Me need cookie to staunch bleeding.

Deep breath. Severe run-on sentence ahead:

You know those bands you champion through your twenties and then, at the last concert you go to for them, you look around and everyone is about 10 years younger than you, and you realize that you just don't have the energy to push to the front anymore and you become the old people standing in the back by the bar, with a beer; the ones you used to look at wonder why they bothered coming; and then you do wonder why you bothered coming, because being at home, listening to the album while laying on the couch, seems more appealing than trying to see over the heads of 500 squirmy adolescents, who have unlimited resources of energy to devote to fanship.

So then, you stop looking for articles about the band or noting when their new album comes out, or the one after that or the one after that and all of a sudden your 34...

Brief interruption. A young jocky guy just sat down beside me on the train with his homemade peanut-butter and jam wrap for breakfast, with a bottled, Starbucks frappucino and he's voluntarily reading an article in a magazine called "International Standards of Auditing", in what I presume is an accountant's magazine? Accountants Monthly? Today's Accountant? Is it that much of a lifestyle that it warrants a magazine?

Anyway, so one day, out of complete boredom with everything in your record collection and possibly life, this band you used to love pops into your head. Like a grounded teenager, stuck in their room, that still has some childhood toys buried deep in the back of the closet, you pull out one of this band's old records (like the teenager pulls out the old Fischer-Price hospital) and start playing it and it's still awesome. You remember why you loved it so much. By the way, playing with the Fischer-Price hospital is still awesome, especially if you have the Fischer-Price Sesame Street characters they put out in the 70s. I have Susan, Gordon, the Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch. I like to make Cookie Monster perform surgery on Gordon with Oscar the Grouch assisting. "Me need cookie to staunch bleeding, STAT!".

After playing the album, you start to wonder what the band is up to these days, so you go and download that beeyatch from iTunes and are pleasantly surprised to discover that the band is still making great records. All of a sudden you feel so refreshed and feel that entropy has been held at bay, ever so slightly, for just a little while longer. Sometimes, you hear the new stuff and it sucks so bad and you regret even knowing about it...but that's not what happened today.

This morning, I tried out, not the newest, but the second newest album by Sloan (because there's nothing wrong with a little caution) and it's really, really good, especially when I make Susan and Gordon dance to it. So thanks Sloan, for not sucking yet and screw you Fischer-Price, for totally not making toys like you used to.

Amen.