i guess this is growing up

Ok, ok that's Blink 182 but still! Same shit, different...nothing.

I went to Tulip Fest this weekend in Albany. I love going to obscure city-cific festivals especially when relatively HUGE bands from my teenage years are now washed up and playing such circuits in the desperate attempt to promote a new album that has been...about 6 years in the making. And just for the record by "6 years in the making", I mean "1 month in the making and 5 years and 11 months in the convincing of any record label they aren't as washed up and out of touch as one would believe and this one's REALLY gonna go gold".

What band could I be speaking of??

None other than



I know that this intro was riddled with wisecracks and the casual reader would probably come away with the idea that I somehow was unaffected and blasé about the whole thing. BUT NO. No casual reader: it was quite simply the best.

3EB was slated to go on at 4 (after StellaStar's set, but that's another story all together) and as the countdown began, the smell of funnel cakes, the sounds of screaming babies combined with the din of bells and whistles from cheap arcade games, and the sight of the likes of these guys EVERYWHERE:



only served to intensify my revelation that I was about to live a much missed experience of my youth: I was at an outdoor state fair (note: I originally typed state fail...yep), drinking Budweiser in a can, and about to see wholly unimportant California band from the mid to late 90s.


I never went to shows. I hated music in high school. Ok wait, I take that back. I did go to shows but I did hate music. Update: I still hate music. Shows were only a means to an end for me, that end being making out with the hot boys that went to shows.

Turns out now that I'm older I can actually enjoy these wholesome activities I skipped out on.

When they went on I was, amazingly and completely independently of my conscious mind, screaming every lyric to every song at the top of my lungs. Don't know where that's been laying dormant in my brain for the last 10 years, but apparently it has. You know when you can't remember a phone number and so you just hold the phone and let your hand "remember" it for you and find yourself dialing it correctly?? It was like that.
At some point (right around "Jumper") my friend and I couldn't contain ourselves and rushed to get as close as we possibly could to the stage. I think I yelled "WE GOTTA CROWD SURF" on the way through. And by "I think", I mean I did.


Next thing I knew we were in the middle of a thousand 14 year old children (who BTW knew ALL THE LYRICS TOO! HOW?? I'm still mystified), alternately avoiding dude next to me vomiting up his life (lay off the Milwaukee's Best, friend), face-smashing blows from the moshers (really?), and the muddy feet of the crowd surfers.

It was at this point that "semi-charmed kind of life" came on. And OH did it degenerate into a 5 minute drum solo! Not that I really noticed, as I decided the only way to truly reclaim my lost youth was to crowd surf my way through this song. It was glorious.

And all my efforts of the day to make myself a teenager again were made righteous when I was successfully set down next to a lanky 14 year old girl with braces who promptly turned to me and said: "Hey I think I know you. Do you go to my high school?"

YES. YES I DO.

The moral of the story is: fuck plastic surgery, to hell with Le Mer, get gone sunscreen and drinking absurd amounts of water. The true path to to staying young forever is Third Eye Blind.

Nevermind that Steven Jenkins looks like he's 400 years old.