ou’re never the same after you hear your first Smiths song. You’re either intrigued beyond belief and want to hear more, or you’re wondering why this Morrissey character is so fucking sad. I had that first reaction.

The first Smiths song I ever heard was “How Soon is Now?”

I don’t remember where I was when I first heard it. This is strange, because I ALWAYS remember where I was or what I was doing when I hear a band I grow to love for the first time.

I knew who Morrissey was, and all I knew about him was that he was a sad, sad man. I’d never heard anything by him, nor did I know that he had been in a band called the Smiths.

All I remember was that I needed to hear more. I couldn’t even describe the sound. It was hollow and ambient, and nothing like what I was listening to at the time. I was a sophomore in high school, and I hate to sound cliched, but music was never the same after I heard “How Soon is Now?”

I finally acquired “The Queen is Dead” one year for Christmas. I didn’t want to listen to it until I could hear the whole thing. I was blown away. Johnny Marr’s guitar sound is , for lack of a better way to put it, incredible.

I began to eat up any sort of Smith’s related information the way Morrissey probably eats salads. I then found out that Mark Spitz, a writer for SPIN magazine, wrote an entire novel based on Smiths fandom. The story, of course, is fiction, but tidbits of Smiths information were scattered throughout the story.

I particularily like to beleive the legend that Johnny Marr showed up at Morrissey’s front door with a guitar one day. It’s romantic to think that might be the way the Smiths began, although it probably did not happen.

The lyrics were also pretty much written for anyone who is insecure and uncomfortable with themselves and the world around them. My favorite line is probably from “There is a Light That Never Goes Out,” and I want to leave you with it, although I will probably add more to this when I come up with some stuff to say.

“And if a double decker bus crashes into us,
to die by your side, is such a heavenly way to die.”

Listen to “Solsbury Hill” by Peter Gabriel. Brendan sent it to me about a month ago, and now it’s pretty much all I listen to.

If you were a guy growing up in the 1990′s, there’s a pretty good chance you were a fan of professional wrestling.

Admit it. There’s something in all our DNA that attracted us to this flashy, ridiculous form of entertainment that mixes athleticism with soap opera and violence. No matter how book smart you are, or how much of a pretentious indie fuck you act like when it comes to the music you listen to, there was still something strangely appealing to this ‘sport’ a level above barbarianism.

My brother and I were no different. I suppose it makes more sense for him, because he’s the athletic type, always interested in any type of sporting event to come on. The Olympics are like Christmas morning for two straight weeks for him. Don’t even get me started with basketball.

Me? Not so much. I always liked to read and watch movies. Sports were boring. Professional wrestling was for idiots.

However, on a boring June night in 1998, I found myself watching an episode of WWF RAW IS WAR (now WWE RAW) with my brother. It was some segment featuring WWF Champion ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin and Kane hyping their First Blood match at the upcoming Pay-Per-View. It ended with Austin getting dumped with fake blood and Kane vowing to set himself on fire if he didn’t win.

With that, I was hooked.

Kane ended up winning the title that weekend, but he lost it back the next night to Austin. As the summer wore on, my brother and I educated ourselves in wrestling history with viewing countless hours of tapes (this was before DVD’s, children).

Out of all of these tapes, we tended to enjoy the annual WrestleManias the most. WrestleMania was a pay per view started in 1985 by the WWE that would feature the best of the best wrestlers. It’s where feuds culminate and grudges are settled. It’s also chock full of celebrities and features some of not only the best wrestling ever put to tape, but also some of the finest dramatic moments, if you understand the history. It’s widely considered to be the ‘Super Bowl’ of wrestling. Just like the Super Bowl, it’s held somewhere different each year. We vowed that if it were ever to return to Chicago, we’d be there, hands down.

Drew and I gradually burnt out of watching wrestling on a regular basis somewhere around 2000. This was after forming our own backyard wrestling federation where we defended title belts that I designed and we had a hand in writing our own feuds. I went as Dude Love one Halloween and Cactus Jack the next. Drew went as Sting the first year and Spike Dudley the next. A friend of ours even went as ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin the first year.
It’s all hilarious to think about now, but it really showed how much we loved something so stupid.

Anyways, even though our fandom eventually dwindled, one thing we always did each year was rent WrestleMania on pay-per-view. Since 1999, we hadn’t yet missed one. Even if we didn’t exactly know what was going on with some of the feuds, it became somewhat of a tradition that we refused to break with.

Last year, when we rented Wrestlemania 21 on pay-per-view, it came time to announce the location of next year’s WrestleMania. Immediately when we saw the promotional video featuring the Chicago skyline, we freaked out.

It was coming back to Chicago! Only two times in the 21 year history of the event had it even taken place in Chicago – parts of WrestleMania II were held at the Rosemont Horizon in 1986, and the entire WrestleMania XIII event was held at the same arena. We vowed at that very moment to get tickets.

We kept enough attention to know that they were going on sale in mid November. Then, out of nowhere… WE FORGOT.

Tickets literally sold out in two minutes, as reported by Ticketmaster.

