Where to Begin

Well it seems that I took a less than brief hiatus since I last put any thoughts down. So much has happened since November that one entry cannot convey the gravitas of my eventful life. Ideally I'll have a few notes up this week to explain what I, Chris Noland, have been up to.

The proper place for me to jump into this, I think, is the old homestead. Like James Van Der Beek before me, it was time to leave the Creek. Unlike Van Der Beek, who had to say good bye to Katie Holmes, and Michelle Williams, and his hot mom, I only had to say so long to my landlords who never fixed our garage door and the lady with the cigarette breath and VERY large leg tattoo that cut my hair. I think her name was Dwayne.

Kristen and I bought a home in Mt. Pleasant. We moved in at the end of November and we couldn't be more pleased. Our neighborhood sits on a highway that goes straight to Monck's Corner where Kristen's vet practice is located and I'm just a short drive from downtown Charleston. After a year of living in limbo, it's nice to have a place to put roots down and call something ours. We bought a two story home and Jeffrey and OD both get a kick out of running up and down the stairs. At the top of the stairs, a balcony looks out over the living room. Every now and again, Kristen and I will be watching TV and we'll hear a whine. We look up and there's Jeffrey sticking his lion mane through the balcony looking down at us. Kristen usually freaks out and sprints up the stairs to grab him but I keep watching because if he falls, I'm pretty sure he could get at least six inches of air on the rebound. I don't want to miss that. Granted, I'd be inconsolable after the fact, but I'd be proudly inconsolable.

We have a fireplace now and it's nice to have a fire burning every night. One of our favorite parts about the new house though, is the fact that we're out of town enough that when you walk out on the back porch and look up, you feel like you can see every star in the sky. We're both excited about spring and summer so we can spend hours out there looking up. Kristen probably says that because she wants to make out with me and be romantic. I say that because just once in my freaking life, I want to say I actually found the Little Dipper. I'm probably going to get in trouble for typing that.

Living in Mt. Pleasant brings with it a small amount of scorn. Apparently the town has a local aura of snobbery. The only rebuttal I have to that is thus: If living in a town with great restaurants, great schools (threw that in for mom so she'll think we're at least thinking of having kids and therefore won't ever bring it up), cultural events, great shopping, low crime, Raising Cane's, it's own Cupcake store, and extremely close proximity to the beach, then color me snobby. I'll wear that badge with pride as I drive the five minutes to the beach to go surfing.

We really feel like we made the right decision by moving out here last year. We struggled with that for a long time for the first few months we were here because we were having a hard time finding a happy place. Now, when I smell the salt on the breeze and hear the rustle of the palmettos or when I'm walking downtown on the warm cobblestones, I feel like I'm home.

That's Right, Cuz It's My Birthday, My Buh-Buh-Buh Birthday

On this night 32 years ago, I made the trip through the hoo-ha and graced this world with my presence. Today is/was my birthday and it was pretty freakin sweet. The day started off when Kristen walked into the guest room to wake me up. I slept in there last night because Jeffrey keeps wetting the damn bed and I don't like waking up to wet feet. So I kicked OD out of his bed and slept there instead. He was relegated to the love seat. Kristen made me bacon and biscuits which rocked my world. Normally I eat like a banana or something so this was completely and totally sweet. So I'm totally full but its cool because its my freaking birthday. Also, my birthday falls on Veteran's Day. You know what that means? Hell yes, no traffic on the commute. Rock on to federal employees for being off work.

So I drove into work in record time which is always most excellent. I walked into the office and what doth appear before my eyes in front of my office door? A bunch of freaking sweet balloons. One of which happened to be in the shape of a dinosaur. Seriously, who doesn't like dinosaurs? Well color me excited because we named him Rufus and he became my own personal secretary for the day. Chrisgina (from the last blog) got me the balloons and then she also got me a dozen donuts. I love donuts. I especially love donuts when the only reason I get them is because I turn 32. Could this day get any better? OF COURSE IT COULD. At approximately 8:35, one of my student workers who we'll call Cake walked in with a gigantic basket of absolute garbage. We had brownies and chocolate covered pretzels, and chocolate chip cookies, and M&M's. My lovely wife sent that along. EPIC. What else could possibly go right? I know, one of our senior fellows, Writtainy, brought me a Diet Coke and a king sized Twix bar. Sweet Jesus this is going to be a heck of a day.

