Top 5: Break Up Songs

     A friend told me when you write what you know it sounds more natural, so today's Top 5 is going to be Top 5 Breakup Songs.  Limiting this topic to 5 picks was quite a challenge.  I probably could have done a top 10 and still struggles picking.  There were a couple of songs that it killed me to keep off because I really wanted to write about them, like "The Old Apartment" by The Barenaked Ladies.  Technically it's not a breakup song, the band claims the apartment isn't owned by the old girlfriend and the couple are still together, but I refuse to accept this.  It works so well and is so poignant as a breakup song that I will never think of it as anything else and you'll see that it made my honorable mentions.  Or "Everything About You" by Ugly Kid Joe, which again, isn't technically a breakup song, it never mentions anything about breaking up, but if you just had a terrible breakup this song is amazing.
     What I found compiling this list was if I really wanted to make my choices easier narrowing the list topic would have been the way to go over expanding the size.  Each of my choices tells a completely different breakup story.  I could have done Top 5 Happy Breakup Songs or Top 5 Sad Breakup Songs or Top 5 First Breakup Songs and I probably could have fit everything in eventually.  But I enjoyed the challenge, so here's just Top 5 Breakup Songs (and be proud of me, no ska until we get to the honorable mentions!)...

5)  Feelin' Stronger Every Day - Chicago
          This may be the weirdest breakup song ever written.  In all honesty, I'm not even sure it's about a breakup, it could be about a significant other who's passed away, but I've always assumed it's talking about the world's best breakup ever.  It's so positive and upbeat that you would never even think breakup without paying close attention to what is being sung.  I find it comforting to think that a breakup can go so smoothly, with both parties taking positive attitudes with them.  That's not even mentioning how fantastic a song it is.  One of my all time favorite Chicago tunes and that is saying a lot.

4)  By The Bed - Phantom Planet
          This one falls under the sad category.  It's not all that impressive musically, it take the less is more approach to support the beautifully crafted lyrics.  The song does a wonderful job describing the moment when one party realizes, much to their chagrin, that there is nothing they can do to mend whatever rift has popped up between the couple.  It's that helpless moment when you realize the relationship is over and you have absolutely no say in it.  Phantom Planet are far from the best band ever, but they have a knack for writing really good relationship songs and this is of their best, certainly the most poetic.

3)  How's It Going To Be - Third Eye Blind
          This song asks one of the scariest questions involved with any breakup.  Unfortunately, it doesn't provide any answers, but it does a great job of capturing that feeling of what next.  What are things going to be like without that person no longer in your life.  It's the feeling that has prevented many a relationship in tatters from ending in the first place.  Unlike the song's I've mentioned so far, and probably unlike almost every breakup song written, this one take the perspective of the person who wants out of the relationship.  Is he wondering what it's going to be like for him?  Or is he wondering how she is going to handle things?  It's not totally clear, but either way it a powerful depiction of the state breaking up leaves you in.

2)  Summer Highland Falls - Billy Joel
          This one is the perfect first break up song.  Joel does an amazing job of tapping into those days when you were struggling to find your own identity, forget about a relationship.  While the other songs detail very adult relationships, this song talks about a relationship of youth and reaching that moment when you realize that you have started to grow into two different people.  It's a totally different break up, one that has a stronger sense of inevitability but no less pain and confusion.  Joel diagrams the situation to a tee and distills the whole thing down to the two emotions that go with every break up, sadness and euphoria.  It's Billy Joel, so it goes without saying that it a great song.

1)  Wrong Bed - The Littlest Man Band
          Yes, none of you have heard this song.  Yes, none of you have heard of this band.  No, this isn't some random obscure pick chosen in some lame attempt to up my hipster cred.  The music by itself is enough to make one weep.  Add in some of the saddest, most profound lyrics ever written and you have the greatest break up song ever written.  You can feel the pain in lead singer Scott Klopfenstein's voice as he tries to deal with coming to grips with a relationship that just wasn't working.  Is it number one because I can relate?  Probably, but I can relate to everything on this list except for Chicago (I wish with all my heart I could relate to that song, but alas).  There's just something about the way the bare bones music and the poetic, sorrow filled lyrics combine to drive right to the emotional center of any break up that makes the song just so fantastic.  Go to Youtube and check it out.  You won't be unaffected.

