On its face, this makes no sense. But this makes all sense.
I would say I enjoy some Mountain Goats songs, but not nearly to the same level as some of the other writers on this project. I don't have opinions about which record is better. I like some of the songs. But years ago, I want to say 2017, this song came to mean the world to me.
I was living in West Chester at the time, and I was drinking too much, and going through a very rough, very long depressive period. Around this time that year, I listened to this song for the first time in a long time, and that chorus became a mantra. I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.
I come back to it often. When I hurt my arm and was out of work for a few months, drinking, spiraling, miserable. I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.
When I was asked to leave my home in West Chester and I moved in to a small room in King of Prussia at a job that made me miserable and I isolated myself. When I thought seriously about ending things and I reached out to a friend and she mobilized some of the people that care about me enough to get me in to therapy. I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.
When I went to rehab for the first time in February of 2021 and I left, resolved to be better. When I wasn't better and got kicked out of sober living. When I went back to rehab for the second time in a year in August of 2021 and moved back to New Jersey in a job working overnights. I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.
When I wasted away, drinking daily not because I liked it or it made me feel good but it simply kept me from feeling worse. When I went back to rehab for a third time in eighteen months in August of 2022. When I left that rehab and found out I needed "urgent" heart surgery, and three days before Christmas that year they opened up my chest to fix me. I am going to make it through this year if it kills me (and to paraphrase the Hold Steady, it almost killed me).
And so forth. I have made it through this year, and it didn't kill me. Come January 1st, I will make it through this year if it kills me. And the year after that, I will make it through next year if it kills me. One day it will. But not yet. Check in with me next December. I bet I'll be here.
I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.
I can't do what Nate did. But Nate did inspire me to share my thoughts on what each of you have given me over the course of the year. It's more than you probably realize.
I'm doing this without taking lots of time to look back at everyone's individual posts, so it's off the top of my head. Here we go:
Allison: Allison is the master of the concise post that felt like it dumped a bucket of cold water on my head. She is a brilliant writer. I have watched, in real time, someone's brain work in an entirely different way from mine when reading her posts, and it's inspired me. I'm also inspired by Allison's career change just a few years ago, when she took a chance on herself and now makes more than she used to. Yes, it's nice to make more money, but it's really nice to take the leap and see it pay off. It's something I'm steeling myself to do soon, but I haven't gotten the courage yet. If I do, you can bet I'll be thinking about Allison along the way.
Brianna: Reading Brianna this year was like drinking a warm cup of tea with a purring cat sitting next to me. I always felt soothed reading Brianna's posts, which is a real accomplishment when you're talking about the filth of camping out at music festivals. Brianna has a real talent for writing in a way that has warming and calming rays of light shining through. It's honestly hard to explain in a way, but I always knew I could settle into her posts. I also loved some of the teacher talk and I can just tell she's good at teaching but is really humble about it too.
Bridget: Bridget was another master of the short post, and brought an enthusiasm to YSC that lifted me up and threw me for a loop. Every time I read a Bridget post, I felt like dancing, regardless of whether it was a song to dance to or not. To know Bridget is to know someone who takes everything she can out of life and enjoys the hell out of it. To know Bridget is to know someone who stands in awe of human life, who brings it into the world and enjoys most seconds of it, but not all seconds of it, because sometimes she'd rather be listening to a "bop."
Gilson: Gilson is a writer who takes on big subjects with a deft tone and a sensitive and smart touch. I was in awe of the way he was able to devastate me within just a few lines. I went to the depths learning about addiction from him, and I felt a brother-esque bond with him in being a fellow someone who swings for the fences. Gilson consistently stayed true to himself musically and personally and pumped out strong musical choice after strong musical choice. I always knew I could count on Gilson for a steady hand and the emotional knockout punch I needed that day.
Joe: What can I say about Joe? YSC gifted me a new Internet Friend this year. At the end of 2024, I can safely say that even though our in-person meetings have been limited, Joe is a Friend, beyond just the level of Internet Friend. A supportive and encouraging and open-minded human who manages to maintain an astronomical level of commitment and dedication to the things he cares about—his family, his friends, the blog, musical appreciation, hating Billy Joel and other hacks. Joe tries to get the best out of everyone, and for that I am very grateful.
Maeve: I felt like I was on the best carnival ride ever when I read Maeve’s posts. There is no one who can match Maeve in embracing who she is and doing it in a way I've never seen anyone else do it. I loved all the things Maeve wrote about, and I stood in amazement as she talked about what a boss she was at her job (told in the most humble of ways). Maeve's dedication to this project was clear even when that presented its challenges, and I felt right there with her, cheering her on, because she deserves it. I will very much miss reading Maeve's posts; she takes a simple gray day and adds endless color to it.
Nate: One only needs to look at Nate's "Year in X" recent posts to realize we are working with a man of commitment, incredible dedication to the people he cares about, and, above all, a truly amazing writer. I stand here in pure awe of Nate's writing voice. The effortless way that he manages to write something a little different every time, to mix it up and still keep giving the people what they want. There were also a few times during this year that Nate's hand seemed to reach through my computer screen and touch my beating heart in ways I never expected. He is a syrup-hearted man who plays a curmudgeon on TV.
Sara: I felt so supported by Sara this entire year. I always knew it was going to be good when Sara commented on my posts. She made me feel good about my dating choices, about my writing about Maryland, and about my life (her comment about "why is every detail about you so funny" was one that will propel me to lean into my life and, yes, write that memoir). I knew beyond a doubt that Sara cared, and that was awesome. But enough about me—Sara's posts were consistently simultaneously off-the-wall and sensitive and grounded and I couldn't get enough of them.
