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

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

"Mistakes (Too Many to Name)"

The Reds, Pinks & Purples

from The Town That Cursed Your Name

2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never Seen It #326: RENT

Find the one blog before the virus takes hold, glory, like a sunset. One blog to redeem this empty life! Time flies, you watch 500 movies you've never seen before, and then no need to endure anymore! Time dies.

RENT

2005

Chris Columbus

Welcome to our next installment of the "Already Seen It" subseries, where we asked members of Film Club to choose a movie they've already seen from the list, and force Joe to watch it. I was hoping no one felt obligated to rewatch any movies that they picked, but some of our loyal club members beat me to the punch and rewatched it anyway. Zach rewatched RENT, and has some thoughts. Then I'll share my thoughts afterward.

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

Zach

This is the third time in my life I've seen RENT. The first was Thanksgiving Day 2005, in the theaters, with my mother's side of the family, who are all way more into musicals than I will ever be. I was deep in the mourning period for my high school girlfriend, even though we had broken up nearly a year before. Coming back to Maryland always made things feel worse, and I (while I don't remember specifically) assume I saw her at some point during that trip. Something about the emotion of the movie got me then. It probably had to do with the emotion of the music, and with all the breakups that happen in the movie, even though everyone seems to get back together at the end. The second time was when it showed at the cheap NYU movie nights in the theater. My main memory from watching it then was an audible laugh at the crowd during the scene where Roger walks out onto the rocks in Santa Fe. I think people laughed because it looked so stupid and contrived. It still does, although watching it now, for the third time, I didn't think it was the most embarrassing shot I've ever seen in a movie.

But let's be honest. To watch RENT today feels a bit eye-rolling. The absolute sincerity of the songs, the lack of irony, the cringeworthiness of "La Vie Bohème"—it doesn't really fit today. Portlandia made fun of that world, and now a show like Portlandia would never make it on air because the world is too dark, and making fun of free-range chicken feels irrelevant. So RENT is certainly dated. 

But the music. Oh, the music. "Seasons of Love" will always get me. "Will I" will always get me. So will "What You Own." Yes, I can laugh at the absurdity of the characters. Mark's movie kind of sucks, Roger is a very clichéd character, Mimi is a manic pixie dream girl, Benny represents THE MAN and the show makes sure you know that, Maureen and Joanne are archetypes... I honestly think the best characters in the show are Collins and Angel. 

Somehow I got lucky enough to like the music of RENT before I realized its cheesiness. I don't like musicals in general, but this one slipped by me, and I'm better for it. I found myself belting out "Seasons of Love" at the beginning along with the rest of the cast.

The show hearkens back to a different New York, too. Nowadays, Alphabet City is a fancy place, like most of Manhattan. It's all high-rises, and modern buildings, too. HIV is much more under control than it used to be. The idea of "selling out" is more of a joke than it used to be. It was a different time, it was a different place, and it's not culturally relevant anymore. But the songs are one banger after another, and that makes it all worth it.

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

Joe

I have no ties to any of this, which is what makes it difficult to have an opinion about this movie musical, and which also probably makes me more willing to accept it for what it is, as opposed to what it does to a thing or a place in time that people genuinely care about. What I mean is that I don't really give a shit about Broadway musicals, Gen X angst, the so-called bohemian lifestyle, the legacy of RENT the musical, New York City, or any dork who cut their teeth in New York in 1989, 1996, 2005, 2011, or 2026. So all that can be brushed aside. I care about the movie in front of me and I care about the music it contains. That's basically it.

A quick aside I might add here would be the fact that I have, of course, been familiar with the idea of RENT as a movie, having cut my own teeth right here in Philadelphia in a low-rate but lovable theater program at my local low-rate unlovable university, with all those theater rapscallions singing along to soundtracks of shows that I'll never seen in person, and also of course being familiar with it as a cultural institution, what with the Team America gag "Everyone Has AIDS" cutting RENT down a year before the film version's release, plus, I don't know, it's status as the perfect and also cringeworthy encapsulation of an entire generation's grappling with growing up in their specific place and time. I've also seen bits and pieces of the film over the years, probably some minutes here and there in the background as I slugged Natty Lights at an upperclassman's townhouse, and definitely during a particularly wayward moment in my high school years, when I made an icky, horny decision and hurt some feelings and feel the shame even now rippling through the two decades since, RENT the movie soundtracking that moment of my life, burned into my brain as the background to a low point. This is coincidence, and not important, but perhaps worth noting, simply because it's that kind of movie.

Any issues that you might have with this movie as an adaptation of a theater show you love is not really my problem. I don't give a shit. To me, it's a movie, and it's fine. That "fine" is circumstantial, though, and I'm trying to tell you now that it's a good thing that it went this way. If I don't give a shit about the musical then I'm not gonna sit here and tell you the movie is inferior. I literally can't, I have nothing to compare it to. There are people who hate this film because it's not like the original version. I'm saying that this movie is fine, don't worry about it.

