Conversations with my family

Me: It's been 20 years since the Mets won the World Series

Mom: Wow that's a long time . . .

Me: That means someone could have been born, grown up and been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq all after Bill Buckner made that error

Mom: Laughs

Last Night the Hold Steady saved my life

Last Saturday night I was riding on a northbound train of the type Rod Stewart likes to sing about - when I was confronted with a depressing spectacle; a bunch
of hyper-active exceedingly youthful 19 year olds on their way to some type of
party/orgy/drug-a-poolza, the fact that people who were born after the 1986
World Series are now old enough to engage in such activities is something that
causes me to stare out at a vast cityscape/countryside and shake my head in
knowing wonderment

As it usually happens though the very next morning I was saved from any maudlin
tendencies as I finally, two years after they broke, stumbled onto the glorious
music of the Hold Steady; the Hold Steady is basically a rock band for people
who read the New York Times (which is a good thing), a band that combines that instrumentation of the E Street band with the lyrics of a young, pre-Teen Vogue Rhett Miller, a band in which every member is not only unattractive but also, and this is key, way older than me - and most important of all the Hold Steady is a band that musically during any three minute song creates a flaming green light saber in your head that allows you to slash and destroy any problems in your life from work to school to people who don't understand you (because the fucking Hold Steady they
understand you) to loud oblivious 19 years olds on a train - against the Hold
Steady and you those kids don't have a prayer.