Monday Update: 8/29/2021
Forecasted poor web productivity likely to continue into next week due to current moving situation, but the end is in sight
Yes I’m still moving. Yes it’s still going to happen. I leave Thursday and I move in at my new place Friday. The city is Waterloo, it’s like thirty miles West of Toronto.
My poor productivity with regards to basically everything else can be blamed on this move, but this whole episode will be over soon, and an entirely different episode will be beginning after this one ends and hopefully during that episode I’ll be in a better place with regards to creativity for a while.
I think in a different week, this next bit might be a full-on blog post, but for the moment it’s just going to be a part of the update. I’ve recently realized that I just need to finally state this and see how it feels. I’ve been pondering it a lot, really all summer, and I think it’ll put me at some ease, some peace, some sense of closure if I state this here right now:
Cartel’s Honestly is either among the peaks or just the peak of its genre.
Mid-2000’s pop-punk is one of my favorite music genres. It’s there with early ‘90s Italo House, early-mid ‘90s twee, late ‘90s UK garage, mid 2010s songs from that YouTube channel that would do funny mashups of video game songs with other things, that sort of thing. Previously I would have stated that the peak of Pop Punk was either Sugar We’re Going Down by Fall Out Boy or Ocean Avenue by Yellowcard, both of which I think exemplify the greatest strengths of that genre, the simple, belted choruses, the almost-embarrassingly intensely sincere (and also to be fair whiny but that’s part of what I like about them) lyrics on topics that are very small and self-contained and probably given too much gravitas in the aforementioned embarrassingly sincere and whiny lyrics, but especially with so much time removed also evoke a nostalgic sort of yearning for a point in life when such emotions could feel as unabashedly significant as these songs make them.
I hope that’s verbose enough that it might seem poignant. I really cannot write about music effectively. But damn if I won’t try!
I came to this song very late in the game, as in I think I heard this song for the first time during this year, 2021, sixteen years after its release. I don’t know what significance that might have. Anyway - Great chorus, lyrics that, as many times as I listen to them and then read them don’t make sense cognitively but I feel them, you know, that staccato guitar thing that comes in and out, just great.
I may have spoken too forcefully when I considered it being “the peak” instead of “among the peaks” because the peaks are still the two that I listed earlier. The list right now is like
1 (tie) - Either Yellowcard Ocean Avenue or Fall Out Boy Sugar, We’re Goin Down
3 (not all that far behind but still behind) - Cartel Honestly
I really think that the two songs at the top of the list are among the best written songs ever. If that sentence makes you respect me less, that is fine, I understand. The fact that probably 90% of people could not tell you with any confidence any lyrics past maybe the eighth word in the chorus of Sugar We’re Goin’ Down but they feel it regardless, and how deeply the bridge in Ocean Avenue can cut you if you let it do so should help you to understand their greatness. I promise I’m trying very hard to write about music effectively here.
Also, I swear that I’ve seen the blonde girl in the Honestly video, in the blue shirt who passes the guy at the crosswalk, in something else. I don’t know what, I can’t put a finger on it, and obviously I can’t find the credits for that music video anywhere (plus, great video, very illustrative of the era’s internet socializing scene), but if you’re aware of where I may have seen the actress from the Cartel Honestly video or if you are yourself the actress from the Cartel Honestly video please contact me via DM at joziebee.tumblr.com. I feel like it was around that era, like the mid-late 2000s. Friday Night Lights maybe but I’m not going to go back and watch that whole show again. And speaking of Friday night lights…
There is truly nothing like preseason football. A Friday night in a colossal stadium, a sparse crowd, several starters resting, the smell of the rubber handle on the putters that you know like a thousand other people have touched…
Sorry, anyway, I wanted to see my beloved and preferred purple team take on my hometown team that I have no disdain for and I was able to do so last Friday night in a fun and exhibitional setting. Word processor’s telling me that exhibitional isn’t a word. It should be. That should be a word. You know what I mean by exhibitional. I guess the word would be exhibitive? But I mean specifically that this has the elements of what one expects from an exhibition, not merely that the event is an exhibition. You know what I mean. I promise that I am trying very hard to write about which words I am using.
