6:05: Purchased 18 tallboys at 7/11. I now know what it feels like to be stunting like my Daddy.

6:25: The awkward moment when Justin Tuck realizes nobody wants to shake his hand.

6:33: Eli looks adequate thus far. Better than Sacha Baron Cohen’s next movie. Pickin’ that defense apart through the air.

6:36: Nevermind.

6:40: My esteemed colleague, Matt, has invented a Super Bowl drinking game.

6:41: Safety. Very non-Brady. He is still beautiful though.

6:42: Hudson just made Elton John her bitch.

6:47: Bradshaw only has an earring in his right year. Where I come from, people will beat you up for that.

6:51: Manning threads the needle to Cruz, and we got a 9-0 Giants lead.

6:52: OH MY GOD IS ZIMA BACK?!

6:57: Just got a text from a friend who alleges Bud Light Platinum is ‘gross.’ Damnit.

6:59: I wonder if the Patriots have more white receivers on their roster than BYU.

7:05: 9-3 after a New England field goal.

7:20: How am I not supposed to purchase my undergarments from H&M now.

7:34: LADIES LOVE GRONK.

7:36: I just got the biggest nerd boner. Real excited about Avengers. Also, I am buying flowers this Valentine’s day.

7:47: 10-9 Pats going into halftime after a Brady to Woodhead TD pass.

7:51: At halftime, I realize I am really not blogging to the best of my abilities. Pretty much every entry has been ~160 or less, so I could just be Tweeting all this. Sorry. I will do better. Maybe. Four pounders in, by the way.

8:05: Madonna is a little bit awkward. But her dancers are bangin’. And LMFAO are excellent as always.

8:13: I think it’s safe to say Madonna peaked a while ago. METTA WORLD PEACE.

8:19: ‘Imported from Detroit’ makes no fucking sense. And you’ve got to wonder if that ad was paid for with government bailout funds.

8:24: BRB my friend Phil and I just got 50 chicken wings.

8:28: Hernandez catches the Brady pass, and we got a 17-9 score. His celebration was confusing.

9:03: Alright, we got 17-15 New England and Brady just threw a deep deep interception. Wings were phenomenal in case you’re wondering. Old Bay Butter flavor. I highly recommend it.

9:06: Got really excited for the Broderick Honda commercial, and was a bit let down Like losing my virginity all over again, except the commercial was longer in duration.

9:23: So MIA did this.

9:25: I’m really excited to know the singer from The Darkness is still alive.

9:28: LADIES LOVE GRONK PART TWO:

9:30: Welker just had a huge drop. Collinsworth just said he will make that catch ’100 times out of 100,’ which is an impressive statement since it had just been disproven five seconds before he said it.

9:33: Mario Manningham is an OG.

9:41: I’m going to mute this if Al Michaels says ‘huge’ like the word doesn’t begin with an H one more time.

9:44: They let Bradshaw in. This is so intense. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone be more upset that they scored a touchdown in my life.

9:53: Game, blouses. Giants win.

Part one, with further explanation of my reasoning for this project is here.

I know this is not a Nickelback song. But I have two reasons I’ve decided to include it in my Nickelback analysis project anyway.

One: It is a song written mostly by Chad Kroeger and, to a lesser extent, Josey Scott (Saliva) that features a bunch of other musicians (most notably and surprisingly among them is probably Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron, who played in the recording but was not in the video). If it’s written by Kroeger, and his voice is included, it reminds me of Nickelback. Because when I think Nickelback, I immediately think of (and blame) Chad Kroeger. For a while after its release, I thought that Carlos Santana song with the singer from The Calling called ‘Why Don’t You & I?’ was actually sung by Kroeger, and I still think of Nickelback whenever I hear it, even though the band had absolutely nothing to do with the song. (Turns out, though, that Kroeger did do a song with Santana at one point.)

The second reason is much more difficult for me to deal with. At one point, I loved ‘Hero.’  I really did. I think for a while in the seventh grade it was my favorite song, one I listened to incessantly in the time leading up to the release of the Spider-Man movie. I would like to think I liked the song by proxy, since it was the theme song for the movie I really, really highly anticipated, but it’s also possible I would’ve liked the song a lot had it not been affiliated with the film in any way. I suppose we will never know.

:00—Typing the words ‘Chad Kroeger Hero’ together into the YouTube search bar was a difficult thing for me to do.

:05—Things open up with Spider-Man swingin’ on some web through NYC. He swings past a group of dudes who are playing music on the roof of a skyscraper, sans audience. Weird.

:10—Kroeger is so high he claims he can hear heaven. If this were true and not merely some sort of hallucination, if he could really hear what was happening up in heaven, his experience would serve as a useful example for the people out there attempting to dispel that whole ‘marijuana is the devil’s weed’ perception.

:20—He’s adamant about the aforementioned place up beyond the clouds he can/thinks he can hear. So adamant he repeated himself word-for-word.

:28—Ah, yes. Josey Scott, the singer from Saliva who looks like Roseanne if she had longer hair, a bunch of weird piercings, and a Strahan tooth gap.

