Prompt: "A song less than 45 seconds long"
Selected by Joe
"Inmates"
Restraining Order
Locked in Time, 2023
I was going to choose "Coffee Machine" by Remember Sports, as it clocks in at 39 seconds, and would've afforded me to "remember" a "sports" story that literally involves a coffee machine, maybe it would've looked something like
or something like that. I would've gone on to describe the unruly behavior of the understandably upset and most likely very drunk Philadelphia crowd inflicted upon that stadium after being told that their precious Eagles had forsaken them. One such scene would describe a man who, after yelling at the woman in the ticket booth for no particular reason other than blind anger and a need to lash out at a scapegoat of any kind, reached his hand through the window and knocked the ticket office's coffee machine off its shelf onto the floor. So there's the coffee machine for you. I don't know how I would've ended the tale, and I don't know what the ultimate lesson would have been. Something along the lines of "it's just a preseason sports game, don't be a fucking baby about it"? I don't know. I'll never know, because that's not the blog post I'm writing today.
I just didn't want to choose a song by Remember Sports in this context. That context being: Bridget chose a Remember Sports song on Day 27, and chose it without knowing much about this great Philly indie rock band, and left it with an open question of "hey I wonder what else this band has up its sleeve" and I just honestly didn't want this to be the follow-up, this 39-second song about a coffee machine. It's probably Remember Sports' worst or at least the most inessential song that the band has in their repertoire. This is a worthy band unworthy of being highlighted here in such a way as that. Go listen to the entirety of All of Something. It's a great album, and I know for a fact that you have extra listening time today, since the totality of your YSC listening today is going to be less than seven minutes.
Here's a good 43-second song from Restraining Order, a Boston hardcore band whose Locked in Time became one of my annual two or three hardcore albums that I consumed in 2023, and didn't really have much to write about at the time, nor really do now. It's a good album, if you wanna check it out (only 21 minutes long, since we're talking about lengths here)!
But all this talk about criminal activity reminds me that there is a small update I feel obligated to share with you, a follow-up to a blog post that I wrote for YSC back on Day 68. On that day, we were tasked with naming the "worst person in your life," which was a task that no one took lightly. It's tough to remain optimistic in this world and also hate someone enough that you're gonna describe them that way. If you'll recall, I took the coward's way out. I just named some random dude who annoyed me for a small reason.
The reason was this: every afternoon on those days when I used to sporadically pick up Willow from school, depending on my work schedule (so much for doing that in the fall, obligatory FUCK YOU MAYOR wedged in here), all the Kindergarten parents would have to wait outside before a school official opened up the doors and let the parents stream in to sign the kids out. The hallways are narrow, and Americans are no known for orderly queues like their British friends, so the scene was usually bedlam. Willow's classroom was, of course, the furthest one back, which meant I had to squeeze past other lines of parents, most times with a squirmy baby in one arm and the other clasped around the preschooler's hand and we all shimmied sideways.
And I always get annoyed at this big burly fucking dude because he would always stand there, right in front of the doors, so that he could be the first one into the school, quickly grab his kids, and practically run out of the school holding the hands of two little ones. Which meant that he was coming out as all the other parents were filing in, and you can understand why, in a thin staircase, it might be inconvenient to already feel squished and then have some football linebacker-sized person pushing through the crowd in the opposite direction.
I just didn't understand why. If it was a matter of being prompt, then the actions were still gratuitous. He saved maybe two minutes of time pushing through everyone, which doesn't seem like enough time to be worth even a minor inconvenience placed on everyone else. It wasn't a personal annoyance—I feel the same way when someone in the back of the train pushes their way to the front so that they can be the first ones off, and likewise with buses, and really anyone in any situation who display any noticeable lack of patience for no fucking reason—but definitely something that annoyed me in a general sense. I think it was a good pick for "worst person in my life" because the issue was so minor that I could brush it off as being funny instead of mean.