I must point out that I found it necessary to have a South Park soundboard on my computer screen at all times so that I could immediately pull the following out whenever I told someone to do something and they asked me why they should: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25HYETWejlI I'm immature and a child of the 90's so just roll with it and love me for who I am.

At lunch, me and another friend who I'll call Mohendra, met for pizza at Andolinni's down the street from our office. She got me a fun writing utensil for my office which was awesome. More importantly, she got me two king sized Reese's Peanut Butter Cup candy bars. I had eight peanut butter cups to work with here. Let's recap my food intake to this point shall we? Two bacon biscuits, a donut and a half, four twix bars, a gigantor slice of pizza and a crap load of Reese's. I haven't had this much sugar since 1992. I didn't have the wherewithal to open the candy basket at this point. What did I have? The energy and mental capacity of one Cornholio from the old Beavis and Butthead days. So of course I found a Cornholio soundboard full of his quotable quotes and played them on full blast. I need tp for MY bunghole mother effer.

I came back from lunch to find my office completely decorated with Happy Birthday signs and ribbons and such. Apparently Rufus participated in my sugar coma and passed out on guard duty. It turns out that someone we'll name Lara was the culprit in this one. She came and admitted as much to me later. I thought it was fun and games until she asked to borrow a red Sharpie and then pretended to color in my bald spot while I was sitting at my computer. Well played Lara, well played.

So we get towards the end of the day and all I want to do is go out for a couple of drinks before I meet Kristen and some friends for dinner. Everyone sold me down the river except for the new Chris Noland drinking buddy core. Me, Chrisgina, Feather and Yimmy headed to Kingstreet Grill for beers. Yimmy and I had Guinness because we are manly men. Chrisgina had some bottle whose name I forget but I'm pretty sure she took a swing at my head with it at some point. Feather drank wine. Feather was lame (that's actually a lie, she's more or less one of the coolest people I know).

We had a great time until I realized that surely I would have heard from Kristen since it was after 6:30pm. I had no service on my phone so I went outside and rebooted the old Iphone. It came back up with six text messages, three voicemails and (I'm not kidding) 48 emails. AT&T really sucks out here in the holy city. Kristen was on her way and we were meeting friends at the Blind Tiger. I asked Feather if I could walk there or if I should drive since she was a bit more acquainted with the city. Feather said it would be no problem for me to walk. Feather was wrong. I was expecting to walk a couple of blocks. Turns out it was two miles (in drinking terms but in actuality about a quarter of a mile but whatever). I started booking it.

Kristen and I met up with our friends Maggie and Richard for dinner and drinks. I haven't seen Richard in a couple of months because he's trying to be all corporate and get an MBA. I was shocked because he's gone through a transformation in the last two months and somehow now looks exactly like Josh Groban. He should probably be on Glee. We had a blast at dinner and I'm glad we got to hang out with them. I was somewhat shmammered so I picked up the tab on my own birthday. It's how I roll which basically is another word for awesome (and by word I mean phrase or something). Richard and I agreed that it was time for another man date. We haven't had one since we went and saw The Expendables. I think we've cooled off enough since then to have another one. Maybe we'll drink a bunch of beer at his house and watch a MacGruber marathon. MACGRUBER!!!

After dinner, I walked Kristen back to her car because I'm chivalrous and it was on the way to mine. We drove back to our humble abode. The most important part of the day had yet to come. I HAD TO KNOW, how many people had wished me happy birthday on Facebook. I was overwhelmed at how many of my friends and pseudo friends thought of me when they saw my name pop up on their daily Facebook birthday list. Thanks guys. It actually was really cool to see and Deanne Arnold even said she wished I'd write these blogs more often. Hopefully I can handle up on that because these are so much fun to write, even if I don't edit nearly enough.

Alright, OD is back in his bed and Jeffrey has already been out to pee so let's keep our fingers crossed for tonight (I also have mention that just as I type this, OD just let a huge one rip and it is freaking foul). This was a great birthday start to finish. Look out for next year because it will be 11-11-11 and I'll be 33. Watch out world.

