Clarity updated!

Back in November, I blogged about how good it felt to buy tickets to Jimmy Eat World plays Clarity to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of its release.  

Sure the music's great.  But I can't even listen to it objectively anymore.  All I hear is the last 10 years.  The nights in the dorm I fell asleep to Goodbye Sky Harbor.  The days I walked around Washington Square Park wondering if I will ever feel like they felt in "For me this is Heaven", and if I would, who would be the one?  All the times driving down 287 to a show listening to Lucky Denver Mint.  In many ways, it was a lonely decade, but Clarity was always there.  This album was instrumental in keeping me who I am, despite having shelved it for a year or two in the middle because I was "too cool".  

So back in November, it felt great just buying the tickets.  Yeah try going to the show, and you will have Clarity too.  It was seriously, for real, one of the best nights I can ever remember, even though I had the flu.  It didn't matter, because I was there with my one, my friend, my "for me this is heaven."  I was there as myself, which was even better.  They played every single note of Clarity, all in order, and all tremendously.  They basically played every single sound of my youth, only without the bum notes.  I know this is getting a little tautological, but I just drank in every moment.  

For me it was heaven.

Clarity

I had signed up for the Pandora app when I got my iPhone back in March, and I installed it this weekend after a friend told me how awesome it is.  Well, she was right; Pandora is amazing.  I signed up for the "Clarity" Jimmy Eat World radio station this morning on a whim, which is an old favorite album (ten years old in fact).  They are playing the best stuff, culminated with a song from the Get Up Kids' "Something to Write Home about"!!!  Those two albums were instrumental in my youth, and going to see those bands 9 billion times in a row was my life.  Once again, I re-discovered a lost piece of myself this fall.  

Randomly, Mike informed me this evening of a Jimmy Eat World show taking place in February where they are JUST playing Clarity!!!  This is amazing!  Tickets go on sale this Saturday...wish me luck! 

Bubble Gum Ice Cream

I'm catching up on blogging about the last month and a half, and I'd say the above picture captures a favorite moment of this fall.  We went to the Poconos for a friend's wedding October 16-18, which incidentally was one of the best weekends of the entire year.  The weekend was filled with friends, laughter, great food, and a day of re-living my childhood in the Poconos.  It was incredible; we went to the pretzel factory where you can "take the tour" and watch fun-loving individuals make pretzels.  We went to American Candle and Holley Ross and every amazing place I remember from being a kid.  I realized on this day how much the Poconos feels like home to me.  I never really felt much connection with New Jersey.  Sure, it's a fine place with culture and proximity to beaches and cities and blah blah blah, but it's not where my heart is.  For the longest time, I thought NYC was my home, but the NYC I know only exists in memory.  I never realized it, but my time in the Poconos was when meaning was whispered into my soul; every falling leaf, ski slope, and walk to the lake pumped life into me.

The weekend more than satisfied my expectations.  In fact, I didn't even realize a piece of me was missing until I got it back sometime on our journey through the Poconos, and I think it was when I found the "Casino" Ice Cream Parlor and movie theater in Mt. Pocono.  My sister and I used to order bubble gum ice cream-the real kind with the actual pieces of bubble gum-and ride the little kiddie rides there.  Then, with our tongues bright red, we would go across the street to the weird gift shops full of Native American paraphernalia, wooden gifts with first names etched into them, and large clocks painted with scenes from hunting in the woods, all while chewing tasteless gum.  Finding the Casino Ice Cream parlor and seeing it again with Mike was the best.  It was Home.  

P.S. The ice cream parlor still had the real bubble gum ice cream.  It also had a new flavor which I HAD to get: Play-Doh flavored.  I mean, it really looked like play-doh.  It was bright bright yellow with chunks of bright bright red and blue "play-doh" mixed with it-really cookie dough.  I felt 9 years old-I had a scoop of play doh and a scoop of bubble gum-only this time I was actually allowed to have a cone.  For those of you who don't know, I may be the only person ever to have been kicked out of an ice cream parlor as a little kid for being TOO MESSY, so growing up I wasn't ever allowed to have a cone.  When I went to college, I found one of the many pleasures of being an adult was the ability to order myself an ice cream cone.  I still am thrilled to have my ice cream cones!