afraid" meant, how would you? Well, then we'd default to the physical properties that are tied to that emotion. Your heart beats more quickly. You get sweaty palms. You get dizzy, or nauseous. Your breath quickens or stops completely for a brief moment. Maybe your eyes get wide, your mouth hangs agape, your body starts to move away from the thing that is causing this emotion within you. I feel all these things when I see a slug. And the fact that I feel these physical reactions to the sight of a slug should, within this definition of "fear," prove that I am afraid of slugs.

In this definition, we are using the physical sensations to explain the emotional sensations. But what I'd like to propose to you now is: what if it moves in the opposite direction? What if we are using the emotional sensations to explain the physical sensations? In other words, what if I feel a certain way physically when I witness external stimuli (in this case: a slimy slug), and the only way that I am able to explain why I am feeling this way physically when I see this particular object is with the word "fear"? But what if those physical sensations are totally separate? What if I'm misinterpreting the way my body is reacting? And if so, should we still use the word "fear"?

Because I'll tell you this: I am old enough to know that there's no real reason to be afraid of slugs. They present no actual threat to me. The most recent 200 times I've seen a slug, over the last 20 years or so, my response to seeing it is simply to move away from it. And if you know those dastardly slugs, you know that they are way too slow to catch me, a human man with abnormally long legs. I know this. I am acknowledging it now. I don't fear slugs when I don't see them, I am instead only reminded of my fear when I see one close by, and feel the physical reaction. I "fear" seeing a slug on damp, half-lit mornings along the sidewalk path, but really what I mean is that I don't want to feel sweaty or feel nauseous or feel my heart skip a beat or feel a strong motivation to run away quickly. Those are unpleasant physical feelings, and I don't want to see a slug because I don't want to feel that way.

I guess it doesn't really make all that much of a difference, how you or I choose to define my "fear" of slugs. Whether it's actually fear or not is a moot point. But it's interesting to think about what we feel and how we feel it and why we feel it, isn't it? We choose to define this sensation as "fear" because that's the easiest way to do it, that's the most understood emotion, and adequately serves to explain why I react the way I do when I see a slug. I must be afraid of slugs. And that seems to be good enough, even though "fear" is an ancient impulse that serves to inform the human body of a threat and trigger a fight or flight response in order to preserve safety and security. But slugs aren't a threat! I know this! Do you see why "I'm afraid of slugs" doesn't seem like a satisfactory answer to me? If I know something is not a threat and have decades of personal data to back up that fact, then why do I still think that I am afraid of that thing? It doesn't make sense.

So when you ask me what I mean when I say that I am fucking thrilled and elated when I listen to Midwest emo, then I am similarly curious as to how I would even explain those emotions. You know what I mean when I use words like "thrilled," of course. If something makes me happy, then you know what I'm trying to say, because you know what it feels like to be happy, and we can relate because we have both felt that human reaction, happiness. And you can connect the dots from there, and say, yes, if Joe feels that way about this particular genre, then I can interpret exactly what he means. He likes it, because of the emotion he says he feels while he listens to bands like the Jazz June is something that I've felt about something else, so this makes sense. The world makes sense. Good. Yes. I'm just curious if we need to be thinking about the Why here, or if it's just good enough to lean on words that signify universally known emotions, and leave it at that.

Like the origins of my love of this Midwest emo genre, the origins of my fear of slugs are murky, forgotten, lost in time. I do know for a fact that the backyard of the home I lived in from birth until the summer of 2003 (at the age of fourteen) was known to feature a non-negligible number of slugs on any given summer evening. My assumption, based on my limited knowledge of how trauma works, is that I had some sort of traumatic experience with a slug during the time in my life from which no memory still remains. Or maybe something happened to me with a slug after the moment in my life when my brain started hitting the Record button, but this particular traumatic experience rejiggered my brain chemistry so that the Record button became loose and stopped recording for that particular experience, ya know, as some sort of self-defense mechanism against whatever horrors I witness in that moment. And yet without the memory, my brain still responds like it probably did in that unrecorded moment, with the fear symptoms like sweaty palms and shortness of breath. This is all guesswork, but fits into the framework of human trauma psychology.

So what's the history—guessed or otherwise—of my love of Midwest emo? It's similarly patchy, though obviously the holes in the story have nothing to do with age. I was 30 years old when it occurred to me that I love this shit. There is documentation on the blog, but here's the secret I'll share with you: I was fucking loaded when I wrote that thing (oh whoops, not a secret, I literally say that in the blog post). This accounts for the bad, lazy writing. This also may or may not account for the shaky reasoning behind my love of this type of music. I know what I feel: I feel breathless, but in a good way, like when you're thrilled with something, like maybe akin to going fast on a highway, or winning a prize at carnival game, or seeing a smile on a newborn's face. But I don't know why that reaction for this music. I'm reading the RYM description of Midwest emo, looking for clues, finding information but no explanation. Did I have some eye-opening experience, back then in the winter of '18-'19, something that I can't remember because I was too blotto drunk but nevertheless changed my brain chemistry in some irreversible way to always be attracted to these particulars sounds?

What you might need at this juncture if confirmation from me that I like The Medicine by the Jazz June. I do. I can confirm it. This is an album review and so it must be said. It also must be clarified that I don't love every single piece of Midwest emo that has ever come across my desk. It, like all music genres, is vast and deep, and ultimately (because it, like all music genres, is just something someone made up and just happened to become widely accepted, even though it doesn't actually mean anything and isn't actually real) encompasses a whole lot of disparate sounds. Record Club's only other pure example of the genre came to us last summer, in Sunny Day Real Estate, and I struggled then to say what I'm struggling to say now. Not only that, but I was less impressed with SDRE than I am with the Jazz June. That probably has more to do with expectations than actual quality, but I'm really just bringing it up because I don't want it to seem like anything that could be reasonably affixed with a "Midwest emo" label gets the rubberstamp treatment from me. The difference in my own opinion between the Jazz June and Sunny Day Real Estate (and American Football, and the Promise Ring, and Braid, and Mineral, and Cap'n Jazz) isn't really that large, but it is there. And I really, really liked The Medicine, in the broader scope of my musical tastes of course (since I love Midwest emo), but also within the specific context of all Midwest emo bands.

I know how I feel when I listen, but those feelings are borne of physical reactions. I know that I love Midwest emo because of the physical sensations I feel when I listen to good Midwest emo music. Then I take those physical reactions and interpret them in a way that makes me label it like: I am excited, I am thrilled, I am happy. I think maybe it's time to just admit that I'll never know the Why. I won't be able to go back and figure out why I feel the way I feel about certain things. There is a reason, a genesis story to those emotions, but they are occasionally lost. And ultimately, they don't even matter, because you are you, and you feel what you feel, and you understand what you feel and what that means, to feel those things. I know how I felt this week, and I liked it.

Also: please don't talk to me about salt. Everyone always talks to me about salt. What about salting a slug do you think would make me feel any fucking better about this? Do you not understand what happens to a slug when they touch salt? And you think that would be helpful for me? That this would address my fear? C'mon now.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5