Best of 2004

Interpol - Antics
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Miss Machine
Lostprophets - Start Something
Head Automatica - Decadence
The Arcade Fire - Funeral
Death From Above 1979 - You're A Woman, I'm A Machine
The Blood Brothers - Crimes
Green Day - American Idiot
Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat
The Von Bondies - Pawn Shoppe Heart
TV On The Radio - Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
The Killers - Hot Fuss
Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Sparta - Porcelain
The Rise - Reclamation Process
Rise Against - Siren Song Of The Counter Culture
Converge - You Fail Me
Senses Fail - Let It Enfold You
!!! - Louden Up Now
Alexisonfire - "Watch Out!"
Underoath - (They're Only Chasing Safety)
Chevelle - This Type Of Thinking (Could Do Us In)
Your Enemies Friends - You Are Being Videotaped
William Shatner - Has Been
Jimmy Eat World - Futures
Eighteen Visions - Obsession
Taking Back Sunday - Where You Want To Be

I originally had it in a Top 20 thing, but I found a few new CDs since I posted this and couldn't fit them in numbers and blahdy blahdy blah, so I just have it as a listing of the best CDs of 2004 without exact rankings. Towards the top is generally better than towards the bottom and the listing at this point isn't bad, but it's not set in stone.

The list seems a bit weird since there's a lot of stuff I've gotten into this year that came out in 2003, 2002, or earlier, and therefore couldn't be listed, but there's still some good stuff up there.

Most Craptacular:
Orgy - Punk Statik Paranoia
A Perfect Circle - eMOTIVe
The Used - In Love And Death
U2 - How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb

And that's not even to speak of albums I haven't digested fully yet (Q And Not U, Morrissey, The Walkmen) and ones that've come highly recommended and I haven't even gotten my hands on yet (Sonic Youth's new one, 65daysofstatic, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, etc.)

2005 should be good. Confirmed new Mars Volta, CKY, Hell Is For Heroes, Nine Inch Nails, Queens of the Stone Age, Funeral For A Friend, Electric Six, Trail of Dead, Foo Fighters, Snake River Conspiracy, Franz Ferdinand, Comeback Kid, and Every Time I Die. Also, a good chance of new Thrice, Weezer, Muse, Brand New, From Autumn To Ashes, and probably others I've forgotten, plus some surprise new bands no one expected. Hell, maybe even Guns N' Roses...

I hope to eventually get to typing up at least mini-blurbs on each of the top 20 and then the honorable mention and fuck categories, but who knows if I will. I just wanted to get this up before I forget.

Last Summer

Music: Last Summer by Lostprophets

The last few days have been surreal. No surprise really, it always feels like that to me whenever something is about to end, but it's still as weird every time. I had my last day of work on Monday and was pretty happy about that, hung out with Nikki B. for a good while, and fulfilled all outstanding obligations I still had. Basically, I've spent yesterday and today trying to wrap things up. Not just last-minute panic forms for neu (not that there aren't plenty of those), but also this whole part of my life. I did a few things I should have, felt like I got a little closure, and I think that's the best I could have asked for.

I don't want to leave anyone behind, and I don't want to forget about this place, I'm just trying to put things in order. The last time I thought about this kind of thing was at graduation, and it's amazing how much my viewpoint has changed since then. I had gotten the biggest high from graduation day and wanted things to stay like that, but that's obviously foolish. If I can take a few good pieces of that time period with me, that's fucking awesome, but I also have to accept that a lot of things change. I know the things that really were good, namely the real friends, will still be there, so I'm not worried.

My life is actually the most organized it's ever been at this point in time, I finished every goddamn project I ever started. My room is cleaner than it's ever been, ever. My computer finally works perfectly. All my music is organized. I don't have any homework or obligations or bills looming over me. I have my finances pretty under control. Still, that surreal feeling permeates everything. Am I alive or just breathing? How did things end up the way they were? Some things seem so close and I wonder if they would have gone the way I expected with maybe a few different turns of the screw. Not that I'm unhappy with how things are, everything seems to have happened the only way it could have ever happened. Some shit just feels like it's straight out of the twilight zone. Driving around the town for the last time tonight was among the weirder things, especially with Last Summer by Lostprophets playing (which coincidentally was just released as a single...).

