"You Are All Assholes"

This is a list of famous people I aspire to be:

• Chuck Klosterman
• Henry Rollins
• Rob Dyrdek
• The RZA
• Bruce Springsteen

This post is about 1 and 5

So if you've ever read my blog, you may know that I love and aspire to be Chuck Klosterman, professional witty dude.

Chuck Klosterman is the Bob Dylan to my Joan Baez; all the cool shit you thought I was coming up with, not me, him. And one of the best things he ever said was his 85% theory. In lay-summarizers terms, everything ever is at 85%.

Now I don't remember if this was Chuck or my brother, Dean TeenIdolAngelo Tartaglia who said this, but the ratio of people who will one day leave their hometowns and make something of their lives is 85%.

And now #5, the guy who made leaving your hometown in a youthful rebellion cool: Bruce Springsteen.




Bruce's songs all come from a place of quasi-semi-auto-biographical wholesomeness, where you expect all of these songs to be about this shit he used to do in New Jersey. That's his appeal. I one day expect to meet Wendy from Born to Run or Rosalita or Crazy Davey from Spirit in the Night and talk about young Boss. This is the kinda shit that makes people beleive that Bruce works at a car warsh in Asbury Park, he's always had that still back home appeal. The 85%.

But comes Glory Days.




Ah Glory Days. My friends are drunks or housewives, but they used to be cool. And it's cool to remember being cool with the other 85% of my hometown! Bruuuuuuce. I am 80s Bruce Springsteen: my biceps are huge, I play a positive blue collar guy in the video, and Clarence plays random percussion because fuck saxophones.

But then I started realizing the contradiction. 80 Bruce Springsteen is all about he's stuck in his hometown (My Hometown, Glory Days, Born in the USA), but 70s Bruce is all about leaving his hometown (Born to Run, Thunder Road, Badlands). And obviously, the 70s story is correct, because he's a rockstar; he is the 15% percent we aspire to be.

When he was singing about staying in the hometown, he was the world's biggest rockstar. Therefore, what is the true meaning of Glory Days?

All of my friends used to be cool, but they are now all drunks and losers because they peaked in high school. Now I am the biggest rockstar ever and fuck everyone I knew.

He's totally about to give 85 percent of the work the finger...