:29—Apparently, heaven does not hear Kroeger. This is what he says, anyway. This could be used as an argument for the people who believe marijuana IS the devil’s weed, because, like, maybe Satan makes Kroeger think he’s hearing people/angels/deities upstairs talking about stuff, and he wants to have some sort of input or ask them a question or something but they can’t hear him.

I had a similar experience in a dream the other night, when I dreamt I had been playing that McDonald’s Monopoly game and had won $60 in anything I wanted from the menu. I was with a friend when I went to redeem some of it, and she purchased a small coffee, even though everyone knows McDonald’s currently has a $1 any size coffee promotion going on. I wanted to say, ‘Why wouldn’t you get a large coffee since it’s the same price, and if you don’t want all of it share it with someone or give the remainder to a homeless man, whatever. Just get the maximum you can for the money spent.’ But every time I opened my mouth to speak, no sound came out. It’s frustrating.

:37—They say that a hero can save ‘us,’ but Kroeger is not going to stand wherever he is and wait for this to happen. Nope. Instead, he will go with the more foolproof and proactive plan of holding onto the wings of a few fucking eagles and I guess fly away with them. (I acknowledge this would be a credible decision if Kroeger knew beforehand the hero we’re talking about was actually Tobey Maguire dressed with red and blue spandex and without a gun.)

:39—Josey Scott has a spiked collar on his neck. Click. Click. Boom.

:45—Look at that handlebar mustache! Is that Joe Flacco or the singer from Theory of a Dead Man? It’s the latter.

1:00—Josey’s turn to sing. He’s staring seductively (I use that term loosely) into the camera, talking about how someone told him about how love would not save us all, but would ‘all save us,’ which I hypothesize he wants to mean the same thing.

1:13–According to Josey, if you analyze the things love is responsible for, then the person who told him love would all save us was completely full of shit. We got: A.) A world full of killing, and B.) A world full of blood-spilling. He indicates both of these worldwide problems were given to us by love, which I think is kind of a stretch and could even be described as completely and utterly moronic. You could get into a very philosophical debate with Scott and/or Kroeger (whoever wrote the lyrics/decided they were performable) about the meaning of love and the role it has actually played in all of the terrible things that go on re: the world. This seems like something Tavis Smiley should make happen on his show.

Also, Scott does not cite his sources about who told him all this stuff about love. Could be somebody just went on Wikipedia and posted a bunch of nonsensical stuff about love and Scott visited the page before any administrator could remedy the inaccuracies.

1:24—Chorus again. Nothing new to report.

1:26—I just realized I’m listening to this song pretty loudly in my apartment, which has paper thin walls. I wonder if my neighbors are getting confused, because I’m in the process of clearing this place out to move elsewhere and have a few cardboard boxes filled with books in the hall outside my unit. I know I’d be confused if I saw some kid owned a bunch of books AND listened to Nickelback. I’d think I was neighbors with the progeny of Roald Dahl and Sable or something.

1:45—Ah, yes. Kroeger’s signature growling/moaning sound he seems to enjoy inserting into areas of songs where he doesn’t have any lyrics to contribute. Most people/musicians will settle for a moment of silence, whether it’s awkward or comfortable (Explosions in the Sky is really good at not using unnecessary lyrics!), but Kroeger likes to do his growl. This is a common indicator that someone is a serial date rapist, according to the same anonymous source who explained love to Josey Scott.

1:53—Kroeger follows the growl up with a guitar solo and a shot of himself Captain Morganing it on the building’s ledge while he plays with intermittent clips of handlebar playing along and Blake from Workaholics playing the drums. This is one of those moments where someone thinks they’re really, really cool in their heads but other people are like…’Come on, dude.’ I can’t read minds, but I’d bet a little money that Kroeger was thinking, during the filming of this part of the video, a variation of the words ‘Swag too long, teach, put away your ruler.’

2:02—Upside down kiss. Iconic.

2:03—So now that the world isn’t ending (because apparently it was going to before, which is I guess what we needed a hero and/or eagles to save us all from), these douchebags are going to send love to someone? Really? Who is going to accept that? When you think the world is ending, THAT’S when you should probably reveal/send your love to somebody. That’s when you put the chips down, man. Not after you’re like ‘Well, shit, we dodged that bullet. Guess I should tell that broad I am in love with her.’

2:12—Kroeger and Scott are worried this love they are sending out is inadequate, because it is not the love of a hero. Here’s something I never thought I’d say: Kroeger is absolutely right. If someone avoided a potentially apocalyptic occurrence by flying on the backs of eagles, and then came back afterward to let me know they loved me, I’d be more inclined to hold out for the hero who helped prevent the end of the world.

The thing that really bothers me about both these guys is they’re about as cool as the guys who wear their high school letterman jacket in college, but they’re both rich and famous, so they probably get to bang hot girls all the time.

3:10—WHOAAA-OOOOOHHHHH.