The feelings of shock and disappointment were quickly stifled with “Oh well, I guess we’ll just watch it on pay per view again this year.” It was an okay consolation, but we were still bitter at the fact that we totally slipped up and missed our chance to go to our favorite event when it FINALLY came back to our town.

We largely forgot about it for the next couple of months, until somewhere around mid-March where we realized we’d better start paying attention so we know what the hell was going on leading up to the big event when we’d get it on pay-per-view.

Then, like a godsend, we saw it.

Two weeks ago, in the Daily Herald, I spotted an advertisement in the form of a WrestleMania trivia quiz. It said that the winners of the quiz would get two free tickets to WrestleMania 22 on April 2!

Then I looked at the questions. I knew almost all of them off the top of my head – and what I didn’t know, Drew did.

“What do we have to lose?” I said.

“Nothing,” he replied.

So we sat up in my room and filled it out. After clicking send, I said “We’re going to WrestleMania.”

“No we’re not,” Drew said, walking out of my room. I insisted we were. For the next few days, I talked as if we were going. He was getting angrier and angrier with every mention of it, stating “DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE PROBABLY DID THAT THING?” I just laughed.

Anyways, two Wednesdays ago I got out of my Copy Editing class early and sat at the computers in the Journalism Department. I checked my e-mail. It was from some woman from the promotions department at the Daily Herald. Right at the top, it said.

“CONGRATULATIONS! You have been selected as one of the winners of our WWE WrestleMania 22 trivia contest!”

I nearly jumped out of my seat. Confident after filling out the quiz that we had them all right, I never really thought we’d win. But we did. I tried to hold back my excitement to prevent the risk of embarassing myself in the middle of a lobby full of people.

Needless to say, I’ve never heard Drew more excited about something in my life.

We finally were accomplishing the goal we’d set so many years before.

He convinced it was a joke. It wasn’t until we picked up our tickets did it finally become a reality.

WE WERE GOING TO WRESTLEMANIA!!

Anyways, we left at around noon Sunday to get to the event. It didn’t start until five thirty, but I knew that there was going to be some stuff to do in the parking lot. The lines were incredibly long, so we decided to line up to get into the arena. We talked to two guys who worked at a Wal-Mart somewhere in the suburbs most of the time. They were total wrestling geeks, just as we were.

I have never seen so many grown men dressed up as their favorite wrestlers, and so many people carrying around $300 plus dollar replica title belts. Even we weren’t that bad, and trust me, we were bad.

Anyways, after several hours of waiting in line, we finally got inside. It really hadn’t hit either of us that we were at WrestleMania. Something we’d been watching for years. Something that’s first fourteen installments got us through an extremely long car ride to Virginia. Finally, we were a part of the big event.

The set was incredible. It was constructed to look like the Chicago skyline, with each individual section being part of a giant TV screen. Yes, there were a lot of lights. Yes, there were a lot of fireworks. Yes, there was a lot of FIRE.

I could run down the entire card, but it won’t make much sense to the non-fans. However, I will I will say, I never will forget how the crowd was cheering for the bad guys and booing the good guys.

I will never forget the night I saw Edge spear Mick Foley through a flaming table.

I will never forget the night Shelton Benjamin did a springboard from the outside apron onto a ladder.

I will never forget Shawn Michaels (my favorite wrestler as a kid) doing a sixteen foot elbow drop off a ladder, onto 60-year-old WWE owner Vince McMahon, who was layed out on a table with a trashcan on his head.

I will never forget the Undertaker’s dive over the top rope, clearing a casket, and colliding with a 400 pound man.

I will never forget the 5’3, 165 pound Rey Mysterio winning the World Heavyweight Championship from guys a half foot taller than him.

I will never, ever forget Triple H, the company’s top ‘bad guy’ tapping out to the WWE Champion John Cena’s submission hold to end the show.

I’ll never forget being one of the 17,155 in attendance that night.

Yes, it’s fake, the outcomes predetermined, but the athleticism is not. To see the stories told in front of you is a lot of fun.

My brother and I always don’t get along. We’re pretty much exact opposites. But wrestling is something we’ve always had in common. I’m glad I got to experience this with him, as opposed to someone else who really wouldn’t care. It was nice to spend a couple of hours with him even though we are on very different paths in life.

As corny as it sounds, it was a dream come true for the both of us. Even though we’re pretty far removed from the extreme fandom we immersed ourselves in nearly ten years ago, it was pretty awesome to be able to just sit back, forget about all the complications of everyday life, and just be a kid again.

Leslie Feist, I adore you.

About halfway through the first semester, I saw her open for Broken Social Scene and play their set with them (she worked on You Forget it In People…). I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. The energy she had was incredible; she never stopped dancing, she moved from instrument to instrument with ease, and she was always singing something. Ah! Her stage presence was incredible and that voice was so hypnotic!

