where have all the riots gone?

As the cities motto gets pulverized
Once in love but now in debt
On your birth certificate
So strike the fucking match to light this fuse.

Gracious, times have changed.
In my lifes concert going experiences ive always been among people of the same general ilk.
The sort of people you’d figure would go to see the pixies. The sort of people you expect to see at the white stripes. The sort of people who would, absolutely, stand in the sun at Coachella.
Im used to looking around at a sea of sweaty, smelly, surly type people and realizing that, although weve never met… we know each other. At least in the vaguest and most superficial ways.

The ways that soccer moms know other soccer moms and can give each other advice on the latest juice box technology. The way dentists know other dentists and can discuss the philosophies behind waxed and unwaxed flosses. The way that hedgehogs can smell and identify other hedgehogs… I don’t know.

As much as we are all beautiful and unique snowflakes we are also all… well…. We’re all still snow. We all find our way to a tribe of people who have all had, essentially, a similar life experience. A little group that’s always been and always will until the end.

Do you dislike your parents? Do you have a college education or quasi-college education that is completely going to waste at your current retail/office/food service job? Do you Tivo the Daily Show? Do you think the president is a douchebag? Is your hair style unnecessarily complicated?
Excellent!
See you at the green day concert.

…or so I thought.

Now I look around at the green day shows and I don’t see anyone I recognize.
I see kids. I see parents. I see frat boys. soccer moms with juice boxes. Cubicle people. Clean people. Groomed people. Brand name people.
They sing along to American idiot, they love Boulevard of broken dreams, they go nuts for Shout, they know time of your life, but that’s as close as they come.

And I cant help but feel sorry. Theyre missing all the good stuff. They’re getting cheated. And, much much more importantly, they are cheating me. I want to walk away with that feeling that we are all in it together, we “shared” a moment, I want to always feel like part of this was mine.

And now, instead, I have to face the fact that I am old. That the times they are a changing. To everything turn turn turn and all that bullshit.
The world has changed. Turned and left me here. my life has changed, and is changing, in at least one very obvious way that tends to get a little weighty around my middle section.

And besides all that, I have to let go.
Green Day belongs to the world now.
To VH1 and MTv2
Theyre never going to be my dirty little secret again.
Ill have to go on knowing that my mom knows all the words to wake me up when September ends. Ill have to shop in target while they play waiting over the speakers.
Ill have to go to the concerts and stand between the middle aged and the middle schooled and find a new way to feel like part of this was mine.

the band deserves all of their success.
but i still wish that i could send the fakers packing, back to their coldplay albums and avril lavine concerts... we'd all be better off.

k.

tattoos and memories and dead skin on trial
for what its worth, it was worth all the while.