So for the last little bit, I've been trying to resuscitate my past musical enjoyments. There's quite a few bands and albums that I haven't listened to in a while because I thought it was cool to hate music. I think being married has changed a bit of that because, quite frankly, my wife doesn't care about silly "pet" band bullshit. More importantly, my taste has become less defensive and therapeutic and more about music that I just like. I distinctly remember being disgusted with myself for briefly enjoying things like Phish, Bob Marley and Pink Floyd, spitting on myself for such terrible mistakes that nobody but me gave a fuck about. I suppose part of my defensiveness surrounding music was related to my parents fascist approach to raising a teenager that wanted to do something besides watch football and "praise Jesus" on somebody else's dime. I hid copies of "The Who Sell Out" and Yo La Tengo's "Electr-O-Pura" in my backpack for years so that on the off-chance that if my dad decided that they were rotting my spiritual journey, he couldn't throw them away. (Oh yeah, that's not a joke. I spent most of 7th grade trying to be Stan Lee and create my own comic book, and during a particularly evangelical weekend, my parents informed me that they were demonic and had to go.)

So with that said, I've discovered that I've spent the last several years being misguided about a great many things in pop culture, especially my great love, rock music. It's not that I was wrong, or that I'm all right on now, it's just that I've started to listen to my self a little more and what I believe to be the opinion of other people a whole lot less.