They ("they" being: basically everything I've read online; Zach, above) say that it's outdated, and perhaps that's true. There are people who needed this musical in their lives during their formative years, when they were young and life was full of fake hardship papering over real privilege and wild fun, and then they see the movie adaptation later in life, see the original cast who are now way too old to play these characters, see what they themselves were actually like in their early 20s, and cringe, and think that there is no way that this film and this idea of RENT could possibly be relevant anymore. They are, as far as I can tell, completely correct. It's outdated because they are older now and this is no longer relevant. But here, too, I can say: I don't care. I am viewing it only as a time capsule, and nothing else. I didn't grow with it and therefore I cannot outgrow it. It's already of the past, and can never be my present.

For what it's worth, though, Pam—having seen the musical, having already seen RENT the movie a few times, and having already played the soundtrack in our car at least a dozen times since I've known her, and that's just counting when I myself am present—said that she liked the movie better than she remembered. My theory is that she went through that typical theater kid process of knowing / liking / obsessing over the musical, and then being disappointed with the Chris Colombus adaptation, due to aforementioned ideas of its "outdatedness" being personal much more so than cultural. But what Pam represents, here in 2026, in her early 40s, is the idea of making it all the way through and coming out the other side. She's far enough removed from "needing" or at the very least "relating to" RENT as a young teen or 20-something that she can comfortably see it as a time capsule now too.

That's growth. Now here's my growth: I liked the songs a little better this time around. I just said in the last paragraph that Pam has forced this soundtrack upon my ears more than a few times over the years. Not to the point that I was familiar with them all by the time I watched the movie (not like Hamilton, whose soundtrack was worn out by the time my ass hit the theater's cushioned seats), but enough that I had formed a general opinion of them. That opinion was: "Oof... rough..." I have always thought and still think now that the lyrics are some of the worst lyrics I've ever heard in any musical. Just some of the lamest, cringiest shit that's ever been put on stage.

HOWEVER, I say this as someone who just generally needs a lot to be impressed, NOT as someone who is any sort of Broadway skeptic. I will gladly cop to the idea that I am easily impressed when it comes to the combination of singing and dancing and "performing" on stage or screen. I am, in other words, highly susceptible to the magic of theater. The best example here is "La Vie Bohème," a song that I grew to utterly despise in my occasional dalliances with it in the family minivan. Its corniness made me want to tear my fucking hair out. But seeing the whole gang dance around to it, my Dazed and Confused boy Anthony Rapp go nuts dancing on tabletops and shit... ya know what? I finally understood the song. I don't think it's great, but I understood what they were doing, for the first time. It felt like a worthy part of this artistic statement, and I'm thankful to see it performed as intended.

Not that I'm going to be excited to hear it in the car next time around (I mean, we just watched the damn movie together, there's no fucking way we're gonna get past the next car ride together without hearing this shit again, right?), but I have a peace of mind knowing that I was simply missing essential pieces of the experience. Elsewhere on the soundtrack, there is another song that stood out in the movie, but for a different reason. Namely, because it's a great fucking song, straight-up, no contextualization needed. "Out Tonight" as performed by Mimi as performed here by Rosario Dawson. You don't even need the context of Dawson being one of the hottest people alive and playacting as a stripper here—homie don't play that shit when it comes to being a music critic. Taking my horny hat off and putting my music critic hat on firmly, I say wholeheartedly that "Out Tonight" is the best song from a music I've heard since Larson's "30/90."

The rest of the music is fine. The rest of the movie is fine. A lot of it is silly even though it's not supposed to be (lol at Zach mentioning the Sante Fe part, I literally turned to Pam and said "I was so fucking confused, I forgot he was in Sante Fe"), and a lot of the intended silly parts are not very silly at all (Idina Menzel's little one-woman show was so embarrassing it made me want to set myself on fire and jump off the fire escape like so many burning eviction notices). But we can stick to what we know, and only what we care about here in 2026. RENT is purely nostalgia now, and since I missed that whole thing at the beginning, I can comfortably say that this movie is fine, and all the glaring issues were simply chalked up to this being a goofy and charming movie, that meant something to some people some time ago. But not me. That's okay.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: We have another round of small group work, and half the crew is gonna be watching Princess Mononoke.

Never Seen It #325: The Notebook

I am no one special. Just a common blogger with common thoughts. I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me, and my name will soon be forgotten, but in one respect I've succeeded as gloriously as anyone who ever lived. I've watched 500 movies I've never seen before, and for me, that has always been enough.

The Notebook

2004

Nick Cassavetes

The memory I have is in a friend's basement, and The Notebook is on. The friend was female (platonic). There were other female friends (platonic) there. I may have been the only guy, I forget. It was a snow day, and we had been sledding, and now we were getting warm and dry and sipping hot cocoa. My friends put on The Notebook. This was done on purpose, a winking nod to the fact that I did not want to watch The Notebook. It was a whole thing. I assume that the pretense of my not wanting to watch The Notebook was based along gender lines. I was a boy and thus The Notebook was not to be my type of movie. It was mutually understood. I didn't want to watch it. I wasn't interested in a cheesy love story.

