Shelter from the Storm: Oral History of One Single Night of Our Youth

Joe is rewriting all his old Xanga posts from 2005 onward, and this rewritten teenage angst is our punishment for the blog falling into a pit of despair.

October 29, 2005, 11:58 PM

There are some nights in a young man's life that render within him the inability to properly express the majesty and wonder of what happened, what it means, what life is, and why it feels so integral to live it the way he lived it on that night. I have lived such a night, and I will always remember it. I don't even need a Xanga post to remember it, but I'm going to type about it anyway, for posterity. In examining the events of the night, I actively feel my words failing me, but I am going to work through it. If it feels like I'm just listing things that happened, well that's because I am. I haven't let the events soak through yet, and I haven't yet given myself the space to consider the WHY and WHAT IT ALL MEANS. That will come in time. For now, a list of descriptions.

We were at Burholme Park.

We hung out at the fire pit, that place of worship in our sacred woods. There was no fire.

Mary introduced her boyfriend... excuse me, "Boo," Kyle, which, yes, the sobriquet of "Boo" did sufficiently add enough irony to the otherwise sincere and sappy idea of having a significant other in high school. He was cool.

Remember these coordinates, keep them safe, remember them always: #49; D.

Spotting a bunch of my former grade school comrades doing their own ritual walking-around-the-neighborhood thing, exchanging hellos, crossing paths in the night at the local Chinese food eatery.

Oh god, the Razor scooters!

Bailing on the Razor scooters, injuries, oh god!

Elizabeth was there, in front of me, as she often is.

Our once and future pal ANDREW FUCKING R*****!!!

Can you have a reunion if you are still actively involved in that thing? Because if so, my bandmates and I meeting in the middle of the street in the middle of the night in the middle of our youth was a reunion of reunions.

Gordon, who in many years from now will lose his job at Wawa, for reasons too unsavory to even predict at this time, looked me in the eyes and told me the truth, a truth that I will bury and forget about as soon as I can.

I did eventually walk home, by the way.

But the sensations remain with me. The spicy hot Hot Fries, Sir Andy Capp and crew.

The cops were a constant and persistent presence in my night, haunting our travails like a specter.

I have a brief memory of a strange man or boy farting in my or someone else's kitchen.

Another brief memory of visiting a gymnasium at a school I will never attend.

A flash of a vision of the man who aids in our crimes, not even noticing us even though we noticed him, he's sitting in a car, passenger seat, red light, cigarette in hand, slowly taking a puff and then the light turns green. What are you thinking about, Andy? Tell us.

Oh so many cameos throughout the night, I can't list them all, and if I did then eventually the list would become meaningless anyway.

But Chris Clark was there. You remember that dude?

I always got the sense that he was annoyed with me, not incessantly, but more in the way that you'd be annoyed that the shower is never clean and always has some gunk in the corner where porcelain meets wall, which is a normal thing to happen, just annoying.

Stealing his friend's eggroll did not help matters.

I was warned of the cops. I did not listen.

The cops and the eggroll incident are not related.

I return in my mind to the firepit, though I'm not there now. I'm comfortable in my room. Harry's asleep on a sleeping back on the floor. I'm staring into the blue screen of my desktop computer.

My brain is swimming, but I remember.

Okay, fuck it, let's try to make that list of people I saw tonight

• Harry (obviously, he's here every weekend)
• Mary
• Boo/Kyle
• Kyle's anonymous male friends
• Keelan (v. cool)
• Maryrose
• Elizabeth (aforementioned)
• Cathleen
• AFR (Andrew Fucking R.)
• The other Ed, not our Ed
• LA FEVER [sic]
• The guy with him, name unknown
• Chris C. (aforementioned)
• Other Kyle, still not our Kyle
• Guitar Mike
• Bass Kev
• Hot Alexis
• Guitar GF Brianna
• Kyra [sic!]
• Michelle
• Amanda
• The whole fucking LF crew
• Tired Wawa employee (aforementioned by assumed name)
• Passerby in ghost outfit (see: date)
• Cops who chase (me; anyone)
• Andy (rat; aforementioned)
• Tina (Laf)
• Remove the parenthetical: everyone from the Laf!
• Including: Michael Myers [sic?]
• Chris Cheesesteak (sobriquet, unknown origins)
• Jenn (family)
• Jenn's two friends
• My parents (beginning of night, end of night, definitely not in between)
• The spirits that watch over the firepit
• Stringy-haired man at Wawa [no order to this list]
• Weird Guy
• Guy in baby costume
• Hot girls on the way to their costume party
• Laf: British Lady
• Laf: cup of lentil soup lady
• The ghost in the reflection of the door of the Chinese food eatery
• THE MAN ON THE MOON [apocryphal]

I hope I didn't miss anyone.

COMMENTS

xOkEeLy07oX: wow, i cant believe i wasnt one of the coolest things tonight,  and i was with u the whole time, i hate you

❤ Keelan

Anonymous: I went to my friend's birthday party last night and I got pretty tipsy though, but I didn't drink that much anyway. Early this morning I went out to the gas station and I saw a guy looked like Bob Dylan. I thought it was the real Bob Dylan, but it must be somebody else look a like Bob Dylan. are you going to trick or treat this year? I probably not since I'm too old for going trick or treat. lol I haven't go out trick or treat in a last couple years with my neice Talia, she's just turns 7 years old a few weeks ago, she's really special to me and I love her very much.

I love you,

Justin "The Entertainment" Clark

Anonymous: check it out my new background on my xanga. it's looked really hot sex indeed. Did you had a good halloween yesterday? Bunch of kids ring the door bell at my house and give them candy. I didn't go trick or treat with my niece because my sister take her to trick or treat instead. 3 more days till my 4th year on xanga, I can't believe that I still using xanga since my aim is not working on my friend's computer. I can't wait to get a new computer as soon as possible.

I love you,

Justin "The Only One" Barrett

Wuthering Heights, Drew P.

The only music I could confidently name from Charlie XCX going into this week was the song "Boom Clap" from her 2014 sophomore effort SUCKER (which I do like), and I was ready for some fun-times happy pop on this record. This album opens with the ominous staccato notes that make me think of music being played a saw or metal object and pain. The haunting melody comes in, the spoken poem starts, and I feel devastated. The lines

"I thought it would be perfect. I thought 'I want it to be perfect.' Please. Let it be perfect."

and

"Do you see beauty? If there's beauty, say it's enough."

make my heart ache with the feeling of trying to do the next right thing and being good enough. "I think I'm gonna die in this house" screams out over and over and I feel stuck in place looking out seeing where to go and what to do but not being able to move towards the goal.

What a way to start the album. The rest of the songs I liked, there weren't any that were skips for me on my listen throughs. A good chunk of songs made me feel kinetic and want to dance while listening (e.g. "Wall of Sound," "Out of Myself," "Chains of Love"), which in my book makes me say "yeah it's a good song."  

As an aside, reading the tracklist before listening, I thought it would be funny if "Wall of Sound" was a Grateful Dead / Owsley Stanley tribute or even sounded remotely like the Dead, but that was way off base.

Final thoughts: I like this album. A lot. It was more emotional with a depth I could have never predicted. It also had its fun upbeat moments to round it out. I'll keep it in rotation for a while.

hey puke!

holy shit i was not expecting this album for what it was. I think i've listened to House a hundred times this week. I keep putting it on to get through the album and get stuck on repeat just feeling a lot of emotions. it fucked me up coming from a place of still discovering who I am in sobriety and navigating that to come out on the other side. the cliche of feeling like a prisoner of your own making to the drink, wanting things to be perfect (marriage job family etc) and the realization of living in the world youve created for yourself that sucks that you just want to get out of. screaming into your own void of wanting to get out while the ominous BWAHHHHH of reality goes in the background. i dunno. banger start to the album but there was a lot on here that made me emotional. fucking charlie xcx man, whoda thunk it?

also I'm so annoyed that no one submitted Boom Clap for the mixtape this week (myself included)! I had the thought too late and thought well surely someone else will have come up with that! also also I wasn't sure how to format the quotes in there so i just did it as their own paragraphs and figured you the blogmaster would know what to do. 

love you dude,

Drew

In My Place 180

June 29, 2026. 39.94293, -75.15072. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Here's the church, here's the steeple, open the doors, and see all the people, all the fellow alcoholics that I met that one time, back in, oh, let's say late autumn 2017, riding my bike down after work, all sweaty, walking into the basement, everyone very friendly, exchanging numbers, wanting me to feel like I belonged, even though I didn't, or at least didn't allow myself to, in some errant self-defense maneuver, not wanting to admit the truth of the matter at hand, that there was a problem, within me, within the church, under the steeple, through the doors, among the people.