Socially Networked

My bad. I probably had it coming. The running joke at the office is that I watch Glee. I play it off and tell everyone that I watch it with Kristen so that I'm allowed to watch football on Saturdays (turns out that's crap by the way). The little joke was also fairly contained to the people that work in my office. Unfortunately (for me), some of the people in my office include student workers, grad assistants, and recent graduates. What do all of these people have in common? Facebook.

I admit it, I joined Facebook in 2005 or so while I was working at Louisiana Tech. At the time, it was still relatively new and you had to have a college email address to secure an account. For the most part, it was a tool for me to keep in touch with student recruiters and members of our staff. Along the way, it started getting bigger and more complex and I started getting in touch with old classmates and fraternity brothers and such. And then all hell broke loose. Facebook exploded. All of the sudden, I'm getting friend requests from random people I might have said hey to passing them on the street. Regardless of the fact that I don't know them, they wanted to be friends with me. After all, everyone knows that the more Facebook friends you have, the higher your social status. That sounds benign enough until some of these people that I didn't know started getting pregnant. Why do some girls find it completely appropriate to describe bodily fluids and functions on a WALL that everyone can see, even people they only know on a very cursory level?

Then you get the people starving for attention and update their "status" accordingly: Skippy CANNOT BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED!!!! Oh heavens Skippy. Whatever could have happened to you? I probably better respond so that you will tell me and we can have a wall-to-wall conversation. Those people make me mad.

I know I need to get back on point here and I shouldn't point out every single Facebook cliche there is. There are plenty of email forwards for that. Let me just mention one more and thats the whole parent invasion of Facebook. God Bless my father for staying the hell away from this thing because he sees it for what it is: horse shit. My mother on the other hand is all over it. And I appreciate it because even when nobody else does, she thinks I'm witty. And she makes comments about that. Incessantly. If she moves to Farmville though, I just might have to cut ties.

So again, I've made the comment a couple of times around the office that I watch Glee. After one episode in particular, I had a Facebook chat with one of our counselors whom we'll call Frant in which I extolled the virtues of such a wonderful show. I don't think anything at all about this innocuous, two-lined conversation until I get an email informing me that I'd been tagged in a photo by someone that we'll refer to as Chrisgina. Seems that Frant took a screenshot of said conversation (I seriously had no idea that this was even remotely possible yet if I bring this up in the office, I'm told how old and bald I am and to shut my mouth) and posted it on yet another counselor's wall whom we'll name Kevan. Chrisgina saw it and tagged my name because, apparently it's a moral imperative that my forced enjoyment of musical tv should be shared by everyone on my "friends" list. Touche' Chrisgina, touche' indeed.

By the time I get to a computer and make my little discovery, I have no less than 85 comments about my sweet pic. Seventy of those are from my sister who's taking dictation from my dad (seriously, he refuses to touch the book). He just wanted me to know that Kimberly doesn't watch Glee and look at what a stellar athlete/student/career woman she turned out to be. I watch musical television and I live with a pomeranian and three legged cat. Unfortunately, I really didn't have a leg to stand on (no offense to the cat) and I couldn't argue with them. Then she called me a bitch. I asked her if dad told her to say that and she said nope, that was from her. Touche' to her as well.

I immediately removed the tag from the picture so I wouldn't be showing up on anyone else's updates. No more torture for me. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Frant, Chrisgina, and Kevan. I truly am looking forward to the days when they are back in the office. You see, I've had weeks to sit and stew and come up with creative ways to get my revenge. Should I be aggressive or passive aggressive? Why not both? This is going to be so much fun.

The time is getting close. I might have to delete the old Facebook account. Much like ICQ and AIM before it, it's run its course. I'm outgrowing it. Actually I outgrew it before I ever signed up but its time to let it go. And I have Glee to thank.

FU FB

Futility and Humility

I was SO PUMPED this weekend. Kristen was all like, yes sir you can watch football. I like to think it's because I was so excited since there were so many great games on. In reality I paid my dues by watching 17 episodes of Say Yes To The Dress with nine episodes coming from Kleinfeld's in New York and eight coming from the Atlanta store that employs the greatest fashion director EVER...Monte. Whatevs.