I was also a teenager. I was young and dumb and didn't know shit about the world and didn't care. I knew nothing about love, and The Notebook, had I watched it back then, would've landed with a heavy thud upon my green, untested heart. So my women friends assuming that it was "not my kind of movie" back in the mid-'00s were absolutely right. It wasn't then. But that was 20 years ago. I've lived through some shit since then. I have a much better understand of what love is now. I'm not saying that I think The Notebook is a great movie because of that. It's fine, it's not great, but it's a fine, pretty good movie. I do think, however, that I appreciate The Notebook for what it is, at this age, better than I ever could have when I was an idiot teenager.

That's probably the case for all movies, right? But here, I'm talking about romance dramas specifically. If the point of The Notebook is to make the case for following your heart in the direction of true love, then that becomes the specific reason that I could only like this movie now, and not then. I have known true love, I live with it each day, and I am motivated now to want that for the protagonists of a film that I am enjoying. Even if the story is fictional. Even if the movie is kinda cliché, as these movies sometimes are. I understand it now, and that makes all the difference.

I was wondering, though: would I have liked this movie even more if I hadn't known the narrative conceit of the senior citizens in the framing device being older versions of the main characters? Was this supposed to be a secret? I don't know. I knew from the beginning, I suppose because this was explained to me smirkingly in that snow day basement of yore. I could imagine a scenario in which I suddenly snap to attention that Duke is actually old person Noah and he's chatting with old person Ali with dementia, and maybe that elevates the film even more.

But I don't even know if that was ever the intention of the film. Maybe it would have been obvious from the very beginning, whether I knew anything about The Notebook prior to or not. Like maybe the creators of this film predicted its cultural ubiquity and didn't even bother with any sort of surprise. Not to mention the fact that this was a book beforehand. That's what Pam told me when I asked her. She said that she has seen this movie many times, and that she had read the book before the movie even came out.

I wonder if she's seen it at any point in the last sixteen years, i.e. in the time since we fell in love with each other. To be clear, I'm not saying that you need to experience any movie's characters' motivations and emotions for yourself before you can ever truly understand them. That's not the case at all, never has been. Movies can show you things that you'll never know for yourself, or simply haven't yet. I remember getting fucked up watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall after a tough breakup, for example. I didn't know what love was, even though Jason Segel's character gradually learns what love is throughout that movie.

Interesting that I was more invested in a rom-com (with Sarah Marshall leaning heavily toward the "com" side, but still), and yet in the same timeframe could never picture myself being invested in a rom-dram (is that a thing?). But see, this doesn't have anything to do with the subject matter of love and my inexperience with it. It has everything to do with what kind of movies I can appreciate and which I can't. I'm saying now that being intimately familiar with love and the joy and pain that comes along with undying love is the thing that makes me able to tolerate The Notebook in the first place.

Otherwise, it's a pretty cheesy movie! It hits a lot of the same beats that your typical schmaltzy love story would hit. It was interesting that they papered over the apparent fact that our star-crossed lovers fought constantly. Also interesting that the "other guy" was by all accounts a really good dude, and was only saddled with the fatal flaw of not being The One. The Notebook either did not do enough to distinguish itself from the tried-and-true romance drama formula, or has become ubiquitous enough in pop culture that it feels unoriginal only because it inspired so many knockoffs.

At the end of the day, though, I liked this movie, because I love love, and I know it well. Eighteen-year-old Joe could fucking never.

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: Everyone has AIDS in RENT.

In My Place 206

July 25, 2026. 40.0997, -75.02314. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

My entire weekend has been in flux, plans coming together and falling apart due to external factors beyond my control. That's okay. It actually reminds me a little bit of college, when you'd be getting out of your last Friday class and start texting people and you wouldn't really know what the plan was until something sudden crashed onto your or your friend's phone and you or your friend's eyes would light up like, oh shit, here it is, the plan! And then you'd leave and it would be a legendary night. As of this writing, my night is still up in the air. The day was locked in pretty tightly, though. We're leaving for the shore in seven days and the next six days are all booked solid, no time to hit the wholesaler before then, gotta be today, gotta nab those pallets of seltzers and boxes of bags of Doritos. We did the only thing we had to do, and then I moved into the unknown.

Unorthodox Behaviour, Gilson

A long time ago, roughly 2008, frequent contributor to the blog Nate and I lived together in South Philadelphia. One night, presumably after some drinking, Nate announced to myself and our then-roommate Stu that he had reduced our respective musical tastes to two words each. I forget what he had for Stu, but it was something along the lines of "wild experimentation." For me, he gave the words "Pop Sensibilities." I protested at the time, but he was right. I like catchy music and tunefulness and a well-crafted chorus and bridge and all that, even if my particular pop sensibilities do not always line up with the larger world's pop sensibilities.

All of that is to say that I feel out of place even writing this review because, and I cannot stress this enough, this album is Not For Me. 

"BUT THE MUSICIANSHIP!" you say. Yes. These guys are all clearly great musicians. And I'd agree that occasionally it is good to hear someone like Phil Collins showing what he is capable on drums, since he is mostly now known as the Sussudio guy. That does not mean that it is listenable, to me. This is the argument made for bands like Phish and Grateful Dead, as well as their many acolytes. That's fine. I respect all of these guys as musicians, and I wish I was capable of what they can do on their instruments. But please let me turn this shit off and put on something I can bop my head and hum along to.

