Regret

So I haven't written anything in a few days, mainly because I know I should not have written the post I did the other day.  I feel really stupid for writing about kids names.  I do.  I should just stick to my opinions, but I realized that I'm just not the type of person who should be telling people what they should and shouldn't do.  I really shouldn't.  So in my feeling bad, I just stopped writing altogether.  I wondered if I should just shut it down, because I keep making myself feel like a jackass for saying things like that.  So after thinking about it some, I decided that the best course of action would to just keep doing what I have been doing, but just think twice before I decide to lambaste something that someone my feel very differently about.

I want to stress, I just am not the type of person to say someone else is stupid for doing something I wouldn't do.  Everyone is different, and will do different things.  There are other people out there that can write about the wrongs of society better than I can, so I'll just leave it to them.  For now, I'll stick to what I am comfortable with.

I don't know if I actually offended someone I know specifically, because no one has actually said so to me.  But the fact that that might happen made me realize what I could have done wrong here.  Bottom line, I shouldn't have written that post the other day.  I'm sorry if you took offense.  Let's move on.  

Got Married

You know, its been over a year now, and it feels like a generation ago, but there are still some decisions I made in and around my wedding last January that I can't help but regret. I know that I was under intense pressure to do things correctly, and make sure all were happy, but there are certainly some decisions I made that I would like to go back and change. I know that no one would care, and they were understanding of the decisions I had to make, but some of the other mistakes I made were pretty dumb.

First off, I STILL worry that it looked like I was slighting a good friend, and one of my best friends in the whole world that day, by asking him to be my pianist, and not standing next to me with my brother and new bride. I hope I made it clear enough, on that day and leading up to the day and after the day, that having him in that position was in no way a slight to him. I wanted to include as many of my closest friends as I could in Tuxedos. This was the logical decision then, because he is the best pianist I know. There was no stupid order or ranking of my friends with whom were dressed up nicely. All were equal! At least that's how I viewed it in my mind. I certainly hope no one would feel like they were slighted. I feel like I slighted them though, in a way, just because I wish they all could have been my best men. They are the best men I know, though. So, I don't know I hope they understand. I say they because I'm including the ushers, too.

Second thing I regret is only inviting two of the security supervisors to the shindig. Why did I only choose two? Why didn't I just invite all of them, knowing some of them would have to work anyway? What the hell is wrong with me? And to make me feel even more stupid for my stupid decision, neither of the ones I actually invited showed up, and one that invited as a "come later and drink with us" guest, actually showed up. What a mistake. Why didn't I just invite him outright? What was the purpose of only inviting him later? To make me feel bad for leaving out people I like?

I don't know, these things have just bothered me for quite some time now. Carry on.

In Defense of the Genre (it's music again)

First off, I'll just admit that I obviously have no idea what I'm talking about most of the time. There was a musical genre right in front of my eyes for the majority of my existence that I didn't even understand. At one time, I thought I understood it, but I didn't.

The genre is emo.

As a 19 year old man, I listened to neo-nu-metal, punk rawk, ska, and 311. I was aware of this crybaby music that some kids somewhere made called emo, and I loved to poke fun at the kids crying because their girlfriend called them fat or something... Emo was not something I was interested in. Not while listening to this or this. I thought of emo as Dashboard Confessional acoustic guitar-style whining. Technically, I was right, but I didn't even know there was a whole wave of emo bands in the 90's that I totally missed. The bands had a serious rock side to them, more like, pop-punk than acoustic. But I guess this is where I blur the lines of what is pop-punk these days. Eh, nevermind. I never understood it before, why should I try to explain it now...

Now, the question I ask myself is, how important is knowing this now? The reason this is important now is that I realized that when I started this band, there were a lot of bands from this era that I really need to be aware of if I am to get along with my new band mates. I have never ever listened to the Get Up Kids until the exact moment that I'm typing this. I mentioned before that I missed the boat on a lot of bands of this era, and this is really good stuff. It's relevant to me now, even if it's only because I wish I was a different person when this was originally released. I want to be familiar with this music so that I can pretend I never was who I was. The music I listened to when I was between the ages of 14 and 21 are an embarrassing list of flash in the pan bands that I got caught up in, and I want to erase it.

But I know I can't. And I'm working on embracing that fact. But in the meantime, I'm gettin' all emo on everyone's ass, thanks to the greatest website ever for streaming music, Lala. I'm just trying to connect with a past I never lived. When I was trying to think of the genre of my new band, I immediately wanted to brand it punk/pop-punk. But I knew there was another layer to it, and more to it that that.

I'm pretty sure I'm in an emo band. Now, I'm trying to understand what that means.