Honorable Mentions: Anything By Reel Big Fish; "Thanks That Was Fun"-Barenaked Ladies; "The Old Apartment"-Barenaked Ladies; "Everything About You"-Ugly Kid Joe; "Scott Farcus Takes One On The Chin"-Less Than Jake; "Some Time Around Midnight"-The Airborne Toxic Event; "Don't Speak"-No Doubt; "Someone Like You"-Adele

Girl Troubles: The Hockey Game

          One of my favorite stories detailing how inept I am when it comes to the ladies occurred in high school.  It sums up everything about me and how my brain works when women are involved.  It also says a lot about me that I enjoy telling it so much.  It’s not the most embarrassing story in the world, but I certainly don’t come out of it looking suave, and yet, there’s something that compels me to tell it on a regular basis.  I’m sure there isn’t anyone who knows me that hasn’t heard it.  And I guess in a small way, it’s the impetus for this whole thread of blog posts.  There’s some small part of me that wants to embarrass and demean myself in front of the whole world and as much as that doesn’t sound healthy at all there is purpose behind it.  Maybe people will be entertained by my stories.  Maybe people will find solace knowing that they aren’t the only ones that go through this kind of stuff.  Maybe I’ll unburden my soul by throwing all this out in the open.

            The high school I went to was an all boys private high school in New England.  Don’t think that the all boys part plays any role in the tales I tell.  I’ve always been comfortable around women; that isn’t the issue.  Whatever social anxieties I have are equal towards both guys and girls and the stories I write here about my problems with the fairer sex deal with girls I wanted to like me, not all girls in general.  That’s an important distinction to understand.  I have more friends that are girls then I do guys.  Turning those friends into something more is where I stumble.  Anyway, the school has a nationally recognized hockey program and the local NHL team at the time had built our rink so they could use it as a pre-season training facility.  That being the case, we had a close relationship with the team and they would give the school a group of discount tickets.  On the Saturday nights that the team played at home, anyone who wanted to could sign up for $5 tickets and the school would bus us to the game.

            Now, I wasn’t a fan of this team at all, nor were any of my friends, but it’s hard to pass up a night out at a professional hockey game at the age of 15 with really no one watching over you for $5.  We would go whenever we could and since we cared less about who won or lost we tended to focus on other teenage things.  What I’m trying to say is, we saw it as a chance for a bunch of guys who didn’t get to see girls all day long to meet and pick up women.  I use those terms very loosely because we were shy awkward young boys who were all talk around friends and had no real idea how to meet girls at large public events.  Every game pretty much played out the same.  We would look around the arena, spot an attractive girl or group of girls, talk about how hot they were, say that we should move over to where they were (the team wasn’t very popular, so we were always able to sit where ever we wanted in the arena) but never actually move, and then head back to the bus when the game was over having accomplished nothing other then recognizing beauty. 

This particular game was different though.  We were sitting behind the net and off to our right, four or five sections over, was an extremely gorgeous girl.  Things were playing out just like normal, except every time we looked over at her, she and her friends were looking back.  This sparked a whole new avenue of debate between the group of us, who was she looking at?  “It’s me!”  “No way would she be looking at you, it’s obviously me.”  “She’s not a chubby chaser, dude.  She totally has a thing for me.”  This went on for two and a half periods, until one of the guys in our group spotted another girl.  The debate shifted to whether this new subject of attention was actually hot or not and rose to such heights that it was finally decided, with minutes left in the game, that we would walk over to her section to get a closer look.

Why we decided to move closer this game as opposed to all the others, I’ll never know.  Maybe we were starting to get more confident about what we were trying to accomplish.  Maybe there was a collective frustration about just sitting there and talking every game and never having anything to show for it.  And on the surface, this new bit of confidence (or whatever it was) didn’t change a thing.  We hadn’t sat down for more then a minute when the guy who initiated the move conceded that the girl was not attractive at all and we should head back to the bus.  But if it wasn’t for that move I probably wouldn’t have this story to tell.  We all got up and headed out the door, me slightly behind.  As I rounded a corner, trying to keep up with my friends, I ran smack into the girl who had been looking back at us for two and a half periods.  We both stopped, looked at each other, and she said, “Do I know you from somewhere?”

I’ve never had a better opening in my life prior to or since that moment shy of a girl telling me straight out that I was going to take her out on a date.  It seems so obvious now what a huge chance this was for me, how it was everything any of us could have wanted to happen every time we showed up at one of those games.  But me being me, all I could think about was the fact that my friends were walking away and I had a bus to get to and what if it left without me.  So, I gave one of the most regratable answers I have ever given to any question ever asked of me.