In My Place 197

July 16, 2026. 40.05866, -75.09205. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

There is absolutely no reason for me to be on Shelbourne St. in the year 2026, so you probably won't get a picture of the block I grew up on, nor a closer view of the field (known to us kids as "The Field") at the end of that block, during this photo blog project. I'm trying to accurately depict my comings and goings, and not go out of my way just to photograph something I wouldn't be seeing anyway.

But I have been traveling to and fro' on these train tracks this summer, seeing as it's too hot and my car doesn't have air conditioning and it's just not worth driving all the way to Fern Rock and letting the car roast in the sun for eight hours then driving home while burning my hands on the steering wheel. Back to that Regional Rail life.

It's been approximately 5896 days since Pam and I first traveled on this train together, me headed home from her Center City apartment for maybe the fifth time and she meeting her dad to get a ride to her grandmom's, who lived around the corner from the station. She told me that we had to pretend we didn't know each other once disembarked from the train, so her dad didn't ask questions and roast her during the family gathering she was walking into all hungover. It's funny to think that this is the first time I ever saw my future father-in-law, from the window of a train, out of the corner of my eye as I looked away into the middle distance.

She thought I was joking when I started pointing out all the places in this neighborhood, specifically along this very train route. She assumed I was fucking around, which, true, I very often do. But people give me way too much credit when they think I'm making shit up. I don't have the comedic capacity to riff like that and pull shit out of nothing. Yes, Pam, that really is where I went to grade school, that really is where I had my first kiss, that really is the Field that was at the end of my block and the end of your Uncle Ed's block too, where the two blocks met at a perpendicular angle, at the Field. Maybe this wasn't the first time I've ever seen your dad. Maybe you guys were getting out of your car for a previous family gathering at your cousin Rachel's Confirmation party and me and my pals were playing roller hockey 100 feet away.

But I didn't even own a camera then, let alone take any pictures of such likely scenarios, let alone have a blog onto which I crudely pasted photos of my life with paltry thoughts for each. I cannot document what happened long ago or far away. I can only document the here and now. Here, now, I am taking the train home from a long day at work, and I'm briefly spotting the Field in the distance.

In My Place 191

July 10, 2026. 40.07704, -75.07706. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

NOTE: Blogger is making these photos look like fucking SHIT lately, I don't know why. If you click on it, it gives you a better look. We're stuck with what we got!

This building is marked for demolition, TBA.

I have no stories.

It was once a florist. I bought some corsages here for various dates at various proms. I could tell you prom stories, but the corsages were always mostly besides the point.

Moving forward in time, I could say that by the time we moved back to Fox Chase, COVID had been raging for half a year, and this business had already been felled. So it's been closed and locked and empty for all this time that we've lived here.

Moving backward in time, I could say that there was a camper parked in front of this florist for a while, and my cousin knew the kid whose parents owned it, and I'm pretty sure I spent at least one night guzzling beers in that thing, hiding in plain sight from the adults who had an issue with underage drinking. But that's not really a florist tale either, that's more just a tale of proximity.

There's still a camper there. I don't know if it's the same one.

I don't know anything, really. Who bought it, why they are knocking it down, what they are building on top of it, if anything.

But I do know that there is a tiny sense of obligation here, in this photo project, to preserve what is here now. There will be a time soon enough that this building will not be here, but the photo will remain. The building itself is of no importance, but the memory is, I think. To remember what we leave behind means to stay true and connected to the cycle of life.

I will update this space when there is a crater where a florist used to be.

Top Ten Albums of 2016 (Revisited)

one million years ago

In terms of blogging, 2016 was like the four years before it: mostly empty, save for the end-of-year ranking of music. The annual Top Ten was the thing that kept Puke on Your Birthday afloat for a half-decade there. By 2017, we were back fully. The difference was work. And if PoYB dies in 2026, then we're gonna blame that on work too.

In short: shit's a lot different in 2026 than it was in 2016. There are so many obvious reasons this is true, so obvious that they need not be mentioned here. But here's a good bellwether of the change: a Top Ten Albums, reexamined. How has life changed? Look no further than how my tastes have changed. There's not complete upheaval, but the list, were I to make it now, looks a lot different than it did then! Only four of the top ten albums are still in the Top Ten! A new number one! At least one album purposefully forgotten about permanently because the frontman was abusive!

This isn't a necessary blog post for today, it's more just to kill time. But let's take a look at the best music of 2016, according to 2026 Joe, and revel in how much has changed.

Honorable Mentions:

20. Ambulance by the Amazing

19. Midnight Run by Connections

18. Ruminations by Conor Oberst

17. Pretty Years by Cymbals Eat Guitars

16. Emotions and Math by Margaret Glaspy

15. Holy Ghost by Modern Baseball

14. Atrocity Exhibition by Danny Brown

13. Blisters in the Pit of My Heart by Martha

12. Light upon the Lake by Whitney

11. Blackstar by David Bowie

Top Ten Albums of 2016 in 2026

10. Bacchanal 'n' Philadelphia by Mischief Brew

I couldn't have ranked this album in the Top Ten during the year it came out because I didn't know it existed until 2022, when I fell hard for it. I don't know if you can blame 2016 Joe for not knowing, because at the time, I was either not cool enough to know about it, or too cool to know about it (still haven't decided which, and honestly it doesn't matter, it could be both). In this folk-punk album, I feel the thumb of a different dimension pressing down upon me, whispering in my ear of a life unlived.