The Stone Roses, Joe

I'll tell you this vision I have of listening to The Stone Roses. I can't speak to its veracity, as it's about sixteen years old, the memory, and you know how things like this get. But I was in my room, and I was about to turn 21 years old. The timing of it was coincidental. It's not like I planned to get deeply into this album in honor of finally turning the legal drinking age. But that's how it worked out.

I was spending a lot of time in my bedroom. I'm talking about my childhood bedroom, like at my parents' house. I was commuting to school that year, which really has a way of fucking with your social life. I was five months away from meeting my future wife so romance wasn't really happening in my day-to-day either. I was just hanging out in my bedroom, on the computer, and listening to The Stone Roses.

And I was drinking. Since that's what the occasion called for. Temporarily drinking alone, there in my room, listening to some good music, and getting excited for the days ahead. For whatever reason, the beer of choice that week was Coors Extra Gold. I remember the taste of that beer just like I remember every snare hit and guitar jangle of "She Bangs the Drums." There were three friends coming over in a little bit, maybe 10 PM. It was a Monday night, and Monday hangs don't really happen all that often. But anyone who was my friend and lived close by and had already turned 21 was invited to hang out in my parents' Florida room while we counted the minutes till midnight. Dave (23yo), Nick (22yo), and Andrew R. (21.05yo) were there. We drank the Coors Extra Gold that I had bought earlier that day (a fake ID being a pillar of my pre-21yo days). We listened to the Stone Roses.

We got a little tipsy, and then the four of us walked down to the Rockledge Pub (three blocks away) at around 11:50 PM. It turned midnight as I was sitting on a barstool. I requested to buy a round of beers basically in the same minute I said goodbye to underage drinking forever. The bartender did not card me. But I insisted on pulling out my ID anyway, and making her check the date.

Listened to the Stone Roses on the drive to school the next day. Slept through a few classes, including a religion class with the president of the school, who had a policy that you could be up to one week late on exactly one essay of your choosing each semester. He laughed when I told him why I was taking my extension today. He was a good dude, and plus my reputation as teen-turned-20-something alcoholic proceeded me.

I don't remember every detail of that day. I probably had jazz band practice. I don't think there were Masque winter drama auditions, I'm pretty sure that had happened a couple days prior. But at the end of the day, I made it home, freshened up, and then we went back out to the bar. McNally's this time. Dave and Andrew R. were back too, but instead of Nick (I think he was a chef at the time, so the night before being a Monday was probably ideal for him), Andrew's sister Jen was there. She worked at the Laf with me and Dave. I had a crush on her for a long time, and for just as long, she made it incredibly clear that the feelings were not mutual. We got pretty drunk, or at least I did. I got cut off when I accidentally knocked over a barstool. Which is probably slightly ironic, knowing now all the shenanigans I'd get into at that bar over the ensuing years, and how rarely I was ever cut off.

I remember I got back to my bedroom in the AM hours, and did the thing where I would look at the computer drunk with one eye open, trying to focus on the screen. I know for a fact that the Stone Roses were playing here too. I was loaded, and I went to the Masque Facebook page to check the audition results for String Fever. I did not make the cut. It was the first time I had ever not been casted in a show I tried out for, and it hurt. Plus, I was fucking loaded, so I listened to "Waterfall" and cried a little bit. You take the good with the bad.

I listened to the Stone Roses a lot that year. It wasn't the only think I listened to. It was a rough year of college for me, and a lot of different albums cut grooves into my soul on those long drives to and from campus. But The Stone Roses was one of them, and they were there for me during a somewhat pivotal birthday in my life, the day that I stopped being an underage drinker and started to be a legal adult problem drinker.

I was still listening to them about eighteen months later, after I had met Pam and we fell in love and I graduated La Salle somehow and got my diploma (eventually—they even denied me that on graduation day, the fucking losers), and a few friends from the Honors Program and their significant others were all headed down to Sean E.'s parents' time share, in Virginia, which was pretty far. Probably a little too far for an overnight trip, but what are ya gonna do, we were young. I don't think we listened to the Stone Roses on the way down there, me and Pam. Though I'm sure she was familiar with "She Bangs the Drums" at that point, my starry-eyed romance with her spurring monthly and probably questionable mix CDs with little hearts drawn on the discs.

The "controversy" of that trip—though extremely mild, and not even that in retrospect, but you know how 22-year-olds are—was that my ex-girlfriend was going to be there with her British boyfriend, and that the boyfriend was "uncomfortable" with my presence. Which I thought was pretty rich for a few reasons, mainly that I was going to have my girlfriend there too, and me and my ex had already had the conversation like eight months prior where we buried all hatchets and expressed admiration and joy for each other for having found our respective The Ones, and, most pertinent in my mind, I wasn't even the guy staying at that vacation house that had had sex with my ex the most recently! That was the founder of the Virigina-timeshare feast, Sean E. (sorry buddy), and for some reason British boyfriend didn't seem to have a problem with Sean being there???

There was no drama when we were all actually there under one roof. We drank a bunch of beers and played some drinking games and quite honestly just did things that we probably didn't have to drive six hours each way to do. But we were crowded around the Kings circle at one point, and the music was playing, a shuffle from who knows who (not me, I don't think), and the Stone Roses come on. And I'm like, fuck yeah, I love this album. And British boyfriend's eyes light up and he jumps out of his chair and goes "Oi! Fookin' Stone Roses! Fook yeah brudda!!!" and we high five and giggle and listen to the rest of the song and get drunk.

Took me about six more years to see him again, at a wedding. There was no mention of the Stone Roses. Mostly just pleasantries. There was a moment early on that wedding day when me and Sean E. were walking down to the lobby to buy some beers from the lobby fridge and we ran into British Now-Husband, and said what's up and kept walking. And I remember asking Sean if he was wondering what I was wondering. Whether British Husband was still uncomfortable around us, and at what point ancient hookups expire and are buried in the sands of time. I don't know if there is necessarily one answer to that question. It's probably different for everyone. But it's been almost nine years since that hotel lobby run-in, and the fact that I'm writing about it now in public makes me pretty confident that British Husband doesn't even remember who I am anymore, let alone care anymore.

The funny thing is that these circumstances make it so that I can't listen to The Stone Roses and not think about all the tiny little memories that have attached to the album like barnacles over the years. The process never really ends. Even just a few months ago, we spoke about a movie that portrayed a slightly fictional account of the scene that the Stone Roses were involved in, and the presence of "Fools Gold" on my copy of The Stone Roses finally clicked for me, now understanding the sounds that were emanating from that scene at the time. I listened to this album a lot this week and I thought about that Zoom in the same way I thought about playing Kings in Virginia Beach and walking through the doors to the Rockledge Pub and driving to school all hungover the entire first week of my 21st year.

I have a friend who recently told me that she views music like a little time capsule, that she hears a song and is transported back to another time. I like that. I feel that way sometimes too. I feel it even when I know that the memories are small and unimportant and micro-personal. I don't think Jen remembers that night at McNally's, I don't think Brother Tom remembers that Religion 301 class, I don't think my ex remembers her husband and ex-boyfriend bonding in that briefest moment in time, and I don't even think some of our stoned blogging friends remember being at that 24 Hour Party People Zoom discussion. But I remember it all. I remember it when I listen to the music. And that brings me so much joy.

GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5

In My Place 110

April 20, 2026. 39.93675, -75.1552. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Psssst. You. Yeah, you. The person who stumbled upon this blog post. Let me share something with you. A little secret, just between me and you. Since we're the only ones here. I'll be vulnerable for a second, alright? That's for letting me trust you with this.

I'm still wildly intimidated by bars, and I'll be even more honest, I'm a little afraid of them. Still. After all this time.

I go into a bar, like say the Dive on Passyunk, and I face my fears as best I can. It's not a matter of "temptation" or whatever, nah. That's pedestrian bullshit. That's basic. I'm not tempted, fuck out of here. It's instead a weird mix of dense matter and psychic strain. I feel like I don't belong, and I fear that I will be called out, by the genial bartender who passes me my first club or by the PBR-crushing flat-hatter who's racking up the pool balls. I feel a dark magic about the place, like it means something sinister to me but I can't name it anymore. I know there's no danger; I try to think of it like exposure therapy.

But there's a moment before I cross the threshold, at the beginning of any night in any bar, when I take a gulp of air and it feels like ice water in my lungs, and I can't breath, but just for a second. Then it passes, and I continue past that threshold, to face what I must face again after so many times before.