Now, I’ve never had a crush on a celebrity before… so I didn’t realize what was happening as I began floating while watching her on stage. Watching her move, I couldn’t help but smile. Seeing her pick up every instrument on stage, I couldn’t help but know that she is pure talent. After hearing her play through “When I Was a Young Girl” by herself, I couldn’t help but feel I was sitting in her bedroom and I had to respond “Baby, you’re going to be FAMOUS!” I felt like I was a part of her life. I may be a creep, but that doesn’t change that I fell in love with Leslie Feist.

Why do I have a crush on Henry Rollins? I don’t even LIKE Black Flag or the Rollins Band.
But for giving off such a testosterone soaked image, Rollins seems like a nice guy.
For some reason, in my twisted mind, he seems like he knows how to treat a lady, and will kick the living shit out of anyone who would give you a problem, and I find that attractive. Not that I find disgusting displays of masculinity super sexy, but with him it’s different.
Plus he’s got fabulous muscles, and he’s funny.
What more could a girl want?

I gave myself a project these past couple weeks: I was going to like Bob Dylan.

It’s not that I didn’t like Bob Dylan before, it’s just that I never had any deep-seated appreciation for him either. I would hear so many knowledgable people whose opinions I respected talk so highly of Dylan, and I was never able to contribute to these discussions. So I decided to take steps towards having the same revalation that so many people before me have had–the simple fact that Bob Dylan is one of the most talented and important figures in the development of music in the last half-century.

I decided to start with the four albums I’d heard the most about–”Blonde on Blonde,” “Blood on the Tracks,” “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited.” To be fair, I’d heard more about “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” than “Bringing It All Back Home,” but I couldn’t find a copy that day so I grabbed the next most recognizable.

“Blonde on Blonde,” possibly Dylan’s most classic album, has songs like the honky-tonk “Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35″ and the classic “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.”

“Blood on the Tracks,” the most easily accessible of the three, has “Tangled Up in Blue” (hands-down one of Dylan’s most dramatic choruses) and the oddly dramatic “Idiot Wind.”

“Bringing It All Back Home” has the frantic “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” the Tom-Waits-on-uppers of “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” and “Mr. Tambourine Man,” one of my very favorite songs and one that we will discuss later.

“Highway 61 Revisited,” my favorite of the four, has even more songs that jump out: the intensity of “From A Buick 6,” the seemingly endless hooks of “Like A Rolling Stone,” and the bizzarly apocalyptic tones of “Desolation Row.” It was during this album that I had the epiphany: Bob Dylan is brilliant. While most of his contemporaries would record boring, played-out, uninspired tripe, Dylan’s brutally untrained voice, his unorthodox stylistic approach and his unparalleled storytelling ability made music that wasn’t just better than the rest–it was more alive, more organic, more fun.

If Johnny Cash, the man in black, was the soundtrack to a funeral, Bob Dylan reminds me of the soundtrack to a wedding reception. It’s not always happy, but there’s an energy there that underlies everything, an energy that embraces life and all its mediocre, unremarkable details. Bob Dylan is the kind of guy who would notice what color trim the cake was frosted with, whether the chairs and tableclothes matched with that frosting, whether the napkins matched the plates and tablecloths, whether any of the other rubbernecking guests noticed the harmony or contrast between frosting, chair, tablecloth and napkin, and then write it all down on the back of that napkin. As cliche as it sounds, that’s how I picture Bob Dylan writing at least some of his songs.

Now let’s address the issue of why I never appreciated Dylan’s brilliance before. First off, there’s the voice. It’s not so much that his voice is that bad, it’s just that people make it out to be nearly unlistenable. So if you’re thinking of following this example, don’t pay attention to anyone’s Bob Dylan impression, no matter how good people say it is. And second, covers of Bob Dylan songs.

Two of my favorite songs ever are “Mr. Tambourine Man” by the Byrds and “All Along the Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix–both Dylan songs (no, Dave Matthews didn’t create “Watchtower,” he just destroyed it). So while I knew they were covers, I never thought the originals measured up to these versions. I still don’t think they do. Even Bob Dylan said Hendrix did “Watchtower” the best. Hendrix just infused a musical virtuosity into a song that, brilliantly written though it was, Dylan could never hope to bring. As for the Byrds’ version of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” we’re talking the Byrds’ vocals versus Bob Dylan’s vocals. And, while I do maintain that Dylan’s vocals weren’t bad, the Byrds, along with everything else David Crosby has ever been involved with, had nearly impeccable vocals. Also, they used a tambourine, an element I feel is critically lacking from the original Dylan version. To Dylan’s credit once again, “Mr. Tambourine Man” is to this day my favorite Byrds recording.

So there we have it. There are certainly better musicians in the world, but Bob Dylan ranks high among the songwriters out there. It wouldn’t be uncalled for to cite him as the single most important American songwriter of the last 50 years. His music has impacted everyone playing music today–either directly, or through his inspiring Hendrix inspiring Black Sabbath inspiring KISS inspiring Weezer inspiring virtually all of today’s hot rock bands. His influence cannot be denied, but his legacy must continue to be recognized. It is not without its flaws, but a basic familiarity with Dylan’s work is utterly essential.

Don’t even try and argue.