Sunny: I viewed Sunny as the sage observer of this blog throughout this year. He is the one who could take any subject, anything that anyone else wrote about or anything he wrote about, and effortlessly turn it into gold. You never knew what form that gold would take. It was like taking part in the actual Gold Rush—you had to search around a bit before finding redemption—but that redemption found you, and it was a wild and awesome trip. I also really felt loved by Sunny this year—this managed to shine through in his comments, which often weren't the most direct; this allowed them to be infused with unmistakable care.
***
"Videotape" is about someone passing into the next world, but it's unclear what their legacy will be in this world as they're leaving it. They encourage the listener to watch the "videotape" they've left behind. Or something like that. And I feel that energy so hard with what YSC has brought me.
Transitions are not easy. There is something that's ending, something big and grand and something good. I shed a tear for that.
I left my entire soul on the pages of PoYB this year, and all of you who have read the posts are familiar with it. That means I'm familiar with all your souls, and leaving that consistent immersion into the life of other people's souls—people who I really like and care about and, dare I say, love?—is such sweet sorrow. I'll miss this. I'll miss all of you.
At the risk of overstating things, I believe that John K. Samson of the Weakerthans (formerly of Propagandhi, and now a solo artist) is the best lyricist in indie/punk music today. I also love Craig Finn, but sometimes listening to the Weakerthans is like watching Rickey Henderson (RIP) run the bases in his prime: there are people doing things that are basically what he's doing, but Rickey is just doing it at a different level.
This song is, to me, a perfect example of that. The story that this song tells, the picture that it paints, is a heartbreaking one. We are left with Ella at the side of the road, wondering what she does next, where she goes, what her tomorrow looks like. We will never know.
Better writers (like Samson) could do this song more justice than I can. But I urge you to check it out yourself.
Best Post: There's a lot of meat on the bone here; there's just an unreal amount of late-stagehair metal to start with, and there's the whole angle of him basically calling his shot on post 1 and keeping true to his word for the rest of the year, vis-à-vis his content. There was the time he became so close to a girl's dad that he sent him a CD through the mail like a civil war bride transported to the future, and the time he correctly fingered the perverse feeling of seeing a bunch of people getting loaded and thinking self-contentedly, "those jokers are doing it wrong."
More than all that, though, I'd like to draw your attention to what an absolute heater Gilson was on, song-wise, for a good month-long stretch in the spring. Banger after banger after banger. Not a lot of people have the courage to jump from candy-ass power-pop, to sleezy joke rock, to perhaps the most moving and affecting vocal performance of the last century, to fucking Hot Water Music. But that's the Gilson experience; say what you will about the man, but he's got taste.
That said, he also found a strech in the middle that went "Medium Pace," "Pussy Crook," "Smooth Criminal," and "I Fuck my Horse." That he was allowed to blog after that stretch just shows that cancel culture is not real.
(Alright, also, Gils wrote beautifully about sobriety this year. Identifying the moment where he thought it was going to stick—and that moment colliding with something existential—was great storytelling and great writing. Ditto his fears about being a link in a chain, and being determined not to be. That was really great stuff, man, I felt really lucky to read it.)
All in, I think the best post, the most Gilson post of the year, was this relatively simple story that captures a lot of the man's essence: music, performance, fuckin' up and remaining good natured about it, fuckin' up but realizing it's not the end, that it doesn't have to be perfect. I would never tell you to find wisdom in the man who told you to "feel the music or I'll end you," but as far as mantras go, "just keep going" is as true and as useful as anything those philosophers would tell you. Words to live by.
Most Deranged Post: For a person who picked approximately 45 Adam Sandler songs, Gilson kept things much more sane than most. Still, you cannot blog without being a lunatic, and Gilson's cracks showed in a few spots, including:
The real stuff is the stuff that's just close enough to sane to make it's angles shine sharply, and Joe's rumination on the power of "rap" rhyming with "crap" during the Clinton-era was that for me.
One to re-visit: Thinking about the last time you didn't think about Trump really did a number on me.
In conclusion: Look, man, we'll probably be texting in the next day or two, so I don't want to get too maudlin or emotional here. Thanks for being here, thanks for sharing yourself. Thanks for putting me into so many of your posts, I'm glad we're still in each other's periphery. Most of all, thanks for Asskick (and for "Farewell Transmission").
"Sesame Street Presents the '80s: Loose Goose / Colors (There's Like a Million) / Two Heads are Better Than One / Count to Nineteen / Super Grouch / Tuck Elmo In Before Before Bed Oh-Oh / Bake Cookie / Don't Stop Your Reading / Always Gonna Be Your Friend"
Prompt: "A song you regret has not been chosen yet by anyone during either iteration of the Song Challenge, because, damn, you have such a good reason to choose this song"
As the year winds down on this project, I've been trying to sneak in some bands I didn't get to earlier and this prompt obviously gives me an opportunity to tell you all about the Downtown Struts. I know Nate Dogg loves them, and sometimes it feels like Nate and I and a few friends are the only Downtown Struts fans in the world. This cannot be true, because I bought their vinyl record on Amazon and they must be good enough to keep it in stock. But this band needs to be more well known.
I do not feel much like waxing poetic today. Simply put, if you wanted to distill everything I love about music and put it in one band, on one album, Victoria! is that album.
They made more music than this record, and it's not quite as good, but I like to pretend that this band released this one perfect record and then disappeared.