“No,” I said as I hurriedly walked away to catch back up with my friends.  I never even stopped for a second to see or hear what her response would be.  I just booked. 

To make matters somewhat worse, I could have just kept that little run in to myself and no one would have been the wiser, but the first thing I did when I caught up to everyone was fill them in on what just happened.  I think there was part of me that thought I would be a minor hero because the answer to the night’s debate about who the hot chick was looking at was now obviously me, but really all I did was admit to all my friends was that I was a chump who couldn’t close the deal with a girl.  Would they have responded any better if the tables were turned?  Probably not, but there was no proof that they would have acted as poorly as me while I willfully gave them all they needed to make me look like a fool.

The saddest part of the whole thing is, I’m not sure much has changed over the 20 years since.  We all like to think that we learn from our experiences, especially the embarrassing ones, and don’t repeat the mistakes, but I don’t know that I would react any different if that girl walked up to me today.  I’d like to think that I’m a bit more mature and would at least be able to spark up some sort of conversation given that opening, but I also know that the scared 15 year-old is still present.  I mean, I’ll never worry about missing the bus, chances are at 35 I drove myself, but there always seems like there is some rationalization for just saying no and walking away as fast as possible and chances are I’ll find it.

Girl Troubles: Middle School Clarifications

          My biggest problems with girls aren’t that I am unattractive and awkward, as my story about my first crush might suggest, they are a combination of having no idea how attractive I am and a crippling fear of rejection.  I know I’m not Ben Affleck or Brad Pitt, but I’m pretty sure I’m not Sam Cassell either and that leaves me unsure how women look at me.  Add to that the fact that I can’t handle rejection at all, and you are left with someone who needs a girl to throw herself at him before things can go anywhere.  I’ve almost always needed 100% certainty to make a move and the chances of getting 100% certainty about anything are slim to none.  Even with those odds, I’ve worked things in my life so that I can only think of five times I’ve actually been rejected.  Only two girls have said no to my advances (not counting break ups which are a whole other ball of wax), I had only one college (Stanford) not except me, I’ve only had one job interview that did not turn into a job and there was only one baseball team I tried out for that didn’t take me.  I don’t bring this up to make myself look uber-successful, because that’s not what it shows.  It’s about a crippling fear that has caused me to have limited experiences in life and a number of painful and awkward dealings with girls.

 I should also take a minute and make sure I didn’t paint middle school me as a hopeless loser; it really isn’t fair to the story I’m trying to tell.  Yes, I hung around with the nerds and identified most comfortably with them, my wardrobe consisted solely of jeans and t-shirts in a world where cloths signaled social status, and I tended to bury my face in books while others were out socializing.  But I had a lot going for me as well.  Like I said earlier, I grew up with all the kids that made up the cool clique.  This allowed me to move back and forth between groups whenever I pleased and this held weight with people.  If I was seen socializing with Joe Cool, then I must be alright.  In fact, as socially awkward as I almost always feel, I had the rare ability to jump between almost any of the school cliques I wanted.  The cool kids, the nerds, the goths, the metal heads, the jocks, I was like Ferris Bueller if you took away his self-esteem and grace, they all thought I was a righteous dude.  I was also lucky enough to be in a class that respected smarts.  All the popular kids did really well in school, so being smart helped my status as well.  Most important of all, I have always been a strong athlete.  Nothing helps more with social status at that age then being able to hold your own on the field.  It’s the great social equalizer.  If you’re poor you can’t afford the cloths, if you’re shy you never make the right friends, but all that is forgiven if you can play ball.

            I say all this to point out that as much as I bumbled things with Lisa, I was far from lacking when it came to female attention.  I never had a problem recognizing the girls who were interested in me who I had no interest in.  Or maybe it’s better to say, I never doubted the intentions of those girls.  But the girls who I was into, they were a totally different story.  My school years were spent knowing there were girls I could have hooked up with but wondering and wanting to try with girls I wasn’t sure of.  I have plenty of stories of middle school girls vying for my attention, it was just none of them interested me or captured my affection the way Lisa did.  There was a girl who spent all of history class every day kicking me in the shins.  There was a girl who took up a full page of my yearbook going on about how wonderful I was, leaving her number and strongly encouraging me to call her over the summer.  There was a girl who would walk down to the local baseball field whenever I had a game just to watch.  There was a girl I happened to sit with on the bus to a field trip who would come to me every day after bringing up the inside joke we came up with during the ride.  Maybe the history girl just liked kicking people, maybe the yearbook girl was just looking for a friend, maybe the baseball girl just really enjoyed baseball, but I think it’s safe to say there was more going on.  I recognized all of this for what it was at the time, it was just that none of them were Lisa.  So if you walked away from my Lisa story thinking I was a character from Revenge of the Nerds trying to hook up with the prom queen you got the wrong story.  This isn’t the documentation of a guy who’s never had options, it’s about a guy who sometimes comically but almost always tragically makes the wrong choices.

