Waking Up Drunk

I've been campaigning this theory lately to friends and drunkards that I've developed over the past few weeks. Essentially, it goes like this: everything comes down to that feeling you get when you're in on a joke that no one around you gets. That feeling when you're laughing really hard with a couple people about some inside joke. No one around you gets it, they never will and that sucks for them because you know how good this joke is. They will probably never get it and that's half the appeal.

This concept applies to everything that I find important. Relationships. Music. Learning to cope with the emotionless mediocricies of day to day living.

Me and my lady went to this very awkward gathering of older people that we didn't know very well for her job. We were younger than the adults by a good ten years, older than the kids by a good ten years. We coped. Stayed for about an hour and then took off and laughed the whole car ride home at the situation we were in all around. We came the conclusion that we're always gonna be weirdos and we were cool with that ["you will always be a loser and that's okay" - thanks Patrick Stickles]. We're alright.

Me and my friends talk about Dads and buttsacks and we are so out of place in this absurd college town, but shit we have a good time. In our minds we get it and nobody else does. We're also emotional wrecks who drink too much and have way too many feelings. So it goes, I guess. I think that's part of the appeal to...we have a lot of feelings. But we get that and we're happy the way we are, even when we're really pissed about the way we are.

And here's why The Replacements are the best band in the world: they were in on a joke that no one ever got to be in on except them, but it seemed so fucking funny. Getting drunk and making dicks of themselves and writing these phenomenal sloppy songs that were SO good and it didn't even seem like they were trying. They never seemed like they were trying to make anything happen up through Let It Be. It just happened and it was so beautiful and smart and witty and stupid.

[I'm going to stop here, because I have a lot to say about this subject. I'm going to come back to it, but this is going to turn into a lengthy dissertation about The Replacements.]

Like any joke, there is a life and death. Jokes get old and unfunny, sometimes to the point that you get annoyed or even angered. Friendships rust. You get pissed when Against Me! sells out or you just realize that you don't need any more than five Alkaline Trio albums, so everything after Good Mourning is pretty much negligible. You lose sight with a friend and suddenly after seeing everything eye to eye, you're just lost on each other and you're never gonna return to where you were. The joke's run its course, but hopefully you still can listen to Maybe I'll Catch Fire and say "fuck yeah" about it or see an old friend at a party and do nothing but talk to him or her for three hours and not give a shit about what's happening around you.

But there are also the jokes that continue to stay funny or the ones that open up an entire world to you and those are the ones that you hold onto.