But then something happened the other day at work. I was processing a report that had something to do with sex abuse and a known perp, which meant that I was going on the Megan's Law website to confirm something or other. While I was there, though, just out of curiosity, I plugged in my own zip code, and scrolled through the profiles on there, just generally curious as opposed to looking for anything specific.
It hit me out of the blue—there he was. The same fucking guy. A registered offender.
In a flash, everything clicked into place. A split second after feeling the surprise of recognizing a face on this website beyond old theater acquaintances, I suddenly realized that this explains everything. This dude wasn't just rushing into school to be a dick. He was rushing because he didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable by being around so many children. Maybe being a registered offender is the worst reason someone could give regarding pushing through school crowds, but it was a fucking reason, and was that not my whole issue in the first place? That I was assuming he was doing this for no reason? Well, here's the reason. It makes sense. It fits. Somehow, it makes me feel a lot better about the situation. And it makes me not hate the guy anymore.
Look, being a registered sex offender is pretty bad. I acknowledge that. Even the lowest levels of severity on the registry—something like "endangering welfare of a child," which this guy is tagged with, and which could be anything, abuse direct or indirect—is and should be condoned. I believe that punishment is in order in these cases, but of course, everything within reason. I don't think the punishment should impede possible rehabilitation. It makes sense to have something like Megan's Law to be aware of these situations, but it also doesn't make sense to lock people away forever or make them disappear because of what they did. There should be room to make good on past misdeeds, again, within reason.
I don't know what this guy's actual deal is, beyond the criminal charge that plastered his name and face on the internet. The only other thing I saw, whenever I was in his general vicinity, was that he was taking care of two young daughters. I trust the system in so much as I trust that this wouldn't be the case if he wasn't on the road to rehabilitation, or making amends, depending on what happened originally and when in his life it happened. It doesn't seem right or fair to me that he should be completely shunned from society because his face is on Megan's Law. The face on Megan's Law (and maybe the fact that some dude is blogging about the face on Megan's Law) should be enough.
For a couple years in this otherwise terrible job, I was working with parents, those who had children in the system, which you can infer means that these parents were credibly accused of abuse, to the extent that their children were temporarily or permanently taken from their care. What I saw wasn't the faces of abusers, but the faces of people who fucked up and knew they fucked up and were trying so goddamn hard to be better. And so I choose to see this in others that I come across, beyond the parents in that specific program. I'm not making a blanket statement and saying that all abusive people deserve an opportunity to rid themselves of their abusive tendencies. For some, that's not possible, and others choose to continue to lean into it and are unapologetic, or otherwise too cowardly to make true amends. But for still others, there is hope, the hope in trying to improve and change and be better and do better.
There could be a thousand reasons why this dude bumrushes the school and splits the tide on the way through an already hassled throng of parents in an un-air-conditioned building. Maybe he is just an asshole. Maybe he feels like he can't help himself sometimes and is running in and out of the school like I do in my kitchen when the cookie jar is open. Maybe he has to get back to work. Or maybe, just maybe, he's just trying to do what's right. Maybe he's trying to get in and out of that school and away from the children whose parents are there and might have visited Megan's Law and are uncomfortable for whatever reason and this guy is just trying not to make a scene, trying to stay below the radar as best he can, under the circumstances.
This is a call for empathy, and it is directed toward the self. I was wrong to call some random person an asshole for a dumb reason, and I'm glad that the universe showed me that the reason behind it isn't so dumb at all.
There are plenty of legends passed on in Philly sports lore that make our city seem like the underdog hero, the one worthy of success if only we can get over that last hump, that final challenge. But there are other stories that get similarly passed down that make our city feel like the pathetic wasteland that on most days I fear it actually is. Here is one story.
I had never been to an Eagles game before. After that night, I knew that I could still technically say that I had never been to an Eagles game, but my assumption was that the claim would come due to the fact that it was a preseason game I was going to. My cousins-not-related Harry and Andrew were there, and all three of our dads, and the six of us did the charcoal-grilling tailgating thing on that muggy August evening before heading into Veterans Stadium to see the Eagles take on the Ravens.
