Can I Pay My Rent In Fun?: Me, Scrambles, and College

  

    This past Monday I graduated college and have been feeling indifferent about it. Excited to be in the real world, scared for the unknown, nervous about inevitable rejection, and other accompanying 22-year-old problems. Countless records have soundtracked this 4 year journey for me but one in particular stands out and that is Bomb The Music Industry!’s 2009 album, Scrambles. I spent my freshman year of college in 2020 at home in Yonkers constantly driving around and listening to this record, longing for my life in New York City to begin. Then in 2021, I started my sophomore year in NYC and finally began to live out the songs I had loved for months prior. I was 19, naive, just started smoking weed, and I was in it. During my first year in the city, I felt pretty alienated and leaned on “Stuff That I Like” for a sense of belonging. I was better than these yuppies waiting in their long lines for lines. I thought we all lived here cause we’re different! I have since shaken the idea that I’m better than my peers but at the time, you couldn’t tell me different because I had Scrambles, which validated me in so many ways. 

    At the end of my sophomore year, I moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 20 years old, bright-eyed with nothing but a fake id and a love for last.fm grid-posting. That first summer in Brooklyn was tough and I once again leaned on my good friend Scrambles. I was actually seeing the sunset from the front of the J train! I was living the songs! I had a fresh attitude and a young body and relished everything around me. I began the routine of taking countless neverending walks around Williamsburg and Greenpoint and made up a Bomb The Music Industry! walking tour in my head where I visited various spots mentioned in songs. I was still naive, still learning who I was, and still listening to “Stuff That I Like” every day. 

    When I turned 21 I had every Brooklyn bar at my fingertips and drank more beer than I ever had before. Scrambles was not just a symbol of a dream life anymore but had quickly become my reality. “We're eating pizza in New York, we're drinking beers with our best friends, we're not looking over shoulders, karma is the shit.” I was free to go out and get shitfaced on a weeknight because I could. At the end of each night, I would listen to BTMI and romanticize my degenerate college lifestyle. Walking home from the bar on empty Williamsburg streets listening to “Wednesday Night Drinkball” showed me that the phrase “life-affirming music” wasn’t just a music writer buzzword. 

    At 22, I’m burnt, I’m gone, I don’t know what I’m on. It shits!!! It shits!!! Ok? Joking but I do feel a sense of emptiness without the constant feeling of having a discussion board to finish. I’m a few days post-grad and I don’t know what the future holds for me and I’m trying to feel ok with this weird in-between limbo phase. I have my whole life ahead of me and that's exciting? I think? I’ve since disregarded some of the music I loved at 19 but Scrambles has yet to leave my rotation, and probably never will. There is so much to do and learn and see, and I have to trick myself into thinking that it's cool my current brain is a sponge soaking in everything around me. All I know is it’s gonna set sadder and it’s gonna get weirder.  

And I also know that I’m seeing Jeff Rosenstock 5 times this summer and if he plays a song from Scrambles at any of those shows I will be crying. 

(Fun fact: Scrambles and I have the same birthday! That’s cool!)