3.31.13

Seven years later doesn’t make it any better. Every time I think about it, which I’ve conditioned myself not to, it makes me wonder what could have been. Maybe the band we were in had run it’s course, maybe we were never gonna be rock stars, but we were all going to be together in Columbus, what a fleeting feeling now.

What is there to say after seven years? Who knows. I like to think I’ve done something with myself that he would at least find acceptable, low as it might be. The thing I know is he never would have turned on me, never seen me as lower than him, we sweat the same battles on the soccer field, in college, in the band, in life.

I wonder what he would have thought of this coronavirus too, like anyone, we have no reference point. He would probably find a clever one though, or one that would justify more than 10 of us meeting to drink together, scientifically of course. He wouldn’t have been scared to do what he did, and defend the public like he could.

We all have a million stories about how Andrew Tarek Katbi affected our lives, so I’ll tell you mine. We were in a huddle as a soccer team before a game, and our brilliant coach John Munoz finished his speech saying this, “Here’s the captains band, and this is how we do it, I don’t pick it you do.” He then threw the armband down in the middle of us.

It was a tenuous second, maybe a second and a half before Andrew bent down, picked it up, and handed it to me. I like to think everyone had that opinion, but I could be wrong Nobody wanted to win more than him, so if this helped us, fuck-em-all lets go. That’s how I became captain of The Delphos Legend, and that’s how Katbi will live forever.

To all of my non-existent readers out there I’m sure you’re balls-deep thrilled about the fact that I’m going to California. The part that I have neglected to tell you about is who I will be traveling with. Luckily for you, WordPress has given me an unlimited amount of words to describe this asshole, so here goes.

I met Zach at Discover Financial Services in 2014 and in our training class I wasn’t too sure what to think of him. There was then a day when we both started trying to kick a ball of paper into the same trash can at which point soccer came up, and as they say, the rest is a silly, tragic, fun, drunken, unfortunate and fortunate bit of history.

‘You’re for Manchester United?’ ‘I’m for Manchester United.’ What about 200 miles of us growing up in vastly different places couldn’t separate was the beautiful game. The only unfortunate part was that he was a Seattle Sounders fan, and I’m still working on that.

We were inseparable at work from that point on, they asked us to to Q and As with training classes because of our charisma together. We had no offense to addressing the trainees, and we were the best of our class.

Fast forward to my new job that I excelled at for the first few months, and about the same time I’m failing at this new job, Zach calls.

The mother of his child had moved all of her things out of the house he rented while he was at work.

I brought a case of beer and all of my condolences. But that was just a start.

This part is none of my business, so I leave it out.

I was hospitalized for bipolar and Medicated.

Medicated Justin was not who I wanted to be. I took myself off Risperdol in 2016

One of the great things I decided to do while in the hospital that I boned up on was getting season tickets.

We did.

For 2016 Zach and I went to every Crew home game we could make. It was glorious.

Since then we have seen each other as often as possible and will be going to California in a month!

You and I are gonna live forever!

I wrote a similar thing way way back when I was a sophomore in college at the university of Toledo about my living situation being amazing while looking at the design of my ceiling. That was an ignorant observation to a world that had passed our neighborhood by decades earlier.

2020

Now it’s been ten years since I graduated from Toledo, and while I would give the University all the accolades a state school could ask for, the city is still a wasteland. I took my first trip back a few days ago with my best friend and future online Rocket Zach, and while being on campus again was nostalgic, I didn’t exactly want to show him where I lived.

Also 2020

The only thing I would change about Columbus is the climate. Some say that the harsh winters make the people who they are, they’re idiots of course, snow doesn’t build character. If you walk down Broad St. downtown you feel like you could be in any major city.

If you go out to Dublin, you can feel like the finest snob in the universe, attend The Memorial Tournament and witness one of the greatest golf courses in the world. The point I’m trying to make here is, I’m proud of my degree from Toledo, but I would’t live there for twice what I make.

So much of life is in the gray, you work, you breathe, you die. I’m only 32 now, and if you asked me 10 years ago when I was staring at that wonderful ancient ceiling in Toledo where I would be, I would have told you Amsterdam or London or Los Angeles. When I stare at the ceiling now, I see Columbus.

I’ve been on this thing for almost ten years now and I can’t say I’ve been introspective all that much, but it is lonely on Christmas Eve with nobody to celebrate with. I’ve had a good year, Browns not withstanding, work has been good, I’ve even dated a few people. How can I really complain? I mean, I talked my best friends wife into letting him come to California with me next year.

I also managed to save a lot for the first time in my life, I know I’m like 8 years behind the game at this point, no 32 year old should be proud of that, but it was savings to me for the first time, and out of credit card debt for the first time since I’ve had one.

As I write this, ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ comes on my Pandora, and how fitting, we are a slave to money then we die. I’m going to hibernate this winter and do next to nothing, in the hope that California is everything that I’m hoping it can be. Who knows, maybe I’ll even write more. but I don’t hold my breath at picking up a guitar again, as romantic as it seems.

This year I stay on the boring and straight and narrow and keep my head down and pretend like I haven’t been fucking around since college, that’s the goal. All I know for sure is that I’m ecstatic to be typing this on a MacBook Pro that I have made sacrifices for and now I’m back in the game.

I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down…again.

All that Britpop influence from college is finally sparking in me something profound…They didn’t know anything either, but they were talented. I have finally discovered that I am not talented at anything musically, and it’s kind of an absolution.

You sold your soul and made credit card debt to be in a rock band just because you and your best friend were good at guitar hero. You thought you were John Mayer or Jimi Henrix because you bought a Stratocaster like the one they played.

I bought my first Stratocaster working at gamestop in college. The mexi version…it was spicy. I played that every night after class hoping to become something. Learning all kinds of riffs and chords, doing it all from YouTube and tab, thinking, we really might have something here….