Except that once we were in our seats and after we had sung the fight song the requisite number of times and settled in with a cold drink, we noticed that the players and personnel on both teams were exiting the field. Fly Eagles Fly, not on a road to victory but instead right out of the stadium. The announcer soon confirmed that the game had been cancelled.
We would later find out that it was because the turf (having been switched from a Phillies baseball diamond to an Eagles football field) was in such poor condition that the Ravens felt unsafe playing on it. Like, you could fucking see third base popping out of the 40-yard-line, that kinda shit. They didn't tell us any of that, though. We just knew that we were there to see an Eagles game and now we were being told there was no Eagles game.
or something like that. I would've gone on to describe the unruly behavior of the understandably upset and most likely very drunk Philadelphia crowd inflicted upon that stadium after being told that their precious Eagles had forsaken them. One such scene would describe a man who, after yelling at the woman in the ticket booth for no particular reason other than blind anger and a need to lash out at a scapegoat of any kind, reached his hand through the window and knocked the ticket office's coffee machine off its shelf onto the floor. So there's the coffee machine for you. I don't know how I would've ended the tale, and I don't know what the ultimate lesson would have been. Something along the lines of "it's just a preseason sports game, don't be a fucking baby about it"? I don't know. I'll never know, because that's not the blog post I'm writing today.
I just didn't want to choose a song by Remember Sports in this context. That context being: Bridget chose a Remember Sports song on Day 27, and chose it without knowing much about this great Philly indie rock band, and left it with an open question of "hey I wonder what else this band has up its sleeve" and I just honestly didn't want this to be the follow-up, this 39-second song about a coffee machine. It's probably Remember Sports' worst or at least the most inessential song that the band has in their repertoire. This is a worthy band unworthy of being highlighted here in such a way as that. Go listen to the entirety of All of Something. It's a great album, and I know for a fact that you have extra listening time today, since the totality of your YSC listening today is going to be less than seven minutes.
Here's a good 43-second song from Restraining Order, a Boston hardcore band whose Locked in Time became one of my annual two or three hardcore albums that I consumed in 2023, and didn't really have much to write about at the time, nor really do now. It's a good album, if you wanna check it out (only 21 minutes long, since we're talking about lengths here)!
But all this talk about criminal activity reminds me that there is a small update I feel obligated to share with you, a follow-up to a blog post that I wrote for YSC back on Day 68. On that day, we were tasked with naming the "worst person in your life," which was a task that no one took lightly. It's tough to remain optimistic in this world and also hate someone enough that you're gonna describe them that way. If you'll recall, I took the coward's way out. I just named some random dude who annoyed me for a small reason.
The reason was this: every afternoon on those days when I used to sporadically pick up Willow from school, depending on my work schedule (so much for doing that in the fall, obligatory FUCK YOU MAYOR wedged in here), all the Kindergarten parents would have to wait outside before a school official opened up the doors and let the parents stream in to sign the kids out. The hallways are narrow, and Americans are no known for orderly queues like their British friends, so the scene was usually bedlam. Willow's classroom was, of course, the furthest one back, which meant I had to squeeze past other lines of parents, most times with a squirmy baby in one arm and the other clasped around the preschooler's hand and we all shimmied sideways.
And I always get annoyed at this big burly fucking dude because he would always stand there, right in front of the doors, so that he could be the first one into the school, quickly grab his kids, and practically run out of the school holding the hands of two little ones. Which meant that he was coming out as all the other parents were filing in, and you can understand why, in a thin staircase, it might be inconvenient to already feel squished and then have some football linebacker-sized person pushing through the crowd in the opposite direction.
