In Which We Think Green Day's Dookie Is Something It Wasn't

Thirteen Was A Very Bad Year

by LAUREN BANS

Oh man, do you remember the pre-Napster-nabbing days of youth, when buying music was still an active verb that entailed getting your family to drive you 15 minutes to the Sam Goody? I would say halcyon days of youth, but who am I kidding? The financial constraints of your bimonthly babysitting income necessitated that Dad accompany you inside the store, wearing his Trust Me...I'm a [Real Estate] Lawyer t-shirt and joking with the teenage cashier, "Do you listen to this crap too?" This was only the humiliating foreplay to family dinner at the Ground Round where parents shoved kids up to the age of 13 onto a giant scale in the restaurant lobby — reminiscent of that terror-inspiring clock in Safety Last — for the “Penny Per Pound” Sunday special.

I mean, THIRTEEN! Is there anything more inhumane to do to a thirteen year old? Okay, hmmm, after quick consideration, let me specify: to a thirteen year old overfed upper middle class suburban American? Do you perhaps know what this felt like? It was 1994, I was 12, and I remember praying "Lord let me cost less than $1.45" and then emotionally scarfing down a grilled cheese. This is what I endured just to get my hands on a copy of Dookie. Thanks Dad, for buying me that.

Of course, I totally deserved Dookie. I never gave my parents anything to object to. I was a "big boned," paler-than-a-feta-crumble 7th grader who had nothing to do but finish all my homework on time and get a super duper headstart on my SAT prep. I spent most nights on my daybed head-banging along to middling mid-90s mall punk like Rancid and The Offspring, albums about the drugs and sex I wouldn’t actually experience for, like, ten years, save for some senior year dry humping.

Also, there was this boy! I had a crush on him. Once he told me that he was excited for high school because killing frogs would finally be sanctioned, at least in biology, a reveal that struck terror into my heart, but maybe also pubescent arousal. He had Dookie, and so I wanted it, nay, needed it like I wanted, nay, needed him to love me even as his little man hands were tearing apart a frog carcass. Because: teens, suffering, fantasy, oh, you know, if you've watched any My So-Called Life.

And God, Dookie was good. I don’t think I understood a large portion of it at first. In fact, I remember being very confused at the pronoun usage in "Basketcase": I went to a whore/he said my life’s a bore/ so quit my whining cuz it’s bringing her down.

Like did Billy Joe see a male whore? If so, WHO is this woman he’s bringing down? Is this or is this not a PSAT prep riddle like he: gay appropriation by eye-linered Cali darlings as Britney-Madonna lip on lip: performative heterolesbianism? I still do not know! But I could headbang on my daybed to the music and, more importantly, relate to the larger sense of insanity, the anthemic angst, permeating the entire album—"giving myself the creeps", for example, was a strong and present phenomenon for an overweight 12 year teacher's pet pursuing a frog murderer as a romantic interest. Because: love, suffering, murder, oh, you know, if you’ve watched any Dexter.

Incidentally, there was one thing I never got straight about Dookie. Somewhere along the line I came under the impression that Dookie was a totally cool code word for "joint." I listened to the CD with this in mind (that is, until I injured my neck head-banging right before my Bat Mitzvah and my parents replaced all my alt-punk with Indigo Girls). And I somehow missed the clear signifier of the monkey throwing "dookie" on the album cover. In college I said things such as, "Pass the dookie." "Anyone got a dookie?" and "DOOKIE!"

Sure, not often, because I'm not a total fucking retard, but, um, WHERE WERE MY FRIENDS? Why did no one correct me? I have lived 15 long years thinking Dookie to be something it is not, something known to the rest of the world as a DOOBIE, only discovering yesterday, by virtue of a conversation about Green Day, what Dookie really means. That's crazy, right? I mean, yes, when you think about the fact that 20 years from now Heidi will probably be on a Cougar reality show, and that sexting is the new terrorism, or even that Bush was re-elected, it's not that crazy. But in my very small, self-centered world, which for the past 6 hours has been a quarantined mattress in front of a near-godlike A/C window unit, it seems like downright insanity. I mean, fuck, I think it's time I leave my house now.