CONCLUSION: There are two possibilities re: this song. One is it makes almost no sense, in any way, and the other is that it makes perfect sense, except Chad Kroeger is on a much deeper and more poetic wavelength than I am. You could argue either one, I guess. 3 out of 10 THROATY GROWLS though, because it made me feel nostalgic for my childhood, when I was really into superheroes and their struggles with women. Also for reminding me of the upside-down kiss.

This year, however, I’ve decided to read every fortune cookie I get. I want to ruminate on what they mean, if anything, and if they have been/likely will be accurate predictions for my own future. Couldn’t hurt, right? They’re basically just going to be thinking prompts for my usually unguided and futuristic thoughts.

Here is a brief analysis of (some of) the fortune cookies I was given in January.:

(NOTE: I may have upset the way in which fortune cookies theoretically work, because I opened them all in one sitting instead of after finishing the meal they’d come with. Furthermore, I tend to get at least two cookies—OK, usually more—whenever I get takeout, because I order so much. Cosmically speaking, all of these cookies may not be meant for me, is what I’m saying. I equate this to pushing around the Quija board to make those in another dimension say that ________ totally wants to French you. Could be some bad karma.)

‘You will be reunited with old friends’: My Mom is coming to visit me soon. She’s my friend! Oh my god, it’s like these cookies know me. I hope it’s talking about my Mom, and not trying to make some sort of joke about ‘old friends,’ meaning I’ll soon be stricken with depression or athlete’s foot. Because in either case I’d be like ‘Hello old friend,’ in that menacing way people say it when they’re really not friends with the other person at all and they want to see them dead, possibly in an intense duel that ends with the former party holding the latter’s severed head in their hand and screaming about how they make Boba Fett look like a little bitch.

(…I just personified a cookie, a mental illness and a physical malady in a space of 100 words.)

‘Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment’: This is some advice I could and should really take into account. I have timid tendencies (bluntly: I’m a pussy), and I need to take more risks to put myself in a position I would like to be in. For instance: if I want all the ladies to like me, I should start lifting weights and pretending I do not care about female affection at all, in any way. Or, if I want to quit being so squeamish about public speaking, I should stage bomb some big gathering of people and sing that rap about the importance of the printing press I wrote once. At the end, I could toss the mic on the ground and scream, ‘Gutenberg, motherfuckers,’ and walk offstage. Nothing timid about that.

All life is not, however, an experiment. To say it is doesn’t even make any sense. I think this is obvious, and if you really want tangible proof, I can tell you it was once a status or part of a favorite quote or something on my little brother’s Facebook profile, a venue where nothing posted ever makes any logical sense.

‘Get your goals high and you will always move forward’: You know how sometimes you can get one word wrong in a sentence and it changes the entire meaning of what you were trying to say? I think this is the greatest example of that I have ever seen in my entire life. I’m assuming they meant ‘set’ your goals high, and that whomever writes fortune cookies doesn’t really want me to smoke my goals up. Because a.) drugs are bad, and b.) that would be completely impossible unless my goal was a person, which would be wrong in and of itself.

I bet it would be awesome to get this cookie when you were high, though.

‘The first blow does not fell the tree’: All I got from this was maybe I should reevaluate some things if I’m still not adult enough not to laugh every time I see or hear the word ‘blow.’ This slightly depresses, and makes me question my maturity and whether I should maybe start ‘acting my age, not my shoe size.’

‘Don’t take life too seriously; laugh and smile at it once in a while’: I feel better now.

‘Everyone has someone to love’: I do, and his name is Walter. My body pillow. (More personification.) But in all seriousness, this is kind of a dick fortune. What if somebody who is all lonely and unloved and shit is just really looking forward to some lo mein and spring rolls and some Sunday night HBO or whatever, and they open their fortune cookie to see this shit? It’s not going to make them feel very merry. They’ll be like, ‘even my fortune cookies are making fun of me.’ Not everyone has someone to love, you know. That’s why the people who do shouldn’t forget it, and shouldn’t need a fortune cookie to keep them from doing so.

‘Don’t be afraid to smile. You never know who’s falling in love with it!’: Apparently the people who write fortune cookies spent a lot of time trolling the AIM profiles of tween girls during George W. Bush’s first presidential term. Also, they were completely unaware that the best way to get girls is via brooding, or ‘The Ryan Atwood Way.’

‘The troubles you have now will pass away quickly’: Yeah. We’ll see if my man boobs start shrinking tomorrow. Maybe they would if I didn’t eat so much Chinese. I bet the writer’s intention wasn’t to move less product when he wrote that fortune, but serves him right.

I work for a newspaper in a Maryland town just south of Delaware. On the first of the year, Delaware became the eighth state where same-sex civil unions are legally recognized, and I was to report on it. This is a big deal because gay couples can now do things straight couples have been doing forever, like visit each other in the hospital, inherit property, jointly adopt children, share health benefits, and live together in nursing homes. There are hundreds of others, too. Basically, they get the state’s legal perks of being married without technically being married. The legislation clearly states that marriage is still between a man and a woman, which is kind of bullshit. The only reasoning you ever hear for this you ever hear are religious ones, and I’m really hoping my generation is the first one to actually honor that whole “separation of church and state” thing that gets ignored in a very blatant way that should be reserved only for the Kardashians and Rick “I-compensate-for-my-lack-of-intelligence-by-pandering-to-people-like-myself-who-also-hate-gays-out-of-antiquated-and-irrational-fear” Perry. Also Bachmann, that crazy, crazy bitch. My nickname for her is even longer, but riddled with words I learned from Trainspotting that would upset my Mom if she saw them printed here.

