Constructive Summer

I was at the Hold Steady show at Rams Head Live (a place of too-expensive beer and tourist-trap glitz; I hope not to have to go back to that venue ever again) last night. It was the most excellent bro-down imaginable, in the sense that it was a bro-down, while also being excellent. The Hold Steady write many songs about drinking and many songs about driving (and many more about all the possible activities in between, such as lapsed Catholicism), but most of the kids there sure seemed like they knew a hell of a lot more about drinking than about driving (not that I know a whole lot about driving--though I did drive a very drunk Katelyn back from Pikesville last weekend--but I do have great appreciation for it), a lot more about sinning than about repenting, a lot more about sweatpants than about John Berryman or Alfred Tennyson, a lot more about massive highs than about crushing lows. No matter; I knew all the songs from Separation Sunday and Boys And Girls In America, of course, almost word for word. I was weak on the ancient songs and the really new ones (not into paying for mp3s), but I shouted along whenever I could, slapped shoulders with the guy behind me as Craig Finn sang "I like the crowds at the really big shows; people touching people that they don't even know, yo!"

I was surrounded by X'ed-out fists pumping the air. When they played "Lord I'm Discouraged" a girl with short hair, glasses, and many tattoos standing with her boyfriend next to me started weeping. Don't know what she was thinking of at the time. I almost wished I was young enough songs would have that effect on me again; the only thing that could come close at this point would be if Guided by Voices spontaneously reformed and performed "The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory," and maybe the rest of Bee Thousand.

Oh, I listened to that song just now. That was possibly a bad idea. Especially after drinking all of Sterling's beers at the Lo-Fi. I probably owe him, at this point.

These days, sometimes it's hard to remember I ever went to college at all. Walking home from kickball last Sunday, meandering through the dusk, I felt as though I had spent all of the recollectable past among these Hampden rogues and vegetarian psych-drummer bartenders who looked and smelled like they could use a shower more frequently. Which of course was not the case. Is it really so easy to forget, or is it just me?