Anyway, I wanted to watch the Georgia-USC game at noon. Fellas I live in South Carolina now where USC means the University of South Carolina. Everywhere else in the world it means Southern Cal. However I'm not really into the whole brevity thing so I figured I'd indulge you and explain. Anywho, I had a dillema because I also had an appointment to take my car into the Honda place at noon. Whatever would I do? Never fear dudes because Honda has a big screen and it turns out that the overweight salesmen in short sleeves and ties AND customer service reps were really excited about the game also. They made sure the game was on instead of taking care of my car. In fact it took an hour and a half for them to tell me there was absolutely nothing wrong with my car. But I didn't care because I was being manly and watching football. Could this day get any better? ABSOLUTELY. They also had free hamburgers and hot dogs and unlimited fountain drinks.

Cut to two weeks later because I got lazy and stopped writing. Check it out though yo, I'm still excited about this weekend because there's so much football. I don't have to take my car into any lame ass car dealership though. I'm probably going to sit on the couch and watch the games with my new pomeranian puppy named Jeffrey. Kristen pretty much HAS to let me. Why? Duhh because I'm a full blown Gleek. Hell yes I watched that show. Not cuz I wanted to though. Again I was paying my dues. Unfortunately for me though, that show has an unwanted side-effect. Oh Lady Gaga, why do you haunt my inner monologues so? I've been singing Telephone to myself for three days. (Check this segue) But that's okay Lady G because this weekend I'm going to watch Boise State phone it in and unexpectedly get crushed by Oregon State. Talk about a Bad Romance. Word.

I'm probably going to be allowed watch another game or two because I ALSO took Kristen to see Jason Mraz last night. Don't ask, it went exactly as you would probably expect it to. The dude stood on stage and would make his band play while he ate cantaloupe and then talk about why he loves cantaloupe and how we shouldn't drink from plastic water bottles but should actually carry our own metal canteens of water like he does. Jason Mraz, you can take your wienered out fedora and punch yourself in your melon eating face. But you're a pretty sweet guitar player...and you can dance.

Question: What is sadder, the fact that my wife just spent $30 on Glee soundtrack music or the fact that I just put it on my ipod?

Hangin with Ursher and Luda

Kristen had her national AVMA conference in Atlanta a few weeks ago. We decided to turn it into a little mini vacation since we won't have the opportunity for a real trip this year. I was excited for three reasons (in addition to the fact that I got to spend three uninterrupted days with my wife): 1) I was born in Atlanta and haven't been back there since 1980. I don't know why that's exciting. 2) We got to see a Braves game which I've never gotten to do before. 3) I got to tell people that I was headed to the A-T-L. I'm a big fan of initials, acronyms, and shortcuts....almost as big a fan as using my area code for where I am. For example, I don't live in Charleston, South Carolina. I stay in the 843....but I come from the 318. But I digress. I digress a lot.

Kristen flew down on Friday morning and I'd drive down on Saturday. We both had Monday off so it would be a nice three-day weekend. Saturday night, the AVMA paid the band Train to be the evening's entertainment. They're popular because they have that omnipresent song "Hey Soul Sister." I didn't know they sang that. I thought it was some chick. Imagine my surprise when they busted that little ditty out. I'm all like hey its that effing song that I hate because it's on every third commercial that comes on TV. The concert actually wasn't bad. The lead singer has some serious pipes and probably could have sang in an 80's hair band. He also took his shirt off which made my wife really happy for some reason. I don't know why because I'm firing heavy artillery rounds every time I take mine off. YESSSSSS. The guitar player is also the spitting image of Howie Mandel which is weird for me. Seriously look him up.

Sunday we were really excited because we were going to Six Flags. I grew up going to Six Flags over Texas but I haven't been since I was a senior in high school. We couldn't wait to get on these roller coasters. Until some gimpy wooden thing called the Georgia Cyclone. That bitch took us to OZ man. That thing shook us so incredibly hard and we just wanted it to end. To make matters worse there were two little ten year olds riding in front of us that kept screaming like girls and laughing. Kristen wanted to skull drag them down the exit ramp but I told her not to because that's rude.