I don't even know what I want to do anymore. I mean, I know what fields I'm interested in, but the thought of doing that for the rest of my life seems pretty bleak. The thought of doing anything for the rest of my life seems pretty bleak. I guess I've watched too many movies and tv shows. I'll never be Spike or Neo or whoever it is in whatever stupid shit I'm watching these days. There's no great hero's calling anymore, if there ever was. Yet that's what I'm looking for, or at least that's the silly notion I entertain myself with. I hope I find what I'm looking for in terms of meaning, because I really don't think money is goal enough for me. Well that's hypocritical, I'm sure it's goal enough to make me work hard, but it's not goal enough to make me satisfied with anything I'll ever achieve.

Well I'm leaving for Boston tomorrow. I'm a short train ride away so I'm sure I'll be seeing some of you on a fairly regular basis. I don't know how much I'll be online, but I guess we'll all have to wait and see. This might be the last entry in this for awhile because I've really just gotten bored with it. The whole concept of writing in this has a negative stigma to begin with, and I'm not particularly good at writing when it comes to heartfelt topics, so I don't know how much good me writing this does. I'm great when it comes to snappy comebacks and passionate arguments, but I just can't articulate what's going on with this shit like what's been going on the last few days, so I'm about ready to say fuck it.

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I would stop time to stay with you
I would stop time so we don't move
I would stop time
I would stop time
I would stop time to keep you

Aw Hell Naw

Music: Motion Without Meaning by Thrice

I worked today, and had a real pisser of a time. I'm gonna wring the neck of the next customer who crosses me. This fucking asshole wouldn't shut the fuck up about Office 2003 tonight. He already ripped the system off once by buying the Student & Teacher Edition, when he definitely wasn't a student or a teacher. But no, that version was "holding him back," so he needed to upgrade to the Pro Edition, the Pro Edition that only differs in its inclusion of Access, a program he had to ask me about to know what it was even for, and Business Contacts Manager, a glorified address book. He wanted the cheaper Upgrade version instead of the Full, but to upgrade you need an upgrade-compatible product, something he did not have in the Student & Teacher Edition. I explained this in extremely simple language and he still didn't grasp it, and wanted me to fucking call Microsoft or another store or something to waste my time on something I was 100% sure on. He then flipped out and did the "I'm going to your competitors" dance and then attempted to insult me by asking if this was the kind of initiative I was supposed to take to help customers. Hey buddy, why don't you just download the pirated warez 7-disc version online that has even more extra programs like OneNote and Frontpage so you can have more wasted space you don't know what to do with, then go fuck yourself, in that order.

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Motion isn't meaning
It’s just another drug
But it's all we've got

108 Kids Go

Music: Five Kids Go by Hell Is For Heroes

Well it's over, it's all over. 108 kids graduated from BMR on the morning of June 5th, 2004. I was so nervous all morning. I had no idea what I was doing as I started reading my speech. But about a paragraph in, after one or two solid laughs, I realized that it wasn't really so bad. I liked the material I was reading, and the crowd seemed responsive, so I loosened up and let it flow. The audience, the students especially, laughed at all the jokes (except the Andrew Jackson one, haha, but that was only for fellow AP History students), and I really got into it. It was an amazing experience. I received a standing ovation at the end, and I really couldn't believe it.

Here's the speech for those who weren't there:
"Ah, high school. Where to begin about high school…. I was initially considering using an analogy comparing high school to a baseball game, concluding that both were too damn long with a speech that was ironically also too damn long, but luckily, I decided to forego that and am going to try to make this as concise as possible

A lot has changed since we first entered high school. We entered as children and are leaving as legal adults. We’re mobile, employed, franchised, and opinionated, and for once in charge of the direction of our own lives. The next step is entirely up to us. Of course there are ramifications for this newfound autonomy, mainly a switch in our methods of justifying our afflictions, forcing us to blame the world at large instead of our parents. But hey, I am sure they’ll be glad to throw off that burden.