I truly hope to turn at least one person on to this, and I think our Editor-in-Chief will enjoy this immensely.
Prompt: "A cold or empty or bitter song that represents something that you lost or some feeling that you've been searching for and could never seem to find"
I could have included this song on the prompt for the reminder of the worst thing you've ever done, because it's about the same thing. There's also something so lonely and empty about the musical arrangement of this as well.
It's interesting to me what loneliness can mean to other people. I write this on Christmas Eve as I sit on my bed watching the beginning of Die Hard 2 (I watched the first on Friday). By all general accounts, I should be a lonely man. But this year, I am not nearly as lonely as I have been in the past: sitting in a shared house, alone, several drinks in while my partner is working a holiday shift at the ER.
Actions and choices have consequences. My consequences are in the past. And they continue to rear their heads on a daily basis. I live with them and I make peace with them. As the song says, now I'm tired and old. We all get tired and old. But I think in recovery, what I've realized is that I get to choose what happens when I get tired and old. I have agency. We have agency.
The Muppet Christmas Carol: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 1992
My favorite Christmas Carol variation, by a long shot.
To this day, when I am very excited for something, and especially around the holidays, I will count down to that day or that thing using "sleeps," which is something I developed from this song.
I was one of those kids who had a very difficult time sleeping on Christmas Eve, all the way into my late teens. It wasn't really the gifts that would have me so excited. Christmas Day, when I was younger, was the day that my dad's family would gather at my Nana's in West Chester and get together, all of us. It was one of the few times in the year we were all together, and it almost always ended up with all of us sleeping over up there. That's what I looked forward to most on Christmas: seeing all my cousins. There are thirteen of us in an age range of about eight years or so, and we all got along so well.
Happy Holidays to all of you on this project and all of you reading this currently. I hope that the end of this year brings you something along the lines of the peace that Christmas at my Nana's brought me.
I could have picked a Pearl Jam song. I could have picked a Guns N' Roses song. I could have picked the Replacements, Drive-by Truckers, the Hotelier, Stereophonics. I could have picked an Old 97's song, a band I know he discovered through XPN. Gilson is a man who knows his music and knows the music he likes and enjoys the music he likes. He only deserves to be gifted more of it. It will make him happy. I am sure of this.
And I want to make Gilson happy. He's been through stuff, and he's been open about writing about it here. We have different lives and different paths, but I have felt a kinship with him throughout the year (watch this space for more on this). I don't know if his love language is gifts, but I have a feeling he likes them.
It's fun to give gifts, gifts that you know the other person will want. The highest level of gift giving is completely altruistic. You give a gift with no expectation you will get any thanks for it or benefit from it.
I'm not on that level. So I'm occupying a slightly lower perch. I'm giving Gilson a gift I know he'll like, but I'm not doing that in an entirely altruistic way. Because I want to also give him a gift that I, myself, will also like. That I'll benefit from, just a little bit.
So. I know Gilson likes the band the Frames. He's mentioned them a few times in reference to his semester spent in Ireland. I've gotten excited when he's mentioned them. Once is one of my favorite movies. "Falling Slowly," while not a Frames song in the movie, apparently started as one, and that song deserved every vote it got for Best Original Song. That was my original choice.
But I put on the Frames in preparation for the pick, just played through their music on Spotify. One other song stood out.
There's a version of "Star Star" out there that the band seamlessly combined with "Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It's on a live album.
There's something about that movie that's just magical. I love it. And I love "Pure Imagination," probably its best song. Separately, Glen Hansard has a way of evoking emotion from any lyric or line or riff. And the way he integrates that song with another emotional knockout—"Star Star"—is just so wonderful.
I'm gifting this to Gilson, because I know he'll like it. I'm gifting it to myself, also, because I like it. And then, again, I'm gifting it to Gilson. Because that's what this is about.
"Close your eyes," Hansard tells the crowd. "Count to three. Make a wish."
At the end of the day, we're all kids. We've been through shit. Breakups, sobriety, whatever. Somehow this song stretches from 1971 (Willy Wonka) to 2003 (the Frames) to 2024. And to 2025. To whatever next year brings.
This is a gift to Gilson. Attached to it is a note. A blank note. For him to fill in, with whatever he wants. Perhaps he'll tell himself "listen to and enjoy whatever makes you happy, and stop being guilty about it." With whatever his Uncle Jim would want him to have. With a prayer for himself, to be able to forgive himself for anything he feels he needs to be forgiven for.
From one person who "gets big feelings fast and wants to take those big swings" to another—here is your gift. Gilson, you deserve it all.
The name I pulled was Brianna. I don't know Brianna, have never (probably will never) meet Brianna. But I did do a little digging through past prompts, and found we have a few things in common, most notably: Social studies teachers, liking music that rocks, and enjoying some indie twang.
So I put a lot of time into this choice. I don't know much about this band except that they put out a ton of songs before disbanding, and the singer was a working friend of Jason Molina during his life. It feels like a good choice even if I can't exactly explain it. So I won't. But just in case, I've included two more songs for her.
Fun indie music with literate lyrics that makes you want to move a little. Petey is weird in the best sense of the word, and I hope that the future holds way bigger things for him.
I've been very open about my life on this blog this year, sharing stories I don't think I've ever told. But this one, I think I'm going to keep to myself. For now.
Last week, I chose a Guns N' Roses song (you guys know the one) for a prompt, and I made it clear in my email to our EiC that he did not have to include the actual song. He told me he hasn't included any GNR songs on the playlists because of a credible rape accusation against Axl Rose. We had a short email exchange about this because I was unaware of this accusation, but unsurprised, and I wondered what exactly this says about my thought process. As we could predict, he was not trying to tell me what to think, but I was going down that road anyway.
