When I was a young man living in rural North Dakota we lived near a couple abandoned warehouses that were converted into low-income housing. My mother, who is the only entity I allow myself to love more than Guns and Roses’ album Appetite for Destruction, would always warn me about straying too close to the poor couples that inhabited these seedy tenements. I never thought, nor did my mother, that these were bad people. They were just people that I probably shouldn’t make a habit of associating with. They certainly were not living in the jungle, but probably met regularly with Mr. Brownstone.

She would explain that those people are like Winnie Cooper from the sitcom The Wonder Years. In the first couple seasons of The Wonder Years, Winnie Cooper was cute in a little girl way. She had decent features, a nice smile, and a heartbreaking coyness stemming from the death of her brother in Vietnam. However, as she grew older and the series progressed, she became less attractive. I am not sure if this was the writers’ fault because her storyline required her to be in a sullen state for most of the time, which contrasted highly with the banal conflicts that Kevin faced. This reminds of the seventh most unique episode of The Wonder Years where Kevin had to deal with the fact that Wayne gets to use the riding lawnmower because Wayne is older than Kevin, while Winnie had to figure out how to disarm nuclear warhead without disturbing her parents’ arguments over how they going to pay for her mother’s hospital bills. Ostensibly, Winnie and Kevin should never have been in the same universe. Their affiliation was in the character relationship dead zone. Much like a scene between Groucho and Harpo Marx, Slater and Screech, or Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana, if they were alone in a scene both characters would spontaneously combust.

Quick Question:

Would you rather blow up a completely random building (any type of building, ranging from skyscraper to prison) that at least 1,000 strangers were inside of and not get caught or kill your nemesis in front of everyone you respect in the world?

I was always satisfied with this explanation as to why I should never stray too far away from my home. That is until I was recently eating lunch with a lady friend named Sarah. In between discussing the repercussions for the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels inability to win back to back National Championships and whether Tumblin’ Dice is the fifth greatest Rolling Stones song, we began to talk about the low income housing in her hometown outside of St. Paul, Minnesota. She compared these tenements in her hometown to Nirvana’s Incesticide, an album consisting solely of b-sides and rarities that were made in between the releases of Bleach and Nevermind. Sarah eloquently reminded me that no one would ever speak negatively about Incesticide, yet no one’s favorite Nirvana song is on that album. In a lot of ways, I found that Sarah was right. It was an interesting place to visit in my younger days and I think part of the reason I liked it was because I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there. Incesticide was the same. It was a bunch of songs that weren’t supposed to come out. The only reason they were there was because they didn’t fit with the prior albums they put out. I quickly realized that my mother’s prior advice about the tenements was actually the eighth best piece of advice she ever gave me (in between my mother likening my getting bumped off Jimmy Kimmel Live to the NBA not allowing Wilt Chamberlain to take jump shots from the free-throw line and my lack of self-assurance around women to Jack McDowell’s inability to win a second Cy Young Award).

At any rate, this gets me to the tenth best piece of advice that my mother ever gave me. She once said to me when I was really sick before my high school football game. She said, “Just do the best you can.”  That sentiment stayed with me and reminds me of this new album from Dudes Ahoy, a Wesleyan based, all male non-vocal a cappella group. They don’t sing, they don’t play instruments but they go out there and hum and snap as best they can. They line up, get in tune, and give it their all. Have you heard their cover of Van Halen’s “Panama”?  It’s unique but it stays true to the original.  As they sway in time to the song, you can almost imagine David Lee Roth making inappropriate statements to girl in her car in a Denny’s parking lot. Sure, they have their shortcomings but they’re like those tenement houses of my childhood, which is somehow perfect