Actually, someone did try to make the argument with me recently that same-sex unions and/or marriages should not be allowed because people who aren’t gay could get married to basically acquire the benefits being married affords while not being much more than roommates. This is ridiculous. The only non-religious, non-legal thing that really separates married people from being roommates who are like really super good lifelong friends is sex, and sex is not a marriage requirement. I mean, my parents have been married for more than a quarter-century and they’ve only ever had sex four times. You know, to make their four progeny, who upon finding out this was how we were created formed a family band called Minus the Stork. I’m sure there are also couples out there who never have boned once, for one reason or another.

This person then decided to say it would “make a mockery out of marriage,” which is something I think occurs more on a case-by-case basis that has nothing to do with sexual preference. Anyone can make a mockery of anything if they try hard enough. Tiger Woods and Anthony Weiner are straight to frightening excess, and they performed a roast on matrimony via their junk and a couple of smart phones.

Andrew had explained to me that I would be attending a small official ceremony they were having to make things official before heading out on a cruise (hopefully not that Italian one), and that there was going to be a larger party at the end of the month. They set up video cameras from different angles to tape the event for posterity, to show everyone at the party, and maybe a son or daughter someday, that they had indeed put a ring on it. Terry told me he and his man had been together for 14 years in the eyes of family, friends, and God, starting the day they had a backyard wedding ceremony. This forthcoming ceremony was something they were doing for the legal purposes. “To finally be able to take care of each other in sickness and in health feels great,” he told me, and I wish I could find a way to describe how elated he seemed to be feeling when he said it.

The union was performed at noon on a Wednesday, with only 10 people present, including myself and a photographer, who I suppose was my plus one. Andrew and Terry weren’t suited up; they were wearing bow ties, blazers and jeans. It was all very low-key. I’ve been to weddings that were extravagant, with people who were deeply in love and all of that stuff, but they were not as special in some ways as Terry and Andrew’s union. I don’t want to trivialize straight weddings and say they aren’t special, because many of them are, and extremely so. Almost half of them result in lasting marriages, too. But there’s something about being in love with someone for so long, and knowing you would make it legal if only you could. To be allowed after years of the opposite is something special and emotionally charging. If Romeo and Juliet had triumphed and gotten married, that would’ve been a really exciting ceremony, too. For those of us who are straight, marriage has never been something we’ve been told we legally cannot do. We decide we want to get married, then we plan out a celebration of our love, or we go to Vegas or the local courthouse. We’ve never had to endure any governmental resistance.

Vows were exchanged along with kisses, then there was some applause and it was over. It only took maybe 10 minutes, but they were a very touching 10 minutes. Photographer and I have differing stories re: whether tears were shed by one or both parties. They offered me some champagne in a paper cup, which I think was either because it was a spur of the moment thing, or because they like Death Cab.

The most amazing moment happened just before the ceremony started. This was when I realized just how special this event really was. Terry had finished setting up his final camera, and he was looking around smiling. He said, ‘Is it really time to finally do this?’

And I was like, in my head, ‘You bet your sweet ass it is.’ No homo.

So, I had put those aspirations on the backburner. The plan was to wait until I finished the teleportation device I’ve been working on, which would get me real paid so I could then start donating a sizable percentage of my income while dedicating another chunk of it to acquiring an Adamantium skeleton or some other superpower. (That was a Wolverine reference.)

But then, a few days ago, I sat down and talked with a dude named Michael Waite for 10 minutes. He’s the director of a local blood bank, and I was interviewing him in Ocean City for a newspaper story about an annual blood drive that was in its first of a two-day run.

Two things he told me that really resonated are that blood donation literally saves lives, and that he and his colleagues believe blood donation is the best philanthropy out there, because of that whole life-saving thing, and also because allowing someone to tap a vein and take a pint of your life force is more personal and intimate than writing out a check. Each donation yields three “units,” so you can save as many as three lives per visit, he added.

Whoa, I thought. I can be a philanthropist without money entering the equation, AND I can save lives without entering into a scenario where I am likely to get my ass kicked? All of this without exuding pretty much any effort at all? It seemed too good to be true, like it might negatively affect my credit rating or something.

‘How often can you donate?’ I asked. Every 56 days, he said. I did some math, and, according to my calculations (which are probably wrong but at least in the ballpark), if I donate as often as possible in the next six years, I can save as many as 117 lives. Before I turn 30. That’s a lot of lives. You know what I call that number? I call that a ‘Superman Statistic.’ If I donated frequently, Bruce Wayne wouldn’t have shit on me.

On my way out, I made an appointment for the next day.