We needed a break so we rode the cable cars. While riding across the park, we spotted the Ninja and I forgot all about Oz. Why? Because ninja's are awesome and it had like six loops. I became the ten year old that was screaming like a girl and laughing. What I didn't count on was the seat in front of me being broken. On every turn, the back of the seat would pound into my knee making me say the f word like 45 times. That might seem like an inordinate amount of f words but that's just how many crazy turns and loops were on this ride. That's because it's a ninja. And ninja's are awesome.

We also rode Superman which kind of supersucked. I mean hey, I guess it's a novel idea to make a roller coaster that you ride on your stomach because it makes you feel like you're flying like Superman. Except you don't feel like that. You spend the ride sucking in your stomach because it keeps falling towards the ground while your head and your legs are strapped in and can't move. Then you twist and turn and get sick as hell but you can't throw up because you're wife is riding next to you and called you a puss seven different times throughout the course of the ride because you accidentally screamed like a girl and then farted on the first drop.

I say all this to illustrate that something happens to a man in the 10+ years between high school and his thirties. Rollercoasters become an exercise in demasculinization. Amusement parks cease being fun and you realize why your parents always looked so pissed off when they were walking you around as a kid. They can't ride the rides anymore, admission is $50, and ICEE's are $10. Crazy stuff.

We went to a Braves game Monday night and had a good time. We ate hot dogs and I had Dippin Dots for the first time which was odd/cool. The Mets aren't any good so the Braves won. We went back to the hotel and packed for the drive back to the 843 the next day. Overall it was a nice little get away but I think we're ready for a beach trip again. We're thinking Bermuda with some friends. B-E-R? I don't know, it doesn't really roll off the tongue. We'll figure something out though.

Man Date

My buddy Richard and I decided two weeks ago to go see the Expendables. It's pretty much the manliest movie ever made. How do I even prepare to take on such an epic review? I need manly music. I hit play and Jewel started asking me who would save my soul. I said hell no snaggle tooth, I yield to Metallica. So with Ride The Lightening thrashing in the background, I give you man date.

I've pretty much been waiting for this movie to come out for two years. I read an interview with Sylvester Stallone around the time I saw Rambo. He said it was time to bring 80's action back. America is suffering from an extreme lack of ultra musclebound, ultra violent, ultra accented action heroes. Plot be damned, we need loud explosions and gratuitous violence, and maybe boobs. The only problem is Hollywood is suffering from the same problem as the music industry: too many pussies. I'm sorry, Michael Cera and Jonah Hill are not going to cut it with gatling guns and throat ripping. Stallone went old school. He brought in Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crews, Randy Coutere, and Jason Statham to fight against Eric Roberts, Stone Cold Steve Austin and some dude who use to make a butt load of straight-to-HBO martial arts movies named Gary. Most important of all (in my eyes anyway), Stallone brought in Dolph F'ing Lundgren. Ivan Drago from Rocky IV. The dude is over 50 and his jaw is like a solid trapezoid. And he still has a lot of blonde hair. The movie just reaffirmed my aversion to Swedish people but in like a really badass way.

So, long story longer, Richard texted me on a Friday with two words: Expendables tonight? HELL YES. I immediately started making plans. I would drink a crap load of diet cokes to be ripped and wired. Then, after work, I would head straight to the gym to lift a crap load of weights so I'd be properly pumped to drive to the theater. We would then go to Cinebarre, one of those theaters that serves you dinner. There, I would dine on a crap load of steak and beer while I watched the manliest of man movies. I felt it was my duty as a man.

However, after consuming all the diet cokes, I suffered from caffeine withdrawal so I crashed. I no longer felt like lifting weights so I called Richard and told him I was coming over to discuss strategy for getting to the theater. Richard wussed out on dinner and decided to eat a Lean Cuisine. I punched him in the jaw. We skipped Cinebarre and went to the normal theater instead. That's cool because I could at least just get some popcorn. We settled in to get ready for the ride. This was the culmination of two years of dorking out. Let me see if I can summarize my thoughts on the actual movie.