Pussy Cats, Joe

I'm ready to declare this a good-maybe-great album, but you should be reminded that I have contrarian tendencies that often go unchecked in Record Club. I came into knowing about this album with the adjective "infamous" attached to it, and thus uncovered its sordid reputation first, and had to work backward from there. It's easier to dismiss contemporaneous critics after 50 years' worth of churning through various reevaluations. It can even be a fun game, if you're that type of person: "let's find all the worthy aspects of this art that everyone else has missed." There is a perverse thrill in holding onto the idea that you are right and everyone else is wrong. Why not lean into those types of thoughts while listening to a cultish, sloppy '70s rock album?

I won't lie, I probably thought more about John Lennon this week than I did about Harry Nilsson. I was thinking about the idea of a "devil on your shoulder." Nilsson was an adult who could make his own decisions, but I do think that maybe his friendship with Lennon was not a very healthy one. I don't need to repeat any details that you could look up in any old hoary classic rock picture book, but suffice it to say that Lennon's friendship didn't necessarily lead Nilsson to become the best version of himself.

Could be the other way around, too! I don't fucking know. I don't know these people, this is all just speculation. Nilsson was famous at the time but John Lennon is legitimately one of the most famous people in history, which is why I probably tend to see the direction in which the influence flowed as one-way for this particular relationship. And also, like, there are songs on this very album that are clearly influenced by Lennon, because it sounds a lot like Lennon's solo stuff that he was already pumping out. There's some primal screaming on Pussy Cats that makes me think that the emotional depths that Lennon plumbed on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band were perhaps not as deep as I originally thought. Or maybe it's one of those things where you have an emotional catharsis but its effects fade away over time, like Tony Soprano after he wakes up from his coma, or basically any kid that arrives home from Kairos looking to make a change. By the time Lennon arrives in the studio to work on Pussy Cats, primal scream therapy probably felt like a hazy drunk joke.

Nilsson does seem legitimately sad on this album, is the thing. And I think that the moments when that sadness peeks through are some of the more powerful moments on Pussy Cats. "All My Life" is the highlight in this regard for me, in the same that it almost accidentally becomes self-aware. You can be drowning in excess and still have brief moments of realization that maybe the excess is too much, ya know? It's a song about drowning but also about drowning in water that's a really nice temperature and really relaxing and man it is so hard to not enjoy swimming right now. I look back on old blog posts from the late '10s and early '20s when I mention my alcoholism, and it makes me kinda sad in the same way that "All My Life" makes me sad. It's sad because the understanding of a problem is very often not the same as addressing that problem, and many times there is a lightyear-sized gap between the two, never to be traversed.

Because I understand the disconnect and the bizarre logic of it, I also feel like I understand the purpose of the wild, raucous cover songs on this album more so than the naysayers. Even this retroactive 2020 review of the album says that the covers of "Loop de Loop" and "Rock Around the Clock" are "embarrassing." Even if they are, then that's the point. If you have substance abuse issues, then you can't wallow in the sorrow all the time. You instead have to perform rituals that allow you to pretend that everything is okay, even if you know in the deepest parts of your soul that you are not okay. You remember how hard we all laughed when I blacked out and tried to do karaoke at La Salle Backstage and fell off the stage? We laughed because it was funny. It was, and it is. But I think there's something to be said about acknowledging the pain that is hidden beneath such humor. "Rock Around the Clock" is, in the hands of Harry Nilsson, almost preposterously dumb, and very funny in that way. Maybe even embarrassing too? But it's also pretty easy to look at it like a shabby band-aid over top of a deep wound, depending on your experience with this sort of thing.

You also have to want to get better, which is a whole different thing. You can either choose to get your shit together, or choose to listen to the devil on your shoulder. We can, I think, consider John Lennon to be that devil. Not an evil devil, just a mischievous devil. And dealing with his own shit, and falling off his own karaoke stages on his own accord. I had to look up what "the Lost Years" were re: Lennon when I was told originally that he produced Pussy Cats during his Lost Years. Apparently he and Yoko were separated for a while, and while her solution to this was to open up their marriage and set John up with their secretary(?), his solution seems to have been sink into a years-long stupor of drink and drugs. I don't think it's too far of a reach to say that Lennon, like anyone who enjoys getting blasted (putting myself in this category, just so you know), had a tendency to keep himself surrounded by likeminded drinkers and druggies, and had the charming, devilish capacity to pull people down to his level when necessary.

I was probably that person for some other people in my day (still am, occasionally, though I try to be aware of it, and try to at least lampshade it when necessary), so I'm not approaching Lennon's hand in all of this with disdain. I am approaching it with great empathy for all involved. These were some fucked-up people who made this fucking album, and what I'm proposing here is that this is what makes Pussy Cats great. This is what makes the tomfoolery at the very least smirk-worthy, and this is what makes the pain all the more palpable. There is a grand picture that you can see if you step back for a moment and consider it. Don't listen to the critics, listen to your heart. You know the pain is there, on the surface or slightly below it. Think about what the pain means to you for a little bit. After you do that, Pussy Cats starts to make a little more sense.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

In My Place 101

April 11, 2026. 40.03455, -75.21645. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

I wouldn't say seeing a Foodery is "triggering" in a woke sense. If it evokes strong feelings, then they are mostly pleasant. I never "crashed out" (oh god, please let me never use that phrase without ironic quotation marks) in a Foodery. The one on Samson was a hideaway, a refuge. I felt good there, and those good feelings were about 70% due to the alcohol coursing through my veins—but noticeably NOT 100% because of that. I was also, truthfully, getting way too drunk at that place during inconvenient hours, a lot of the time (but not always) by myself. The only reason it remains pure in my mind is because Foodery Rittenhouse closed about six months before the drinking started to get legitimately dangerous, and ten months before I stopped drinking all together. It died before I had a chance to regret going there. It lives forever in my mind as one of my favorite places to drink, a perfect hideout from the droll hustle and bustle of the world outside of it.

After it was shuttered (I guess the owner never ended up opening up his planned Foodery in University City), I spread the love at a few different bars. I also started to work from home a little bit when my schedule shifted, which was good, because I wasn't drinking at home as much as I was drinking outside of the home. Then I started drinking before class (yes, even when I had like an 8:30 AM class, whoops!), at bars in that part of the city, or more accurately a bagel shop that started selling alcohol at 7 AM, and also out of a paper cup in quads, and, most pointedly, a deli that acted for a few months like an ersatz Foodery for me. That deli was the source of my final alcoholic drink ever. I can never go back to that deli. I wouldn't be able to.

I would be able to go back to a Foodery though. Nothing but fond feelings. I would even be able to attend a book club there, if such an event were to happen at such a Foodery.

But I found out that they were closed after I took this picture, only opening an hour after the book club's meeting time, and so we chatted about the book in Gorgas Park up the street instead. A good day.

In My Place 099

April 9, 2026. 40.05678, -75.0941. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

I see it clear when I rumble past it down the train tracks—a former youth, reanimated in front of my moving eyes, the paths that we cut and marked forever. This here, the nondescript far side of an unremarkable warehouse at the end of so-and-so's block, we had a night here. Maybe a few, the various paths burned together over time. I look over. I see the young boys with their cracked cans. I see the foam going down, coming back up. It was dark; we drank by moonlight. Hidden away, no one knew it was here that we were, on that night. The way the dirt road tilted on its axis as I swayed to and fro. The way she took my hand, her breath hot like shame. I tried so hard to forget all this. My punishment is that I'll always remember.

÷, Joe

PREVIOUSLY ON: Record Club grapples with soft mid-'10s AMAB pop stars. A time traveling Joe finds himself shooting a future version of himself, in an attempt to avoid an honest discussion about one of the biggest pop stars of our age!

[flashback]

2045 Joe: I'm from the future!

2023 Joe: What album are you doing this time?

2045 Joe: The new Ed Sheeran album, No.58 Collaborations Project! Help!

2023 Joe: [shoots 2045 Joe in the head]

2045 Joe: [dies]

2023 Joe: You're welcome.

[end flashback]

Let's see what happens with our time-traveling heroes next! Here on another edition of: Time traveling to save our sanity!

2026 Joe: Oh my god, what have you done?!

2023 Joe: I had to do it. I had to. I'm sorry, but I had to. He said that Record Club was covering an Ed Sheeran album. I couldn't let that happen.

2026 Joe: But don't you understand what you've done? What danger you've caused?

2023 Joe: It's not a big deal. I killed my future self. The sacrifice was worth it.

2026 Joe: You don't understand! You've fucked with the timeline! It doesn't matter which direction in time your gun is pointed! If you kill another version of yourself, that send irreparable shock waves through the multiverse!