________

I left the office for the blood drive, which was held at the convention center in town. My iPOD shuffled up Celine Dion’s ‘It’s All Coming Back To Me Now,’ and I immediately decided it would become my blood donation anthem. For reasons I can’t explain, it pumps me up—literally, it’s inexplicable. Especially that part where she just hauls off and screams ‘BABY BABY BABAYYYYY.’ I decided I would listen to it in the car every time I was on my way to give some red, kind of like how the Foo Fighters’ ‘There Goes My Hero’ came on whenever Johnny Moxon/James VanDerBeek was gonna do something awesome in that one Varsity Blues scene.

First thing they did was give me a free T-shirt. Then, they sat me down in this little makeshift cubicle and pricked my finger to check my iron content. It was normal, and so was my blood pressure. They followed this up by having me take a touch screen questionnaire on a laptop. Said questionnaire is extremely invasive (and for good reason; you have to keep that supply clean). It asks you all kinds of questions, many about your sex life. When that’s done, they come over and check your answers to make sure you still qualify for a donation. The woman I was working with questioned me about my vaccination history — I had marked ‘yes’ that I had had a vaccination in the past eight weeks, but it wasn’t one that prohibited me from achieving philanthropy. This leads me to believe they will repeat whatever question it is you answer that could disqualify you, to see whether you made a mistake or not. So, from now on I will have an opportunity every two months to accidentally answer a question that will lead to an uncomfortable situation.

Here’s an example:

Phlebotomist: ‘Have you ever had sex for money?’

Me: *Giggling* Oops! Did I say yes?! My finger must have slipped, because of course I haven’t had sex for money. Wait. Does that mean money in the traditional sense, or anything that could be construed as currency? Like, say, theoretically, Skittles. Not that I would have sex for Skittles. I don’t even like Skittles. Wait, do you have Skittles?

________

They finally gave me a donation kit and directed me to a sunbathing chair, where Samantha, my Phlebotomist for the day, told me to roll my right sleeve up. I did her one better by pulling my cardigan off and tossing it on the ground, which is like the lesser, hipster-flavored version of Clark Kent going into a phone booth and ripping off his button-up. (NOTE: How many shirts did that dude go through? He never, ever would unbutton them in a civil manner. He’d just rip them off. I’m going to write Dean Cain a fan letter and ask him.)

Sarah and Jenn, my friends and coworkers, had tried to conquer their fear of needles and blood a couple weeks before by going to a blood bank to donate. Neither had succeeded, by no fault of their own. I’d told them I’d signed up to give blood, and since I like to pretend I’m really masculine—like 200 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal masculine, even if my favorite pastime is reading books and/or weeping for no good reason—I went full-bore with the whole process. When Samantha told me she was going to insert that gauged needle in my arm, that it was ‘the time to look away if I wanted to,’ I stared straight at my arm and watched it go in. I wouldn’t recommend this if it is your first time donating. Or ever, really. It’s completely unnecessary and sort of unsettling.

The blood started pumping, and I sat there squeezing a little foam ball every 8-10 seconds, to keep my flow strong. Samantha and I jawed about our respective jobs, where we’d come from, how long we’d been living on the shore, etc.. Mostly, we talked about how great the music was that had been playing through the speakers in the convention center room we were in, which resembled a large warehouse, except instead of boxes it was full of people getting blood taken from their bodies. Like something from True Blood, maybe, except nobody was naked. When she’d needled me, ‘Build Me Up, Butter Cup’ had been playing. I don’t remember what the next song to come on was, because I was too busy sitting in the chair sending a text message to Jenn that said, ‘I’m texting as I do it. Boom,’ and feeling kind of woozy, like I had just skulled two Zimas in rapid succession.

Samantha removed the needle and bandaged me up. She told me to hold my arm above my head for a minute, and while this happened the ‘Cupid Shuffle’ came on. Some of the blood bank employees began dancing. Samantha told me this song had been playing regularly every couple hours during the drive, and that the Phlebotomists and others would stop what they were doing if they could and, well, do the shuffle.

‘That is like, one of maybe three or so dances I actually do in public,’ I said. She encouraged me to go join in with a group in the center of the room who were doing the dance on my way over to get some free pizza.

‘You know, if you’re not too dizzy,’ she said. Natch, I was dizzy as hell, but I don’t think I’ve ever done that dance when I was anything less than dizzy, so I joined in.

So to recap. If you give blood, you can (potentially) do the following: save lives, be philanthropic, obtain a free T-shirt, do the ‘Cupid Shuffle,’ and eat free pizza.

Do some good, if you can. Someday, you might need it in return.

]]> http://scottmuska.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/blood-donation-is-vaguely-philanthropic-slightly-heroic/feed/ 1 scottmuska http://scottmuska.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/analyzing-nickelback-part-one-photograph/ http://scottmuska.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/analyzing-nickelback-part-one-photograph/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:05:19 +0000 scottmuska http://scottmuska.wordpress.com/?p=121 Continue reading →]]> This is the first in a multi-part series where I try to analyze the feelings of hatred I harbor toward Nickelback, a band I seem to spend more energy disliking than would be required to pretend they simply did not exist. I will do this by subjecting myself to the band’s songs, videos and maybe some other materials. Feel free to email me analysis suggestions at srm5082@gmail.com.

