OK, LET’S DO THIS.

Well hey there, stranger.

I know you didn’t miss us (you probably didn’t even notice we were gone, you insensitive pricks!), but I took a much-needed month off from posting my potty-mouthed ramblings after we lost Mikey, the co-founder of this site. He died out in LA suddenly and unexpectedly, and it’s been a rough month, to say the least. 

Thank you to everyone who reached out, I really appreciate it. I have considered taking the site down, but in the back of my pea-sized brain I knew I wouldn’t; I just needed to allow enough time to pass, if that makes any kind of sense.
 
I don’t want to seem like a gushing pussy, but it actually hurt to think of doing this site without Mikey. He was my best friend, a godsend when I met him. I was an awkward transfer student at Emerson without a friend in the world, or at least in the city. I met Mike the second day of classes outside of the Little Building, and he made my life so much easier; suddenly there was a guy at Emerson who watched sports and drank beer, just like me. Mikey was extremely friendly, funny, and nobody listened or cared as much as he did. I told him things I wouldn’t tell my own family, or my girlfriend, or anyone else. There’s no way I would be where I am or who I am, without him. He would have been the best man (or at least one of the best men) at my wedding. And it crushes me that I didn’t give him the chance.

I miss him terribly, and the fact that I now don’t have anybody to randomly call out of the blue for no reason to bitch about the Celtics, the Sox, or life in general for 20 minutes is tough to comprehend.

 This was our forum to expunge mental spittle that was rattling around in our heads. It was our outlet. It still is.  I’m not going to take down what Mikey wrote. He has a few unfinished drafts kicking around, which I might publish and release Tupac-style. I can’t delete them, or anything he wrote. It just feels weird. I think it’s probably always going to feel that way. But he wrote it, and I wrote it, and we did this thing together. It’s always going to feel like there’s something missintg. But it also feels like it’s time to get back on the horse. 

One of my favorite memories of Mikey is almost 6 years old now. I was working at ZLX as a part-time jock, making minimum wage and renting a room with no windows. I was working a Saturday overnight shift, which meant I was on the air from midnight to 6am, when NO ONE listens to the radio besides drunks, stoners, drunk & stoned high school kids, and crazy people. Mikey and his brother Stevie came and hung out with me at the studio, because there was 30 minutes of downtime between talk breaks and all the music was scheduled for  me, so there was nothing to do but take calls from the slack-jawed masses.

 Mikey, Stevie and I decided to take calls (I believe they were both drinking, I might have had a pop or two) and try to get people excited for their song requests and their respective Saturday nights by basically yelling at them. As more and more time passed and more and more of the beers in the studio-fridge disappeared, it basically devolved into us yelling at callers to “FIRE IT UP!!!” and trying to get them to yell it back at us. We did it for hours. I don’t know why, but it was hilarious at the time, and it’s still one of my favorite random good memories of my life. That’s what Mikey brought to everybody who knew him. Random goodness.     

Speaking of that,  The loss of Mikey did lead to some good things. Seeing some of our old Colt Monday friends was a blessing in disguise, as they all have similar if not better memories of Mikey, and getting to share and hear them over the last few weeks has been extremely helpful. One of the few things I heard from everybody at the funeral was that they were interested in contributing to the site, so we’re going to get the band back together, and bring some of the original Colt Monday crew on to write here. Over the next few weeks, you might be seeing some new (and returning) authors here soon.  I’d like to think Mike would have appreciated that. I know I do.

So, let’s get this little hate train back on the tracks, and let’s fire it up.