who i am - blink 182

Blink 182's new album Neighborhoods came out today. As many people know I'm a huge Blink 182 fan. A little over a year ago I wrote an essay about how they affect my life. This essay is very much about me and what I think of Blink 182. I hope you enjoy.

It’s a balmy eighty degrees on a late Sunday night in September. The air is stale with a hint of body odor whiffing through the room. The television is blaring as four newly married couples start to play Guitar Hero. I hold the mic close to my dry pinkish slightly chapped lips. The sweat is starting to bead up on my forehead as I wait for the song start to play. Allison’s guitar riff starts firsts on the television. Red, green, green red, yellow. I jump up a foot in the air my legs bending a little in true punk rock fashion as I yell in to the mic, “Take your pants off!” a classic rebel cry for Mark Hoppis and Tom Delong. These are not the words to the song that just started on the television. I don’t care the lyrics haven’t started yet I’m primed to rock out as if this was my last night on earth. I’m just buzzing hearing that opening riff on the guitar played on my television. I’m no longer a twenty-eight year-old unemployed loser playing Guitar Hero in his living room to escape reality, but a dorky fifteen year-old.

There are very few things and moments in a person’s life that they can point to and say this has changed my life forever. I no longer want to be my old self, but a new person. This one song, this one band helped form my personality, the essence of who I have become over the last fourteen years. I can name a few different things that have done this in my life, but there is one thing that is so defining that it changed the course of my life: Blink 182. No other band had more influence on me as a teen. One song changed my life from dork to punk. Not the 70’s Clash punk or the 2000’s emo, but a true 90’s short-haired pop punk band. The only kind of punk I have ever wanted to be. To this day I would say I’m still a 90’s pop punker just waiting for the next Blink 182 album, which is coming.

When I was fifteen I wasn’t actively searching for anything to change me. I was happy listening to Sugar Ray’s album Floored. I was happy with my crappy hair cut with the part on the side when I put a pound of gel in it. I was happy sitting in my house being just what my parents wanted me to be. But I wasn’t happy; I just didn’t know it yet. How can you know you’re not happy when you’ve never experienced anything? How can you know you’re happy when you’ve never really had great joy? My home just got cable television a few months earlier. Before that we only had PBS in the house. I was experiencing MTV for the first time; it still played a couple music videos at this time. Not all the time, but at least enough to find new music. Music I would have never been exposed to without it. I remember hearing “Dammit” for the first time on MTV.

It’s alright to tell me what you think about me, I won’t try to argue or hold it against you. I know that you’re leaving you must have your reasons. The season is calling, your pictures are falling down.

Those first words sung by Mark Hoppis with three cords played by Tom Delong was a spiritual awaking for me. No longer did I have to listen to Top 40 crap on the radio. No longer did I have to be nice and pretend I liked everyone. No longer did I have to have a lame 50’s-style haircut that never worked with my hair. No longer did I have to try and discover who I was. No longer did I have to wonder if the Spice Girls were the best girl group on the earth, a debate that never mattered in the first place. I was a punk. This song was about girls and how they screw up your life, which I knew nothing about, but Mark and Tom were going to be my teachers for the rest of my life. I need some teachers, because the rest of pop music told me to find a girl that likes Breakfast at Tiffany’s and that was enough. I had no clue what that meant, but why would pop music lie? I just needed to find this amazing restaurant and I would have women. Oh Top 40, how you lie to me. There is no restaurant at Tiffany’s; it’s just an overhyped movie from the 60’s that girls love.

The transformation wasn’t overnight, no transformation can be that fast. I had to go down to the record store and find this new band, Blink 182. I only saw this music video once before I searched it out. This was before youtube, before bands were on the world wide web. Searching took time and effort; it was like you were Indiana Jones looking for the Holy Grail. You could ask the guy at the record store, but there was never a guarantee that he knew the band you wanted. They usually only cared about the obscure Indie Rock that was coming out. I had to go old school and search Karma for the CD. I found it. I was able to remember enough to actually find it in a large CD store. This new discovery was amazing, not just for me but anyone who would know me post-“Dammit.” Over time I grew out my sideburns, the classic 90’s sideburns that everyone was sporting. You can tell which guys lived through the 90’s as a teen because most of them still sport the sideburns. I decided to cut my hair short on the sides and a little longer on top. Then my hair went straight up a year later. I’m no early adopter, but I was one of the very first kids in my school to sport that look. All of a sudden people started to notice me in the halls. I wasn’t a nobody anymore, I was a cool kid. Okay I wasn’t a cool kid, but people stopped making fun of me. My pants got huge, and I learned the white guy dance from The Offspring’s Pretty “Fly for a White Guy” music video.

Discovering yourself shouldn’t be as easy as finding a silly Blink 182 song on MTV. Everyone knows who Blink 182 is now. They sing that song “All the Small Things.” When I discovered “Dammit,” I was alone in a crazy world. It would be about a year before any of my friends were listening to “All the Small Things.” Bands have weaved in and out of my life. Blink 182 has not left me. The only time I stopped buying Blink 182’s CDs was when they decided to stop making new music.

At one point in my fourteen year love of Blink 182 people started to think they were lame, in fact at many times of my life I run across this. For some reason people think Indie Rock is where is should be. They don’t care about pop punk. They don’t want to listen to happy upbeat tunes about boys losing girls and trying to figure out how to get them. Yet that is what life is all about. You are either trying to get a girl or trying to figure out how to get over them. My teachers Mark and Tom taught me this. It doesn’t matter if you’re married either. You are still just trying to win your wife over every night, at least I am. Why do you think so many marriages go south? It’s because they don’t listen to Mark and Tom about love. If you take it for granted you lose it. Now that’s a true punk belief.

To this day if I hear “Dammit” or any Blink 182 song I have to stop for a second and punk out. If it’s the car I just nod my head. If I’m walking when it come on my ipod, then maybe a little dance move right there on the street. The best is when I can rock out to the entire song. I can scream at the top of my lungs for the entire song. I can jump up and down and be a maniac, because I know I’m a punk. I’m no longer that dork with lame tight jeans and a bad haircut.

It’s happened once again, I’ll turn to a friend someone that understands, she screwed the master plan. But everybody is gone and I’ve been here for too long to face this on my own. Well I guess this is growing up.

Well I guess this is growing up.

For two minutes and forty-five seconds I was a legend of punk rock. I let the eighty degree weather shove it. I didn’t care if I was dehydrated. I belted out “Dammit” for the whole world to hear. I turned away from the television, not needing to see the lyrics, and serenaded my wife as she played the fake guitar. I jumped up and down. If this is growing up, I don’t want to stop. I want to keep going. I want to listen to “Dammit” a hundred thousand more times and remember I can change and be something amazing if I need to. We all can.