FUCK YOU 1995!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

8th grade did suck, though.

best friend from high school died in a car wreck
decided to start drinking and smoking
i don't remember listening to any good music that year
my dog died
denied to my top university choice

fall 1995: new classes with 2 new groups of awesome friends, was on newspaper (aka excuse to go fuck around and "interview" people and not sit in class), was in drama class (aka another good place to fuck around and not do class-like things), had a generally great time. my parents decided i was depressed. lolz.

8th grade journalism class field trip to news channel 7!
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/166/360126786_b63b85dd44.jpg?v=0

with silly labels (i did not add these but lol)
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/151/360126789_be35bb776e.jpg?v=0

note: have discussed this pic w/ old friends. no one can figure out who the 'who the hell is that????!' kid is! how sad for him :(

everybody at school was still into nirvana at the start of the year but had fragmented off into gangsta rap or britpop by the end. also I got to do philosophy class because I was, ahem, a "gifted" student.

http://scoopsnoodle.com/lix/95.jpg

i liked a few rock bands a lot at the time: grifters, red red meat, versus, gbv, kicking giant, august sons, rockateens, railroad jerk and rex. and it was rad to get to see some authentic hillbilly and gospel type stuff in person.

i was living with my not-yet-ex-wife (then girlfriend) in chattanooga, tn: getting paid in magic beans as a grant writer/ arts administrator plus writing a bit for 'artforum and 'the voice' but mostly for like the two worst possible outlets ('ny press' and 'raygun' -- had good editors at both but still yecccccch so embarrassing that i did stuff for both those outlets).

yr right: fuck 1995, in both eye sockets.

YAY!

i would just like to take this opportunity to clarify: my post was not some sort of sweet reference to how much i partied in college. i just spent the last half hour thinking abt it and while i do have plenty of memories of those years i really have no idea which ones were in 95 or what order or whatever. also i did not go to college. that is all thanks for yr time.

virgin, obvs.

on the plus side, i got to hang out with my awesome grandpa (chemist, professor, used to do radio narration and act a bit [deeeeep gruff yet amazingly sonorous smoker's voice], and could yodel fucking wild). we'd play cards and cook, him always with a highball of Old Grandad on the rocks during dinner prep, listening to Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook. he died in 97.

also, i got into Rancid, NoFX, and the Dead Kennedy's at the beginning of 5th grade. first issue of MRR bought at Borders. skated my fucking brains out. smoked my first cigarette. stole beer from my friend's momz fridge for the first time.

woah, 95 was nuts.

http://www.noiseboxmedia.com/dad/uploaded_images/Ben%20-%208th%20Grade%20Graduation-761797.jpg

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/78227817-S.jpg

church youth group trip to L.A., me and STEVE and BRANDON formed a kazoo band and went around the santa monica pier playing for peoples money. i played mine into a CHERRY ICEE

god i was a lame kid

-- more grease in the pianissimo. (melissais...), January 17th, 2007.

nah i didn't get to. i was miffed!

speaking of News channel 7, my best friend Sean works at News 4. he's the sound guy there.

http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/cc/crowes95.html

then we realized we didn't know how to

1995 was end of junior year/beginning of senior year of high school. i remember it as being an exceptionally miserable time, but i wonder now how much of that misery was typical teenage hormonal shit. for the last two years of school i pretty well retreated from all humanity and lived in my room more or less, basically just living in a world defined by music, comic books, occasionally getting drunk, and hating the world around me. (oh, shit.)

i dressed in the same black t-shirt, jeans, and chuck taylors combo almost every day. flannel shirts when it got cold. a big green army jacket. i wasn't exactly fashion forward for most of high school.

bands i was obsessed with: husker du, the minutemen, wu tang, superchunk, fugazi, public enemy, the clash. i probably had some rave tapes and maybe a CD or two (i had stopped going when alexis left) but living in suburban PA pre-internet (for us po' folks anyway) meant i couldn't really make heads or tails of them until about 18 months later when the ELECTRONICA EXPLOSION meant that you could buy this shit in sam goody.

i worked at a landscape nursery in the summer and fall. in the summer it was mostly humping trees and 100 lb. bags of fertilizer back and forth from the lot to peoples cars and trucks. in the fall i got to move inside and set up the CHRISTMAS SHOPPE, which was actually fucking awful and kinda ruined christmas that year because when yr decorating trees in october, it's kinda hard to care by late december.

