can we skip to the good part?

the musical offerings of ajr & an interview with myself

Last Friday, I went to the Rays/Brewers game followed by an AJR show hosted at Tropicana Field as part of their Summer Concert Series. It was, as you might imagine, a PERFECT night.

I love being surprised by a set list, but I find I enjoy a show more if I’m at least somewhat familiar with the music. With AJR, I knew a couple of their big radio hits (“100 Bad Days,” “Bang!,” and “Burn the House Down”) but that was it. So, with the show coming up, I hit the books . . . aka I listened to the artist’s Essentials playlist on Apple Music. And you know what?

I’m an AJR fan.

What’s not to love? Every song is a bop, they do that mix of neurotic/introspective/sad lyrics with danceable music that always hits, they’re a band of brothers and I think that’s pretty cool. I was surprised how quickly I went from being like, “I don’t know who this band is. I mean, they could be walking down the street and I wouldn’t know a thing. Sorry to this band” to basically listening to nothing but AJR and dancing at my desk.

(A few very specific things I enjoyed about this experience of getting into a band all at once:

• you don’t know any of their fashion or in-jokes or whatever. So like I was at the game and I saw SEVERAL kids wearing those furry ear-flap hats and I was like, “That’s kinda weird for Florida but maybe it’s a Milwaukee Brewers thing?” and then the lead singer came out and I was like ohhhhhhh

• you also have no sense of context as to like, this song came out on this album or this was back when they had more of that sound or what have you. So AJR performed “The Dumb Song” for what they said was only the second time, and you could tell the crowd didn’t know it as well as the others, but I was like hahahaha this was the first song on the Essentials playlist, suckers! I know it the exact same amount as their first radio single!

• in general, you can tend to go back to the same music you imprinted on over and over and lord knows there’s nothing wrong with listening to the first 5 Offspring albums in chronological order, but it’s just nice to have something new in the mix)

I have no idea if AJR was selected for the Summer Concert series because one of our players uses “Burn the House Down” as his walkup song, but it’s a charming connection nonetheless. And because I never saw a pitch out of the zone I didn’t want to take a swing at, I . . . emailed the Rays public affairs office to ask if I could interview him about the song choice and the band and baseball in general.

Truly, sometimes I embarrass myself. I think I actually used the phrase — wait, let me check. Yup. I did. I literally said “I’m just taking a bit of a swing outside the zone here” in my email.

Suffice to say, I never got a response and let’s just hope my cringe-y email went to spam. But since I spent all this time listening to AJR’s lyrics and thinking up questions themed around them, I’m just going to turn the interview on myself! Except then I actually changed/beefed up a lot of the questions because I’m not as afraid of offending or irritating myself so I really opened myself up, journalistically. Also, I don’t play baseball.

So, to quote “Bang!” . . . here we go!

“Netflix Trip” is a song about how much of your life can be lived alongside a TV show, and what that show comes to mean to you. (In this case, The Office — I love the line where he sings, “I sat and crossed my legs like Jim would do.” It’s such a specific image and I know EXACTLY the way he means and it feels EXACTLY like what a kid would do, imitating something they’d seen on TV. I used to run up the stairs the way Anna Chlumsky did in My Girl because I just liked the way she did it. Sometimes I still do.) Anyway, what’s your “Netflix Trip” show, the one that’s seen you through different parts of your life?

Wow. First of all, this is a GREAT question and I’m not annoyed by your asides at all. I spent most of my college and immediately post-college years watching Friends and Gilmore Girls. I had the complete series for both on DVD, and I can remember sitting alone in my dorm room, my laptop whirring as I put in another disc of Friends. So Friends is a lot about loneliness to me, listening to a laugh track that’s too loud and dialogue that’s too quiet through my headphones while other people are out doing more fun things with actual friends, probably. And Gilmore Girls was my cozy comfort show, where I’d curl up in bed and read through the booklets that came with the DVD sets that explained every single pop culture reference while I let the banter wash over me. Now I find both shows almost unwatchable for different reasons I won’t get into here, but yeah, I still know them like the back of my hand and they’re very nostalgic for me.