I just didn't understand why. If it was a matter of being prompt, then the actions were still gratuitous. He saved maybe two minutes of time pushing through everyone, which doesn't seem like enough time to be worth even a minor inconvenience placed on everyone else. It wasn't a personal annoyance—I feel the same way when someone in the back of the train pushes their way to the front so that they can be the first ones off, and likewise with buses, and really anyone in any situation who display any noticeable lack of patience for no fucking reason—but definitely something that annoyed me in a general sense. I think it was a good pick for "worst person in my life" because the issue was so minor that I could brush it off as being funny instead of mean.
But then something happened the other day at work. I was processing a report that had something to do with sex abuse and a known perp, which meant that I was going on the Megan's Law website to confirm something or other. While I was there, though, just out of curiosity, I plugged in my own zip code, and scrolled through the profiles on there, just generally curious as opposed to looking for anything specific.
It hit me out of the blue—there he was. The same fucking guy. A registered offender.
In a flash, everything clicked into place. A split second after feeling the surprise of recognizing a face on this website beyond old theater acquaintances, I suddenly realized that this explains everything. This dude wasn't just rushing into school to be a dick. He was rushing because he didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable by being around so many children. Maybe being a registered offender is the worst reason someone could give regarding pushing through school crowds, but it was a fucking reason, and was that not my whole issue in the first place? That I was assuming he was doing this for no reason? Well, here's the reason. It makes sense. It fits. Somehow, it makes me feel a lot better about the situation. And it makes me not hate the guy anymore.
Look, being a registered sex offender is pretty bad. I acknowledge that. Even the lowest levels of severity on the registry—something like "endangering welfare of a child," which this guy is tagged with, and which could be anything, abuse direct or indirect—is and should be condoned. I believe that punishment is in order in these cases, but of course, everything within reason. I don't think the punishment should impede possible rehabilitation. It makes sense to have something like Megan's Law to be aware of these situations, but it also doesn't make sense to lock people away forever or make them disappear because of what they did. There should be room to make good on past misdeeds, again, within reason.
I don't know what this guy's actual deal is, beyond the criminal charge that plastered his name and face on the internet. The only other thing I saw, whenever I was in his general vicinity, was that he was taking care of two young daughters. I trust the system in so much as I trust that this wouldn't be the case if he wasn't on the road to rehabilitation, or making amends, depending on what happened originally and when in his life it happened. It doesn't seem right or fair to me that he should be completely shunned from society because his face is on Megan's Law. The face on Megan's Law (and maybe the fact that some dude is blogging about the face on Megan's Law) should be enough.
For a couple years in this otherwise terrible job, I was working with parents, those who had children in the system, which you can infer means that these parents were credibly accused of abuse, to the extent that their children were temporarily or permanently taken from their care. What I saw wasn't the faces of abusers, but the faces of people who fucked up and knew they fucked up and were trying so goddamn hard to be better. And so I choose to see this in others that I come across, beyond the parents in that specific program. I'm not making a blanket statement and saying that all abusive people deserve an opportunity to rid themselves of their abusive tendencies. For some, that's not possible, and others choose to continue to lean into it and are unapologetic, or otherwise too cowardly to make true amends. But for still others, there is hope, the hope in trying to improve and change and be better and do better.
There could be a thousand reasons why this dude bumrushes the school and splits the tide on the way through an already hassled throng of parents in an un-air-conditioned building. Maybe he is just an asshole. Maybe he feels like he can't help himself sometimes and is running in and out of the school like I do in my kitchen when the cookie jar is open. Maybe he has to get back to work. Or maybe, just maybe, he's just trying to do what's right. Maybe he's trying to get in and out of that school and away from the children whose parents are there and might have visited Megan's Law and are uncomfortable for whatever reason and this guy is just trying not to make a scene, trying to stay below the radar as best he can, under the circumstances.
This is a call for empathy, and it is directed toward the self. I was wrong to call some random person an asshole for a dumb reason, and I'm glad that the universe showed me that the reason behind it isn't so dumb at all.
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