2023 Joe: C'mon, what's the worse that could happen?

2026 Joe: You fool! You failed to prevent Ed Sheeran from entering the Record Club canon in 2045! Instead, all it's done is move up the date! We're covering an Ed Sheeran album in 2026 instead of 2045! Thanks a lot, you dick!

2023 Joe: Oh no. Oh god. I'm so sorry.

2014 Joe: Umm... do you guys still need me here?

2026 Joe: Yeah, you might as well stick around. Ed Sheeran was pretty big in 2014. Though not quite at his commercial peak.

2014 Joe: Ed Sheeran, I think I know that name. He's kinda like Sam Smith, right? The artist that you traveled back in time to pester me about a week before my wedding?

2023 Joe: I didn't bother mentioning Ed Sheeran because you probably didn't hear his biggest 2014 hit at your wedding.

2026 Joe: It was a close call, too! "Thinking Out Loud," which would eventually peak at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, wasn't officially released as a single until 25 days after you tie the knot. Even though, if you were an Ed Sheeran fan, you might have heard it on his × album, released two months before your wedding.

2014 Joe: I am certainly not an Ed Sheeran fan.

2023 Joe: Exactly.

2014 Joe: Is that a good song, though? "Thinking Out Loud"?

2026 Joe: It's a piece of shit.

2023 Joe: Total piece of shit.

2026 Joe: But it's absolutely a must-play at weddings with lame-ass DJs. Which you don't have. You have Dave the mailman behind the turntables. Best $400 you'll spend all day. No Ed Sheeran.

2014 Joe: I guess I'll have to check it out.

2026 Joe: You really don't.

2014 Joe: Listening now. This kinda sounds like Marvin Gaye, doesn't it?

2023 Joe: Say, is it okay if I leave here and pop back to my own timeline? I think I hear Pam calling.

2026 Joe: Bullshit, you stand right there, you fucking piece of shit. You drunk prick. I know for a fucking fact that Pam isn't calling you, that's the barmaid at McGillin's. You're going to sneak off for another Rolling Rock pitcher!

2023 Joe: You caught me. But c'mon, you're telling me that it's wrong to have a few pints? Just to take the edge off?

2026 Joe: I mean... I get it. Since you are me, I have the deepest empathy I possibly could. You'll find out in approximately five weeks what happens with all that, though.

2023 Joe: Sobriety?!

2026 Joe: Mhmm.

2023 Joe: Not gonna happen.

2026 Joe: Okay. No judgment here.

2023 Joe: What, are you telling me that in sobriety, you are a newfound appreciation for Ed Sheeran? Get the fuck out of here, man.

2026 Joe: No, I don't think that's true. I still didn't really like this album, and I don't think there was any way that I was ever going to... but at the same time, I do think that there's this thing where I'm less distracted by the haze of alcohol and to make up for it I am leaning pretty hard into "music as art" and am waaaay more willing to give shit like this a fair shake instead of dismissing it outright.

2023 Joe: Not worth killing 2045 Joe over, you're saying?

2026 Joe: I mean, the more I think about it now, the more I'm thinking that maybe that was the right call. Who knows if I would've been in the right state of mind to explore a 2045 Ed Sheeran album in 2045. Much better, and probably much safer, to appreciate a 2017 Ed Sheeran album in 2026. It's the perfect time. I am open to the wonders of the universe. I may not like what I hear during every single minute of my music-listening experiences, but I'm open to be optimistic about it.

2014 Joe: Sounds lame as shit, honestly.

2026 Joe: I'm not surprised to hear you say that, of all Joes. You think that just because you're having an easy time saying yes to marrying Pam next week, that this means that you would have an easy time saying yes to all kinds of different shit that approaches you in life. Whereas really, you're not a very humble or curious person. Not yet, anyway.

2014 Joe: What's there to be humble about?

2023 Joe: Have you seen Love Is Blind?

2014 Joe: What the fuck is that?

2026 Joe: It's a reality television show where contestants attempt to fall in love without ever seeing each other, and then test it to see if they can stay in love after they finally do see each other.

2014 Joe: That sounds... awful? Why would you know about that? That doesn't sound like something you'd like.

2026 Joe: The truth is that, in 2026, every man you know is deeply in debt on sports booking apps, and every woman you know watches Love Is Blind.

2023 Joe: Even Pam.

2014 Joe: I mean, that makes sense. Pam is awesome, she's not a snob, she likes all kinds of art, from highfalutin shit to base reality dating shows. That's what makes her great.

2026 Joe: I agree with everything you said, but I'll add that she hates the blog.

2014 Joe: The blog? What, Puke on Your Birthday? Why does she even know about that? That was college shit. It's been dormant for years.

2026 Joe and 2023 Joe: [laughs]

2014 Joe: I don't understand why you are laughing. I also don't understand why you are talking about Love Is Blind in the context of an Ed Sheeran album.

2023 Joe: I don't understand either, I don't think. What, was Ed Sheeran on an episode or something?

2026 Joe: No, but Pam's been watching the newest season, and I can't get it out of my head that Ed Sheeran's soupy love ballads should fall under the category of "Love Is Blind interstitial music."

2014 Joe: I've never even seen the show, and I understand how that could make sense.

2026 Joe: To be clear, I don't like it. The ballads are the worst part about ÷.

2023 Joe: But wouldn't it make sense to view it the other way around? Not that Sheeran's shitty slow music sounds like generic Love Is Blind interstitial music, but that Ed Sheeran's shitty slow music was so influential that he inspired countless reality TV execs to order, for budgetary reasons, even shittier and more generic versions of the music that Sheeran pioneered?

2026 Joe: See, you're already getting it! You're ready for the next steps, man. Or rather, the first of the twelve steps, shall we say.

2023 Joe: Fuck off. Next you'll be telling me that there are good songs on ÷.

2026 Joe: ...

2023 Joe: No.

2014 Joe: No!

2026 Joe: Look, you might not get it yet, but you will by the time 2026 rolls around. But "Castle on the Hill" is a good fucking song.

2023 Joe: Oh christ, is it a nostalgia thing?

2026 Joe: In some ways, yes, it has to do with nostalgia. But only because the song is about nostalgia, and the poignant way that the protagonist gives into his nostalgia, no matter how much it pains him. As opposed to, ya know, "Castle on the Hill" itself being nostalgic for you/me, which it is not.

2023 Joe: I don't believe you.

2026 Joe: It's funny, but this is probably one of the few times I can legitimately prove it to you. Give me one second. [fires up time travel machine]

2017 Joe: Where am I?

2026 Joe: No time to explain. You know Ed Sheeran, right?

2017 Joe: The Muppet-looking weirdo who was on an episode of Game of Thrones this summer? I guess?

2026 Joe: That's right. He has a new album in your year. It's called ÷.

2017 Joe: You pulled me through time to talk to me about this?

2026 Joe: I did, just bear with me. Are you familiar with a song called "Castle on the Hill"?

2017 Joe: Why the fuck would I be familiar with a fucking Ed Sheeran song?

2026 Joe: You haven't heard it in bars or clubs or whatever?

2017 Joe: Clubs? What fucking clubs do you think I'm going to in 2017? Do you remember nothing from 2017?

2026 Joe: I guess not. I think the 2020s really fucked me up in the brain, fucked us all up. Definitely COVID's fault, partially.

2014 Joe: What's COVID?

2023 Joe: A deadly disease that kills millions of people in 2020 and beyond, and causes our entire human society to spend a few months stuck in our homes.

2017 Joe: What?!

2023 Joe: And president trump basically led a cabal of conspiracy theorists and got a whole bunch of extra people killed?

2017 Joe: President—?

2014 Joe: We went over this last time, but I still haven't had time to process it.

2023 Joe: Yeah, well, at least he was only a one-term president, so badly did he fumble America during the first go-around.

2026 Joe: Actually...

2023 Joe: What?!

2026 Joe: You know what, nevermind. Not important.

2017 Joe: So a pandemic is not important, and a creepy fuck who yes even in 2017 we knew was a fucking pedophile is the fucking president, these are not important facts, but my opinion about Ed Sheeran's music is somehow important?

2019 Joe: This is a Record Club review, not an actual conversation.

2017 Joe: Record Club? What are you talking about? Who the fuck are you?

2019 Joe: I'm 2019 Joe. I'm establishing Record Club as we speak. I'm gonna try to get really weird with it, and write some meta fake transcript style reviews.