In “Bummerland,” he sings But I hope my bank account gets so low, even zero, so next year, when I buy that first beer, I’ll be a goddamn hero. What’s an example of a relatively humble purchase you’ve made that just felt WILDLY indulgent to you?

When I buy a nice pen I always feel like a goddamn Rockefeller. Currently, my favorite pen for my planner, my writing notebooks — anything really — is a Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen fineliner in 0.5. I love my writing to be BOLD, not a spidery little Bic with cracks all in the ink or god forbid a dull pencil, but a nice, thick line. But I also don’t like a pen that feels too marker-y or smears or bleeds. This is the PERFECT pen for me but they cost like $5.00 each, which has me like —

So for a long time I had one and only ONE of these pens, and I dutifully transferred it from my purse (to use at work in my planner) to my desk at home (to use with my writing notebook) and there was something very “if I cut up this old muslin sheet I can make a new pinafore for Bessie” I liked about that. But then I also decided that I deserve to own more than one pen. I, too, can live a life of abundance.

In “World’s Smallest Violin,” he sings, Somewhere in the universe, somewhere someone’s got it worse, wish that made it easier, wish I didn’t feel the hurt. I remember teaching a class on YA literature one time, where this one student just COULD NOT get into any young adult books because they were too “whiny” and the problems just “weren’t as bad” as other stuff that goes on in the world. And I tried to enter into a productive discussion with this student, but at some point I don’t really know how to explain empathy to you if you’re really not getting it. There are so many very real, terrible problems out there, but it doesn’t make your own any less valid. That being said, what is the absolutely PETTIEST problem you have right now that causes you massive distress even though you know it’s ridiculous? What’s making you play the world’s smallest violin?

Let me talk about Instagram for a second. I get physically ITCHY if I have a bunch of notifications that aren’t cleared. I feel it in my BODY. All I want to do is “catch up” with my feed, but as I’m scrolling it’ll take me all the way back to the beginning. Or I want to keep up with comments and likes but they move around and get buried under other stuff. Then if things are running too smoothly, Instagram decides we must want a complete overhaul of the way things are done and adds some new feature or puts something in a new place. IT ALL DRIVES ME BONKERS. And yet I can’t stay away, I can’t NOT catch up, I can’t not go through and like every comment, I’m a completionist and I’m driving myself mad and I know it’s all my own fault but I will be a rat hitting the lever every single time if it just means that the notification disappears. Please don’t ever add me to a group chat on Instagram because their mute feature is trash — of COURSE I’m not getting push notifications of COURSE I’m not hearing any little tone but the very fact that it moves to the top and gets bolded again as unread will literally be my undoing.

Okay, everyone knows “100 Bad Days” — it was like THE song of the summer when it came out. My daughter played it on loop when she was in that early kid stage of discovering your own music and wanting to hear the same song over and over (honey, I can relate!!). One of my oldest friends and I always had this saying, that we were “in it for the stories” — basically, a justification for when you had to do something you didn’t really want to do, or when you did something where it all went wrong. You really can spin a lot of things that way. A hundred bad days made a hundred good stories, a hundred good stories make me interesting at parties. So what’s one of your “bad day” stories?

I was really looking forward to a baseball version of this answer, I gotta admit. You know there’s some really terrible play that’s HILARIOUS now that you look back on it. A former baseball player whose videos I watched on YouTube for book research has a great one about how he got told he was being traded (in the minor leagues) while he was playing a road game, and they were like, “We know your mom lives near here so we thought maybe you’d just want to go home.” So he had a friend drive two hours and come pick him up and take him to his mom’s house. That’s a pretty bad day but a pretty wild story.

I’ll tell my publishing version. My first book, a YA called Psych Major Syndrome that I don’t talk about much only because idk I have very mixed feelings about it, was published in 2009. It came out in hardcover (which is normal for new YA) but I was told it would get a paperback about a year later. Maybe we’ll change the cover, they said. Okay, that would be fine! (I didn’t love my cover.) Actually, no cover change, but here’s what the paperback jacket will look like and we’re really excited! Okay, no problem, I’m excited, too. Here’s the date it’s coming out! Yay, I can’t wait.