I wondered, wonder, what the difference in my brain is between Guns N' Roses and, say, Ryan Adams. I have two Ryan Adams records sitting in my record collection that I have not listened to in years, and I won't buy Demolition or Love Is Hell because it makes me feel icky. On the other hand, I am actively searching for reasonably priced copies of Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion II.
I think it comes down to this: Guns N' Roses is not going to provide me with any kind of emotional heft or true beauty. I put on Guns N' Roses to fucking rock, and they come through on that count every time. It's why I probably still listen to Cheap Girls, because "Gone All Summer" fucking rocks.
This is not a particularly nuanced or emotionally mature reasoning, but I think it's the closest I've come to figuring it out. I put on an album like Heartbreaker because I want to think along with it. Use Your Illusion just makes me want to rock.
This one felt a little simple, but sometimes I just want to take the layup. I've heard the argument that Coldplay was ruined because of the joke from 40-Year-Old Virgin, and I think there's some truth to that. I also think they were ruined by putting out mostly mediocre music after A Rush of Blood to the Head (there are some good ones in there, don't get me wrong). I'm not going to go back and look at Nate's whole exercise in which bands are the most important, mostly because I don't really understand it, but whether we like it or not, Coldplay is going to be one of those bands that features heavily into the pop culture story of the 2000s.
Fun little Coldplay story that I like to tell: One time in probably like 2010, I was closing at the deli in Avalon I've mentioned before. I think I was the senior person closing, and as we slowed down, I liked getting more and more adventurous with the music we chose. An old guy and his wife came in to order a burger I think, and he did the old guy "What is this music?" I said, "I'm sorry?" To which he responded, "All of this music today is just noise, I can't understand any of it."
Now, readers, there are many songs on my iPod at that time that I would consider noise and would fully understand this gentleman's reaction to those songs. In this instance, however, I had on the album Parachutes by Coldplay, in particular the song "Sparks."
BIG OLD TRIGGER WARNING AT THE TOP OF THIS. I, J. GILSON, DO NOT IN ANY WAY ENDORSE THE LYRICS CONTAINED HEREIN.
You are Alan Niven, Guns N' Roses' manager, in 1989. Appetite for Destruction has become the biggest record in the country, and your band is an absolute firecracker. You are selling out huge stadiums around the world, and you have three videos in heavy rotation on MTV. Sure, some of the guys are dealing with addiction issues, dancing with "Mr. Brownstone" if you will, but these guys aren't pretty boys like Mötley Crüe, they are grimy, dirty motherfuckers who played those clubs in LA and came up through this scene, warts and all.
But it's been two years since Appetite. In 1989, it's getting to be a while without any new music. But things aren't going great. The plan, from Axl I assume, seems to be to rerelease an old EP. Four live tracks, which showcase the band Pre-Appetite and fucking rock. But four tracks isn't enough. So Axl has a few acoustic tracks to contribute. I don't know why either, man, but it is Axl and he's the golden goose so you're gonna go along with it.
"Used to Love Her." Ok, that's a neat song. A fantasy about killing an ex. A little on the nose and a little rough, but whatever, these are bad boys.
"You're Crazy." Reworking a song from Appetite as a dirty bluesy groove. Cool. Lots of "fuck"s on this one, but that’s fine. Appetite wasn’t written by Puritans.
"Patience." Holy moly, what a song! These guys are not as one-dimensional as we thought! They might have something here.
Axl puts on the final track. "One in a Million."
That's a driving acoustic guitar. I'm into it. Oh ok, some dirty distorted electric underneath it. I like it. It's got attitude, and Axl's uncharacteristically mellow vocals provide a really neat dissonance.
Oh. Oh my. Did he just say the n-word? It's 1989, not 1959. And even then, imagine Elvis dropping that word.
Whoa. Insulting immigrants and using the f-slur in the same line is certainly a lyrical choice.
Ok everyone, relax. It's not that I think this song in particular sucks. It's just that I think Chris Stapleton (outside of "Tennessee Whiskey") is dreadfully boring.
Years ago, after that first album came out and he was a sensation, I went with my ex to see him at Festival Pier in Philadelphia. My ex liked him a bunch, I thought he was fine, but mostly we went because Jason Isbell was opening for him.
(Side note: what a terrible show. This is not the fault of Isbell or Stapleton, but driving down Columbus Boulevard seeing tons of dudes in cowboy hats and girls in short shorts walking down for a fucking Isbell/Stapleton show did not get me in a mood ready to listen to these guys. Festival Pier: 2 Nates Down.)
Chris Stapleton sounded like his record, but all I could think during his set was "Man, this is fucking boring." There was nothing new, different, or exciting about it and, in my opinion, there was certainly nothing there that Isbell, Patterson Hood, or Ben Nichols of Lucero (or now Tyler Childers or Sturgill Simpson) have not already done better. This song may actually be his most exciting song, and even has all the emotional and sonic heft of a Foo Fighters song.
I think Chris Stapleton is fine. I do not understand how he has become this generation's country bard.
Prompt: "A song about..... um, I don't know. You tell me. Pick something funny that should have been included in this prompt. 'A song about ____.' Make it a good one."
Frankly, I'm a little surprised this prompt wasn't used. If you're going to sit here and say its too juvenile, then I'll also direct you to the "songs that would be funnier if they were about sex" prompt. This selection would be a little too on the nose for my general taste, but I just really really wanted this song to be on the record as having been chosen for YSC.
