The fight to stay cool...

...is a fight I have all but abandoned.

Remember when we were in college and we were the kings of awesome stuff. Music, fashion, and movies were our domain. We were determined to stay ahead of all others and find the newest stuff and the most independent stuff around.

I eschewed fashion and critical movie taste, but did like finding new music to listen to. I love music. So seeking out good musicians/bands to entertain myself with was a worthy expenditure of time.

Fashion though, not worth a damn.

In Ice Age, Sid the Sloth when asked whether he knows much about tracking responds, "I see a tree, I eat a leaf - that's my tracking." That is my approach to fashion. I see something to cover the top of me and something to cover the bottom of me - that's my fashion.

In high school I cut the inseam of all my jeans from the ankle up six inches and put thumb holes in all my long sleeve shirts. I put every t-shirt I owned in the washer and poured in half a bottle of bleach and washed them. The strange splotch tye-dye that arose from the washer was my fashion. My heart harkened back to the grunge era of the early nineties where looking like a lumberjack/bum trying to keep warm was completely acceptable and cool. So making my clothes look raggedy was my way of paying homage to the musicians whose music made my world go 'round.

Then Jesus came and I added in some Christian T-shirts to the mix. T-shirts that I found inspiring and simple, and that were far away from selling out to mainstream capitalistic culture ala "HISWAY" ("SUBWAY").

Then I got to K-State and got into my "Tantonio" phase where I just loved tans and browns. At least in pants, but sometimes I would have on tan slacks/cords and a tan T-shirt. Hence the "Tantonio" nickname because everything I had on was tan, but my hair and shoes. Sometimes I even wore these zip-off short/pants that I had mixed the bottom half of the legs on (in order to fit with my rebellious and zany image) and was given the nickname "Two-Tone" because my pants would be two tones of tan.

So, what I am saying is that I have never really cared what I looked like, as long as I did not look like other people (which admittedly is a type of caring all its own) and I never saw anybody with "Two-Tones" on around campus so I was good. Even crazy old "Priest" did not look like me. Thank goodness.

And when it came to the pursuit of movies - I like just about anything and still do. However college did teach me how much enjoyment could come from the genres of the Documentary and Indie films.

But music I loved pursuing. When Dean would come back from K-State on weekends he would have some band that he discovered or Glenn had shown him. The chief ones I remember are: Sunny Day Real Estate, The Flaming Lips, The Anniversary, and The Get Up Kids. MTV2 introduced me to Coldplay and Pete Yorn. At K-State I discovered/introduced to Purevolume and Pandora. Remember Purevolume?

Inevitably though we would not know everything about what was cool, hip, and new. We would defend ourselves by calling the kids that did "scenesters" and "music snobs". That let us off the hook.

So where is my meandering going. Recently Slade asked me if I've listened to any new music, and I was faced with the realization that "No, no I hadn't." I hardly listen to music anymore on the radio or internet. I grew tired of Lazlo's ranting and repetitive banter and constant reruns/best of compilations of the "Church of Lazlo" and a lot of the bands for some reason all sound like The White Stripes/The Raconteurs to me, which I do not enjoy. (My new love affair has been NPR, because without cable or digital television I was losing touch with the outside world. Plus NPR has really interesting/bizarre shows, when they are not broadcasting the news, that are just compelling to listen to.)

Besides, once I moved back home to KC and was out of college life, I found the struggle of staying up on the music scene or scanning the internet for the next musical thing to be too much of an effort. I was 25. So I silently declared (in a way of letting myself off the hook) that 25 is when you start losing your cool and you truly become an adult.

Now the only way I find new music is from watching TV shows. (I have not really discussed this with anybody beside myself and my wife, but I think that the first show that really made music placement a big deal was "Dawson's Creek"  or at least that is the first time I remember hearing "music" on a TV show. The former WB made this a trend that is copied on all stations in their dramas to help a certain moment strike a chord with viewers.) The show that in my opinion features the best music in its episodes: "Grey's Anatomy". Three artists that GA has turned me on to are Andrew Belle ("Static Waves"), Greg Laswell ("Off I Go" and "Comes and Goes - In Waves"), and Royal Wood ("A Mirror Without").

So give up the fight, embrace being over 25 (unless you aren't...enjoy the fleeting moments) and just be easy. Being cool is for kids, silly rabbit.

...I wish I could build a time machine and save all this trouble for my present self...