Only I went to the bookstore the day it was supposed to be out, and . . . it just wasn’t there. I looked it up online, couldn’t find anything.

Turned out they just decided not to put out a paperback, because sales didn’t justify it. Like, things that could’ve been brought to my attention yesterday! aka before I went to Barnes & Noble looking for it like a clown.

Ahhh, it’s not as good as being traded and dropped off two hours away from your mom’s house. But at the time it really sucked.

What I love about a lot of AJR’s lyrics is that they grapple with a lot of stuff that I think about all the time, and that I know a lot of us do as we navigate this world of 24-hour news cycles and demands on our attention and stressors to our mental health. There’s this idea that maybe we’re better off if we don’t engage (Your world is endin’ soon, mine’s a little better ‘cause I never watch the news - “The Dumb Song”); that we can pick ourselves up just by dropping our expectations (And I don’t wanna cry no more, so I set my bar real low - “Way Less Sad”); that artists have to decide how openly “political” to get versus how much to focus on the entertainment (Should I keep it light? Stay out of the fight? No one’s gonna listen to me, if I write a song, preaching what is wrong, will they let me sing on TV? - “Burn the House Down”). Anyway, ooof. I don’t have a question. Just what do you think about all that.

That’s a lot and you know it.

The world’s a lot.

It’s a lot. It feels like it’s getting to be more every day. I feel very weighed down by it. I feel very overwhelmed by it. Sometimes I do have to deliberately not engage. I scroll through Twitter with unfocused eyes and don’t let them land on anything that I know I’d fixate on. I like clips of cool baseball plays and type “omg it’s gorgeous!!!!” to a cover reveal and snort-laugh at a meme and then I click right out. I don’t know that it does me much good to read all these stories about things I have no control over but which I will make me feel a hopeless pit in my stomach for the rest of the day.

But at the same time, you have to engage. I think the goal is to find ways of doing it that are actionable in your community. Find out what books are being banned in your county and write a letter of support. Find out what your representatives are voting on and make some calls. Even if you can’t volunteer or donate money, you can boost other people who are doing those things. You can speak out, openly and often, about your support of people’s basic human rights. Sometimes I think I get overwhelmed because the voices of the other side seem so loud, but we’re fucking loud, too. We’re here and we also have things to say. And you don’t know what a ripple effect it might even have to say them, who you might be reaching, who you might be comforting who didn’t know that they had an ally in you.

And joy is revolutionary in and of itself. That sounds cheesy but I really do believe it. I do think even the act of writing happy stories and putting them out in the world, of being authentically and wholly and joyfully yourself, is its own act of courage.

In “The Good Part,” AJR sings If there’s a good part then I hope it’s not far ‘cause I thought it’d be today . . . What’s the “good part” you’re looking forward to?

The other day, I was driving into work — my usual commute. I was listening to this song, and I was driving toward the Tampa skyline, and suddenly I just started crying. Some of it’s the way he sings that one part — If you put this scene on a movie screen, is it called a happy end? I’m a sucker for a building falsetto like that. But I also just started thinking about my home state of Florida. The ways I’ve defended it, and the ways it’s become indefensible. The ways I’ve loved it, and the ways it doesn’t love me back.

I carry this around with me all the time, and I realized that morning, listening to this song, what it was. It’s grief. I’m actively grieving. And to anyone who doesn’t live here — the pity doesn’t help, the condemnation doesn’t help, the Florida Man memes don’t help, the Bugs Bunny cutting off the state gifs don’t help, none of it does anything because there are a lot of people who live here who don’t like what this state is becoming and are trying to fight it but feel like we’re fighting an uphill battle. We’re fighting against gerrymandering and politicians who openly defy even what we ACTUALLY VOTED FOR. And for those of us who are here, what do we do? Do we leave our jobs, our families, our friends, our lives we’ve built? Do we just give up and say, fine, take this state all the way red then? But what about our own safety? What about our kids?