2014 Joe: Sounds stupid.

2023 Joe: It's really stupid.

2026 Joe: Incredibly stupid. And yet here we are, in an Ed Sheeran review.

2017 Joe: But wouldn't it make more sense if you were actually reviewing the album?

2026 Joe: You're right. I still think about that all the time. What do you want to know? Even though the album is out where you're from, you can listen to it too. You can tell me your own goddamn opinions if it's that important to you. Maybe even write a review about it?

2017 Joe: That still sound stupid. But anyway, I dunno, uh, if I were to ask a question, I guess, um, what did you think about ÷?

2026 Joe: Okay, let's see. I appreciate the sequencing, how there were seven slow ballads but that they were spread out evenly among the faster/harder (all relative, mind you) tracks, exactly even until the final two songs fuck up the pattern. But I was rarely ever bored, even with a majority of the songs being certifiably boring.

2014 Joe: I just don't understand why you would listen to something that you don't like?

2019 Joe: I can answer that one. Because it's important to examine all art, just as an act of being well-rounded. You can't appreciate the shit that you love without knowing very well the shit that you hate.

2026 Joe: And for the record, I never said I hated ÷. I think there are a couple fun songs in here. The aforementioned "Castle on the Hill," I just really like the vocal performance of Eddie on this one, I'm ashamed to say. The way his voice cracks during that climax! Goddamn! Also, "Galway Girl" is corny shit but fun in the right context, an Irish brunch being one of them maybe. "New Guy" is absolutely absurd, with Ed Sheeran spitting bars about other dudes bleaching their assholes.

2017 Joe: This is good, you're saying? Should I listen to it now?

2026 Joe: No... I don't think this is a recommendation. This is more just me on my journey toward music criticism nirvana, that place where I can listen to anything and appreciate something about it and never feel those feelings again of utter spit-flying rabid hatred, which sometimes feels fun in the moment but never sits well after the fact.

2014 Joe: Okay, seriously, can I go now? I don't have anything to do with Ed Sheeran.

2023 Joe: But you will. And that's why I was so quick to kill the future version of ourselves. I wouldn't do this to anyone.

2026 Joe: See, that's where you're wrong, though. The journey is worth it. You're not going to love everything, and there's shit that you're going to hate, but it's ultimately worth it. Just trust me, okay?

2019 Joe: Just for the record, though—since that's gonna be the whole point of this Record Club thing that I'm creating—you did or you didn't like ÷ by Ed Sheeran? I'm getting mixed signals.

2026 Joe: And you, 2019 Joe, will eventually realize that all that doesn't even really matter. The grade matters but only because it gives you the freedom to pontificate within the review, give some spare thoughts, and not be beholden to explaining every grade you give to the fullest extent.

2017 Joe: This is all just so annoying, and I can promise if any other future Joe comes back in time and tries to get me to listen to Ed Sheeran, I'm going to shoot them in the face.

GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5

2045 Joe: I'm from the future!

2023 Joe: No, we already did this. I already killed you. You should be dead.

2045 Joe: Incorrect. The fact that you, in three years, review an Ed Sheeran album, means retroactively that you never had a reason to kill me in the first place. I never come back from the future to announce that we are covering Sheeran's new album No.58 Collaborations Project in 2045. In fact, he never even releases such an album at all. He never makes it past No.7, let alone No.58.

2023 Joe: I get it. And I can know for certain that we won't be covering an Ed Sheeran album in 2045 because of the No Repeat Artists rule, right?

2045 Joe: Well... no, maybe we should wait till 2045 to announce that.

2023 Joe: You're covering another Ed Sheeran album? How?! Why?!

2045 Joe: No, I'm not saying anything. I don't want you to murder me again. I changed my mind.

2023 Joe: Wait! Come back! I need to know! 2045 is 22 years from now! That's an impossible wait, I need to know! Why are we covering Ed Sheeran again?! What album?! Is Ed Sheeran alive?! Come back! How many people reviewed Donny Most by Donny Most in 2027?!?!

Top Five Tuesday: Best Movies to Have Sex To

Welcome back to Top Five Tuesday. After literally years of telling myself I'm going to get my shit together and create a landing page for all of PoYB's Top Fives lists, I finally got my shit together and did it. Here is the new landing page for Top Fives. If you want to make your own Top Five, send it over! It'll save me from having to write something on a Tuesday sometime soon!

"Netflix & chill" is definitely still a thing, even if you're one of the cool, reasonable people who cancelled their Netflix subscription before that shit started getting really out of control. The problem with Netflix? You can't have sex while watching any of their movies. The quality is fucking dogshit. It's too distracting to be like "wait, what artless gutless empty suit of a Netflix exec green-lit this fucking trash?" and when you start thinking about that kind of stuff, you lose your boner.

Sorry, in the time it took me to write that paragraph, Dave Chappelle was paid another $100 million by Netflix for taping a brand new special about how he hates trans kids.

Let's not worry about any of that for now. Let's instead get horny.

Top Five Best Movies to Have Sex To

5. Encino Man

I'm just dropping random movies in here, because I actually want to write another blog post, but I was too anxious about writing it by itself, so I'm slipping it into the framework of a Top Five about movies to have sex to. You can fuck to anything. You could fuck to Cool Runnings if you wanted to. Trust me, I've tried... and SUCCEEDED.

What I actually wanted to do was write a blog post about myself (lol, what else is new), but specifically within the framework of "I am going to a therapist tonight for the first time in a very long time and I want to make sure I have a good handle on myself beforehand so that I can use the allotted 50 minutes to get him up to speed on who I am and what I'm about." So this blog post is a dry run, I guess. Who am I? If you were my therapist, what would you need to know?

I'm hoping that by placing all these thoughts within a blog post about Top Five Best Movies to Have Sex To, it can act as a firewall against the possibility that I'll just simply be like "I have a blog post, read this instead of listening to me," which is a lazy shortcut. This will stop me from even mentioning this blog in my session, because if I mention it, then he'll type in the URL, and the first thing he'll see is "Top Five Best Movies to Have Sex To," which would not be an accurate first impression. I am now fully motivated to NOT mention the blog to my therapist in any way.

4. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

I did legitimately get horny watching this film, but I was alone, and I have too much respect for Film Club to get distracted by horniness while watching a film!!!

First, I'll have to tell him the basics, because these are important. I am a male, 37 years old. I am definitely white, I am mostly heterosexual, I am mostly cisgender. I grew up in upper-middle class and remain in the upper-middle class. I have a master's degree in my field. I am happily married and I have three young daughters of single-digit ages. We own a home. I have a steady job. I will tell him what the job entails, but I won't type it here. I will say that I previously had deep financial concerns but those concerns have lessened at least 75% over the past six months. I spend a lot of time with my family, and over the past two years I've had added stressors over the fact that I see my family less because of my job. We have a both-parents-working household, and we have strong family supports for childcare.

All of this is relevant to who I am, so I will say it, but none of it feels relevant to the reason I am going to see a therapist. It's important to know, but the therapist could probably get by if I told him none of this and let him just assume whatever he wanted to assume about the basics in my life. I don't think any of this is affecting my mental health in a way that would require a specialist to listen to me talk about it. On the other hand, there's also a good chance that the therapist will be like, nah dude, it's all related, you have to tell me, and here's why. So I'm covering all my bases here.

3. Star Wars: A New Hope

I just had sex while this movie was on a week ago. My takeaway? Not enough Jar Jar Binks.

He'll probably want to know about the drinking, since therapists, man, they love substance abuse. It's honestly such a cut-and-dry subject. It's been studied extensively, everyone knows what works and what doesn't. You tell a therapist that you're in there for substance abuse and they start licking their lips and rubbing their hands together. But I've written enough about this subject on this blog, especially in the past five days, that I feel like going in depth about it again might be a bit of overkill.

It's important to me because it's something that I did and was actually successful at (so far). It's also relevant to the reason I'm talking to a therapist, but in a tangential way. I don't need strategies on how to avoid substances, I think I managed that okay. What I need is strategies on how to deal with the emptiness left in the wake of alcohol's disappearance from my life. I don't think I feel sad or empty because I'm an alcoholic or because I had 10,000 beers in a row and needed to stop. I think I feel sad because I know I had to stop, and I did, and what's left is a whole host of other emotional issues that I never had to address when I was slopping the Hamm's Special Light down my gullet like water.

It's grief, is what it is. Grief over losing a friend. I know this. I'm not a crier at funerals. I accept death, I know it's permanent, I'm not clawing at the casket wishing my loved one were back with me for one more day. But in losing alcohol, I lost something pretty deep, and I think that bottle-sized feeling of emptiness within me metastasizes sometimes as similar-but-not-same emotions, like loneliness, or longing. It feels like I'm continuously searching for something, and I don't know if I am actually missing something or it's just my brain incorrectly assessing the very simple basic grief of sobriety.

