On emo, aging, Dashboard Confessional, and bad metaphors

My iPod makes me feel old. Or at least it did last week. I was at work late one night and put it on shuffle, just for fun, willing to play Russian Roulette with 5,000-plus songs, unsure which would be secretly, mortally humiliating.

The gods of math and chance and imperfect randomness threw Dashboard Confessional at me. And you know what? I fucking loved it. I wanted to scream infidelities. Ender save me and everyone else. The Swiss army romance romanced me right into the bedroom.

But after the music stopped and I fell from those dizzying heights and sat there, panting and craving a cigarette, holding the sheets loose around my chest, I wondered: How true is my love? How honest? Chris Carrabba had my sentimental 16-year-old heart, to be sure. But at 25? Is the love still true? Or, good god, am I old enough to be nostalgic already? Are dim memories of lunch tables and SATs and three-minute warning bells the only reason this emo-weenie holds me captive?

American Football says no. I discovered them just a couple weeks ago (thanks, Alisa), and they're every bit as maudlin and tormented as Katie Holmes' ex-lover (sample lyric: "Well I'm not dead yet / But the regrets are killing me"). And even though I discovered them at the ripened -- nay, bright-yellow-and-beginning-to-show-brown -- old age of one-quarter of a century, I still eat it up. I don't love bad emo because of ancient memories. I'm just a sucker for that shit.

P.S. You're welcome, Torres.