 

9. City Sun Eater in the River of Light by Woods

Good news: Woods holds up. This is the only album that remains in the same position as it stood a decade ago. Number nine just feels right, because this is quirky and chill and not life-changing but instead infinitely satisfying. Tracing Woods story with another ten years of insight, I'd mark this as the moment they went from DIY lo-fi to widescreen. The results past this point are extremely hit-or-miss, and if I had a gun to my head I'd probably choose the lo-fi stuff like Songs of Shame or Bend Beyond, but I'd be remiss to not point out that City Sun Eater is the album that Woods had the best chance of mass appeal, and they almost grabbed it.

 

8. Beyond the Fleeting Gales by Crying

Damn, it sucks when a great album from a decade ago remains the most recent album from that artist. Such is the case with Crying, a singular band that effortlessly combined prog-rock with Game Boy. What are these people up to? There was a one-off EP with J-Brekkie in 2020, but that had nothing to do with Crying. I don't think about Crying too often, but when I do, I wonder if we'll ever get a new album, and whether that album could even sniff at the idiosyncratic greatness that occurred ten years ago.

 

7. Moth by Chairlift

Here's another album by a band that hasn't released anything in the decade since, but under different circumstances—they simply broke up. Frontwoman Caroline Polachek has put out some solo stuff, of course, and by all accounts it's just as good if not better than her Chairlift material, but I dunno. It's not for me. Maybe I'll come around on it eventually. For now, Moth stands at a particular moment in time for me. I mark this album as the first capital-p Pop album I've ever loved. There have been so many brat summers since, but back in 2016, this was new to me, and it was so goddamn exciting. Pop music can be good, and it doesn't necessarily even have to be short for "popular." Wow.

 

6. Down in Heaven by Twin Peaks

Sometimes just good ol' fashioned rock 'n' roll survives. I'm talking in this case about how I started listening to Twin Peaks' seminal Down in Heaven in 2016 and liked it, and then as the years went on I just kept listening, to the point that now I absolutely fucking adore this little thing. It's not revelatory, it's just simply good. Just a few kids banging out some feel-good rock, ya know. Surviving can also refer to Twin Peaks themselves, who broke up and got back together and just a month ago played anniversary shows for this very album. Somehow they are surviving even as their name remains ungoogleable (sorry David Lynch fans). Good music survives.

5. DARK THOUGHTS by DARK THOUGHTS

There are five bands that I think about when I think about those first few months of parenthood, when being a dad meant sitting in a room with a tiny little thing that couldn't do anything for herself, and just simply trying to keep her calm (and well-fed, sure, and all that other shit, but you get what I'm trying to say). I listened to five albums over and over, and they became my soundtrack for those early months. DARK THOUGHTS is one of those bands. But my first daughter wasn't born for another two years, and I guess that means that AT WORK was the DARK THOUGHTS album that I was into at the time. But I loved that one a lot, and eventually went backward to their first album, and that was obviously good too. There are no DARK THOUGHTS albums that sound all that different from the others, and that's okay. But that also just means that I'm listening to a ten-year-old album and thinking about my eight-year-old daughter, which is chronologically wrong, but that's how it goes!

 

4. Home Wrecking Years by Brendan Canning

The great part about Broken Social Scene, but also the confusing part I'll admit, is the open-door policy of the band. If you say you're in Broken Social Scene, then you're part of Broken Social Scene (I am a member of Broken Social Scene). Brendan Canning is a member, and is in fact a co-founder with Kevin Drew. But because of the structure of the band, I didn't really hear all that much from Canning during the promo cycle of the recent Remember the Humans, to the point where I don't honestly know if he is even on the album. I'm pretty sure he is? I'm not too concerned, because I'll always have this little solo album from Canning. It's either the most slept-on album of 2016, or definitive proof that BSS has duped me into fanaticism. I mean, it sounds like one of their albums, and it would probably stand toe-to-toe with a couple of them. I don't really know how else to explain it? It's a secret Broken Social Scene album? Isn't that enough?

 

3. Teens of Denial by Car Seat Headrest

The former #1, and still in the Top Three, so don't think of it too much like a tumble downward. I think it's drop by two positions is more indicative of how dramatically the other two album have grown in the past decade than anything regarding Car Seat Headrest's downfall in reputation. Teens of Denial still holds up immaculately. It's still one of the albums of my lifetime that most accurately describes what I mean when I say "I like indie rock." I wasn't bothered by the fact that this is probably, in retrospect, the last time that CSH ever had a good idea. The only GREAT album in the ten years since is a re-do, and the other albums are interesting and fine and nothing more, and now he's out here re-doing Teens of Denial too, making it more, uh, religious? I don't give a fuck. Listening to this one instantly transports me back to my Port Richmond backyard, a big buzz going, getting hit with the fact that this is one of those albums that will live with me forever. I still feel that, every time I hear it.