2. Love Actually

I can personally attest to this one as well. Just make sure you time it so that you're not fucking when that disgusting British pervert who travels to America is on the screen. I hate that guy.

Something about me that I'll be curious to ask about is the fact that I seem to care a lot what people think about me. I'm really sensitive about it, but I'm also pretty decent at hiding that sensitivity. My entire existence depends on praise or criticism, it feels like sometimes. My mood sinks really low when I'm criticized for something, and I'll feel it in the pit of my stomach for a long time. I feel incredible when someone is nice to me or takes the time to point out something that I did right. I seek approval and that guides a lot of my actions. I fear reprisal and that guides a lot of it too.

In retrospect, I think I grew up in a household that was stingy in its praise but almost total absent in its criticism. This means that I crave praise too much and that I don't have the tools to face criticism appropriately. Moving in together with Pam was an interesting adjustment period because I was facing criticism for legitimate reasons for the first time (at least when it comes to in-the-home shit, I guess), and it took me a while to understand what that meant and how to appropriately address the criticism. I also think that I find myself attracted (not sexually, but like, in a human-connection way) to people who are stingy with the praise. Like maybe if you praise me too much, I get suspicious or something, and I subconsciously start to distance myself. I want praise but in the depths of my soul I usually feel like I don't deserve it anyway.

And I have this problem where I interpret apathy as criticism too. Like I'll worry that if you don't text me back or don't reach out to me or there's any reluctance to hang out or chat or whatever, that this means that you don't like me, or are annoyed by me, or have finally had your fill of me and that's it. Even though that's mostly never true, and it's really just people wrapped up in their own shit, and the idea that it's about ME is incredibly self-centered. There's this thing where I feel like sometimes I care more about people than they care about me. I think it's actually true maybe half the time, and the other half is just my anxieties talking.

Even with the therapist, there's this desire to be a "good patient." Like maybe I'm picturing the therapist hearing all these insights and being like "wow, you've thought about this a lot already!" which would constitute as praise for me, and make me feel good. At the same time, maybe that's not the type of therapist I need. Maybe I'm going to need him to be like "cut the bullshit and just let me tell you something you don't already know."

1. Hocus Pocus 2

You can't really go wrong with this film. Basically every scene has one of the following: a hot-ass Hannah Waddingham dressed like a witch; a hot-ass Sarah Jessice Parker dressed like a witch; a hot-ass Sam Richardson dressed like Sam Richardson. A very memorable movie, who could possible forget it?

So if I try to put all these pieces together, it looks like this. I feel sad for unknown reasons. I try to express that sadness but it doesn't come out right, and a Pam-type in my life questions why I would feel that way, or would take offense as to why I would feel that way, what, is my life not good enough, etc. And that makes sense, because I can't express why I'm sad, only that I'm sad, which is confusing and frustrating for all involved. It makes things worse because then I'm given a reason to be sad, like maybe my wife is mad at me because of being sad, and how that sadness makes her life worse, OR maybe this is my assumptions again, how I'm assuming that when people don't feel like dealing with me it must be because they don't like me, which is maybe sometimes true but not always, and especially not with my wife. But even if I acknowledge the truth of all this, then at the end of the night I still feel like shit and I'm not anywhere closer to the answer than I was at the start. I think it has something to do with sobriety, which frustrates me because the whole point of me stopping the drinking was because I wanted to live and I did that and I'm alive but at the cost of feeling sad more often? How is that fair? But then I try to lay the blame at sobriety's feet but that doesn't feel right either. I know I'm missing alcohol but the feelings I have feel so disconnected from alcohol that it honestly just confuses me more. I am immediately suspicious of anyone complimenting me on sobriety because I fear that it's masking some loathing on their part, both in that sobriety is in its essence pious and holier-than-thou and those are repulsive qualities, and also that sobriety means that I am less fun, and that I stripped something away from myself to everyone's detriment. "Congrats on the not drinking" as a way of saying "but I wish you were still drinking." How "congrats" makes me feel good anyway, but it's a hollow goodness. How this is obviously all me being so strung up on what other people think that I'm starting to walk in circles now. I wonder if it's just a chemical imbalance, either something that occurred naturally or occurred because I imbalanced it for so long by tipping the scales with alcohol that a true balance feels completely wrong for me. I wonder too if the fact that I don't always feel this way nullifies the honestly rare times that I do feel this way. Like is it wrong to talk to the therapist for something that happens to me maybe once a month, etc. Or is that just my anxieties worrying about what other people think again, etc. And if it's gotten to the point where I'm sad and then I'm worried about what the therapist is going to say about all this, in what ways he will criticize me and withhold critical praise from me, in response to the deep dark thoughts I've been thinking... well then, yeah, probably time to see a therapist.

I'm not joking, Hannah Waddingham is so fucking hot in this movie, it's insane.

Song of the Day: "The Polynesian"

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

"The Polynesian"

Pkew Pkew Pkew

from Optimal Lifestyles

2019

Tomorrow is the third anniversary of my final drink. March 15th is the day I celebrate sobriety, even though I wasn't sober on March 15, 2023. It was when I made the decision to quit, a decision that somehow stuck, for at least three years now. I made that decision while kinda drunk, but not while drinking. I got drunk and then made the decision when I was coming down off the high of inebriation. And then, of course, reaffirmed that decision in the cold dawn of the next morning.

So I celebrate that decision every March 15th, the anniversary of my last drinking binge. Today is March 14th, however, and so beyond celebrating Pi Day, and beyond celebrating Pam's birthday a few days early, I am celebrating, uh, the anniversary of my second-to-last binge, I guess? I know that one too. I finished up my work for the day at like 11 AM, and instead of taking the rest of the day off, maybe spending a little time with the family or whatever, I chose to saunter down to the local watering hole (McGillin's) and order me up a few pitchers of their finest Rolling Rock. And I sat there at the bar by myself, drinking, thinking, and, yes, writing a Record Club album review.

Which was a weird thing to do (the drinking alone thing, not the review-writing, which is never weird and always normal no matter what the circumstances are). Weird, but also... enjoyable. I can safely admit that at this point. It was enjoyable and I liked doing it. I liked having little adventures by myself, going to a bar, drinking, chatting with the bartender a bit maybe, but mostly just observing, taking in the world around me. I was alone but I was participating in a ritual, and that made me feel good. It made me feel like I was a part of something. And the drunker I got, the more I could convince myself that I was a part of something special, and that made me feel even better.

But still weird, right? I keep using the word "weird," both in this blog post and in life in general, and I need to confirm for you now that I am using it in a positive way. "Weird" as a compliment, and as a goal. I want my life to be weird. I see that as a good thing. Weird is a synonym for exciting. Weird is an antonym for boring, and boring is a mortal sin in my eyes. I can't make it through this life while being bored.

The rub is that I also can't seem to make it through this life if I have another sip of alcohol ever again. The problem, therefore, is that I can no longer rely on alcohol to make life weird. And damn, dude, I really did lean on that shit for so fucking long. I needed the weird and I used alcohol to get there for approximately eighteen years and ten days. I am sincerely thankful for all the crazy, stupid, weird-ass shit that happened to me (or because of me) while I was drinking. Anything from getting blackout at McNally's to going crazy on the dancefloor at my wedding to, yeah, honestly just sitting at the bar by myself and soaking in the world around me. All of it was weird. All of it occurred with a little help from my former friend.

I don't have that anymore. Three years in, I'm not yearning for the alcohol anymore. But I still yearn for life to be weird. I couldn't do that my first year because I was just spending so much physical energy trying to hold on tight and make it through. I didn't do that my second year because I was just spending so much mental energy trying to get my emotions in order and figure out how I could plan for future with such a large hole in my psyche. So the task of my third year of sobriety was to figure out how to get weird.

I think I made great strides in this task, and I'm going to attempt to talk about it now. It's something I've mostly avoided, and at most barely hinted at over the last year of blogging, but I'm going to now make an effort to write about it somehow. Because it's important to me for you to know my truth, as uncomfortable as that truth sometimes is for me and for you. This, despite hearing a really cool quote recently that resonated with me in my predicament re: truth-seeking and truth-spouting. Joni Mitchell, once upon a time, played Blue for Kris Kristofferson, and Kristofferson, upon hearing it, told Mitchell "God, Joan, save something of yourself." Kristofferson is the devil on my shoulder, telling me that I don't need to share everything, that I can keep some things to myself. I brush him off my shoulder and turn to the Joni Mitchell angel on the other shoulder and look to her for the courage to lay it all bare, tell my truth, get it out there, cleanse and become anew.

