phamos

Wait, people not involved in fandom are referred to as "mundanes"? I had never heard this before. I don't know whether to be insulted and laugh out loud. I exist at the outskirts of fandom -- what does that make me? When I didn't quite fit into the nerdy crowd at my high school, my friends referred to me as a "pseudonerd". I guess now I'm pseudomundane.

Enjoy the new book about the single most important publication in teen girl history. Sassy changed their lives? It changed mine, too. I'm sure I've written about Sassy on here before at some point, so I won't babble for too long. But I was weird in middle school. Sassy taught me that it was cool to be weird. And even if that mentality has bubbled over to unfortunate effect into the totally overwrought hipster scene, it doesn't change the fact that some funky 20-something girls in New York once told me that it was OK to wear Docs or Birkenstocks and listen to Liz Phair and dye your hair with Kool-aid (although they didn't recommend the latter, just for the sticky-and-impractical factor). It's hard to overstate how revolutionary that was for a gawky, dorky 12-year-old girl at a private school in Buffalo. I know many of you can relate.

more fun with crosswalk signs. the shocker always reminds me of ben, but not for any actual prurient reasons, i promise. it had to do with this t-shirt he got at summer camp...oh, i give up. there's no way to make this sound ungross.

if you don't know what the shocker is, than please ignore this whole post, because it is disgusting and wrong and entirely unappealing.

"oh! it's flag day! it's my birthday!"

in late 2001, tiny band buttons were a very pseudo-hipstery thing to have attached to your jacket or satchel. i found one on a trip to newbury comics that simply said "fucker" in white lettering on a black background. this button inevitably caught people's attention, and they would inquire as to where i'd gotten it. so, after a number of these inquiries, i cooked up a standard response. i would describe the foam pillars at record stores with buttons on them, and how they made me feel so out of touch because i didn't know any of these hardcore and "emo" bands. "i mean, who the hell," i would ask rhetorically, "are death cab for cutie?" nowadays, those foam pillars are covered with buttons for AFI and good charlotte, so i'm rather distainful and don't feel uncool for passing them over with little regard. back them, however, emo was a very new concept to me, one that i didn't understand simply because i was oblivious to the history of the punk scene in washington d.c. in the late '80s and early '90s. i had heard of fugazi, but didn't know what they sounded like.

i associated most punk, other than the original generation of the '70s, with bill ewing, who decreed as the big man on campus in '95 that if i didn't listen to bad religion, minor threat, or the descendents, then i was a hopeless plebe to be patronized incessantly. i hated bill ewing, ergo, i hated punk.

for what i knew of emo, it didn't even sound like punk at all, so i was confused. and i put death cab for cutie away in my head along with such other preposterously named bands as sunny day real estate and further seems forever.

this is all leadup to saying that yesterday, i downloaded death cab for cutie's transatlanticism album off gnutella. and i really like it. it's pretty orchestral, and not nearly as whiny as a lot of the newer emo that i strongly dislike. (god, will that guy from a simple plan just ask someone for a hug already?) so now, i still wouldn't wear a death cab for cutie button. but i apologize for dismissing them out of hand for being part of a movement that i just didn't get, and in which bands had really silly names.

so, to segue to a similar topic, what the hell is the difference between "emo" and "screamo"? is screamo just emo but harder? or is it really really screamy? like, would thursday be considered screamo? because they sound kinda emo to me, but louder. all i know is there's an entirely different way of classifying bands today among these young whippersnappers than there was when i was in high school and even college, so i periodically need updates.

i added that girl zoe trope to my friends list. some of you may have heard of her; she started writing self-published chapbooks in high school and ended up having a book published by harper when she was like 16, called "don't eat the freshman" -- sort of a biography/collection of essays sort of thing. she reminds me of joan yin -- that's the only reason why she doesn't just make me rabidly jealous and think she's pretentious.

and yes, i know i'm still not sleeping.

this is like that episode of the sopranos where tony tries to take some of the heat off himself in re: the fbi investigation so he goes to what is ostensibly his place of business, namely the waste management company, and goes to his "office" which has been for all intents and purposes turned into a storage space. and then he sits around and does nothing all day, because he actually has nothing in said office that he could do and could possibly consitute "work." i am also sitting in an office that isn't really mine (yet) and doing nothing because there is nothing to be done.

of course, tony deals with the situation by deflowering the twentysomething born-again-christian receptionist of said waste management company. i don't really have that option. which is why my work travails are not the basis for a critically acclaimed hbo drama series that has year-and-a-half-long hiatuses.

i swear to god i dated christopher, though. only less shooty, more borey.