Book Review: The Redeemer by Jo Nesbo (48 in 2013? #1)

          I am starting to have similar experiences with the Jo Nesbo novels I jump into, or at least similar questions about how much I should believe the fictional worlds he creates.  Much like Redbreast, I found myself wondering how much of Nesbo’s story I could take as an actual reflection of reality and how much was just twisted facts for the sake of wonderful story telling.  The Redeemer seems to be showing the insides of a religion that is much more prominent in Europe then here, The Salvation Army, but how much of that is made up to make a compelling story?  Here in America the Army is nothing more then a store for second hand cloths and a red bucket for change during Christmas time.  If The Redeemer is based at all in truth, in Norway they are more like Mormons or Scientologists.
            Straight or twisted, the Salvation Army as presented by Nesbo sets up a hugely intriguing plot.  I guess it’s not really an original story, a closed off religious group that can almost be considered a cult gets caught up in murder plot, but Nesbo does a great job using the Army’s peculiarities to weave a tale that feels fresh and keeps you turning pages.  The religion is never the center of the plot, but it sets up the characters and motives in ways that keeps the reader guessing and underlines almost everything that goes on.  I guess it ultimately doesn’t matter how much of the Army stuff is real or not as long as the story is entertaining.
            I’ve found Nesbo’s work to be extremely hit or miss so far.  He’s written stuff that has left me both deeply moved and totally wanting.  I guess that’s pretty much a given with any author who writes a long series of books with the same main character.  It’s not much different then a television show with its good and bad episodes.  The Redeemer is a middle of the road installment in the Harry Hole cannon.  It keeps moving and never totally loses the reader, but doesn’t have the punch of Redbreast or Devil’s Star.  If you’re a Nesbo fan, it’s a must read.  If you’re thinking of picking the series up, start with something else, you’ll get pulled in quicker.

Girl Troubles: The First Crush

          My first real adult ordeal with the opposite sex started in the 7^th grade and should be filed in the “lost opportunity” section of my love life, easily the most crowded.  I use the word adult not because it was an especially mature relationship, I was in middle-school after all, but only as way of comparing it to my early grade school experiences.  In a period where most boys are concerned with cooties and “no girls allowed” club houses, I had a run of “girlfriends” that just might out number my total amount of girlfriends since.  Relationships in grammar school were so easy; they existed solely during school hours and consisted of nothing more then holding hands and sitting next to each other whenever allowed.  But, by the time I reached middle school I had discovered sex (not by experience but in stolen magazines and scrambled cable channels) and that was a game changer.  Girls were no longer cute little things to waste time with; they were burgeoning sources of pleasure.  For me this was an added layer of pressure that made girls harder to deal with.  I became more worried about being liked now that the stakes had been raised and fear of rejection often paralyzed me from taking action.  At 13, like most everyone else, I was struggling to figure out who exactly I was, forget about whether that was someone the ladies would fall hopelessly in love with.

            I entered middle school as part of the in crowd, but the in crowd had circles that started with the most popular and spread out from there like when a rock plops into a puddle of water and I was clearly in circle two or three.  All the people in the outer circles seemed to work at nothing else then to stay as close to the inner circle as possible and that never sat well with me.  It just felt demeaning trying to latch on to others popularity, so I found myself leaving the in crowd and hanging out with a group where I would be an integral part of the inner circle, a group that could be described as nothing other than nerds.  King of the nerds felt way better then jester of the in crowd.  Of course, that kind of demotion in popularity, whether self induced or not, did not help when it came to female relations.

            It was into this haze of insecurity, self discovery and social politics that my first crush, Lisa, walked.   We started 7^th grade in all the same classes and I quickly fell head over heels for her.  But I was a nerd who ran with a bunch of unpopular kids and she was a beautiful bubbly cool girl.  In my eyes, I had no chance in hell and became satisfied with watching her from across the classroom.  As the year went on, though, we slowly became friends and by the end of the year we were sitting next to each other in almost every class.  She’d make good natured fun of me for being smarter then her and I would try to convince her that she was smarter then she gave herself credit for.  Looking back as an adult, there was plenty of good natured middle school flirting going on, but at the time it felt like nothing but conversation between two friendly classmates and I was left to beat myself up over whether I should ask her out or not.