 

2. Nonagon Infinity by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard

I think you can probably pinpoint quality more accurately if you pull your nostalgia-tinged glasses off and reexamine. Like, if you remove your personal emotions about the thing and it still holds up, then you know it's a good album. I'm wracking my brain to come up with an emotional connection to Nonagon Infinity, but it's not really like that. I keep this band at a really far emotional distance, to be honest. They are by and large not my band. But they do so many goddamn different things that, mathematically, they are bound to get it right at some point. And with Nonagon Infinity, they got it so right that it's almost baffling. A song cycle that never quits, never lets go of the tempo, the purest psych-rock shit that I have ever or will ever hear in my lifetime. I feel elation, but that has everything to do with the music, not the when or the where or the who or the why. It's just good music. And sometimes, that's a good thing.

 

1. Cardinal by Pinegrove

I couldn't have known what would happen to and with Pinegrove in the ensuing decade. But we know now, ten years later. I've been with them through it. I fell out just like everyone else. I came back when it was okay to do so. I've listened to Cardinal so many times that I can basically recite it by memory. Every time I listen to it—mostly at night, mostly on the ride home from non-home locations—my heart hurts. It hurts because the music touches some deep part of the human soul, and it hurts because it never portends innocence, because it knows that humans are flawed, and it wears those flaws on its sleeve. I feel flawed when I listen to it, and that makes me feel more whole, in a weird way. Like I know myself better at the end of every relisten, and that makes the long, arduous journey worth it. I will keep this album close to my heart until I die.

MORE HONORABLE MENTIONS: Wriggling by Abi Reimold; Patch the Sky by Bob Mould; 22, a Million by Bon Iver; Caamp by Caamp; Can't Die by Chris Farren; Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not by Dinosaur Jr.; American Band by Drive-by Truckers; Painting of a Panic Attack by Frightened Rabbit; At Hope's Ravine by Holy Esque; Goodness by the Hotelier; Psychopomp by Japanese Breakfast; WORRY. by Jeff Rosenstock; Everything You've Come to Expect by the Last Shadow Puppets; Wake Up Laughing by Music Band; Blue Wave by Operators; A Sailor's Guide to Earth by Sturgill Simpson; Album by the Sun Days; We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service by A Tribe Called Quest; Emotional Mugger by Ty Segall; Forever Sounds by Wussy

In My Place 184

July 3, 2026. 40.02741, -75.10994. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Here's what I think about whenever I cross this intersection, here at F and the Boulevard, which is surprisingly often, since this is the turn that seems to be the most efficient way to get off the Boulevard and through to our home in the Northeast: My old neighbor, Mr. Callaghan, just some fucking guy up the street, a wife and two kids who were slightly older than me, one day coming home from wherever, work probably, and getting shot, here at this intersection, except the bullet was slowed down enough while shattering his car window that it didn't pierce skin, just blew a hole in his jacket and stopped, no injury, a new lease on life—

Ah shit I already talked about this, didn't I? I did. It's too easy to repeat when you're spending all your time looking back. In fact, that's basically been this column's m.o. over the past, what, ten days? "This is a place I am, and it's also a place I once was." Isn't that weird? How many places in my life are just repeats of places that I've been to already in this short 37 years of life? In My Place is an exploration of the past, the present, the future, but they all end up being the same when you stay in the same city all your life. These boundaries keep you here, spinning in circles. Where did that bullet come from? Maybe the question is not where, but when.

In My Place 183

July 2, 2026. 40.0874, -75.04328. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

alright this one takes a bit of an explanation, because it's not how it looks...

this is a racquetball club, nominally... i've never played racquetball, but i've been here before... plenty of times... more recently because now my kids are getting swim lessons here... or were, today was their final lesson... but back in the day, way back, i used to play roller hockey here, in the winter months...

maybe only a few seasons, i forget... the brain doesn't really document those details, you know this, i've reflected on it 183 times now it seems... but we were definitely here, playing roller hockey, down this hallway or that... i recall there was a time when we were left to our own devices, me a few friends... we were running these hallways, looking for trouble... we were looking to steal tennis balls, is what we were doing... there are tennis courts too, somewhere in this labyrinth...

and we found one, and we took it... and i have a memory of "getting caught" by some adult... he took the tennis ball back, found our parents, accused us of theft... no punishment, just reprimands... when i remember this, i remember it as an adult catching us stealing the tennis ball... but we were so young... it was probably just some kid a few years older than us... i'm trying to imagine the teenagers teaching my kids how to swim also moonlighting as the protectors of the club's tennis ball collection...

it was all so long ago... like a ship passing into the fog...