I remember when I was in my teens, I was watching some weird shit on MTV (with my dad?), maybe like a Wayne's World special or something, and they went through a bunch of terms for beating off that they thought were funny. The two that stuck out to me enough that I still remember all these years later while completely forgetting the context of them are "Patting the Robertson" and "Roughing up the suspect." So I come to you, denizens of YSC, and ask for your favorite euphemism. And to be clear, this is gender-inclusive so ladies, sound off in the comments.
Trying to squeeze as much Pearl Jam into the last month as I can.
I'm glad that last week Sara brought up what was happening with her sister-in-law. Combined with something going on in my life, it is providing a reality check for me in my sobriety.
I found out that one of my friends that I was very close to growing up entered rehab a few weeks ago. Our families were also very close, so I found this out through my mother, who was in contact with Bill's mom (not his real name). She went to my mom for advice, and I told my mom that she can call me any time as well and I'll talk to her. And I'll be more than happy to talk to Bill when he gets out.
The problem, or the reality check, is that Bill's circumstances going in to get help are very different than mine. He did not really go in on his own accord. He has a lot of anger towards the people that urged him there and the boundaries that are being put out there by those in his life. He wants to get the fuck out of the facility he is in, and is hating him time there. I did not share his experience in any of these areas.
It is important for me to still be involved in recovery for this reason. It is a reminder that, yes, I did a lot of work, but I am also very grateful for how far I've come and some of the grace I've received. And the truth is that everyone's path is different. I hope Bill stays sober and I will do what I can to help him, but he is not me. His recovery is not mine. So all I can do is do things with a good, generous, graceful heart, and hope that is enough to help him. And I think I project that to Sara and her situation. Whatever you do to help your sister-in-law, do it with grace and generosity and love and let that be enough. And if things don't work the first time, keep that spirit of grace, generosity, and love. Because in most situations, the person struggling is not giving themselves those gifts. They have to come from somewhere. Until Bill can find them himself, I will be glad to provide them.
I am writing this the weekend after Thanksgiving, so this one came to mind pretty immediately. Patterson Hood has such a way with slice of life songs that I am very much envious of.
My family doesn't really have many Thanksgiving traditions. We don't do any real special foods, and over the years (especially after my parents' divorce), we've lost people coming to dinner rather than gained them. I look forward to football all day, and I look forward to food, but that's about it to me for Thanksgiving. When I was drinking, obviously it was a bit of a different story. Thanksgiving Eve was amateur hour at the bars, but it was an excuse to get shitfaced, just like the holiday itself was. Now I like finding excuses to leave as early as possible.
Also, my mother refuses to eat before like 5:30, which I've tried to explain to her is fucking insane for Thanksgiving, but she simply refuses to hear otherwise.
When I was in high school, I was taking guitar lessons from a guy named Charlie. In one of the first lessons, he asked me what kind of music I liked. I said I liked hard rock and heavy music, and he asked what I meant by this. One of the bands I gave in response to this question was Pearl Jam, to which he (lightly) scoffed. He said that he considered Pearl Jam "basically electric folk." This was the Riot Act era of Pearl Jam, so the song he was probably thinking of in that very instant was "I Am Mine," and in retrospect, that description is fitting for that song. I can only imagine what this guy thought as Pearl Jam started to release songs like "Sirens" and this one. I cannot stand this song, because these sorts of radio ballads are not what I want to hear when I listen to Pearl Jam.
At the same time, when Pearl Jam tries to make punk songs on their newest records, these are also not exactly my favorite songs of theirs. I never would have thought that my favorite songs by a band would be their midtempo "Active rock" stuff, but that is absolutely the place that Pearl Jam now occupies for me.
So what music did this guitar teacher enjoy? I credit him with getting me in to Tool, Failure, and Quicksand (and by extension Rival Schools). So I'd say he did a pretty good job.
Song found on Day 1 in Sunny's write-up for "Starting Over" by Reba McEntire
"I Will Buy You a New Life"
Everclear
So Much for the Afterglow, 1997
At the beginning of the year, I had aspirations of keeping an Excel spreadsheet going of all the information compiled throughout Yearlong Song Challenge, all the songs chosen and artist repetitions, all the themes that kept popping up in people's writings, all the extraneous art—the music, the movies, the books—that were mentioned by those bloggers experiencing life outside of the blog. I think I stopped after Day 3. You have to remember that this thing used to pull 20+ posts per day, at the beginning. It was a lot of work, and the Excel spreadsheet was the first to go.
So I don't have a list of every song that was mentioned but never chosen this year. For today's prompt selection, I started from the beginning, and went through the posts in order until I found one. It was by chance that Sunny's was the first to pop up. Then again, a lot of this is by chance—for every day of YSC, I've plugged numbers into a random number set generator, and that's how we decide the order of the blog posts. I have chosen Everclear's mediocre '90s quasi-hit "I Will Buy You a New Life" in a random fashion, but that feels right, because life is random too. Pulling this song from Sunny's blog post was no more or less random than Sunny's decision to write on this blog multiple times a week for almost five years now.
I had no idea what this blog post was going to be when I sat down to write about this stupid Everclear song, but now I know. The last sentence of that previous paragraph has (randomly) set me on the path that I now know I was always fated to travel down today. I'm going now free-write about how fate led each of the other nine current YSC participants to write on this blog today. This is similar to the "how I met each person" bit from Day 31, but each of those moments described therein will now be discussed in the context of the entire story of how we ended up here.