Dude this movie is like one giant Andrew WK song. We open with hostages and the expendables show up. What happens? Dolph Lundgren shoots a dude in half with a shotgun and then people throw knives and shit. Sweet. Then back home, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger show up and have a conversation with Stallone. It's completely pointless but so incredibly cool because these three dudes among dudes are all on screen together. Wood. Stallone and Statham go visit the bad guys. The bad guys hang out in what can only be described as a lair. A FUCKING LAIR. Straight up videogame style lair. Statham and Stallone decide to shoot a bunch of bad guys with a cargo plane. They then decided that riddling the bad guys with bullets isn't enough. Stallone circles the plane back around and dumps gasoline on them and then Statham pops up out of the nose of the plane and shoots a flare gun at the gas covered bad guys. Why? Because this is an action movie mother fucker and he could get away with it. So not only are the bad guys flailing with unrealistic yet awesome gunshot wounds, they're now on fire. But not just any sort of fire. This gas was obviously explosive because they don't just flame, hell no these dudes explode. CARNAGE.

Statham and Stallone go home and hang out with Mickey Rourke. He smokes a pipe like Gandalf and tattoos people. He says some philosophical stuff to Stallone because the girls watching the movie need a deep part. While all this occurs, Statham finds out this girl he's been seeing got beat up by this other dude she was seeing. Bad move sir. Statham takes his Ducati to the playground where this dude is playing pickup basketball with his boys. Statham doesn't care. He delivered one of the most badass ass whippings I've ever seen on film. And it was on a playground. Dude took out like six other dudes. Nothing was sacred. He punched nuts and grabbed hair. Why? Because this is combat and not little league. And because he's one of the expendables.

After that, the whole crew gets together to go back to the LAIR. Why? We're still not really sure but mainly because man rules dictate that when there are bad guys and a lair, you take it out. So the team goes except for Dolph. He went rogue and fought Jet Li so Stallone is all like hell no dude and shot him in the chest. So the team minus Dolph heads back down to take out the bad guys. Seriously the final fight was awesome. The expendables show up and start fighting people and starting fires. Stone Cold Steve Austin and Stallone had a sweet fight that involved lots of flipping and head butting. Jet Li and Statham fought the straight-to-HBO guy named Gary. But then the bad guys got the upper hand.

That is until Terry Crews shows up with Dolph's shotgun. This is no ordinary shotgun though as we come to find out. It is fully automatic with exploding rounds. This is the most perfect weapon of ALL TIME for shooting people in half. And then when people are shot in half, you can turn it on guard towers because that fully automatic shotgun will blow those things up too. The sound that shotgun made was sweet and I still hear it in my dreams. So what do they do next? Remember, there is a lair involved here. They had to blow that mother fucker up. I forgot to mention that they spent about ten minutes of the final fight placing charges. What kind of charges were these? I don't know but they probably came from the 80's. When they went off, the lair crumbled in on itself like lairs were made to do.

Cut back to Mickey Rourke's tattoo parlor. The guys are telling stories and playing darts. Except these dudes play darts with knives because thats what dudes that ripped do. And Dolph Lundgren was back. See, he's such a badass that even when he's shot in the chest, he survives. I can't explain it and I probably don't want to know because it might be too much for me to handle. Then Statham walks out the front door into the street and takes a knife and throws it at the camera. So help me if this movie would have been 3-D, I might have kissed Richard on the mouth right then and there. PERFECT ENDING.

As the credits rolled, there was absolute silence as we filed out of the theater. Every one of us was still in awe. Richard gave me a hug and I understood. We bonded for two hours of awesomness. I was so incredibly sore the next day because I was involuntarily flexing for the entire movie. That's what happens when that much testosterone is on one screen. It's probably a good thing I didn't go lift weights beforehand because my shirt would have ripped right off during the movie because I was so incredibly pumped. I don't know if that experience will ever be repeated. All I know is Richard and I have this almost telepathic relationship with each other now. When we see each other we automatically start flexing and posing and then immediately start laughing. Just like they did in the 80's. Hell Yes.

Nevermind about August and everything after. I've got a licence to ill in this tragic kingdom. Ten-Four

Remember the blog post a couple of months ago regarding my musical nostalgia that was completely disjointed and vague? Me neither. So I've decided to revisit this subject in a hopefully more entertaining fashion. The title of this little diddy here might seem a bit ostentatious. It's not though. You see what I've done is take the titles of several of the cd's I own from the 90's and combine it into a sentence. This seems like a good idea for two reasons: a) I came up with it and it's obviously genius. b) I've seriously eaten an entire box of Mike & Ike's, two gigantic hershey kiss and chocolate chip cookies, and chugged three diet cokes. I couldn't lie about something like that.