When I said a lot has changed, I wasn’t only referring to ourselves. Look at the world around us. The last four years have seen economic turmoil, terrible destruction both at home and abroad, the greatest nation in the world declaring war on a noun, and the invention of the fruit-filled Ego waffle. Goth has given way to emo, the end of the world has come and gone at least 3 times, and your value as a person is now dependent on how many little flags you have attached to your Hummer. Hell, Yahoo was even superseded by Google, what the heck is wrong with this crazy world (well, besides rap)?

But it’s good to know that our time at BMR has prepared us to face these inherited burdens. When you’re writing up the charter for your new joint-stock business venture, just think: what would Ethan Frome do? When you’re working out the calculations for your marine squad’s drop formation, think back to those geometry proofs that allowed you to show that one did indeed equal one. And who could forget all those guest speakers who were brave enough to fight through the propaganda and inform us all that drugs and alcohol had negative consequences? I mean, I didn’t know, did you guys? And what of The Song of Roland, I can’t think of any career that that WOULDN’T be useful in!

Even in the off-chance that you don’t actively use something you’ve learned from BMR in your career, the knowledge you’ve gained here is a precious gift that will enrich your life. Your experience with iambic pentameter and the causes of the fall of the Qing Empire will stay with you forever. Your knowledge of the problem they had with those people in Russia, or that South American guy, you know, that guy – that guy will enrich your life. I don’t ask myself “What would Jesus do?” I ask myself “What would Andrew Jackson do?” Of course asking that always leads me to the response “Close the national bank” but that’s a problem for a different day.

All jokes aside, I do hope everyone has learned something valuable from this experience. High school is a time of growing up, a time of finding out who you are and what you enjoy, hopefully setting the stage for a life prolific in both challenge and satisfaction. High school isn’t about who so-and-so went out with, or what the in-crowd thinks about your new leg warmers. Nor is it about sacrificing your sanity to turn that 99 into a 100, or getting into the favorites brigade of some megalomaniac. All that matters once you grab that diploma and shake that hand is the growing up and learning you hopefully experienced and how that’s going to help you on the next leg of your journey.

It’s easy to let things in high school get you down. High school is a constant game of appearances. Parents and officials don’t always understand the next generation and its loud music, and certain standards are set that often result in treating students as children. Driving, voting, military service, sure, but you need a special form just to walk the halls!

Other expectations are set for education, or at least perceived education. Curriculum nonsense, buzzwords and acronyms aplenty, seem to be the newest craze. Confusion is created by renaming classes without changing the core foundation, ignoring the fact that 1.0 classes are still 1.0 classes whether labeled as college prep or not. And political correctness is a must of course. Infuse a little comedy and break that cookie-cutter image and bam, there goes your honor, national, social, or otherwise, and your respect.

But what may initially seem important is oft nothing more than a humorous anecdote in the epic novel that is your life. Funny word, “but.” As a conjunction, “but” separates two ideas from each other. It marks the transition from one train of thought to the next. This present graduation is much like that simple but effective word, bridging the gap between our past and our future.

And to the future we look, awaiting successes beyond the halls of this school. Success is defined in a myriad of ways, and you’ll find it one way or another. Always fight for what you believe in and focus on what makes you happy and everything will work out for the best.

So, in conclusion, the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum, what might be right for you may not be right for some. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have…. my speech.

Here’s to new beginnings, 2004."

Click here for printable Word document

It went about as good as it could possibly go, and I had a really great time. After the ceremony concluded, I went party hopping. I stopped at Mitch's for a bit, then caught up with Alicia and Heather at Steve's, and eventually we switched over to Matt's. Thanks to all the friends who made today great, thanks for the congratulations or hugs or both, it all really meant a lot to me. I have a bit more to say but I'm wiped from today, so maybe tomorrow.

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All we have left is self-control
All we have to do is pack up and go

I put the "dick" in valedictorian

Music: Lola's Pictures by Hondo Maclean

Oh boy, this speech stuff is tough. I did some major editing, adding in some more stuff. I've been working on it pretty much all night. I asked for some e-pinions online and basically got told I was an asshole and a douchebag. I sent it to some people I know that wouldn't be able to attend graduation, and they all loved it. So I don't know.