            It’s tough to write a piece like this and not try to describe how the femme fatale looked but I can’t really describe it.  It’s way to easy to over fantasize how beautiful she was now that I am so removed from the experience.  I’m sure the vision I have in my head doesn’t compare to reality, it never does.  Not to mention how creepy it is to have a 35 year-old sexualize a 13 year-old, even if he’s using his 13 year-old memories.  But what I know for sure is she had a smile that made my knees melt.  The way her eyes squinted and the dimples appeared out of nowhere was just too adorable.  I spent way to much class time just trying to get her to laugh so I could see that beautiful grin.  I tended to be successful more times then not and that was something else that I absolutely adored about her, she was so easy going and free to laugh that she made school, something I dreaded with all my heart, a joy.  I tended to hide my fear of rejection by claiming that what I was really doing was not risking the relationship we had built.  Why risk making things weird when it was so much fun the way it was?  I’ll never know for sure if she was attracted to me at all but I am pretty confident that she enjoyed my company.  She always seemed at ease around me, like it was OK to be her goofy self or do well in school because there was no way I was going to judge her.  That tended to make her pretty attractive too.

            7^th grade ended with nothing happening, entirely because I didn’t have the courage to make it happen, and 8^th grade found us with a totally different set of teachers.  We’d occasionally pass each other in the halls and excitedly say hi, but our paths never really crossed and we were left with no means to socialize, so I once again found myself pining for her from afar.  Then one day she pulled a stunt that has stayed with me to this day.  Before school started each day the whole student body congregated in front of the building waiting to be let in for classes.  We all gathered in our social circles, never really breaking loose to talk to others, me with my nerd friends, her with whatever cool girls she hung out with.  I was standing there talking about Terry Brooks novels or the latest episode of Fresh Prince of Bel Air, when she walked up and gave me a pack of watermelon bubble gum.  She remembered that I loved artificially flavored watermelon candy and wanted to let me know she still thought of me.  And I did… nothing.  Looking back now, it’s hard to imagine a bigger green light, certainly not a stronger sign of middle school affection, but I was still paralyzed by something.  Really, at that point there wasn’t much to lose.  I didn’t see her enough for a rejection to queer a friendship.  And yet, I couldn’t harness my fear or build up enough courage to just throw myself out there.  I’d like to report that this was just middle school me, that I overcame my silly fears and learned later in life to throw myself out there, but at 35 I’m really not that much better at dating then I was at 13.

It’s a little sad to admit but a stupid middle school crush has come to epitomize a good portion of my female relationships; become friends with a girl I’m attracted to, flirt playfully for years, never have the courage to do anything, spend the rest of my life filled with questions and regret.  This particular chapter in my love life ends with a fizzle, as way to many of my love stories do.  She wrote her number in my yearbook at the end of the year and I spent the summer debating over whether I should call her or not.  The next year I went away to a private high school and never saw her again.  Years later, a guy I played baseball with said he was friends with a girl who knew who I was, Lisa, and that she wanted to come to a game to see us play.  I got more then a little excited but she never showed up.

Book Review: What Is The What b y Dave Eggers (48 in 2012? #41)

  I said I was going to finish this off even though I didn't hit my goal, so here we go.  I have a feeling that these are all going to tend to be little short due to the fact it's been a while since I read them.  But I'm a man of my word, whether you care or not.  I'll probably start weaving in some 48 in 2013 books just do I don't get to far behind on those...



          What Is the What may be considered a novel, but that is just to protect Valentino Achak Deng from taking criticism for any details that might be slightly embellished.  This is a very true chronicle of Deng’s unbelievable journey to America from war torn Sudan by way of Ethiopia and Kenya.  In Dave Eggers extremely capable hands, Deng’s story hits home as a sad tale of being removed from everything one knows and love and the human condition to survive at all costs.  Though the narrative tends to drag at points, I can’t take anything away from the emotional potency of Deng’s journey.  The hardships he has overcome are amazing, the journey he is forced to take unbelievable.  It is certainly a testimony of what one person can accomplish when they put into a position where they are forced to adapt or die.
            Even though Eggers name is on the cover, and I’m sure he played a huge part in the verbiage and structure of the story, this novel is very much Deng’s.  If you are looking for typical Egger fare or a sequel to A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, this isn’t what you are looking for.  If, however, you want a highly educational, deeply moving story of humanity, this is the book for you.