Lauren Bans is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here.

"Pulling Teeth" - Green Day (mp3)

"Having A Blast" - Green Day (mp3)

"When I Come Around" - Green Day (mp3)

In Which This Is Not Love

Wait, You Like The Smiths?

by LAUREN BANS

The last movie I saw where the two protagonists were convincingly in love was Wall-E, and that really only worked because it was the apocalyptic future, they were both virgins, and they didn't speak all that much. But that's good — rom coms shouldn't try to tackle love, it doesn't work, it ends up tasting of saccharin and looking like glow sticks.

John Hughes rightly concerned himself with crushes, infatuations, the first flushes of like—developments that can realistically be covered in two hours. Molly Ringwald scores the popular bro and Eric Stoltz learns that there is such a thing as upward penis mobility for the working class redhead. Real love is boring and unwatchable. This is not love:

I LOVE The Smiths.

Wait, you like The Smiths?

Yeah! (sings) ‘To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die’ Love 'em.

I mean, my Mom likes The Smiths. Love based on the triviality of one’s taste should at least be exclusive to the point where the shared preference saves both souls from eternal ostracism, like:

I LOVE the Klingon version of Hamlet!

Wait, you like the Klingon Hamlet?

Yeah! (recites) ‘taH pagh taHbe’ Love it.

The highly stylized, disjointed story of the relationship between Tom and Summer is full of meaningless signifiers, starting with the annoying fact that there’s no reason 500 needs a parentheses in the title. It’s why Tom and Summer work at a greeting card company—the only setting with enough faux sentiment to beguile the viewer into thinking Tom and Summer are the real deal, at least in contrast to the empty platitudes on an Anniversary card.

Have you ever clicked the “Romantic” tab on a porn site? Of course you have. You know how it’s still the same old gross dudes effing college students for book money, only they dub in "Lady in Red" or "My Heart Will Go On" as the audio, and maybe add a face caress or two to make it seem more like lovemaking? This is more believable than 500 Days of Summer.

Sorry to be so harsh! I mean, I know, who the frak doesn’t love Joseph Gordon Levitt? It’s simply unfortunate that he plays a lovelorn idiot who falls for the real life version of the Morton salt girl. Tom never learns anything about Summer.

She prances around the screen with perfectly adorable saucer eyes, eschewing commitment (but not in any way that might lend insight to her character) and shouting “Penis” in public (how Quirky Aggressive!). She’s like an ethereal form — free of any human wants, desires or needs — a blank page onto which Tom can project his fantasies.

It happens quite literally as they sit on a bench overlooking Los Angeles. Lacking paper, Summer proffers her arm as a drawing board for Tom’s architectural renderings (his dream is to be an architect). So nice that she lets him work out his self-actualization on her skin! Now what does she want to do with her life again? Oh yeah, they never talk about that. I don’t really see how this is all that different than having a relationship with a 2 dimensional anime pillow.

I think we’re supposed to relate emotionally to Tom, because for some reason Hollywood thinks women like distraught, emasculated men. Somewhere along the way a dude who can't function as a fully formed human being became synonymous with the female dream of an emotionally-rich man.

I don’t know if I should blame Wes Anderson or Ethan Hawke for such emosogyny. Can you imagine if they made a movie where a chick spent the duration sobbing like an emo-idiot over a breakup with a guy who said that he wasn’t looking for anything serious right from the get-go? There would be bra burning in the street! I might partake!

Lauren Bans is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here and twitters here. She last wrote in these pages about Adventureland. She writes at The Perfect Ratio.

"Mozzarella Swastikas" — Adam Green (mp3)

"Baby's Gonna Die Tonight" — Adam Green (mp3)

"Apples I'm Home" — Adam Green (mp3)