Hey real quick if you live in Albany, Rochester, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philly, or NYC? Can you do me a favor? Megan From Work is coming to your town (March 27-April 4) and you should go see them. Let’s move some tickets. Get to the gig.

Happy baseball season… or as they call it in Korea:

IT’S BIG BALL CHUNKY TIME!

Today’s post: two of my favorite records written by the same guy turn 25 a week apart, a Jeopardy update, the Wikipedia game, ICE at airports, and swing sets.

The Old Ass Places You Have Come to Fear the Most

Dashboard Confessional’s The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most turned 25 years old last week and yes I did just pull something in my shoulder just typing that sentence. I listened to it a bunch over the weekend and thought about the specific feeling of being 16, lying on the blue carpet of my bedroom, poring over the lyric booklet, singing along to these sad songs, feeling hopelessly morose and alone, pining for whichever human(s) I was crushing on at the time.

The record meant a lot at the time and holds up really well. But what that led me to think about was watching the band rise from tiny side project to leading the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack in a span of about four years which led me to reading a lot about the band and diving back into my Livejournal, which is always fun.

Thank you for this, Wikipedia:

I’m just going to start sending that to anyone who asks me what kind of music I like.

I got into the band in 2001 (though I did not know anything about Further Seems Forever at the time, I would discover them later) and among my friends, Places was a huge one. This guy was it. There was a real buzz when we’d go see him. And then it just kept growing. All of a sudden our non-music crazed friends knew about him. They didn’t like the other bands we liked, but they had the CDs. They had D/C shirts. They wanted It was organic, a combination of filesharing sites and word of mouth, trading these songs back and forth. Then A Mark… came out, and they were just huge. We knew we weren’t going to see him play small clubs anymore.

By 2004 I know I was annoyed at the size of the venues and the crowds, but that was selfish. It was exciting to be in on something that just kept growing, like your little secret got shared with everyone and they felt it deeply too.

It blew me away to learn that Places and The Moon is Down came out seven days apart. They are two of my all time favorites. What a week for Mr. Carrabba.

Here’s an incomplete Chris Carrabba timeline from the beginning of Dashboard up to “Vindicated” plus I had fun looking up when and where I saw them during these years:

2000
March: releases The Swiss Army Romance (Dashboard’s debut) on Fiddler Records
August: leaves Further Seems Forever but…
Fall: records The Moon is Down with the band anyway

2001
February: records Places
February 27: releases The Drowning EP on Fiddler Records
March 20: releases Places on Vagrant Records
March 27: The Moon is Down comes out on Tooth & Nail
March/April: opens for Hey Mercedes
May: opens for The Weakerthans
June-September: tour tour tour
September: first late night show performance (below)

October-December: headline tour (including the first time I ever saw him: November 6 at Mass. College of Art with Ben Kweller and Sense Field)
December 18: releases the So Impossible EP on Vagrant

2002
April 2: releases the Summers Kiss EP on Eulogy Recordings
April 4: I saw them at the Palladium in Worcester, MA with The Anniversary
April 24: becomes the first band without a platinum record to record an MTV Unplugged session [good read: The Oral History of Dashboard Confessional Unplugged]
July 21: I saw them open for Weezer at the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, MA
August 29: “Screaming Infidelities” wins the MTV2 award (a fan-voted award recognizing the best videos that got their start on MTV2) at the 2002 MTV VMAs, beating out The Hives, The Strokes, Norah Jones, musiq, and Nappy Roots
September 7: I saw them play at the Hatch Shell in Boston with Hot Rod Circuit
December 17: releases MTV Unplugged 2.0 on Vagrant

2003
August 12: releases A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar on Vagrant; the record debuts at #2 on the Billboard 200 and #1 among independent albums
September 6: I saw them headline the Tsongas Arena in Lowell; Brand New, MxPx and Vendetta Red opened. I wrote in my Livejournal: “they were good but better last year.” Ok cool guy!
October 18: “Hands Down” peaks at #8 on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart, spending 21 weeks on the chart in all

By this point, the e word (emo) was everywhere. He was the magazine poster boy, the patron saint, the ambassador.

And their biggest hit was still months away.

2004
Valentine’s Day: I saw them perform at UConn; we sat in the very last row of the theater; Straylight Run(!!!) opened
June 27: I saw them headline the Honda Civic Tour** at the Tsongas Arena in Lowell; Thrice, The Get Up Kids, and Head Automatica opened; My Livejournal review of DCs set: “meh.” How jaded!
August 7: “Vindicated” — the lead single on the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack — becomes their biggest hit, peaking at #2 on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart, spending 26 weeks on the chart in all [the only song ahead of it: “Just Like You” by Three Days Grace]

Quite a ride. It was fun to experience and fun to look back on.

** Storytime! We arrived early to this show with a bunch of friends to hang around outside the venue. Chris came out and said hi and took pics and signed autographs. The only thing my friend Jordan had on him was his report card, so Chris gave it a real close read, said “pretty good,” and signed it. Some kid had an acoustic guitar, so Chris signed it… and then tuned it. He did not play it.

Frequent Liar Miles

Everyone already hates going to the airport. Every poll shows Americans absolutely hate ICE. The administration is now sending these goons to stand around Starbucks and Hudson News strapped to the teeth, glaring menacingly at people, because they are malevolent trolls. This dumb gambit shows their backwards ass thinking very clearly. TSA (I promise I am not simping for them here, they have many real issues that could and should be fixed; I am just saying the status quo is much better than these wild and unnecessary disruptions!) could be funded already.