Instead of getting weird with alcohol, I've been getting weird with sex. It's a safer thing to explore because I am not addicted to sex like I was with alcohol or would be with drugs and definitely am currently with food. It's safe because I'm not addicted and yet when I participate in the act, it feels great. But not great in a way that I'm making bad decisions because of how great it feels. I am in control of my pleasure, unlike I was during all those manic highs of binge drinking. I feel uncomfortable talking about it this way, now that I'm writing it out. Too clinical, not weird enough. Let me not sell the weirdness of my experiences short.

I'm also pretty hesitant to talk in lush details because this is not a solo adventure (well, it sometimes is, but I'll spare you those details). There are other people involved. Sex often requires a partner or partners to complete the widest range of acts under its umbrella. But at the same time, I don't want to blow up anybody's shit on this blog, which is public but in the least public sense (mainly that it's available to everyone but chosen to be read by very few, especially on a Saturday like today, especially underneath the feint of a Song of the Day header). So I'm not going to do that.

But I have been exploring ethical non-monogamy for over a year now, which means that I am in a loving relationship with a beautiful woman but that we define our physical relationship as not necessarily between just the two of us. Having a solid relationship with lots of excellent communication with the person I married is not WEIRD, and so this is not really relevant to the blog post's purpose, I think. It was important to note for the record, though. Always is. Love is awesome. I've found love and I hold onto love and when I talk about getting weird and finding excitement in the weird corners of my existence, I have love as a foundation, as a home base to return to.

I've explored some weird shit with my partner. But the ethical non-monogamy has allowed me to meet other people, some of whom I'd consider FWBs (friends with benefits), some just friends, and with my friends and FWBs I've also explored some weirder shit. Gone places, done things, ya know what I mean. I like how it's afforded me the opportunity to build friendships that don't look like friendships I'm familiar with, or friendships that most people I know are familiar with, and in the new, I find the weird. 

I have a good life, and I had a good life before I started to explore sex in weirder ways. What's cool about sex inside and outside of the home is that it can get weird in good ways but never overwhelming ways. Like, it felt like drinking overtook my life for a while there. Sex is just a little something extra, something cool to tack onto an already good life. It weaves its way through the gaps in my life, making it feel fuller—in how it strengthens my relationship at home, in how it allows other relationships to grow, in how it addresses certain needs and makes everything feel more content. It's not medicine, because nothing was wrong. It's more like a vaccine, I guess. I stave off the boredom for another day.

It should probably be acknowledged that I feel comfortable exploring the weird (the good weird) because I don't very often feel the weird (the bad weird). I can distinguish between the two, which I suppose is not a distinction that some people are capable of making. This blog post is a great example of what I'm talking about. Do I want to write about the weird-ass shit that I got up to at the sex club? Absolutely. But I'm holding back, because I'm acknowledging that other people probably find it weird, the bad weird. That's why I'm not going around talking about all this too often, because I know for a fact that other people find it weird. I've tried to talk about it with a few monogamous friends, and on at least half of their faces, I can tell that they think that this is the bad weird. And so I hold back my truth, because I don't want other people to feel uncomfortable with the weird. We just see weird differently. Which is fine! The need for me to reveal my truth is not so strong that I'm going to make people feel bad over it!

Still, I've been thinking lately that it might be to my overall benefit to start being a little more open and honest about my lifestyle choices, and the ways that I get weird. First of all, because if you are still my friend at this point in my life, then that is a choice based on the fact that I like you and care about you a lot, and want you to know who I am and what I believe and how I spend my life. Second, because I keep looking back at the last time I was getting weird, with the drinking, and how closely I guarded so much of that weirdness, which ultimately led to a downfall. I loved getting weird with drinking so much that I did it in secret too, and it's the secret that makes me ashamed. I don't want to keep things from the people I care about. I want you to know me, in the same way that I desire to know about you.

So this is what I'm thinking about this weekend, as I celebrate another year of hard-earned sobriety. I'm thinking about all the ways I'm coping with the loss of that part of my life that I cherished for so long. One of the best ways I've been coping is to feel the way I felt during my best drinking days, but in a much healthier fashion. I have determined that I can still get weird without drinking. It's just a matter of finding out how. This was a good year in finding the weird again.

Never Seen It #297: Days of Wine and Roses

You remember how it really was? You and me and a blog—a threesome. You and I were a couple of bloggers on the sea of blog, and the boat sank. I got hold of something that kept me from going under, and I'm not going to let go of it. Not for you. Not for 400 movies I've never seen before. Not for anyone. If you want to grab on, grab on. But there's just room for you and me—no blogging threesome.

Days of Wine and Roses

1962

Blake Edwards

Alright gang. Sit down, pull up a drink, and scroll down to see what we thought of this one.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Catherine

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:

Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes

Within a dream.

Who picked this bummer of a film?? Whoops.

All I knew when I made my selection was that it was a Jack Lemmon-led '60s romance. Fun! ...I was wholly unprepared to meet the Sid and Nancy of the Lawrence Welk set.

In retrospect, it's a perfect title. Along with the poem, it really captures the fleeting euphoria alcohol can bring before it takes a sharp turn to misery. Or at least a slow, numbing joylessness leaving you nostalgic for how you used to feel. But it was painful to watch.

God, I hate Joe Clay. I hated witnessing Kirsten be corrupted turn after turn by such a useless BUM. 

In brief:

• She wants nothing to do with him so he bullies her into a date.
• She's perfectly happy sober, he doesn't understand or accept that, so he TRICKS her into drinking.
• She's trying to be a good mom but it makes him insecure to be the only drunk one so she dives into oblivion with him as an act of loving solidarity.
• She's succeeding in her sobriety, he's tempted to jump off the wagon, so he drags her along.
• Then it's too late. He gets sober again, she can't. He gets better, and she's a lost cause wandering out into the darkness to drink herself to death. Sammen i himmelen, I guess. It's not fair. No amount of checks to her father will correct all the damage Joe has done.

I like to imagine a Christmas Carol-type pivot in the movie where we find out this is all just a bad dream brought to Kirsten by a benevolent ghost to show her what a train wreck her life would become if she lets Joe in. She wakes up before she ever gets on the boat, gleefully chomps on a little chocolate bar, and the credits roll. Trust your instincts, KA.

While I watched, I kept vacillating between two opposing takes: This a poignant, fascinating and accurate presentation of substance abuse, and this is kinda like Reefer Madness for booze.

When Joe ends his nursery-smashing bender in a straight jacket, gnashing his teeth at a horde of needle-wielding orderlies, I couldn't help but think we needed to rein it in just a bit.

Then he meets Jim, his AA sponsor, and their conversations are deep and unexpectedly raw and capture so much of the complicated psychological aspects of alcoholism and I was rapt.

Overall, I think the message of the movie was a little too on the nose for my taste. For a similar story that approaches alcoholism and marital woes without feeling like a neon sign blaring ALCOHOL IS BAD, I'd say Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is the way to go (maybe an unfair comparison, but it felt relevant).

Deciding a rating for this has been tricky because I don't think it's a bad movie whatsoever, but it did flirt with a bit of melodrama and I didn't really enjoy myself watching it AND I don't think I'd necessarily recommend it to anyone so I will reluctantly say 2.5 Brandy Alexanders out of 5.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sunny

I realize I enjoy myself a good alcoholism/addiction-based media. Leaving Las Vegas, Another Round, obviously IJ if we bridge to books. I sometimes wonder why the personal appeal; I don't spend too much time on the thread, afraid I'll pull apart the whole sweater. Zach said a line in MMM this week that stuck with me ("But we've all been alcoholics at some point"), and even if it's not literally true, there's something spiritually right about it.

I was initially a little worried about this movie—the age, the length, the opening song. Was this going to be a slow and boring two hours? Or worse, overly preachy?

The opening is bizarre enough. What's this guy do exactly? Sort of an early Epstein slash Pete Campbell type? But somewhere around the Peanut Brittle scene and the elevator diatribe, I clicked in for the next hour forty-five.

The movie feels more modern than I first gave it credit for. The pacing was fast. The acting was superb. Lemmon and Remick, obviously, but I also enjoyed the Dad and the AA sponsor from 12 Angry Men. I dug that huge swaths of time would pass without much explanation, giving enough credit to the audience to fill in the gaps and get "Oh, they've fallen down another couple notches."

