I remember me and my friends playing at dad’s house on the weekend,
‘Til he found the video camera where my friend had recorded
an MTV cribs satire of his house about how he had old broken-down food
about how his house was broken down too
in periods when my dad lived alone

When my dad didn’t have a girlfriend, he’d hire a maid for the house
I remember specifically, he’d have us dump our cereal bowls down the toilet
and Mike and I we’d get $50 to go to Safeway and buy groceries for the weekend
we’d never bought groceries in our lives before that
so we thought the best idea would be to be a $20 birthday sheet cake
and dad would wake us up so early the next morning, sayin
“you wanna go to Shari’s and get takeout for breakfast?”
and I would always say yes even though I was so tired,
‘cuz I could get chicken Fried steak and that was my favorite

“He don’t mind to get up early, if it means there’s a chicken fried” x2

Mike and dad playing Battlefield 1942 on the computer every night,
me lyin’ in my bedroom, suicidal,
sometimes trying to hide that I was talking on the phone
to my high school girlfriend nightly,
things in our relationship got pretty crazy,
Things got out of control so quickly, shout out to my mother
But while I was in my room fighting off the dark
I left my brother out there with a hungry tiger,
I shoulda been there to protect him for sure,
but I was so weighed down by the things in my head
And I still wish now I coulda been there with him,
been there as my dad used the game they were playing
as an excuse to get mad at Mike,
it’s such bullshit now that I’m an adult and I understand

Dad would get drunker and drunker
and eventually black out most nights when we were over at his house,
This night we weren’t so lucky though,
he got this idea in his head, he started yelling
“Mike, you shot me in the game! That’s friendly fire!”
And Mike’s just playing games with his dad
He’s like “I didn’t, I didn’t!”
And dad’s yelling at him like “you’re a liar!”
and I come out at this point,
I see them fighting and screaming, I get involved
and dad decides the best thing to do is just to send us home for the night
But that’s just how things were for Mike and I back then
things in our houses were a total circus,
I remember one time when I was at dad’s house
my friend locked me in the den with a picture
on my dad’s computer, he had found it in a search
it was a picture of my dad’s dick, dad had sent it to a family friend
one of my friend’s moms, and my friend thought it’d be funny to lock in the room with it
I didn’t even cry I just didn’t know what to do,
I just felt so ashamed that my dad was so crazy,
Cuz my friend’s mom was nothing like that,
she had a mature parental manner and good boundaries,
she would never let her son find her sexy photos on the computer,
she was a good lady,
my parents were both completely out of control,
Party on the weekend when the babies are away

And I’d cry x14

But the nice thing about having crazy parents who are going insane,
is sometimes they’ll go a long way to please you
with material objects to try to make up for
the way that they will emotionally neglect you,
One nice thing my dad did for Mike and I
was he bought us the entire rock band game set,
and it was so prohibitively expensive back then
that I thought I would never even get to play it,
But instead I was the first kid on the block with the game,
I was so excited to get my whole friend group over
play the drums, bass, guitar, sing at the same time,
my dad even set up a cool sound system for us,
Mike and I would play the game when we were alone
it was sort of a precursor to the kinds of things we do now
I think about it now I think it’s kinda beautiful, we were just playing the game

And we’d play x7 “Say it Ain’t So” by Weezer
And we’d play x7 “Sharp Dressed man” ZZ top

When I think back now about the way that I felt back then,
I feel bad for the little boy who was dealing with such darkness
So much pressure that I felt to be fully formed back then,
Every mistake was a reason to feel like I was
less than a person but especially that I couldn’t find a girl,
I was obsessed with the idea that I was a fuckin’ loser
‘Cuz a couple of my friends had gotten girlfriends first,
And I knew that I was unloveable the way I was then,
So I’d write in my notebook about how I couldn’t be loved,
About all my dark feelings and the way I would hide them,
Its amazing to me the way my songs can sometimes be things
that I wouldn’t understand ‘til 15 years later,
I’ll play you now the first song I ever wrote,
It’s not a great one, but I like the way the lyrics acknowledge
that I was hiding the darkness that I felt
art gives us a window to the subconscious processes

“If I told you that I was fine, then you know that I lied”

So I tried to be a good boy and always follow the rules
but they drove me totally crazy until I couldn’t see straight
‘Til last year my mind started opening up
to the way I used idealization as a defense mechanism
against all this unregistered childhood pain,
Unregistered hypercam, unregistered sex offender
Unregistered, in my brain