books

I got better. I'm terrible at picking favorites of anything, ever, but I can now confidently say Joe is now part of a four-way tie for the title of my favorite Fall Out Boy member, as opposed to a two-way tie for second place. (Again, so sorry. In the unlikely and frankly terrifying event that Joe himself is reading these words: I will totally buy you a beer to make up for my pre-pubescent stupidity, even though you're richer than I will ever be. Also, your dog is adorable.)

I can also confidently say that I loved this fucking book. It feels a bit weird to say "I had such a good time reading this!" when the book deals deeply and unflinchingly with, like, emotional abuse and neglect from a parent, antisemitism, addiction, severe anxiety and depression, and a bunch of other not-super-fun shit, but also, I was laughing out loud to the point where I eventually had to leave the coffee shop where I was trying to finish reading it because I felt like I looked insane. It helps that I've seen enough Fall Out Boy interview footage at this point in my life that I felt like I could hear everything in the author's actual voice without even needing to touch the audiobook; it has a very, like, shooting-the-shit vibe in places, in that exact way where many of us young weirdo types will make friends with someone through equal parts talking about our nerdy little interests and trauma dumping. There were other really, for lack of a more sophisticated-sounding word, touching things, too. As someone who was raised as a girl and is still a bit of a Christmas-and-Easter female (as in, it's easier to femme it up a bit at Christmas and Easter than come out to my grandparents), it's like... genuinely awesome to hear from a dude who loves his daughters as much as Joe Trohman loves his fucking daughters. There's a whole thing where he goes into that whole man-to-man "aw, but don't you wish you had a son?" thing and goes "fuck that." Yeah, yeah, cis men need to do more than just paying lip service to women being cool or whatever, but fuck off, that's a really genuinely good sentiment. I hope someday his girls get to read that and it means something to them, I dunno.

Anyway! Anyway. I really enjoyed this book. I found the organization of it interesting--it's like, vaguely chronological, but not entirely; each chapter is organized around a theme rather than a specific period in Joe's life, and will cover stuff around that theme but from different periods of his life, but then the themes themselves are more or less chronological, if that makes sense? I'm no expert, but I assume that's a less common way to organize a memoir than a chronological take; I think it works, though. At least, my brain, which loves themes and patterns, liked it. And, of course, I liked the fact that it was by and about one of the guys from my favorite band. One of the founding guys, even. Plus, as a FOB fan and especially as someone who's seen them five times in the last two years, there's something really amazing to me about the fact that this book, which was written and released prior to So Much (for) Stardust, let alone Tourdust and 2ourdust and the Days of Fall Out Past festival shows, and the impact those have had, the outpouring of love, playing songs from Evening Out live on stage... I feel like I need Joe to release a revised edition with one more chapter just to cover all that.

I'll give this one five Morrissey tramp stamps out of five.

Sensing a theme? Yeah, I dunno, I've found myself in the frame of mind this year where I'm enjoying Books About Music (TM). I mean, I've still only read two as of writing this, but two is a lot for me. Consider I usually max out at like... five non-fiction books a year. Two about music? That's 40%! That's almost a majority!

So, anyway, Mark Hoppus. I'm sure I'll never get this information, but I'm definitely curious how much influence Dan Ozzi had on this book, and where, and when, because some of the parts that are most compelling to me are the very very personal places. I mean, sure, there's obviously a lot of overlap with the musical stuff (the fights with Tom come to mind), and also the more music-focused, industry-focused pieces are still really interesting, but.. There's a chapter in the back third or so of the book where Mark talks about scuba diving. My family are all divers; I've had my open water certification since I was a teenager. So I see a picture of what is clearly Mark in a scuba mask and go "Hell yeah!" He talks about finding peace and comfort in being underwater at a time when his life felt totally out of control, when his OCD and paranoia were totally rampant, and I go, "I get you!" He talks about going out on a boat in a kelp forest and getting paired up with a woman he's never met, then losing track of her for just a minute as they ascend after a great dive, then searching, agonized, until eventually they find and recover her body, and I go "Oh, fuck." And like... I don't know, maybe fucking Dan Ozzi ghostwrote that, but I, uh, doubt it. (Is it even still called ghostwriting if your name's also on the cover? Whatever.)

All of that to say, I enjoyed this a lot. Memoir is a really interesting format to me; at my heart, I'm a fiction writer, but I also have a background in persuasive writing and essays, and memoir is kinda-sorta both. But also it's just, like, a person telling you about their life for however many hundred pages (about 400, in this case). And in some cases you care just because it's an interesting story, and in some cases you care just because the person's famous or did a thing you like, and in some cases, like this one, it's both. I haven't really read enough memoirs (or read enough about memoir as a craft) to say for sure that this one is like, particularly good or whatever, but I really liked it, and I really liked getting a window into yet another highly regional punk scene that has gone on to shape the face of modern music. I wouldn't call myself a blink superfan or anything, but like, c'mon, it's fucking blink-182; of course I like blink-182. I've seen them live, had a great time, and look forward to doing so again. So that element of it was cool and exciting, but the actual person-level memoir-ness of it all was really fascinating, too.

All told, I give this one five out of five TRL segments.