“What was your first concert?”

Fresh haircuts.

New desk in the house.

Yep, school starts this week.

I now have a 3rd grader and a middle schooler. A fresh chapter around here. The elementary years are sweet and innocent so the air is bittersweet as we look ahead.

The timing isn’t ideal, but on the night of the first day of school we are taking the boys to their first concert — The Foo Fighters. We have lawn seats at the Concord Pavilion. A first concert is one of those reminders that time is linear but our experience of it is anything but. For the rest of your life you will always relive that moment because “What was your first concert?” is the canned icebreaker at meetups and orientations.

My first concert was Rusted Root. It came late — my freshman year of college. I went to Battle of the Bands type stuff in HS but never to a concert that cost real money. Up until then I had been to very few live events. I had an uncle take me to WWF wrestling on a Monday night in 7th grade. We walked in a bit late but I can still remember the first match — the Rockers, Shawn Michaels and Marty Jeannetty (I think that was his name – I refuse to look it up the instead of trying from memory), doing their high-flying acrobatics against a couple of heels.

[I also got to see Randy Savage that night. Randy is a top 5 celebrity in my standings. An unparalleled performer both in the ring and in his interviews. But just as outstanding were his less-staged interviews when he’d go on The Arsenio Hall Show. Even within his commitment to the bit, he winked wisdom and self-awareness to the audience. He was always my favorite wrestler. His match against Ricky Steamboat in Wrestlemania III is unrivaled. But I didn’t appreciate just how amazing he was until I saw his old clips through my adult eyes. What really sealed his GOAT status — how beloved he was by his peers and everyone who came into contact with him.

He was a generous soul who put everything he had into the craft of entertaining. He took that seriously without taking himself too seriously. That combo is the embodiment of inspiration for me. To sit in the tension that we are dust, that in 100 years it is unlikely that your name in reference to you will ever be vocalized aloud again, but that we should give the moments we get here their respect. We don’t know many we got and they don’t matter far faster than we might hope. Randy didn’t get enough moments but man, pound for pound…f’n legend.]

A different uncle, just as awesome, took me to a couple Jets games way up in the nosebleeds. Like 3 rows from the top of the Meadowlands. Cold wind, fistfights, and the most spirited “J-E-T-S” chant in the stadium. That was also middle school years. I can’t remember too many of the names. Al Toon was there. We saw them play the Rams who I actually remember better — Jim Everett, Flipper Anderson, Robert Delpino. The Rams had the Giants’ number so those names are memory-etched in vengeance font.

In the late 80s, I became a lifelong Giants fan after reading and re-reading a book that went behind the scenes of a week’s prep for a game against the Eagles in 1987 (after the Giants won the Super Bowl). Interestingly, I can’t find the book on the internet at all. Anyway, my love for the Giants was cemented when LT stripped Roger Craig during the 1990 NFC Championship en route to another Giants championship.

The first discretionary purchase I made when I graduated college — even before my inaugural cell phone — was season tickets to the NY Giants. That turned out to be the Thunder (Ron Dayne, frown) and Lightning (Tiki Barber) year where Kerry Collins led them to the Super Bowl where they were dismembered by the buzzsaw of the greatest defense of all time led by Ray Lewis and Ed Reed.

[A pause for self-therapy:

I lived in Park Slope my first year out of college. I’d get to Port Authority to take a bus to the games. After the games, I’d wait in long ass lines in the cold to get back to the city. It was an all-day affair to go see these Giants. Psychotic in hindsight. Another strong memory — instead of drinking and hanging with the other fans on the bus I’d whip out Natenburg. I studied options on all these bus rides. I can even remember thinking that one day I’d be able to just enjoy myself but I had a lot of work to do until that time would come. If I’m telling it straight, it was a mix of self-pity and determination which is kinda pathetic. I really wanted work to be easy which feels so immature to say now. I can remember how it felt so strongly which indicated just how high the stakes felt to me. When I think back, I wasn’t motivated to be great — I was just deathly afraid of failing. Life itself felt like pressure.

How much of this was of my own making versus what was incepted in me by my upbringing? I don’t know. It probably isn’t healthy. But it was useful I guess. A decade later I got to meet Justin Tuck at a charity dinner in SF. He and his wife were seated at the table next to us. I remember telling Yinh, I’m gonna go talk to him — we’re at this fancy thing where rich techies would nonchalantly raise their paddle with 7-figure pledges during the “power raise” part of the evening. For all Justin knows I could be a baller. We are equals in suits even though inside I was fanboying. I was a fan of his from his first days in the league and even had his jersey. I only had a jersey of one other player:

Randomly I also met Shockey. Kind of. I was walking in Manhattan and he pulled up alongside me, rolled down his tinted windows and with total disdain asked for directions as if he was disgusted with the city. He didn’t seem like a pleasant fellow. But it appears I can manifest meeting players by buying their jerseys.

Well not all of them (at least not yet). I have a signed Klay Thompson jersey from a silent auction — I never met him but Yinh and I were at the game where he dropped 37 in the 3rd which is insanely lucky since I’ve been to less than 10 NBA games. It was the best live moment I’ve ever seen…which gets us back to the main thread.

In adulthood, live events have been my favorite way to spend money. You could say I made up for lost time — date night this Friday will be my second concert of the week and maybe the 200th concert of my life — Khruangbin, my favorite band from the past 5 years, is coming to my happy place — The Greek in Berkeley.

In preparation for the kids’ first concert, we watched the outstanding roc doc Back and Forth and Linklater’s School of Rock. I hadn’t watched SoR in over 15 years. Yinh and I rediscovered just how f’n good Jack Black is in that movie. I’m also convinced that all it takes to ensure my entertainment is to have a name “Jack [insert color]”.

Meanwhile, Zak found Jack cover-your-eyes cringe which is a) a testament to how perfect Jack’s performance is and b) an unsettling reminder — Zak now cringes. That’s a relatively new emotion around here. Gonna be a fun one for his shameless dad to trigger. The kids already think their parents are weird between mom performing full-on Tina Turner concerts as she gets ready in the morning and me having new nicknames for them every third day.

For most of the parents out there, it’s still very much summer break. Watch SoR with the kids one night. It’s a lot of fun and if you play an instrument I dare you to not dust off the cobwebs and play after the credits finish rolling (and yea, I plugged in afterwards. I even fired up the Digitech Whammy and looper to get myself right.)

You must watch through the credits — I literally (I’m using this word with faithful adherence to its definition not the colloquial literally-the-opposite of its original definition use) got tears in my eyes. Pure joy.