But I’m getting sidetracked. You asked about the good part, which I assume was not me crying on the way of work. I do happen to think any place is worth fighting for. I believe we can do it. I know a lot of really good people who are doing it. And in the meantime, I take a lot of joy out of the little things. Discovering a new band. Reading a romance novel. Baseball. (ask me my thoughts on whether the Rays should stay in St. Pete or move to Tampa: I DON’T CARE JUST DO IT ALREADY STOP TALKING ABOUT IT AND JUST DO IT I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER WORD ABOUT IT and also personally I have a soft spot for the Trop and a verrrrrry high tolerance for just putting up with stuff (see earlier answer re how long I lived with one pen) so I’m all good)

Let’s wrap this up with something more light-hearted, shall we?

My favorite AJR song is “Karma.” I find the lyrics hella relatable and think it’s really clever, the way it mirrors a therapy session and builds in this breathless, anxious plea to the universe.

And the last Summer Concert Series show I went to was Avril Lavigne, back in 2011.

One day I will throw a ceremonial first pitch and mark my words I will be TRAINING for such a day. I will be ON THE MOUND and I will not BOUNCE IT IN and embarrass myself. It’ll be my off-speed (I’ll save my fastball for when it counts) but you’ll see my best stuff.

There was some technical issue with her microphone, where the sound kept cutting out, and then she went on an “expletive-filled tirade” the Tampa Bay Rays literally apologized to the fans for in the next day’s paper. I couldn’t remember exactly what she said — although I do distinctly remember thinking even at the time, “Whoa, I don’t think you’re supposed to drop the f-bomb at a family event?”

This has become LEGENDARY in my house and we were making jokes all Friday night about how AJR had to “apologize for Avril with their set.” (A Spinal Tap reference, made funnier to us since there were like 12 years between the concerts lol.) Anyway, what a rich history. What a great time.

Currently reading . . . this is SUCH a brag but I’m currently reading Kate Clayborn’s next book and I am just a FULL BODY ACHE I am an EXPOSED NERVE I am a BALL OF EMOTIONS I love her writing so much and this book is very, very special. I don’t want to say anything more because I don’t know what’s publicly out there, but you can always subscribe to Kate’s newsletter for updates on all her bookish stuff. And if you haven’t already read her other books like Georgie, All Alone or Love at First or Love Lettering, what are you waiting for?

watching . . . Okay, this is a little weird but I feel like this newsletter has been a little weird? So I’m just going to go for it. I low-key hate myself all the time. Like, not in a concerning way where you should be worried about my self-esteem or whatever. Just in a kinda joke-y, I’m trash, hahaha god I’m annoying, wow people must be so sick of me, type of way. You know. The fun kind of self-hatred! The normal kind! But sometimes I just absolutely crack myself up. Sometimes I’m like, man, I’m genuinely glad to know you. I love spending time with you. Keep doing what you’re doing.

Yes, I’m talking about how I recently posted this picture to my IG stories overlaid with “I Found Someone” by Cher:

This is a picture of my favorite pitcher, our closer Pete Fairbanks, that’s on the wall at the Trop. When I was at a recent game I snapped a quick picture of it just because I felt like it, and then that very same night he closed the game down and so I decided to post it to my stories. And one joke that will ALWAYS make me laugh is the juxtaposition of certain songs laid over images (for example, Enya’s “Only Time” laid over something unexpected kills me). So yeah, this image of wild-eyed Pete with Cher singing about I found someone to take away the heartache/to take away the loneliness . . . all because he saved a game. You have no idea how many times I rewatched my own story and died laughing. That was for an audience of one, that audience was me, and I don’t even have any room for a self-hating voice of “that’s . . . barely a joke” because I am too busy STILL cracking up. I might post it again. God, I want you to feel the triumphant self-confidence I feel after posting this one silly little Instagram story. Go out and find it for yourself today. Go out and delight yourself.

listening to . . . Speaking of HYPING YOURSELF UP, when I ran that giveaway last week I asked a bunch of people on Instagram to comment with their favorite “feel good” song, and man did they deliver!!! I wrote down every single one and created a playlist of 10+ hours of certified feel good bangers from the entries. I had forgotten about S Club 7! But there truly is no party like an S Club party!