My freshman year of high school was a beautiful time. It was rife with all sorts of psychologically damaging things, such as the common "friend kills himself" complete with the "aftershock" suicide attempts, of which there are always a few, or the verbally violent rejections, and the "he said she said bullshit" as it was so eloquently spoken by poet Fred Durst. You know, things everyone deals with at some point in high school. I think I got them all in one year of high school.

The best thing that happened to me in high school was that I discovered The Beatles. This surprises me, now, because I grew up singing Yellow Submarine. My mother actually saw The Beatles play all three (or two?) times they played here in Los Angeles. My mother saw The Doors, and didn't care for them. (I don't care for them either, really.) I grew up surrounded by The Beatles (a poster of John Lennon hung forever in the living room, only to eventually be replaced by Gene Clark) and yet never knew of them.

By the time they were exposed to me, I was already dressing like a hippie, but I listened to System of a Down, Powerman 5000, Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead (a lot of Radiohead), Type O Negative. I was all over the board, but aside from the occasional Cat Stevens (though I'll never remember how or why I discovered him back before Skinny Puppy, foreshadowing I guess) I didn't listen to anything "old".

My clothing choices (green jacket, long hair, white shirt, blue jeans, red eyes) were due to my involvement in the political scene, where we all listened to System of a Down and organized protests in Los Angeles. Or something. I don't know. All I knew is that we staged a "walk out" where everyone left school and marched across town and it was sick shit. I wanted to be involved with these people, they did cool dangerous things and wore images of Che. Also, they smoked a lot of pot, something of which I never had any of my own, so that worked out too.

One night I tried to visit a girl I had a mean crush on in 5th grade. Hadn't seen her since, but in my freshman year I met up with a mutual friend we had back in elementary school. He said they still hang out and I----and I admit that this would make more sense if I wrote what I was supposed to write about today, in which I explain how in my younger years I was a hopeless romantic sap who didn't know how to deal with the concept of attraction or nostalgia or, I don't know, what a pussy I was? or am? or... I don't know, nevermind----got all excited like, "Yay! Let's meet old friends and damn I'm lonely, maybe she's cute, and chemistry at ten will translate to chemistry at fifteen?" Maybe my thinking was sound.

She wasn't there when we arrived but I ended up hanging out with her sister, Timothy, who was really cool and looked a lot like Winona Ryder at that age. I got really high by their swings (with pot I probably stole from someone who wasn't paying attention) and went into their den to lie down on their couch. Timothy came in and said, "Have you ever seen Yellow Submarine?" and I don't remember what my reaction was.

I hope I was like, "No, put it on," all cool like, but maybe I was a dick. Maybe I said something like, "Isn't that a cartoon?" and she replied, "Well, yeah, but it's the Beatles." "The Beatles, huh? I don't know about the Beatles..."

She put it on and I was somewhat amused in my sleepy stoned state, but it wasn't until Eleanor Rigby came on did something finally strike at my depressive teenage stoner heart. The visuals accompanying it were cool too. Sorta nonsensical, but interesting in their own right. I went home changed that night.

I pulled all my mother's Beatles CDs off the shelves and spent weeks listening to just the Beatles. If they had Last.FM back then, I would have been the top Beatles listener of back then. I loved the Beatles then. I love the Beatles now, but I love a lot of other stuff too.

I feel like it was genetically inherent in me. Something about being a Quaker and having a mother who was a die hard Beatles fan gave me a predisposition to like a lot of the music I like now. It was my destiny to love The Beatles.

The Presidents of the United States of America (the band) and Green Day were the first real bands that I listened to. Nine Inch Nails were my first real obsession that drove me to explore music in a research/intensive way. The Beatles exposed me to an entire era of music and shaped my taste forever. I hear The Beatles in so many of the artists I love (Michael Penn, Jon Brion, Olivia Tremor Control, Type O Negative) and I love them all the more for it.

I have to thank The Beatles (and Nine Inch Nails) for pretty much everything I listen to these days. So, thanks John, Paul, George, Ringo & Trent. You guys are great. Or were great, in some cases. Peace.

Site Note: Ten bucks if you read all that and didn't vomit. I'm in a rush to eat breakfast and go to work so I'm not going to proof read this ever. Not even when I get to work. If there are horrible typos and things that just outright confuse you, I don't give a shit. I'm probably going to get sued for putting up the Beatles.

Update: I proof read it sloppily. I am a liar. I really need to sit down a day in advance and plan these things out and write them properly instead of churning them out in a rushed couple of minutes. This thing is full of more unfinished plot lines than John Sayles' Limbo.

P.S. The girl finally showed up, but I was asleep and I woke up to her sitting across from me and my dad on the phone telling me I can't stay longer so we only got to hang out for that initial awkward period where it's like "Hi, it's been a while," "Yup," "So," "Yeah," and then I had to leave. I didn't see her for another six years. She's fucking weird now. I spend a lot of time with Timothy.