Genius: the people standing in extremely long lines at airports will have plenty of time to look around and see the moral rot that has consumed our country. This photo shows it all. These unhappy travelers will have plenty of time to get pissed off thinking about how Trump will pay goons to stand around and make things worse and less safe, but will not pay TSA to keep things going as they were. This is who they are.

“The cruelty is the point” is an overused aphorism, but it’s hard to look at their many actions and not conclude that they are sadists.

They could solve this. They could do something that would help. They are choosing to make it worse.

This is a pattern.

Like how they are now fighting this war to open the Strait of Hormuz, which is only closed because of the war that we started a few weeks ago. A war that “we won” on March 11, which is 14 days ago. Trump told us “in the first hour it was over” but of course, that was a lie.

The guy who ruins everything he touches is taking the whole country down with him. They just wake up and choose violence every day. No foresight. No reflection. Just violence.

This government is like a record collector who has every Death Cab release ever except the one from 2005. Plans? We don’t have any Plans!

There’s another disturbing pattern. The President is just moving his secret police around to wherever his political problems pop up. These chuds clearly understand that they can act as recklessly and as violently as they feel with no real danger of accountability hanging over them. Their presence anywhere makes people less safe, not more. They are undertrained. They are not very bright. They aren’t there to help, they are there because he wants to be seen as doing something but has no interest in actually doing something. But now he can say “I fixed it! ICE is there!” Nope, that’s not how this works. Also, there is no reason to believe this will be the last place he sends them to do some nonsense. They’ve been in the streets. They’ve been in our airports. This won’t be their last assignment. They have billions of dollars in their budget — our money — and they’re going to keep blowing it on bullshit like this. This is textbook authoritarianism.

Where is the opposition party? Going “well at least they aren’t wearing masks.” Useless.

We have an iPad baby for a president. Every day, military officials make a short video for him to watch with updates about the war: “The daily montage typically runs for about two minutes. One described each daily video as a series of clips of ‘stuff blowing up.’ But the video briefing is fueling concerns among some of Trump’s allies that he may not be receiving — or absorbing — the complete picture of the war, now in its fourth week.” Here you are, Mr. President, your daily video of bombs going boom boom. Weeee! Yes, the war is going great, we are winning for sure. You’re so great. Keep it up. Thank you.

This is insane. He’s the president of a country fighting his illegal war of aggression, but he can only give two minutes a day to get an update on how that whole war thing is going. He’s very busy with more important matters like corruption and covering up his rotting right hand.

Here’s a staggering quote from a current official: “We can’t tell him every single thing that happens.” The guy who spends all his time golfing and napping and watching tv doesn’t have more time to dedicate to the illegal war he started that is destabilizing the global order? Oh, poor guy!

Incredible photo:

It feels like our only hope is enough people who support him realize that he is a singularly solipsistic and antagonistic force who only cares about himself, can’t see five minutes into the future, and these problems all fall squarely on him, with blame cascading down onto all those who have enabled, supported, or bent the knee to him. Then those people all need to be at least shunned from public life and at best laid in the guillotine. If you act evil in the service of power and no one stops you, why would you ever stop?

It’s so frustrating to be given one wild life and have to spend it watching these soulless craven ghouls, drunk with money and power stand firm against progress and actively make everything worse.

Update: Jeopardy!

So last time I told you about Jamie Ding breaking or tying huge Jeopardy records. After posting about him I was worried he’d lose his next game and then you’d all say “wow Crit you really blew that call” but I am pleased to report he is still rolling along.

He has now won 9 games and over $245,000.

Update: The Wikipedia Game Rocks

I was worried/excited I’d become obsessed with this game and that has mostly played out. One click, five random Wikipedia pages, over and over and over. I have over 14,000 cards and have learned about a ton of random stuff.

First let’s check what I got from my wish list: some cool bands and a Twin Peaks episode!

Any emo band (or album) 
Clockwise from top left: a Weezer song, Candy Hearts, a Brand New album, a La Dispute album, a compilation from Silverstein, an AFI song,

Twin Peaks

Other cool/funny/interesting pages I got: time in Massachusetts, Duck duck goose, Stop Snitchin’, vajazzle, tickle fetishism, Mary Oliver, nude psychotherapy.

I anticipated seeing lots of cool animals, and I have seen a ton. I’ve been especially excited about the many butterflies, moths, and birds. Am I gonna become a bird guy?

Some of the cards I’ve pulled have been truly delightful. I can’t count the number of times I’ve reacted with “wow!” I screamed “I got Mary Oliver!” so loud it scared my wife a little. (Then we read some of her poems together! How cute.) Multiple times I was like “whoa look at this cool fucking bird!”

I also learned that “duck duck goose” is also called “duck, duck, gray duck” or “Daisy in the dell” which both sound fake and I do not approve.

Cool names: Holenice, Tom Cruse, Humpty Doo, and…

Havelock Bank Robbery.

Sounds to me like they… didn’t havelock.

Swing, swing

This weekend I pushed my 9 month old daughter went on a swing (or as my 3 year old niece calls it, a “weeee”) for the first time. I was excited for it, it was nice out, we were at a family gathering, the vibes were great. We got her strapped in and…woosh. The joyful look on her face was magical and the moment really got me good. I stood there pushing gently and trying to play it cool. I felt like I was watching myself in a movie about a proud dad. Joy radiated throughout my body. Then later I saw a video of myself pushing her and I felt the wave all over again. I continue to marvel at the joy I feel from every small moment with her. She’s the best. There’s nothing like it.