There's this dude in my office named Jackson. He's a student worker and a pretty cool kid. I say kid because Jackson was born in 1989. Jackson has a lot of hair and one day the girlfriend of a roommate or something pinned his butt down and straightened his hair with one of those straighteners that girls with nappy hair like to use. He came into the office looking just like one of the Beatles. He also looked like the dudes from Oasis so I thought it would be a good idea to nickname him Gallagher. Apparently he didn't get the joke because he kept giving me weird looks every time I'd say the name, point, laugh, and then tell him Don't Look Back In Anger dude, which just made him more confused.

Jackson's boss Jimmy and I are the same age and share the same musical tastes. Jimmy has seen Pearl Jam live 15 times. We both started quizzing him on bands from the 90's that more or less defined our musical vernacular. Come to find out, Jackson and his fellow student workers had never heard Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Counting Crows, 311, Blues Traveler, Beastie Boys, No Doubt, Bush, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Red Hot Chili Peppers, STP, on and on and on. Does that mean that I'm just getting that much older or is it testament to the fact that music and radio is confined to the drivel that is Ke$ha, Black Eyed Peas, and Bieber?

I made it my personal mission to burn as much music for Jackson as I could. I went home that night and made him two 90's sampler cds with a song or two from as many 90's artists as I could find. I own a lot of full albums from that era from the bands that had a little bit of shelf life. I consider many of the albums to be classics but a lot of my self professed 'music snob' friends do not. I added some Alice in Chains, Jane's Addiction, and Candlebox along with the aforementioned menage-a-rock. I proudly presented Jackson with two cd's to blow his mind. I came back an hour later and he was listening to 'Alive' by Pearl Jam. He had that confused look on his face again and told me he'd never heard it. I non-verbally told him to go fuck himself and marched straight to Jimmy's office to let him know that his very own student worker doesn't know one of the signature songs of his favorite band. Jimmy verbally told Jackson to go fuck himself and ordered him to keep listening.

I gave it another hour and walked back into Jackson's office. This is a bold dude, man. He had turned off the cd's and I kid you not was listening to Hall and Oates. I was beside myself and walked out without saying a word. The battle was lost but the war, while probably lost as well, was motivating me to open this kid's mine even if I had to pry it. So here I sit at my computer burning him full albums. This is the list so far: 311-self titled, Beastie Boys-License to Ill (80's yet still classic), Blink 182-Enema of the State, Blues Traveler-Four, Bush-Sixteen Stone, Counting Crows-August and Everything After, Nirvana-Nevermind, No Doubt-Tragic Kingdom, Oasis-Definitely Maybe and What's the Story Morning Glory, Pearl Jam-Ten, RHCP-Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic; Smashing Pumpkins-Siamese Dream, STP-Core, Third Eye Blind-self titled, U2-The Joshua Tree (80's but he'd never heard of this one either and that made me really sad) I might throw an AIC or Soundgarden album on there just to really grit things up but these should suffice.

Those albums I listed are indicative of the type of music I love but are in no way a complete representation of what I wish I could put on there. I've lost Weezer's Blue album and Green Day's Dookie. I never owned a lot of the one hit grunge bands like Sponge, Ruth Ruth,Marcy Playground, Schtum, and Trippin Daisy. I use to have Self's album but it's scratched beyond recognition and me and two other people are pretty much the only one's that have heard of them. I love 2 Skinnee J's but that might be a little too out there for him. I probably should have put Dr. Dre's The Chronic on there but I don't want to send the wrong message.

I wish I had a musical mentor to guide me when I was young and malleable like young Jackson. I had to do it on my own. Now I keep the dream alive by traveling to different horse tracks and casinos to see my favorite bands of yore; now fat, bald and pathetic, fighting the good fight. Hey Jealousy? Yes please. Cumbersome? Always. Sex and Candy? Whenever and wherever. Here's to you 90's music. And all your flannel and angst. Rock on.