My best friend owned my old guitar, a squire Stratocaster, so we started practicing together with a few others from his college. What was that thing we were missing, A FUCKING DRUMMER!

When our drummer moved in next door, we knew this was fate, so I maxed my first credit card and got Katbi an epiphone les Paul. We needed it for the band. The cops were only called on us twice for practice, but it could have been many more.

The two shows we played at little Mexico in Ada, Ohio were two of the best nights of my life, chaotic as hell both of them, for different reasons, but great, and I will debate you until trump melts into the Potomac that we have the best cover of ‘Baba O’Riley’ on Youtube.

It’s the dream of all those that want to be movie stars and music icons, I just want to see it. I want to see and feel everything I’ve seen on tv and only imagined could be real.

Today I got the word that my best friend would be joining me on this journey,  and to say I couldn’t be happier would be an understatement. We have previous adventures to Arizona with a mutual friend and that went well so I have no doubt we will be fabulous travel companions.

But this new adventure to the far west coast, will be the best ever. California on Labor Day week will be perfect weather and all the drinks will flow.

San Diego may not have the Chargers anymore, but the will have Zach Crist and Justin Clark for a week. They may not survive…

Anyway, like Led Zeppelin, I’m going to California.

With this tumultuous government shutdown over the last month or so you seemed to get a feeling that America had two sides, two sides fighting for their point of view, but also, two tribes, one for government workers, toiling away without a check, and one, pupils dilated, thinking about how much they enjoyed the chaos and that it was affecting political rivals so it was just fine…

I’m not old, this wouldn’t have happened with Obama-McCain, or Obama-Romney. Maybe I am old, I remember Bush and Gore and 9/11 and I even worked phones on the Kerry campaign. But here we are, with a clear signal, this President was willing to sacrifice the pay for government workers to get a wall that has less popularity than a vanilla ice video.

Alright I’m old, and to start this manifesto I started out young, at least watching The Daily Show when I was in 6th grade, your parents can mold your politics, but they can’t define them, luckily, I was able to spread my political views wider and louder because I knew my parents had my back.

People that enjoy the suffering of government employees going without a paycheck are a plague upon society, yes they exist in our workplaces, but they should not be allowed to propagate a message of hatred, be it subtly or unsubtly about immigrants or about anyone. These are the people to avoid.

If I had to take a stand, I would do as Nancy has done so far, deny, win, and force Trump to be a Tsar.

Love that Bloc Party song, but yet again, my non-existent audience, here we are. I’ve been back in Columbus since July and I couldn’t be happier. I was never in combat, definitely not Vietnam or Afghanistan, but I did do two years in Delphos, OH, and I would give it a yelp review on par with either of those other places.

I really bit the bullet to get back here, taking a shitty call center phone job and was lucky enough to have an old friend who needed a roommate. He has been great, and I was fortunate enough to find a better job almost right away.

Since being back, I have voted, drank, eaten, wandered, had sex reasonably recently, and even visited the library. That being said, on this MLK weekend, I might even dream. I am planning a California trip for next year that should finally check all the boxes on my bucket list, that way, I can keep making excuses for doing nothing.

I hope I’ve found some kind of stability that I can live in for a long time, but I’m not so ignorant to know it could all be snatched away on a moment’s notice. So I’m savoring every second I can think to remember, and doing my best to keep the ship going in the right direction. It’s Morning in America again.

From a backward perspective, I cannot state more strongly or pathetically; depending on your logic, whether Andrew Katbi and I would ever be in a band. What I can tell you with evidence is that we were completely into music from the time we became roomates and had ‘Guitar Hero 2.’

A Playstation 2 conveniently lent to me by my cousin, and 2 guitar controllers later we were off.

It wasn’t enough to get five star completion of the songs in the game, it required a college and internet try that many wouldn’t believe.

Fifty dollars and ambition later, we had modded our Playstation, as to become the ultimate guitar hero custom machine…

And mod the playstation we did, an infinite quantity of shitty songs that people had, ‘Charted’ as they say.

I would give a shout out to the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ creator, except that it crashed on the solo part….every single time.

This was my, very, very well researched guitar hero tab for The Strokes ‘Heart In a Cage.’

Flashback to 2007.

Thankfully, we live in a society that generally does believe that the earth is spinning, and also around the sun, despite religious groups disputing the topic.

Civilization has proven so many things, both negative and positive, but overwhelmingly or under-whelmingly, we have survived both.

Flash forward to modern America, of course there are political, economic, and social differences that compose the modern United States.

Here is the difference that brings everyone together: Climate Change.

I am not going to argue the point. There is enough research available to prove the point that if you want to argue this basic truth, you haven’t read enough, or you are reading something that is either a heavily funded by a lobby group, or a settlement as a result of an energy company and a victim.

I want to change my posts from complaining about what people aren’t doing and can do, to what they are doing and they can do.

I started this over a year ago somewhat passively, by buying a 2012 Prius C.

(Insert your joke here)

I’m never going to tell you that I’m better than you for buying a Prius C. To be honest, it’s work, but work I’m willing to do. It is also work, that a fiscal conservative would praise.

The amount of money that I save between my 2003 Camry and the 2012 Prius provides all you need to know: I not only save the planet, I save almost twice the money per trip to the station!

Short trips, I can go all electric, and after a fill-up of the meager 9 gallon tank, I can still reach 340 miles. I’m trying to figure out what I would want to ever do that wouldn’t be within 340 miles…

Selfishly, this doesn’t count in the US, because we have 2 coasts with amazing destinations that I would only have to stop a few more times for.

I guess the point is, if you care about the country and the world, the 2012 Prius C is for you!