I will also use a random number generator to decide the order in which I will discuss each person's role in the blogging cosmos.
Nate — Nate is spending a lot of time here because writing is in his blood, in his fucking bones, and he has a blog but he recently described it as "nearly defunct," but he can't help himself with the writing, and so here he is. We wouldn't have stayed in touch after college if he and I hadn't met certain friends at separate times, but also had at least somewhat overlapping tastes in music, both of which meant opportunities to socialize. Also, maybe we are similar in the mindset of "I am out of shape and I need to be in better shape and I will continue to make mild efforts to address this," which led to Nate's participation in Beer Runners, which probably helped shore up any natural damage to friendship that might have happened in the post-college years. Oh, and geographical proximity, for a bit, which meant carpooling at the very least. And all of those have separate limbs of fate branching out (e.g. willingness to live in "up-and-coming neighborhoods," etc. etc.), but all collapse on sharing an alma mater, and, yes, Nate eventually dating one of the first friends I met at college, and plus also Mandy, who has a tendency to latch onto older guys with similar tastes (platonically speaking, or not), and I had to be friends with Mandy before that, enough that I would've been brought by her to an older (fatter?!) dude's dorm room pre-Hold Steady. Might not have been friends with Mandy in high school if she hadn't broken up with boyfriend during our senior year (boyfriend who was then a freshman at La Salle and would later become my friend too). All three of us had to make separate decisions to attend a dying institution. Nate had to play football and not know that La Salle's football program was in even worse shape than La Salle as a whole. I had to choose La Salle because it was geographically closer to home (even though I wouldn't have articulated it that way then). My parents had to choose to move ten minutes away from my childhood home in Lawndale instead of, say, 45 minutes, deeper into the suburbs, which may have affected my decision to attend a shit school in North Philly. We don't have to go back this far for everyone, since many of these decision trees will end up back at my decision to attend La Salle.
Maeve — I don't know if I ever asked Maeve why she chose La Salle. That seems like a farther reach, cosmically and geographically speaking, than some idiot from Northeast Philadelphia choosing La Salle. Fill in the blanks on how she got to that decision. She was born to parents who instilled within her a love for theater. That means Maeve is getting involved in theater at college. I had a different path toward that extracurricular but we both ended up at the same place. We also ended up at underage drinking through slightly different paths but that put us on the same side of the theater divide, socially speaking. My underage drinking getting me banned from the dorms means that I didn't have the wherewithal to run for the Masque E-Board position that would've pitted me against Maeve near the beginning of our true friendship (that Maeve would have and obviously did do a better job than I ever would or could have is moot in this case). Maeve chose to live in La Salle Apartments instead of the Townhouses, which means that I was allowed at her apartment, whereas a lot of friends who lived in the Townhouses temporarily faded from my life during that time. Maeve had to be raised in a way that made her kind and welcoming, which then meant that she was cool with this guy crashing on her couch almost every weekend. She had to make the decision to stay in Philadelphia after college (which, I did too, but again, that's not as tall of an ask for me). She needed to keep being VP of Personnel and keep organizing events and hangouts. She needed to be present enough that when I started asking around for people to write on the blog every day for a whole summer, that she'd be on the list of people I asked. And then that experience needed to be meaningful enough that she wanted to do it again the following year. I suppose I needed to be patient enough with tardiness that I'd choose to be friends with Maeve for all this time too.
Gilson — I had heard from Sam—who outright earns the superlative of Most Gossipy Friend, and I love him for that—that there was some issue with my acquaintance Gilson, who I hadn't seen or heard from in a couple years, something with the heart, which was no joke in one's 30s. I don't know if I had also heard from gossipy Sam or maybe inferred from Nate's "nearly defunct" blog (this blog post specifically) that Gilson was sober. Neither of these facts were what led me to ask Gilson to be part of YSC; I was really just basically going through all the names at the top of this blog and trying to think who would be a good fit. Gilson's name was up there because he had written a review for Hookworms, which he only wrote because it coincidentally had some significant meaning for him at the time (and because Gilson, as he has sinceestablished on the blog, has no issue listening to music from so-called "cancelled" artists). I knew from that review that he was a good writer, and so it felt natural to reach out to him. He wouldn't have known that RC was covering Hookworms if (I think) Nate hadn't added him to the original Facebook message (that we used first, in lieu of email, before I quit Facebook, which happened the week that Gilson picked INXS for RC, which was basically the last thing that happened before Gilson disappeared from my life for a few years). This means he needed to befriend Nate, and I forget if that story has been mentioned or summed up on this blog or not. Gilson needed to choose to go to La Salle. Fate put him in the class of '07, which means I didn't go to school with him, which means our friendship would've taken a different shape if we had ever seen each other around campus (similarly, if he had had any type of friendship with my future wife, who is also class of '07). Not for nothing, I think the fact that he is one of like three people in my life who is taller than me makes him memorable, and thus, I remembered him when gathering the YSC squad.
Zach — Zach speculated earlier in the year as to how he got roped into Puke on Your Birthday's email. The answer to that is Sam, who seems to tie more than a few of the dudes of this blog into its orbit. So we could go off on a tangent about our mutual friend Sam, say something about when me and him hung out during that one spring break when he saw a tweet of mine and realized that we were two of the only people around campus left and we got drunk at Hannah's house when she wasn't there and I definitely did not hook up with Hannah's roommate, but that's too far away for a blurb nominally about Zach, who, as I described previously, was in the periphery during a few key Sam and Hannah events, and, though memorable (was there something to do with Hannah's mom at their wedding? is that too personal to bring up, or was that a bit, or what?), was probably not in my life to the extent that I'd be asking Sam about him, or know that he was out of the country or why. If I were to work backward from there, then I'd have to pick up the trail of breadcrumbs from Zach's blog posts this year—the job in journalism, which coincided with similar journalism jobs for friends I've already described, which came after Zach decided not to be a food critic, etc. The confluence of fate occurs at the juncture of one person having the desire to write and the other person having the balls to maintain a space to write on, in 2024, on this internet that is pretty unkind to those types of spaces in general, and yet here we are.