I’m being honest? I used to dig the song ‘How You Remind Me’ when I was in sixth or seventh grade. Then, I was really into that ‘Hero’ song Chad Kroeger did with Josey Scott (the singer from Saliva). Like, really into it, though I maintain this had to do with my slight obsession with the Spider-Man movie for which it was the theme song. If I’d had YouTube back then, I probably would’ve watched and re-watched the video they made for that song, which was mostly Kroeger and Scott singing on a roof with occasional shots from the movie spliced in.

So, I didn’t always hate Nickelback. I liked them when I was in middle school, a period of my life when I thought George W. Bush should be a president, and when I would get in fights with my brother where I would vehemently oppose his viewpoint that Conor Oberst was a better lyricist than Chris Carrabba. I also wore Fubu wave caps and wanted my Mom to let me get my hair braided so I could be more like Allen Iverson. What I’m trying to illustrate is that three-year period was one where I experienced temporary insanity.

I can’t tell you when I started to dislike Nickelback. There’s not a precise moment that stands out. It was probably something that built up over time, as I began to realize how awful their lyrics were, how every song sounded cheaply similar. This happened during a time when I really started to value lyrics and music in general, and my distaste probably had to do with hearing Nickelback songs EVERYWHERE when I knew there were so many amazing artists out there who were getting no mainstream love.

It got worse a few weeks before my 2006 high school graduation,  when my classmates and I got to vote on a class song. We were given a slip of paper with five choices, one of which was ‘Photograph.’ I do not remember any of the other choices, but I do know that Vitamin C’s ‘Graduation’ was not one of them, and neither was Alice Cooper’s ‘School’s Out,’ so I wrote in the Ben Folds cover of Dr. Dre’s seminal and timeless classic ‘Bitches Ain’t Shit’ and hoped for the best.

A majority of my classmates picked ‘Photograph,’ despite it being a song wherein the (alleged) protagonist openly admits to not having even graduated from high school. Talk about cheapening a moment that is (supposedly) one of life’s most important. I wonder if any of them picked it just so they could be reminded for the rest of their lives that, in at least one way, they outdid Chad Kroeger. I recall complaining to my Mom and also to my print media teacher about the selection. Mom was nonplussed—not her class, not her problem—and she told me her class song was ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ That did not make me feel better. Teach said she ‘kind of liked it.’ This is how I knew for sure it was a terrible song.

I think this was when I started to hate the band.

Since then, I’ve been pretty vocal and serious about my Nickelback hatred. A while back, one of my friends asked me why I hate them so much. All I could say is that their lyrics are terrible and their songs sound the same. You could say that about a lot of bands I feel merely indifferent about. Some I actually enjoy may fit this mold, as well. I started to wonder if maybe I’ve just been an insolent douche this whole time about Nickelback, if maybe I’ve just been drinking too much haterade and directing the side effects toward those distortion-using Canucks for no reason. If I have, then I’ll issue a mea culpa. To find out, I’ll subject myself to many things Nickelback. I’ll either dispel my hatred for them, or I’ll be able to form a clear thesis on why that hatred remains, if it does.

First up: an analysis of the song and video, ‘Photograph.’

:01 — The video opens with Kroeger holding a photograph to the camera and urging the watcher/listener to look at it. It hadn’t occurred to me until just now how much this song relies on people to either be looking at something (i.e. the objects in the music video) or visualizing what Kroeger is pointing out—his photograph, house, school, what that dude Joey is wearing, arcade, etc. This would be fine, except for the fact that Kroeger does not provide any details about these objects. You just know they are there, and that you’re supposed to be checking them out.

:09— Red eye in photos occurs ‘when using a photographic flash very close to the camera lens (as with most compact cameras), in ambient low light,’ according to Wikipedia. (eff SOPA/PIPA amirite?) Also, the sclera, or white part of your eye, can get red/bloodshot as a side effect of smoking marijuana. One, the other or both could be the answer to the question, ‘How did our eyes get so red?’

:12— Nobody knows what in the hell that is on Joey’s head. Probably a hat. Maybe a coon skin cap (which I suppose is a variation of a hat). Could be a bike helmet. Nobody knows. This was clearly just a line inserted because Kroeger wanted something to rhyme with ‘red.’ He didn’t pull off the rhyme-a-bunch-of-random-shit-and-hope-people-dig-it songwriting style as well as the Lyte Funky Ones, who executed it brilliantly and with seemingly no effort. Example: Shoobie doo wop and Scooby Snacks/ I met a fly girl and I can’t relax. Next. Level. Shit.

:15— Kroeger/the protagonist he is portraying wants to show you the house where he grew up. The present owner may or may not have fixed it up, but Kroeger leans more toward the hypothesis that he has.