my parents bought a new house in december of '94 and we moved in just after the new year. we were always basically working class, and this was a huge old farm house with a barn on a three acre property. it was their white whale, basically. we spent most of that winter, spring, and summer fixing it up. when the barn was fixed up, my sister used to put on shows there, and those were great. 200 high school and college kids and 6 or 8 or 10 indistinguishable local punk bands (and the occasional great one that i still listen to) going nuts. the best was my dad standing at the end of the driveway telling the cops to fuck off and come back when we were actually violating a noise ordinance, by which time the show would always be over. my sister also had her own band, which if i ever rip the demo tape to mp3, she would actually kill me.

i forget who i was talking to about this the other day (ethan?) but any time i see a photo of myself from before, like, 25, i wish i could go back in time and warn him. (like, play some sports, fatty.) but alas.

On the plus side, discovered Tekken 2 and played too much of it. Moved out of my shitty 1st dorm room and into a far better 2nd dorm room. Finally got Trumpet Winsock working so i could browse the web from home. Played lots of X-com 2. Got far better at acoustic guitar. Saw lots of killer Michigan hockey games. Listened to a lot of Zappa & Concrete Blonde.

had long hair that was unbelievably girly, horrible idea in retrospect

spent most of my time hanging out with a different group of friends, kind of drifting away from old friends in the process. not at all helped by the fact that my parents opted to move five miles south of the city. there was an awkward birthday party where my different friends came over and it seemed pretty cool for a while but didn't really work

finished my first year of school spending half the time at our area's magnet school for smart kid classes. didn't seem like it at the time, but there was some minor culture shock involved. things were really good, if weird. ended up talking to the guy who was pretty much my new best friend all the time, but he was kind of an insecure dick in many ways and seemed to like keeping me down whenever we were in a group. my self-confidence was already pretty ripped up from a couple years of middle school where some kids with disciplinary problems were constantly fucking with me, so 1995 was probably the year where I started being a lot more insular.

spent a lot of time thinking about computer games but not really able to do anything about it because my computer was outdated. my life was pretty much ruined (or recreated) the next year with new pc + internet access.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/Kiss_of_death_dvd_cover.jpg

F.A.B. = FUCKED AT BIRTH.

So I get this job at Affiliated Foods Headquarters out in fucking Edina or somewhere. I'm driving my Cavalier down the interstate at 60 in fourth gear. I scope the parking lot for a space on an incline where I can coast backward at the end of the day, or at the very least, has a wall or sign in front of the space where I can shove off and run and jump back into the car. A little ghostriding the whip from 0 to 15.

I was filling in for this woman who had gone on vacation. Her cubicle included lots of losing-weight "Cathy"-like inspirational phrases taped to the walls, a map of Australia overlayed onto a map of the U.S. - something that I'd like to find again, and a panorama of the Jerusalem that stretched from one side of the cubicle, behind her typewriter, to the other side of the cubicle. I usually read "City Pages" and waited for one of the three times of the day that I'd deliver office mail. Strictly on an hourly wage and excluding whatever bonuses I get now, that temp job was my highest paying job.

The boss told me that Friday was "casual day". I was looking forward to losing the tie. I showed up in blue jeans and a flannel shirt. Everyone else was wearing khakis and golf shirts. Fortunately, it was my last day there.

(I still kinda miss my car that looked like this:

http://www.sarpy.com/sheriff/auction/images/41-Gry-91-Chevy-Cavalier-10.jpg )

haha yeah, I got that video in the mail from Nintendo Power and I was TOTALLY EXCITED.

I think all I did in 1995 was play video games and drink chocolate milk

i was in grad school and enduring a broken engagement. working my ASS off, like incredible fuck-off hours. mom almost died, but she made it through, love ya momma. truly fucked my ankle in a not-that-sketchy skateboarding maneuver. started torrid affair with SF, fell completely out of love with LA (such a sleazy bitch) within a year.

and so much more happened, just pull-up noizepickle.xls for the full re-cap.

This is me.

on the right

m.

I basically quit school in 1993 to play "Castle Wolfenstein".

i never played video games. my parents refused, our computers always sucked, and... i never liked them after 6th grade or so?

-- Pleasant Plains /// (pleasant.plain...), January 18th, 2007 4:57 AM. (Pleasant Plains ///) (later)

hahaha me too with doom 2. thank you alternative high schools!!!