Bridget — Like many paths of fate that end on PoYB, this one runs right through another person. I am fairly confident I would not be friends with Bridget if I wasn't first friends with her sister Maeve. I'm running through alternate scenarios from the multiverse, and I can't find any that would reasonably lead here otherwise. I had friends who went to Scranton, but none who would've run in the same circles, and none her year, and none who I was close enough to that I was leaving my own shitshow college experience to drive two hours and have another one at that school. I did visit Scranton once and I met people and I partied at different house parties, but this is a few years before Bridget got there. And even if I had gone to visit an acquaintance and I had attended a party that Bridget also happened to attend and I had met her in some weird twist, then what are the chances that that interaction would've then led, a decade later, to her writing for this blog? Still not likely. So no, I think the easiest path here was the one we found—she grew up with a strong emotional bond to family, she had reasons to move to Philadelphia that must have included at least partially the fact that her sister was here already, a sister who was still hanging out with friends from college who are all-in-all, despite the GOSSIP, good people, and welcoming, and so it makes sense that the decision to live in Phily would lead to a decision to join this one friend group, that happened to contain a guy who decided to restart the blog he and another friend group had made just around the same time that Bridget was moving into the dorms at Scranton University.
Brianna — This is the one that's gonna diverge the farthest from that Day 31 post, because it's not just a matter of being born to the same parents and living in the same house. If it was, then I'd be writing one of these for middle child Jenny as well, and I'm not, because she doesn't write for this blog, except when I literally sit down next to her and force her to write. So what's the difference here? What sort of fate led one sister to write 180+ blog posts for her brother's blog in one year, and the other to refuse to engage at all on a consistent basis? I don't know, but I suppose the path runs through music and through writing, for both me and for her (but not for Jenny). Both hobbies/skills honed on separate but parallel tracks, outside of the home. Not that our parents necessarily discouraged writing or seeking out music, but it wasn't actively encouraged either. We're four years apart so I don't know what type of feedback Bri was getting from Mom and Dad regarding homework because I wasn't there when it mattered for her, but if it was anything like mine, it was all "good work" and a general appreciation for decent-to-good grades and nothing specific about anything written, no thoughts given to any essays at all really. Which is fine, parents are under no obligation to do anything except keep you alive, and Mr. and Mrs. K. did that and then some, and did so willingly and provided a safe and nurturing environment out of the love of their hearts... but I wouldn't say that anyone was developing a deep love of any sort of vocation like this. So where, and why, and who, and when, I couldn't say for anyone but myself, but I'm filling in the blanks here. Brianna is a teacher, and I can imagine that the way one needs to express themselves as a teacher might be at least in the same ballpark as the way one might need to express themselves during extracurricular blogging sessions. And the music thing is something Brianna is already documenting throughout this current blog project, so I'll let you draw your own conclusions there. But wiping all this way, I'd say that maybe an alternate path that we might consider is the fact that we were raised being told that you are there for family, and maybe Brianna felt like she needed to be there for her brother as he and his friends wrote themselves into insanity (with her getting a taste for the insanity through 2023's yearlong project of Infinite Jest book club).
Sara — I think you could pull details from what I've already written here and get a general sense of what stars aligned to get Sara on here today for one of her thrice-weekly blog posts, but with maybe a couple differences. Consider all of life's events in the suburbs of Baltimore that led her to attend university at the same place and time. Consider the couch that stood empty on most weeknights in the living room that she was renting with Maeve on campus that was suddenly not empty on the weekends due to a tall drunk sweaty elf that was crashing on it. Consider the decision to stay in Philadelphia, and the superhuman effort it takes to maintain friendships with fucking anyone in a post-collegiate world, let alone some asshole with a blog. I would say, however, that, at least during college, Sara's place in my life threatened to be that of a bit player more so than others, perhaps, just simply due to her non-involvement (or unofficial involvement) with the theater program, that being the thing that tied a lot of us together. Maybe I would have only remembered her as the dame over whom Kyle P. and Drew P. came to literal fists at Casbah Caterers on the night SigEp and AXP had their formals the same night but on different floors of the hall, were it not for, ya know, everything else that's happened. And maybe she meets her husband at a different time too, maybe the timeline is thrown off, maybe she has a child earlier, or later, and doesn't feel the need to reconnect with adults in some tangible way, a way that she finds through some song challenge malarky. Who knows, man.
