Hot Hot Heat, the band that did extremely well in the 2000s and then dropped off the face of the earth. Hot Hot Heat, the band that played on Yo Gabba Gabba when I was a kid and pretty much made my childhood. Hot Hot Heat, the band that released one final album and silently disappeared.
Thank you, Hot Hot Heat, for all the jams over the years. I can't count the times I've danced around to Bandages and Goodnight Goodnight in my kitchen after school. I can't count the times I've listened to Kid Who Stays In The Picture on long drives this summer. Hot Hot Heat, I'd like to thank you for an awesome seventeen years. I'm proud of you. When I was twelve years old, I received my first ever posters for Christmas. They were of two of my favorite bands, Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand. Until then, I'd put up pixelated photos of Daft Punk printed from my school's computer lab to fill the empty void where posters of baby animals used to be. I was proud of those printed photos. They were pretty important to me. My parents have told me to take my posters down before, which I understand, I mean, I totally could do something cool with my wall, but I've never actually done it. Posters are a very teenage girl sort of thing, because teenage girls tend to obsess over things. My mom's teenage obsession was this band called Menudo, who were basically a Puerto Rican One Direction. I hadn't heard of them before my dad brought them up as a joke at dinner one night during the height of my Franz Ferdinand phase, but man, I don't think I'll ever get Vamos A La Playa out of my head. These strange and spontaneous obsessions give a sense of security, at least if you were me in 2014. When there were no decent guys at your school, you fell for the guitarist of that band you liked. When your friends excluded you, you turned to this band, this group of friends making music together, and somehow, strangely, they made you feel better. You may have been ridiculed for it, or bullied by some mean girls at school, but that one strange thing that you loved was so important to you that you felt hurt by it. But let me tell you, twelve and thirteen year old girls of planet earth, if that thing makes you happy, no one deserves to put you down for it. No one. Anyway, back to the posters. I'm pretty sure my Franz Ferdinand poster resided in the basement of a record store for twelve years before it ended up in a box at my front door. Besides the huge gash, which is thankfully barely noticeable against the black background, it's covered in dents, a couple rough patches, some minor and barely visible yellow discoloration, and I'm not kidding, a kiss mark over Nick McCarthy's head. So, yeah. That thing's probably been through World War One (haha, crappy Franz Ferdinand joke, although the man himself didn't make it through the war!). That poster is THE WORST. LIKE LITERALLY THE WORST. It's fallen on me in the middle of the night while I was sleeping so I had to spend ten minutes of my night fixing it, fallen on me in the middle of the day, fallen just as I walked into my room (cue the deep sigh), scared my cat so bad she wouldn't come into my room for days, and that thing was even on the floor just when I got home from Florida. So, when my dad woke me up at 8:00 AM one day and told me to takedown my posters since we were painting my room, my first thought was this: I knew my Franz Ferdinand poster would be impossible to keep up. I didn't want to take it down, but I did, because my room was ugly and painting it a lovely shade of periwinkle would really make it look better. Anyway, two days later I had to put my posters up again, and I knew that my Franz poster would fall on me within minutes of it being on the wall with just tape or *shudders* mounting putty. Let me tell you about mounting putty. If you don't know what it is, it's that gooey stuff you always thought was gum that teachers used to hang up your artwork in first grade. Look at this. EWWWW. iI AM... DISGUSTED.
Yeah. Mounting putty. *deep sigh*. My mom bought it for me in 2014 when I put all of my drawings on my wall so I wouldn't damage them. I tried to hang my Franz poster up with it, and that obviously didn't work. I needed a new way to hang my posters. Tape didn't work. Mounting putty obviously didn't work. Command strips almost destroyed my Arctic Monkeys poster. But then I found them. Mounting squares. I don't really know how to describe them. They're there little sticky squares that you attach to stuff, I guess? Anyway, I knew they'd work on my Franz poster. I had a feeling. I probably put about eight around the sides, and it's been a week and it hasn't fallen yet. Wow. That must be a new record. |
About The AuthorLiah is a high school senior who plays guitar and loves the color yellow. She doesn't post much, but when she does, it's awesome. We promise.
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