:30— The school in the video is called Hanna. Kroeger did indeed grow up in Hanna, Alberta. One would assume this is where he really went to school, and that the decrepit gym he and the band begin playing in is where he had to do whatever it is Canadians do in gymnasiums. There is shit strewn about everywhere in this room. Looks like it could never be used for basketball, and I guess maybe it wasn’t since Steve Nash didn’t grow up in Hanna and is the only Canadian person to ever play basketball. (I didn’t mean that literally, Jamaal Magloire.)

:45— He wonders if it’s too late, if he should go back and try to graduate. (Why I think this is a terrible graduation song.) Makes me think of Never Been Kissed a little bit. If there was a reality television show wherein Chad Kroeger went back to his alma mater to get his degree, I would watch the fuck out of it. You know the soundtrack would be all Nickelback and, like, Theory of a Deadman, and there would be all of these dramatic, slow motion cuts where Kroeger is having an inordinate amount of difficulty with a Trig test he needs to pass if he wants to walk with his classmates and avoid the black hole that is summer school. Also: I envision him getting put in detention for doing that weird growling/moaning thing he does in his songs, because it was weirding all the girls out when he was doing whilst decorating cupcakes in Home Economics.

1:16— I just realized I have very few memories of walking out the front door of my parents’ house. My usual point of egress was the garage…

1:42— There is a guy in a Canadian tuxedo walking through a junkyard. That is all.

1:58— I hope the dude rocking out with his acoustic on top of that truck is the truck’s owner. I would’ve been real pissed if somebody tried to stand on my car like that. I hate when people don’t respect others’ belongings. The only time I’ve punched someone in the face who is not my older brother was in seventh grade, when this kid put on my new Iversons and started running around outside with them. Just had a flashback, and now I’m pissed off all over again. (NOTE: Two Iverson references in a blog post about Nickelback. I’m confident this has never been done anywhere else.)

2:12— KISS HER MANNNNNN. KISS HER IN THE TRAIN YARD YOU DIRTY, DIRTY DOG!!!!!

2:14— I’m now thinking about the first girl I kissed. She is about to have her first child (the first apple of Kroeger’s eye has had a couple), and I have not seen her since I don’t know when. I’m starting to empathize with a Nickelback song. My friend also just informed me Kroeger has cut off his goofy golden locks. I feel the hate slightly dissipating.

2:22— The aforementioned weird growling/moaning? Yep, right here.

3:25— If Kroeger could relive those days, he knows the one thing that would never change…BUT HE DOESN’T TELL US. How is he going to leave us hanging like that? Why hint that you know about it when you’re not going to tell us? The hatred is back.

CONCLUSION: This is a terrible song, as I’d suspected. It doesn’t make me look forward to the next song I’ll make myself listen to repeatedly. It gets 2 out of 10 THROATY GROWLS, ’cause of the brief moment of empathy and the kissing.

Here’s the story about why I am doing what I do. It’s a question I ask myself frequently. There are two reasons, actually, one of which I can take care of speedily before launching into my anecdotes:

I’m really terrible at math.

________

I spent more time in cars than most kids. My parents had three other children, all close in age—they were mad busy in the sack from ’85-’90—and my Mom would lug us all over the place in one of those wood-paneled station wagons, and then a conversion van, during the years we were too young to stay at home alone. We all had our activities, and my younger brother had to go see a lot of doctors and therapists during his formative years, many of whom were specialists who worked far away from our home. It wasn’t uncommon during the summers to sit in a car most of the day, only getting out to sit some more in waiting rooms.

So, I read a lot, and I was good at it. (Mom was adamant I do Hooked On Phonics ®, which I hated at the time but am now eternally grateful for.) Reading was just about all I could do in the car, unless I wanted to sit there and focus on Mom’s constant playing of Bob Carlisle and Celine Dion songs. (Challenge: find another 24-year-old straight dude who knows every single word to “Butterfly Kisses.”) If I were one of those people who became carsick when they read, I’m really not sure what I would be doing right now—washing cars, maybe.

I was a huge fan of Shel Silverstein and Tomie dePaola, two guys who wrote AND illustrated their own stuff. I would read and re-read their books and be like, “Oh, I could do this,” which seems laughable to me now, but I began sketching in a book and writing out stories and poems. I wrote a poem called “Life” that got published in this anthology that I think published everything sent its way. We had this creative writing assignment in second grade where I went above and beyond the requirement on this story about Freddie Kruger, a villain I found very intriguing/frightening but knew nothing about, because I wasn’t permitted to watch Nightmare on Elm Street. In third grade, my Mom took me to this creative writing camp for children.

I got these perforated sheets of paper and, using our revolutionary color printer, made myself some business cards. They said, “SCOTT MUSKA, AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATOR” and I’m pretty sure they didn’t have a phone number or any way people could get in contact with me.  I don’t recall whether this was something I accidentally neglected to include, or if my parents forbade me from disclosing my whereabouts because of stranger danger. It’s a shame, though, because I’m sure I would’ve made bank from people who commissioned me to ghostwrite their memoirs, if only they knew where to find me.

