i'd rather [build] things [up] than [tear] them [down]
One time my husband said to me, in what was clearly meant to be a light burn, “your favorite band in eighth grade was probably The Offspring.” And I was like . . . yeah. Absolutely it was. Next question.
Lately, all I’ve wanted to listen to is The Offspring’s first 5 albums, in order, from start to finish. Self-Titled, Ignition, Smash, Ixnay on the Hombre, Americana, and then I loop. It puts me in immediate nostalgic mode.
I can’t remember the prologue from The Canterbury Tales I was forced to memorize in high school, but best believe I can recite every single disclaimer/intermission section on an Offspring album. Now if I wasn’t such a weenie/do you think you’d still love me. When I tell you I think of this line from “I Choose” EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE.
The Offspring have several genres of songs, ranging from serious/political (“Tehran,” “Lapd,” “Not the One,” “Americana”) to funny/tongue-in-cheek (“Beheaded,” “Pretty Fly (for a White Guy).” My personal favorite genre is where Dexter Holland sings about getting a lot of sex but feeling some kind of way about it (“Session,” “Self Esteem,” “Me & My Old Lady,” “She’s Got Issues”).
But for sure what made The Offspring an important band to me at 13 — when I felt alone, and misunderstood, and angry for reasons I didn’t even understand — was their anthemic songs rebelling against authority, society, whatever. I didn’t even care what they were rebelling against. I just wanted in.
Enter “Cool to Hate” from Ixnay on the Hombre.
[The above video is apparently from the Americana DVD, which I did not know existed and have never watched. There’s such an AV club student film quality to this that I was honestly transfixed — “Did you fart?” is genius cinema, I’m not taking any questions at this time — but fair warning for the weird plot twist at the end where he sprays everyone with a tank of his own urine? That is not part of my nostalgic experience with this song.]
I mean OF COURSE “Cool to Hate” is tailor-made for a girl wearing plaid pajama pants to school and hoping it counts as punk! OF COURSE this is the song you want to listen to when you bitch about pep rallies but are too chicken to actually skip one! It’s literally just a listing of all the things it’s cool to hate. Which, it turns out, is everything!
Recently, I was making my weekly drive to the library to pick up some holds, shout-singing along to this song in the car. The wild thing is that I go to the exact same library that I did when I was 13. I checked out The Short Life of Sophie Scholl so many times that I used to leave myself little scraps of paper inside the book for the next time I took it home. I had such SEXUAL TENSION with the red car I would see in the parking lot covered in punk bumper stickers. (The driver of the car, that is, but I can’t recall a single detail about the person while I could draw you a detailed picture of the car.)
So I’m making this drive I’ve made a thousand times before, shout-singing along to this song I’ve sung a thousand times before, and I can’t help but think about who I was then and who I am now. The more things change the more they stay the same, etc. but I realized a big difference is that I really don’t want to hate things anymore. I don’t have the energy for it.
(like, I still hate Nazis and feel great about that, but I’m not looking to hate-watch Glee episodes, ya know?)
I wanna be defined by the things that I love/not the things that I hate, as Taylor Swift says. (btw I love Taylor Swift). Or But mostly I hate the way that I don’t hate you, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all, as Kat Stratford might say (I also love 10 Things I Hate About You). Even most stuff that’s not for me — Glee, for example, now I feel self-conscious calling it out in a post about not hating on shit but it is what it is! — I don’t need to hate it. I just don’t interact with it. And if you love it, I love that for you. I’m glad it exists. I’m glad you found it when you needed it.
There’s just so much good shit in the world. Books, art, music, people, whatever, and 13-year-old me would probably hate me for saying something like that, but it’s true.
A few closing thoughts:
A close textual reading of the lyrics for “Cool to Hate” does provide some evidence that Holland is being satirical when he talks about hating everything — “I like to hate stuff ‘cause then I don’t have to try and make a change,” “I’d rather tear things down than build them up, it’s easier that way,” and “I’ll cut you down ‘cause I’m a fool” all suggest that he is, in fact, poking fun at the people who feel this way. I have an MFA now so I’m better able to parse this kind of nuance.
I made this meme with my bare hands (/a meme generator) and I just want it to be admired thank you.
I wrote this nostalgia and love of my local library DIRECTLY into my upcoming romcom Love in the Time of Serial Killers, which is coming out August 16, 2022 from Berkley. Below is a brief excerpt from Phoebe’s first time going back to her childhood library:
You can preorder the book here.
Currently reading . . . The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio. Beautifully written. I just finished the chapter on undocumented workers who helped clean up Ground Zero and teared up multiple times.
watching . . . the third season of You. What can I say. It’s been a wild ride.
listening to . . . Dexter is doing his high-pitched falsetto “give it to me baby” in “Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)” AS WE SPEAK so I’m nothing if not consistent.