five foot ten inch man

kyuss - one inch man

I find it slightly amusing (or more likely, disappointing) that my good friend Nate doesn't really have any form of online existence, only because a lot of what I'm writing here seems to have something to do with him. Although we went to separate colleges (or no college at all...), Nate was probably my closest friend throughout my college years. Because of this, I think we share a lot of the same opinions on everything from which sports to watch on television to how to behave around people we're not familiar with.

My college experience was probably atypical: an hour drive to skip class by sleeping in my car in the parking lot, followed by a 30 minute drive to work in St. Louis, and then a 45 minute drive home at the end of the evening (and I actually have a degree!). I have zero friends that I actually made at college, and my best memory of school is probably playing sega in my dorm by myself (I lived at school for exactly one semester, in which I determined that I was wasting my money living at school). But regardless of all that, I still managed to have my "college years", they were just spent at a friends' apartment in St. Louis.

I suppose one stalwart of the college experience is the road trip, and Nate and I made our first in 1995 (I think). That was the year the Rams moved to St. Louis from Los Angeles, and home game tickets were an impossible find. Luckily the Rams played the Colts that year, so we bought a couple tickets to a Colts game in Indianapolis. I don't remember very much from that trip, except that the Rams scored on their first possession, and that we listened to Kyuss' "One Inch Man" approximately 100 times on the way to Indy.

I pulled the CD out of storage last week. I hadn't listened to it in years. And it's not really the sort of song anyone should listen to 100 times in a row. But I know we listened to it at least 20. Despite the fact that Kyuss' singer was a major liability (and you could barely hear him), the song was in that moment the best piece of music on the planet.

Of course Kyuss eventually split up, and the guitar player went on to form Queens of the Stone Age (a current favorite). Nate and I stopped hanging out as much, and I don't know if he ever bought a QOTSA album. But we still hang out every time I'm home. And he still digs almost every piece of music I give him. So we haven't changed that much.

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This really wasn't meant to be a bummer. Somehow everything I write seems to have this melancholy "remember the good old days" vibe. Yuck.

Sorry about that.