Arrowhead Stadium, or, rather, GEHA Field at Arrowhead now, because nobody can have anything just be without having to Google who GEHA is anymore, and if you’re curious they are a self-insured, not-for-profit association providing medical and dental plans to federal employees and retirees and their families through the Federal Employees Health Benefits program and the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program (that was what came up in google), anyway Arrowhead is a truly astounding stadium. It can overwhelm you if you let it. It’s the bridge of Yellowcard’s Ocean Avenue of football stadiums, we all call it that. Everybody calls Arrowhead Stadium that.
Wait, sorry, everybody calls GEHA Field at Arrowhead that.
I don’t go to that many “big” sporting events, meaning ones with major implications, like playoff games or games that might decide playoff slots or big rivalry games. I’ve been to one final in any sport - the 2012 US Open Cup Final between Sporting KC and the Seattle Sounders - and though many men’s basketball games at KU were big deals, I spent most of my time in college working in a concession stand as a fundraiser for a club through the band, and thus while I was in the building for many of those, I was not in attendance and watching. I would estimate maybe five or six times in my life have I been present at a major, important game. I will say that the final USMNT match during the Gold Cup group stage felt very big in the moment.
I would like to go to more, I envy the Chiefs fans who went to that stadium for playoff games, more specifically during the 2019 run when it was all full-capacity. I’ve never been to an NFL playoff game, for example, and I want to. I think anybody would want to.
This sort of exhibition has its place, though. I love the NFL preseason because the game being played and the score being kept come secondary to the players’ individual performances in many ways. When the Chiefs scored on their first two drives, it was less about the fourteen points that they gained and more about how all of the players still know what they’re doing. When the Vikings failed to score touchdowns on their first three drives, it was less about the fourteen points and more about getting Kirk Cousins used to being sacked.
It’s when you get into the second half that the magic begins. This is when the starters rest and the second and third stringers come out. This is when you see players trying to secure that last roster spot. This is when I struggle to be optimistic about Kellen Mond’s future as an NFL quarterback.
And the most magical part of the second half came in the final ten minutes. The Chiefs had held a 28-10 lead at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Rookie Vikings quarterback Kellen Mond led a drive that nearly ended up with a touchdown, but they ended up getting stopped at the goal line on fourth down. On the ensuing play, Rookie Chiefs quarterback Shane Buechele threw an interception to Vikings cornerback Parry Nickerson, a former sixth-round pick currently playing on his fifth team in the past four seasons, which he returned for a touchdown. Mond successfully converted the 2-point conversion. The score was now 28-18.
The Chiefs were able to get a few first downs on their next drive, but they stalled at the Minnesota 45 yard line, which was recovered at the 11 yard-line with about two minutes remaining. Mond was tasked with taking his backups 89 yards down the field for nothing more than pride and proving something to the coaching staff. And, by god, the kid did it. He scrambled and passed his way down the field, primarily to fellow rookie Ihmir Smith-Marsette, and they garnered some yards through a pass interference call as well. This ended with a one-yard touchdown run by A.J. Rose, a converted extra point, and a score of 25-28 with thirty seconds left on the clock.
The onside kick attempt was unsuccessful, recovered by Chiefs preseason standout Daurice Fountain, and the game ended with that score. Nobody in red left the stadium all that joyous, nobody in purple left the stadium all that despondent, as is the nature of preseason football.
That’s not to say that nobody in the world was experiencing emotional extremes after the game ended. We looked up the point spread immediately after the final touchdown, and the Chiefs were 4.5 point favorites. In this game that ended 28-25, one which would have otherwise ended with a covered spread were it not for the late-game garbage-time heroics of one Kellen Mond, there was probably somebody somewhere who had lost money on this exhibition game, and there was probably somebody else somewhere who had won some. I don’t know why anyone would bet on preseason NFL games, but if they had, there were definitely some emotional peaks and valleys created on Friday night.
I have now, in my life, attended one regular season NFL game and one pre-season NFL game. This will not be one of the nights that I watch on the sky as Jesus and I walk down the beach after I die like in that proverb, and if it is for some reason, there will be two sets of footprints on the beach, I am very confident of that. But it was a good night, and that’s all I could ask for, a good night of fun watching football at Arrowhead Stadium.
Shit. GEHA Field at Arrowhead. It was a good night of fun watching football at GEHA Field at Arrowhead.