That pacing cuts both ways—one hour into the movie they're getting clean and working with the dad, but the audience knows there's half a movie left. It's inevitable the relapse, and we're just waiting to see how. Turns out there'd be like half a dozen more relapses. And there's definitely real power in those scenes. I cringed hard and felt the pain during the greenhouse trashing, the motel room concession, and the final apartment scenes in a way that a lot of media comes short in producing.

Two lines from Remick's character in particular stuck with me. Early on, when Lemmon is asking her why she doesn't like booze, saying it can make her happier, she says she's "already happy." I believe she genuinely means it, despite being a secretary living in a roach kingdom. There's a certain envy I have there, but I guess we all start like that don't we, as babes?

And then in that last scene, when she says she needs to drink because she can't deal with how "dirty everything looks," and the Substance make it pretty again. I can relate to that. It's both shocking and totally believable how someone's mind could change that dramatically in ~7 years and how they were taken on a ride nearly outside their control the whole time.

It's interesting that in the '50s/'60s drinking was everywhere (not like it isn't now), especially in well-to-do society and white-collar work. Like Mad Men, Lemmon mentions how he knows plenty of people who drink more than him, but didn't have this down-spiral happen to them. Moreover, it's interesting to see here a time where AA is ~30 years old, still rather looked down upon, and alcoholism isn't a disease but rather a failing of will. Remick's reaction to the program both felt real and hard to watch. I think I read on Wikipedia that Lemmon, Remick, and the director Blake Edwards all ended up going to AA in the years following the movie. There's some sympathy for poor souls to their social trappings. The sad/ambiguous ending closes the circle in that this definitely wasn't overly preachy; actually, quite grounded for and in its time.

Together in Heaven! 4/5

P.S. Somewhere around the third act, the score really clicked, and I kinda get why Mancini won the award, even if I think that opening song's stupid.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Joe

Well fuck, man. The timing on watching this one is pretty good. My sober-versary is this Sunday, and I'll be celebrating three years sober, so it's definitely been on my mind. I did not know what Days of Wine and Roses was about until maybe 30 minutes into the viewing, so I did not have the foresight to plan this blog post to be published three days prior to March 15th, on a Thirsty Thursday no less. Total fucking coincidence, and a welcome one. I don't believe in god and I don't believe in fate, but sometimes it's nice to just sit back and marvel and the wonders of the universe, and how the pure fucking randomness of it still manages to smile down upon you.

That's something I would probably say at an AA meeting, that bit about fate vs. randomness and the juxtaposition not really mattering at the end of the day. I would say that if I went to AA meetings, which I don't. I have, but I don't currently. I am 100% pro-AA, and I believe that it works. I also believe that if you can get through sobriety without it, then that's okay too. It's cool to know that I always have that as an option. I've pulled the trigger on AA as an emergency option exactly twice. The first time was on March 15, 2023, Day 1, or rather Night 1 I guess, an 11 PM meeting with a bunch of Northeast Philly hoagie-mouthed dudes. Figured I should start out on the right foot. It was nice saying my piece, talking about that voice in my head that told me that I should probably stop or else I'm gonna be dead soon, because everybody understood what I was talking about. The second time was on May 15, 2023, Day 62, before my graduation from Penn, when I knew that I would feel like a huge piece of shit that day for not celebrating "the right way" and honestly for feeling like a fraud for the degree I was receiving since I earned it mostly while intoxicated. So I fit a quick meeting in at like 7 AM, and the two other people there understood exactly what I was talking about, and then I went to graduation and felt like slightly less than a piece of shit and managed to not drink.

There are some good stories that you'll hear in AA, I'm sure. The ones I've heard were pretty normal. My story is nothing special. I don't have an exciting or retrospectively comedic rock bottom. I just made a decision to stop drinking after a lifetime of too much drinking. That more or less feels like this other Joe's story too. He got too drunk too many times, had some mildly amusing (to the observer) mishaps (like the greenhouse scene, yikes!), and finally reached the point where he had had enough. The trick is that the story doesn't have to be exciting for it to be impactful. The idea that there are other people out there just like you is enough. Even if the characters are fictional! Even in a movie as melodramatic as Days of Wine and Roses! It's still helpful!

(I'm glad I didn't know what the film was about, or else I think I might have approached it more guardedly. It honestly did not occur to me that this was a Movie About Alcoholism until, hmmm, maybe when the house caught on fire? Which is pretty late into the film. Look at the poster at the top of the blog post and you'll see that the themes were pretty well-known to contemporaneous audiences. I actually only added this film to the list because it sounded like the Japandroids song "The Nights of Wine and Roses," which I looked up was actually named after The Days of Wine and Roses by the Dream Syndicate, which is named after the same poem as this movie.)

While watching, I was concerned that perhaps it had too much of a After School Special vibe to it, too much pontificating by Joe and by Joe's AA sponsor about the evils of alcohol. It wasn't subtle. Kirsten goes from getting tipsy off one drink to having a beer at breakfast and destroying her home. Joe goes from getting taken off an account due to boozing to getting thrown in the psych ward. There's this thing that alcoholics who have not yet admitted they have a problem do when they say "oh, well I'm not THAT bad," and I think this movie probably provided a lot of wiggle room for a lot of alcoholics in the 1960s. I watch Joe and Kirsten and I can say truthfully that I was never this bad... but I can also say truthfully that I was bad in other ways, and that I have a problem, and that I cannot drink anymore or else I'll die. I just think the movie would've been more effective if it had been more subtle and casual about the substance abuse issues.

But see, here's where AA comes back in. It doesn't really matter. I'm not taking anyone else's inventory, including a movie's. It's not my place to say if something or somebody is "too dramatic," it's still a true-to-life story of alcoholism, and because of that, I appreciate hearing it, and I can identify. I can identify with a lot in this movie, it's true! Mostly Joe's fear of drinking, how some of those final drinks feel like he's allowing himself to be consumed by a monster, and he knows it, and the shame and fear and intertwined. That part didn't feel too dramatic to me at all. That felt grounded.

Something else that hit close to home, I guess in the contrast to my own experience, was when Joe's sponsor was like "your wife's gonna be miserable now! she lost her playmate! booze was your meeting ground!" I don't think that's true in my life, but it's definitely a fear that I have, still, however unfounded. I don't think that booze was my and Pam's "meeting ground," I don't think our relationship was ever built on that, and so right now it still feels solid to me, maybe even more so without beer soaking the foundation. But I do worry that I'm not as fun to people anymore. There's nothing much I can do about it, but I still feel bad. I don't want to be a wet blanket (or a "friend of the milkman," as Kirsten puts it, hilariously). I don't want people to feel weird about drinking around me. I don't want Pam to think that she can't have a great time with me like we used to do. I'm trying my best, and I'm half succeeding, but the fear remains.

Shit, my bad, gang. I'm getting way too far into the weeds on this one. I haven't really talked about the movie, just my personal reaction to some of the themes the movie has brought up. Hopefully there is some engaging discussion beyond what I've had to say about the Joe watching and the Joe being watched. Jack Lemmon is so fucking good, isn't he? I haven't seen too many (I think Some Like It Hot and Glengarry Glen Ross, plus JFK which was basically a string of 100 cameos by famous actors), but I love his nervous, manic energy. It was pretty interesting to watch him and Lee Remick attempt to play drunk characters, since that's generally tough to do, but Lemmon especially, since alcohol is a depressant, and Jack Lemmon is the living embodiment of an upper drug.

Some of the best moments in the film were just watching these characters exist mired in their own fucked-up ways. Drinking in the bedroom, stumbling toward the liquor store across the lake, the intense sadness of Kirsten alone in that motel. Those felt real. Otherwise, I'm acknowledging that this movie was corny as fuck. I'm saying that I thought it was over-the-top and maybe a little too preachy and outdated in the way that it had to explain in detail was AA was and what it means to be an alcoholic. I've seen public service announcements with similar tones.

And yet, if you're the type of person who has had sobriety on his mind a lot lately because of a personal anniversary, and you still struggle with the idea of sobriety even as the sobriety itself seems pretty intact at this point, and you are in a film club and you stumble across a movie during this time of the year, completely by chance, the time of year when maybe you need to hear someone's story, since hearing stories are always helpful, no matter how lame, no matter how cliché, you're just the type of person who needs to hear it, and finds comfort in it, in the idea of finding empathy in this space, even the fictional space in a movie, then, well... maybe this is a good movie for you.

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GROUP AVERAGE GRADE: 3.33 pukes out of 5

Destroy every pot in the greenhouse to find the comment section.

(NEXT TIME: Our final small group of the month gets together to talk Babel... and speak in different tongues, I'm assuming...? That's just a guess, I know literally nothing about what this movie is about.)