Tyler: Don't Hate Me

I read this line in some shitty music magazine recently and I think it kind of stuck with me. It was basically a list of things that are always overrated. One of the top 5 or so things was the music you listened to in high school which I get. I understand that. I listened to some shit I wouldn’t be ready to admit in most circumstances but I feel relatively safe writing it here because, well, I think only me and Roger actually read this.

Freshman year of high school had ridiculous pop punk going on.
1. Blink-182
2. New Found Glory
3. Good Charlotte
4. Mest
5. Relient K
I mean, I still love Blink and I think I always will but the rest of that list actually hurts to look at. Just fucking embarrassing really.

Here’s the thing though, I still need that music. Maybe you know me, maybe you don’t, I don’t know. If you do you might know that I’m usually pretty laid back but every other month or so I will just flip out. My brain will stop functioning on a normal level and will just elevate itself to this really fast paced rambling with which I can’t keep up. It’s absurd. I was at my parents house today and I was looking in the mirror of my bathroom and all I could think was, “I’ve got to get some of this fucking hair off my head.” And I did. It was almost unconscious. I got out the trimmer and went to town. My sink looked like it was growing baby rats. At the end I looked around at the mess of my departed hair (does this pun work here? Like, it’s gone but it’s also not parted anymore. I don’t know.) and kind of felt like Edward Norton at the end of Fight Club when he shoots his jaw and kills Tyler Durden. Fucking weird. And right now, I keep saying ‘fuck’ over and over in my head. Fuck fuck fuck.

So before I left my parents’ house I looked through my old cd’s and found a mix a friend made for me junior year of high school I think. It starts off with Mest, goes on to some hardcore punk stuff I never really liked (I liked pussy pop punk, remember?) and track 11 is where I jumped. That’s where she implanted four Get Up Kids songs that still haunt the depths of my brain. I just looked up the name of the song I’ve been singing all day, it’s called “Don’t Hate Me.” I listened to it for the entire ride back to my apartment and it calmed me down better than my prescriptions so I think that’s pretty good. I don’t know, maybe if I didn’t find that song I would have listened to Death From Above 1979 on the way back and wondered what the fuck I was actually listening to. I’m pretty glad I still have all the music from high school. I wouldn’t go preaching that to a crowd but I still need my Get Up Kids every once in a while.