Eventually, I came to the realization that I could not draw well at all, that from practicing I would get better at writing, but my level of drawing/painting ineptitude seemed to stagnate. So, I decided I would just go ahead and be a writer. I messed around a little bit with short stories and poems, never really following through with anything (probably because I was in grade school and had no ambition beyond acquiring and eating Lunchables and Gushers at every available opportunity). This lasted until about halfway through fifth grade, when I was 11 years old and decided I wanted to make my own magazine. This happened out of nowhere. I enlisted the help of five or so friends, and hosted my first ever editorial meeting. Each pal was in charge of writing some things they would give to me to type up and print out at my house. We would sell them to kids in class. There were sports stories, and some other stuff. There was a relationship advice column (I still write those) with questions we posed ourselves and signed with some weird pseudonym. I don’t really remember what else was included, or what we named it.

I printed out a bunch of copies, and busted one out for my friends to look at during indoor recess one day. We were all gathered around, checking it out, when Miss Davis, a woman whose job it was to monitor us during recess and at lunch, asked us what we were looking at.

I did not want Miss Davis to see this. Now would be a good time for me to mention that the magazine had some inappropriate language in it, including multiple uses of the word ‘fuck.’ Fifth grade was that age where my friends and me began using swear words around one another because we thought it made us seem badass, but we knew better than to let ‘em fly around parents or other authority figures. At 11, we still had that perception that cursing is something bad that is justifiably punishable. (This is probably why young boys even start using swear words to begin with. If you tell a kid from birth that he can’t use the word ‘ramshackle,’ he’s totally going to want to use that word. Especially if Bruce Willis uses it repeatedly in this awesome movie your Dad let you watch one night when your Mom was out with her friends.)

Davis grabbed the magazine, looked through it, and then she gave it to my teacher, Miss Frederick, who read it, blanched, and kind of glared at me, but didn’t really say much to me about it. At the end of the day, I asked if I was going to be in any trouble for it. I was scared out of my mind.

‘We’ll see after I talk to your Mom,’ she said, and notified her she would be calling my home that evening to set up a little parent-teacher exchange with her for the next day.

 ‘Fuck,’ I thought.

________

Mom met with Miss Frederick the next morning. I’d come clean to her about what she was going to hear, but when I was summoned to the hall outside of my classroom to talk with my Mom, she was crying. To actually hold those stapled together pieces of paper where normally her well-behaved child used some really bad language and referenced things he wasn’t even close to understanding had given her a shock. I apologized profusely, and was surprised that she seemed to be okay after she’d finished her brief crying sesh. The language was what she was upset about, not the intent. She was impressed I’d taken the initiative to do something like what I had with the ‘zine. She thought it was good. I couldn’t believe she’d even been able to see at all beyond the bad part of what had happened. She went home, I went back to class, and it was never spoken of again. And she has never once tried to dissuade me from writing. In fact, the level of encouragement I get from her and my Dad is unreal.

________

I don’t think I decided for sure I wanted to write professionally that day. It’d be stupid to say so, because in fifth grade I had no idea what implications would even come with saying, ‘This is what I want to do the rest of my life.’ If anything, getting in trouble with my parents because of it was kind of disenchanting.

Eventually, the disenchantment wore off. I kept reading and writing and swearing. All three continued to grow on me, and I found myself doing the former two as my last activities before sleep almost every night. I started writing for my school paper in ninth grade, and for myself in Moleskine journals at home. It became increasingly apparent that I was better on paper than I am anywhere else (though this isn’t to say I’m good at writing, it’s more to say that I’m not really very articulate verbally). In 10th grade, I looked up the median salary for print journalists and, when that didn’t make me not want to do it, I knew it would be my college major and subsequent profession. I may or may not have had an Open Diary.

I learned that words can get a reaction from people. Sometimes, from only one, and sometimes from lots of them. If you have the ability to write, and you have something worth saying that people will enjoy, then you should go ahead and do that if you feel like it. Just like how if you want to put people to sleep before operations, or you want to bring mail to people, then you should go ahead and try to be an anesthesiologist or a mailman, respectively.

So that’s what I’m doing now: I’m trying, and writing here and everywhere else people will permit me to is probably the best way I can think of to succeed.

I’ll end with this, the series of moments that transpired when I was 20—at the end of my sophomore year of college—when I decided I would at least haphazardly dedicated myself to writing. I was in a rough patch. My little brother, who has faced near-constant adversity since he was born, had a couple of seizures and was diagnosed with epilepsy. This weighed deeply on my family. Then, a couple days after that diagnosis, I got my heart broken by a girl late at night in a rainy parking lot. I was sitting in my off-campus bedroom during finals week a few days later. I’d just gotten six bracelets (one for each family member) in the mail that were fabled to bring good luck and ward off evil. I’m a symbolic person. I figured I’d hand them out for Mother’s Day. I wrote a letter to my parents to go with the bracelets; I suppose it was pretty sentimental.

My Mom cried a lot more when she read that than she did that day in the elementary school hall a decade before, but the tears this time were for a different reason. A good reason. I figured I may as well continue attempting to increase the good-to-bad ratio.

So, yeah, here I am.