Sunny — If each of these starts with "when did the person start writing every week," then I start the farthest back with Sunny (if there is a difference between "writing most weeks" and "literally writing every week"). It makes sense that Sunny is writing a blog post today for Yearlong Song Challenge because it's been five years and Sunny's written a blog post every week for all that time and so why wouldn't he do YSC. He's also expressed in the past some FOMO for not doing Summer Song Challenge. I assume he didn't want to do Summer Song Challenge because the previous summer's Grannie Gone Wild Challenge burned him out on summer projects. But he was the only one who took on that Reba Challenge because he's the only one here who is willing to at least take a chance on all my worst ideas here at Puke on Your Birthday. I hang out with Sunny in-person maybe six times a year but read his words most days of my life, so there's a bond there, as strong as one could be when it is built over the fragile gossamer wires of the world wide web. He ended up starting Record Club because he had taken part in a Your Favorite Movie interview. He did that because he saw links for previous interviews... on Facebook, probably? Or was this another instance of Sam stick his greasy nose through the cracked doorway of fate? Sunny went to high school with Sam. That's how Sunny ended up on that improv team, the only dude I didn't know previous to seeing them perform. Sunny getting invited to boys' book club and currently standing as the only member who has never missed any of our 24 official meetings (and one unofficial meeting in K Lot). Lots of Sunny's past is still rather mysterious to me, which is okay, though some of it is unspooling on the threads of YSC this year. I would say, however, that the biggest hand of fate that we'd want to know, if we are truly tracing the story here, is what about Sunny's upbringing or life experiences made him into the type of person who just seems to be down to partake in whatever bullshit his friends are doing, whatever seems fun, whatever seems like it's gonna result in the fullest life experience. Not everyone is like that, ya know. Not these days.
Allison — I've thus far tried to figure out why my friends are writing for Yearlong Song Challenge today, what led them to this moment, all the millions of factors that came together in the perfect way to create this, this moment, right now, this blog post, and those alongside it. I don't think the answer for Allison would be too far off from others, in terms of the broad details. La Salle, the Masque, living in Philadelphia, good writer, some drinking mixed in there to act as the mortar for the brick wall of our friend group, and so on. You can mix up some of the details—I've almost never known Allison outside of her relationship with Stephan, and maybe blogging is something you are more prone to do when you "settle down," which in some ways happened for her earlier than others? I don't know. Maybe that's grasping at straws. Also, maybe consider the overlying fact here for everyone that being friends with me is a choice, and maybe that choice looks different for some than it does for others. Like maybe Allison's choice looked different after an unnamed moment in time in which she was angry at me—everyone has had a good reason at some point or another—and so I know through the fact that she still chooses to be in my life means that she's a kind and ultimately forgiving person. Why are you writing for Puke on Your Birthday? A billion fucking reasons for each person. Why are you, one of ten people here, still writing for Yearlong Song Challenge, after eleven months and 165 previous blog posts? I have to imagine there is a reason out there that ties us all together. I think we're all searching for something. That's my theory. I see it in Allison's writings the most, I think, that search. It's fascinating to see because the search looks different when you already have a lot of what you've always wished for. Then it becomes what else. I'm thinking about the blog posts about the gym (apologies to Allison, I seem to be writing more in her blurb than those for others, that's the RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR for ya, baby!!), going to the Y in the early morning hours. I see the parallel track there, the quest for self-improvement, and the need to document it. I think if you looked at the motivation for what keeps her on that bike, it might look like a similar motivation that keeps the emails coming to my inbox three times a week, right on schedule. That if you keep going you're gonna discover something about yourself that will have made it worth it.
Okay, now for everyone—it would surely be too pat to try to tie in this stupid fucking Everclear song into what I ended up saying here, about how we are all here for a reason. But maybe there's something in it. The lyrics about a guy making the case that he can make your dreams come true if you just stick with him. That's not me, I'm not that guy. Neither is this blog, I don't think. Puke on Your Birthday will not buy you a garden. But maybe it can be the garden, the one in which your flowers bloom. You can't buy a new life, here or anywhere. Instead, every day, just a little at a time, we can work on ourselves, try to make tiny changes, and where better than here, on a sixteen-and-a-half-year-old Blogspot blog.
I didn't think that this was going to be the blog post I wrote today. But here is where my life has led. To this moment. Almost exactly 36 years in the making, plus every decision made by others before that, the stars exploding trillions of years ago in just a way to get us to this minute in time, when we can sit back and listen to a fucking Everclear song and ponder about our place in the universe, and what it means that we are who we are, where we are, and why we are. It gets a little heavy sometimes, to think about it. Everclear does not help.
Song found on Day 76 in Gilson's write-up for "I Fuck My Horse" by Asskick
"Chips Ahoy!"
The Hold Steady
Boys and Girls in America, 2004
I don't know what else there is to say about this band at this point. Joe and I both considered this song for the prompt about horses, and both declined because we thought someone else would do it. Classic prisoner's dilemma.*
I just filled out the PoYB holiday survey, and there is a question on there that I have been thinking about a lot lately, oddly enough. It's the question of motivation. What would motivate me to write more?
I am generally a go-along-to-get-along type of personality, but in some ways, I do feel like I have a terrible case of oppositional defiance disorder occasionally. Some of you (our editor) have surely tracked that I did not complete my review of Lou Bega's album. I do not have plans to complete it. Partly because I don't want to listen to that shit, and partly because every once in a while, I just decide that if someone wants me to do something, I'm not going to do it.
This is not something I'm proud of. It's one of many reasons I need to go back to therapy. And at the end of the day, my review of Lou Bega is a nothingness to the universe. But, for example, my career is not. I am trying to get my Pennsylvania teacher's certification transferred to New Jersey. I take initiative and put in my application, and it has taken forever. If left to my devices, I will take care of this. But if my mother asks about it and wants me to get on it? That just makes me not care about it. And it leads to this task not being completed in as timely a manner as I would like.
This is not a cool thing for a man pushing 40 to think. But I was told that we are in the tree of trust, the trust tree, and I'm sharing it here.
*This is not, in fact, the prisoner's dilemma, but I can't think of the name for this fallacy.