In My Place 182

July 1, 2026. 39.9522, -75.17833. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

It all gets a little murky because every big night we had here was also a drunk night and a late night and a fun night, and it's hard to parse through all the various tangled memories. Remember when it was the only place to be for New Year's Eve? It made so much sense, going to the one bar in the goddamn city that didn't charge a cover on that night. And a free buffet! The same owner, he of the surname featured on the bar he owns, he's still around. Murkier still are the rumors about him. I gotta assume he's just an old dude at this point. The Temu Fergie or something, I dunno. I've literally never spoken to him, I don't think. He was apparently there beforehand tonight, giving us space to watch the dumb sports game. When was the last time I saw him? Did I ever, or am I misremembering? I remember so much and so little. I don't know if I got it right.

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.

In My Place 179

June 28, 2026. 40.08312, -75.06434. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

In the defense the drive-by photo. Not the prettiest thing, but it gets the job done. Photographic evidence of a building that exists both in my neighborhood and in my mind. The retirement home I used to work at, used to grow up in, cut my teeth within. I just drive by it now. I wouldn't be inside to take a picture. There's nothing more to say, in life or on this blog, that I haven't already said about the place. The subject has been picked dry. Just a quick photo, a quick glance at a thing that once was, and still is for others. Remove no shroud for me, for I am at peace.

It's been fourteen years, four months, seventeen days, and approximately twelve hours since I was employed by the Lafayette Redeemer Senior Living Community.

In My Place 178

June 27, 2026. 40.19552, -75.24289. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

I can't recall a single time that I ever stepped foot in Gwynedd Mercy Academy High School before my daughters started to have their annual summer dance recitals there. Which is crazy, because I had friends from here, I had a crush on basically every girl I ever met from this school, and when I stroll the hallway next to the theater while my youngest non-dancing daughter cools down from being cooped up in said theater and I see all the old posters for musicals that the students and male counterparts put on for audiences back in my day, I recognize a few of them. I know for certain that a few of my friends acted and sang in Pajama Party. How many times did they mosey down these halls? What old high school romances formed and flamed out here? How different would my life have been if I had tried out for a play at this school? Would I have broken hearts, or had my own broken more often? There is no regret, none, just idle curiosity, before I step back inside and watch seven-year-olds tap-dance to songs from The Lion King.

In My Place 173

June 22, 2026. 38.45173, -75.06439. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

There's a lawn outside the restaurant along the dock where there's a lawn, and there were all one-year-old kids running around, with young parents slowly following them, around and around. You do this for years and then one day you don't have to do it anymore, and you instantly don't remember, until you see other parents doing the thing you once did. Remember when the kids were so restless that we literally had to wait outside with them during dinnertime at a restaurant? I do... but only kind of. Now they are sitting the whole time and eating their food and only going out onto the lawn when everything is eaten, and even then they are allowed to go out there by themselves for a few minutes. This is the new normal, and one day, I'll forget this too.

In My Place 170

June 19, 2026. 39.98238, -75.11333. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Nostalgia for the Port Richmond backyard, all those rears of homes backed up against one another, the wild wires running through, the morbidly curiosity for all those BBQ grills and folding chairs scattered about on the other side of the fence, the alleyway, all those vines held back, one summer at a time. There's just something about city living in this particular way that makes me feel at peace.

Easier Said Than Done, Zach

today i passed by a cd store and i remember all the times going into tower records used to be the best part of my day, well, not really, i mean how often did i even really go into tower records anyways it was to buy jagged little pill and fush yu mang (i could have left out the fact that i also bought backstreet boys but i won't) but seeing that cd store didn't make me feel nostalgic, it just made me feel like time had passed the place over and no one bothered to tell him, this isn't really connected to pool kids other than the fact that it's a completely appropriate band name for the amount of nostalgia this album brings, i remember the days sitting by the pool in the inverness complex with my friends jumping off the diving board, i was never really a pool kid, never belonged to a pool except for the one at the local jcc and that's not really a pool kid's pool anyways, and so i got my little taste at inverness, something about the voices and the guitar riffs here (especially the one in "perfect view") make me miss those times so much, so so so much, i wonder sometimes if this whole journey is opening up more and more doors and giving me the chance to continue to feel like those old parts of myself are still alive, but when i make that fateful decision in the end i will be killing off a part of myself, i will be slamming doors and there's no way around that, don't get me wrong, i want to make that decision, but still, and what will it mean for the fact that i think about those fleeting moments when i was a pool kid, will they still be around, or will i have to murder them, over and over again, and be okay with it?

Easier Said Than Done, Joe

Watching my own pool kids get swimming lessons, proud of themselves for kicking and propelling back and forth, dunking under water, the littlest one still afraid to go in but making progress, probably more afraid of the instructor than the water itself. I don't remember taking swim lessons as a kid. I remember I spent a whole summer counting how many times I jumped off the diving board (200 times), and that's an early memory, one of the earliest as a former pool kid, and I must've known how to swim at that point, so maybe it was just something that happened. It's, like, just an exposure thing. I overheard a parent at the swim class the other day say "my dad just threw me in the pool, that's how I learned!" as a way of contrasting with paying for swim lessons, I guess. I think that's boomer posturing but there's probably some truth in it. If you ignore the potential for very real trauma from such an experience, then getting thrown in the pool is a good way to learn how to swim. But maybe that's not how you mold a pool kid. Pool kids are the kids who hang by the pool. It's not just an ability, it's a characteristic. Some pool kids become pool adults. Many don't. I guess I was a pool kid. We belonged to swim clubs with diving boards. That was how we spent weekdays in the summer. I was a pool kid. I'm not a pool adult. What's the difference? And does this all have something to do with why I'm struggling with Pool Kids as a musical entity?

