Your elbows on my knees

Say what you will about the wisdom of writing a monthly column that often features your deepest, darkest secrets (my affinity for The Gin Blossoms immediately comes to mind), but it’s incredibly heartwarming when, after a piece detailing a particularly devastating month hits newsstands, a complete stranger approaches you and says, “Sorry you’re having a shitty summer, man. Better luck next month.” It’s crystal-clear, razor-sharp moments like this that allow you to appreciate the simple, honest kindness of your fellow man, and momentarily forget that your shtick is about as fresh as a Dorf on Golf video.

So what will you get when you bite into this month’s installment of SubVersions? Well, along with the usual soppy final paragraph and obscure Tim Conway references, you’ll get…

Botched High School Reunions!!
After weeks of icy stares and veiled death threats (see last month’s column), a strange light begins to beckon, promising to absolve my sins and return me to a different time – or, at the very least, take me out of Milwaukee for a weekend. I’m talking about my 11-year high school class reunion (hold for applause)! For reasons unknown, my graduating class couldn’t seem to get their shit together for a 10-year reunion, though a series of poorly-worded emails promises me that the 11-year will indeed be a hoot. For even more reasons unknown, I find myself giddy with anticipation during the weeks leading up to this sure-to-be epic soirée.

So I prepare: I use a precious day of vacation (the reunion falls on a Friday); I get a haircut (The Cutting Group, natch); I ready any number of outright lies for the inevitable “What have you been doing for the past 11 years?” question (day trading, scuba diving, lion taming).

Two days before the big event, however, I receive a short email from the class president: “The reunion has been cancelled due to lack of interest. Maybe next time.”

It’s only a few minutes later that I start contemplating suicide-by-blowtorch for the following reasons:
1. I’m old enough to have an 11-year class reunion
2. I was actually excited about going to said reunion
3. Apparently, I was the only one that was excited
4. To clarify: I was actually fucking excited about going to my high school class reunion

Life-Affirming Local Bands!!
Being something of a recovering music snob with precious little free time (what with my side-career as a color commentator for tournament cribbage), I can only really bother myself with one or two local bands. One of those is The Candliers, whose recent crowd-pleasing show at the Riverhorse I was lucky enough to attend. In a perfect world, these fine folks would be headlining any number of cleverly named outdoor music fests, though I’ll stand by my conviction that their ideal venue (and I mean this in the best possible way) would be some sort of hipster-patronized Chuck E. Cheese. (Fun Fact! Chuck E. Cheese founder Nolan Bushnell also invented the Atari video game system, making him the greatest American of the 20th century!)

Put simply, The Candliers’ music is completely refreshing, their enthusiasm wholly infectious, and even though they’re seven members strong – and a few of them wield rather unconventional instruments – they manage to avoid the dreaded “Hi! We have 14 people in our band and six of us play toy glockenspiels!” curse that sinks nearly every other indie band playing today.

Drunken Late Night Swimming and Moped Driving!!
Beyond bruised limbs and a mild concussion, this one’s pretty self-explanatory.

Drunken, Ill-Advised MySpace Friending!!
I’m sure this particularly heinous phenomenon is now as prevalent as drunk-dialing: searching for – and contacting – someone on MySpace that you probably shouldn’t. Always a glutton for punishment, I decide to give it a go with my first girlfriend from 13 years past. Along with the dubious honor of being the first to ever see me shirtless, this young lady also happens to be the first to ever wish me dead. My email to her is nothing noteworthy – something along the lines of “Blah blah blah, how are you? Blah blah blah, I’m drunk.” A few days later I find a reply in my inbox. This is what it says:

“matt…I think i jumped up and down for you once upon a time…i have of a picture of us with my elbows on your knees…my first car was named after your band…haven’t thought about you in a long while…life flies when we’re chasing fun, but not necessarily having any…cheers.”

Days pass, and I fail to come up with anything to write in return. After all, what would I say? How my life has become increasingly sad, my friends increasingly distant and estranged? How the majority of my nights are spent watching reruns of Poker After Dark or wandering the streets of an increasingly hostile city alone?

It’s on one of those very nights that I find myself making a long (and also ill-advised) trek home from Riverwest. Drunk, lonely and still ostracized, I suddenly hear something I haven’t heard in ages: my name being called from a second story porch. The night air is perfectly still, the voice from above warm, inviting and untouched by malice. Fuck. Maybe there’s still time to turn this summer around. Maybe time flies only when we allow it, only when resign ourselves to phantom-reunions and sad-sack nostalgia. Maybe this can all work out, after all. The voice calls out again, “Hey, up here!”

I stop, take a breath, and look up. VS