Pete Yorn is not my boyfriend

My ears are getting old, my hearing a little, well, what?, but I still go to rock concerts. And at most of the shows I attend, a good chunk of the crowd is in my demographic, wearing earplugs and supporting whatever band is trafficking the latest brand of reunion nostalgia. It's a racket, but I fully participate. Sometimes I even buy the T-shirt.

I am, however, a little old and a lot married for crushes on the bands. Isn't that the domain of teenyboppers, of Tiger Beat and Bop? (Do they still make those magazines? Somebody ask the computer. Or I could just, you know, run to the newsstand for a sec...) Still, I love so many bands and singers. Tears of joy at the Pixies reunion in '05, same at my first Feist show in '08.

I may not plaster the walls with posters these days, but that's simply a design decision, not a statement about lack of feeling. Music can still transport me back to the age and mood when I first heard it, a sometimes awkward space to inhabit. Or the best place in the world to inhabit. You know how it is.

I've always wondered why music can have such an emotional hold. In the height of the nostalgia tours, Daniel J. Levitin's book This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession was released at an opportune time. I wound up listening to his book on CD in the car, which was great for the musical examples (less so for technical descriptions, at least for this visual learner. Narrator/actor Edward Hermann, recently of Gilmore Girls, rocked the house nonetheless.) The science folk speculate that the part of the brain that makes memory is closely tied to the part of the brain that understands music. Music discovered in adolescence makes such an impact because the brain and self are in a period of insane change, another reason adolescent experiences stand out so strongly in memory.

Which may be why, in the most time-crunched part of my week, I decided to see Pete Yorn in concert Monday after teaching my night class. He graduated from Syracuse University one year ahead of me, and I didn't discover his music until I was in my mid-20s, living and working in Syracuse several years after college. My friend and co-worker Glenn passed on Pete's first album, Musicforthemorningafter, knowing we shared similar taste in music. I was, and remain, hooked. Pete's now promoting his fourth album, and while he's too young to be on a nostalgia tour, something in his music makes me feel nostalgic: it reminds me of being in college, it reminds me of Syracuse, it reminds me of people I miss.

Because of the brain's weird emo-circuitry, I have to remind myself that it's my own memories I'm associating with and projecting onto the artist. Pete Yorn and I don't know each other, though he was very kind when I met him briefly a couple years ago at an in-store show & signing. That sweltering summer day, he covered The Ramones song "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" in a packed record shop. The crowd swooned. (Why pretend? I did, too.) In between songs, he recognized a young woman in the crowd. "You don't live anywhere near here," he laughed, and she stammered some reason for her appearance at yet another show.

Monday was my third Pete Yorn concert, though I've yet to travel far to see him play. But why wouldn't that young woman, or anybody, really, drive out of her way? Certainly it's for the artist and the quality of the music, maybe even the Almost Famous dream. But I think the power of memory moves us, too. We're driving closer to ourselves.

(500) Days of Summer = (past)(present) + (soundtrack)(dance sequences)

Maybe it's that the movie (500) Days of Summer is so clearly aimed at my age demographic (romps through IKEA! A main character in Clash and Joy Division t-shirts!) Or maybe it's the parenthetical title, which refers to the time span Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the now-grown kid from TV's "Third Rock from the Sun") and Summer (Zooey Deschanel, of the film All the Real Girls, which should be watched for the brief clown-dancing scene alone) meet, do or don't fall in love, and leave Tom to piece together what happened in a narrative that jumps around in time. Whatever the case, I spent much of the movie making my own parenthetical asides, mostly in my head so as not to disturb other theatergoers (though it's impossible not to exclaim over the scene with Pixies karaoke. What bar do I need to go to for PIXIES KARAOKE? Apparently a bar in Los Angeles.)

This is the kind of film that anyone who's had their heart broken could appreciate, if only for the vicarious closure of revisiting the past and learning to see it objectively rather than selectively. Good luck with that, eh? Or maybe it's possible, as we watch Tom's attempts (when did the kid from "Third Rock from the Sun" get so...handsome? And why do I keep saying "30 Rock" instead of "Third Rock from the Sun"? Need to watch the "30 Rock" premiere. Hope the Tivo worked.) Tom's a sensitive guy -- reminded of Summer by the song "She's Like the Wind" by Patrick Swayze (sad. He died last week. The Barrelhouse folks put together all their Swayze Question answers as a tribute. Nice.)

And then there's the public dance sequence to Hall & Oates, as Tom revels in a particular morning after. (She's All That, 13 Going on 30 and Ferris Bueller's Day Off also have excellent spontaneous-ish dance sequences, though S.A.T.'s actually takes place at a dance, making it comparatively pedestrian. I am drawn to these moments because I harbor a secret wish that it will happen in the middle of my day. I've given some thought to this, logistically speaking. I find mass demonstrations of coordinated movement inexplicably moving.)

There's also a scene when the characters go to a movie, and they are facing us, eating popcorn. Which was weird, because we were watching them, eating our popcorn. (I don't care what anyone says, a little artificial butter every once in awhile is gooood. But I suppose I could've skipped the Reese's Pieces.) And French film is gently lampooned (funny, because Audrey Tautou showed up in a preview - Coco Before Chanel, mayhaps? - and she is adorable in Amelie, which I'd just been thinking about watching again. I used it in class a couple times and it went over better than expected. Good students.) (And there was that other preview for a movie set in Paris, as well as New York I Love You, a redux of Paris Je'taime but, um, in New York. What's with all the Frawnch previews? Why isn't anything getting blown up? Arts Cinema. Got it.)

It took more than half the movie for me to realize it was set in L.A., which, if it has a distinct and picturesque downtown, was inaccessible for shooting. One train scene had lovely shots of the ocean through a dingy window at sunset. (Pretty effect for photos, but so glad I finally cleaned the living room windows. You finally can see so much more clearl--)

(You are spending an awful lot of time thinking about things you're reminded of, considering the $$ you paid to go to a movie and clog your arteries. Pay attention already.)