Maybe not. It's not that it's naive or innocent—themes that are tolerable on average within music, especially when the innocence is delivered with a knowing wink—but more so... strident, I guess is the word I keep mulling over in my head. Something about the vocals. Not every vocal performance is good, and not every bad vocal performance has the ability to grow on you. The cilantro tastes like soap to me. (This happened with Chubby and the Gang, remember them? They didn't sing about pools or being kids, so I am running with this theory that sometimes it just doesn't work for me, the singing.) There are times when Christine Goodwyne goes above and beyond, like the climax of "Last Word" and the conclusion of "Dani." That tells me that the ability is there but the natural ability is lacking. And there's not much else about the music that I haven't heard before, that specific brand of young-person emo-pop-punk.

I think they are going for poignance with the lyrics, too, which I buy more than anything else. That's where the Pool Kids thing comes in. They aren't singing about literally swimming in pools as kids, it's more like an idea of being that age when you could be a pool kid, spend days lounging around the pool to the point where that was your identity. The contrast is drawn in multiple songs, between the Then and Now. Like in "Tinted Windows," how Goodwyne sings about irresponsibility of youth (going fast in a car) and regretful responsibility of adulthood (having to worry about a goddamn COVID test). Or on "Leona Street," when the protagonist is exploring the haunts of a former youth... but only because she's trying to get her steps in. Pool kids worried about young love and former pool kids are worrying about their heart health.

I remember one time, at the pool, we were acting up, doing something against the rules, possibly jumping into the pool during adult swim but I don't remember the details. The result of whatever we did was that we were forced by the lifeguards (let's be honest, probably kids themselves, though it felt like they were grownups in comparison) to walk around the pool grounds and pick up trash for a couple hours. Which is very funny in retrospect, but felt like a pain in the ass at the time, and totally unfair.

What would have happened if we just said "no"? That's what I'm wondering now. What if we had just said fuck yo trash go suck a dick to the lifeguards? I guess we might've been banned from the pool? The reason I'm asking these questions is because I'm an adult, and I'm having such a hard time getting into the mind of my preteen self. But here's the truth: back then, these felt like life-or-death stakes. Everything felt so fucking important, even the stuff that in the ensuing decades would reveal were not that important at all. You forget about it after a while, but in the moment, it's everything.

Easier Said Than Done is ultimately a good album because it is hyperaware of this juxtaposition, that it's able to explore those capital-b Big capital-f Feelings, in real time. It chronicles the story of someone suddenly becoming aware that everything you used to know is getting smaller in the rearview mirror and that there are new challenges right ahead of you that feel, still, now, like the most important fucking thing in the universe. What's missing is the question: in thirty years, will what we're feeling now seem small and unimportant, tiny in the rearview? Or are we getting it right this time? Will these pool kids remember swim lessons, or will they only be able to remember back to a time when they could all of a sudden swim?

But Easier Said Than Done is ultimately not a great album because the music doesn't excite me as much as I wish it did. The stories are there, but the sounds back up the words are a little too generic, and the voice unleashing those words onto the word is a little monotone most of the time. None of this will matter in time. Bands like Pool Kids fade away, gently, over the years, but the stories we share will remain, and will be told. So this album can live on in that way, even though it'll start to feel more and more silly and forgettable every day, from here on out, starting now.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

In My Place 169

June 18, 2026. 40.00833, -75.17062. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Back when I worked in the job that licked the boot, way back when, you remember, that fourteen months of my life that I regret, career-wise, but which at the very least opened the door to where I am now, yes, then, it was a job that required a lot of map-reading. You needed to know the city on an almost intuitive level. And I remember one of my trainers being like, okay, if you want to get better at this job, all you have to do is... drive around the city. Just drive aimless and build the map in your mind. I never did that while employed with that department, but the next department required a lot of driving around this city, the greatest city on earth, and I got to know it pretty well. Still find myself driving around, building that map in my mind, street by street, remembering after today that this building is at Hunting Park and Stokely, for example. You can tell I'm still building my map, like literally, there's a map linked to this blog post, and see how empty of pins this area of the city was previously. Here we are, and here I'll be.

In My Place 168

June 17, 2026. 40.07295, -75.06939. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

"—and I looked over yonder in the stables and I saw smoke, actual smoke rising into the cool autumn sky. This was, what, November 2020? I think. That's not important when. It was some morning. Saw the smoke, and was pretty close to calling 911. I don't know, because of the smoke? That's how I was raised, man! This is what they teach you. Call 911 if you suspect danger. Like if there's smoke rising from your neighbors yard. Play it forward, though, in this case. Imagine what would happen if I HAD called the fire department, and they came out in their big trucks in the early morning dawn and unloaded equipment and rush in and realized that the smoke was steam rising from the hot horse manure in the dumpster. What can you imagine was—"