Valentine’s Day, Shmalentine’s Day
We talk about being bitter, mixtapes and what the actual St. Valentine did (it had nothing to do with chalky candy hearts).
Happy Valentine’s Day, my friends! Welcome to another exciting edition of Moronitiude!
I know this isn’t an original thought, but Valentine’s Day has to be the most polarizing holiday of them all. Arbor Day just doesn’t rile up the same emotions in people, with folks doubling-down on their anti-tree stances. With Valentine’s Day, what makes it interesting to me is that it isn’t simply a case where people either love it or hate it. It’s way more nuanced, as in many cases people feel one way or the other depending on their personal circumstances each year. I’ve always leaned towards hating it, but I’ve definitely been suckered in by Cupid’s festival in the past.
During high school I reveled in my disdain for Valentine’s Day. It was fun to build a persona around how stupid the day was. I made some of the best mixtapes of my life for Valentine’s Day using a boombox with twin tape decks recording off of the CD player, always unsure of just how much of the 45 minute run time I had left on the side. Whereas the mixtape has historically been used as a device to win the heart of a potential mate, I was a very clever teenager using the medium as a way to express all my frustration over whichever unrequited love was upsetting me at the moment.
It was a silly little tradition, but I adored doing it. I’d spend most of January trying to figure out the perfect songs for the tape. I made sure to keep a delicate balance between the music I was most into (ska, punk, etc.) and the standard alternative rock that most of my friends preferred. The tape was a gift after all, I wanted them to like it. This led to me putting a Mustard Plug song (“Never Be”) immediately after an Elliott Smith song (“Waltz #2) without a shred of consideration for how sonically jarring this would be upon the listener. I’d then spend a couple of days “mass-producing” the tapes on my boombox which, and I really must stress this point, did not have high-speed dubbing. Thus, it took 90 minutes to make a single tape. I spent a lot of time on these silly tapes. I’d then pass ‘em out to my pals and, hopefully, they’d enjoy them.
I can’t find any of these tapes, which frustrates me to no end. But on the other hand, I don’t have a tape player, so I’d likely be far more frustrated if I had one of them in my hand with no possible way to listen to it.
Making these tapes, along with an abundance of jokes about the day, was a very thinly masked way for me to cover up the near-constant hurt of being a lonely teenager who desperately wanted to hold hands with someone. At least the rest of the year I could suffer in peace, but on Valentine’s Day my plight became abundantly obvious. Being bitter and pissed was easier and my tape tradition brought positivity to my day.
With all of this in mind, as well as the benefit of hindsight, I can tell you this with 100% certainty, I would have sold out my bitterness in a millisecond. Actually, I don’t even need hindsight, I have the historical record. My senior year I ditched all the sadness/self-loathing because I was actually dating someone on the formerly-dreaded day. I was torn by my decades of hating Valentine’s Day and my very earnest desire to go all-in now that there was someone actually interested in me. I ended up doing a half-measure—going all-in but in my idiosyncratic/weird way. It backfired. Actually, that’s a gross understatement. I’ll leave out some details, but by the end of the day she was dating somebody else.
Needless to say, this hammered home my hatred of Valentine’s Day for quite some time. Then, as I hit my mid-thirties, I developed a pretty healthy relationship with the holiday. I understood that I didn’t need to make a big dramatic gesture to prove my romantic worth just because it’s 2/14. I finally understood that I had value as a potential mate. There wasn’t none of the pressure that existed before: I didn’t feel the need to prove myself and if I was with somebody I was confident enough to know that they weren’t going to leave if my Valentine’s gesture was subpar.
This is why one of my all-time favorite Valentine’s Days is the first one I spent with my fiancée. We had only been dating a couple of weeks, so we knew that it was kind of awkward. So we decided not to make a big deal of anything. We ordered pizza from Vinnies and watched “The Big Lebowski.” It was perfect.
Today we got bundled up to have some drinks outside, then ordered Mexican food. I know this sounds cliché, but what you do doesn’t matter one bit. It’s who you’re with. I’m just glad I finally figured this out.
But the mixtapes were pretty fucking good. Here’s a playlist I made trying to channel that energy from a couple of years ago, it’s pretty darn good.
Weekly Song to Rock Out To
The World Has Turned and Left Me Here by Weezer
The first time I had my heart broken—not cracked or dinged up a little, but BROKEN—I curled up on the floor of my bedroom and listened to this song on repeat for a couple of hours. It was… pathetic. But goddamn if this song doesn’t still hit me directly in the feels. Plus, it’s from the blue album, so they weren’t too weird and kinda gross yet.
Charlie’s History Corner
Often when there is a holiday based off of a saint I find myself asking, “What the hell did this guy do to deserve a holiday?” Almost all of the time it boils down to, so-and-so was super into being Christian but the folks around them weren’t so keen on Christianity, so they did [insert horrific form of execution] to so-and-so. It’s never ideal. It turns out, that most people don’t end up being canonized for dying happily in their beds at a ripe old age.
So who was Saint Valentine? Well, he was a Roman who lived during the third century. He may or may not have been a priest who helped Christian couples get married, which Claudius II wasn’t down with, thus, Valentine was beheaded. But like oh so many historical records from that time period, nobody is sure who the actual Valentine was. As early as the late fifth century people were questioning whether the Valentine canonized by the Catholic church was the actual Valentine or not. There is some belief that the stories of two separate priests were combined to form the St. Valentine we all know today.
It gets complicated further when you consider that this one St. Valentine—who may have been two different people—is one of roughly a dozen different St. Valentines. “Valentinus” is Latin for “worthy, strong or powerful,” so it’s a pretty apt name for somebody who martyred themselves for the cause. There are literally over a dozen St. Valentines. Shit, there was even a pope named Valentine, but his reign lasted less than two months, so who cares. He was almost as much of a disaster for the Vatican as Bobby Valentine was for the Red Sox.
This St. Valentine is also the patron saint of beekeepers, which is apparently a profession worthy of a patron saint. When he’s not busy with all of those beekeepers, he’s also in charge of epileptics, people with the plague and engaged couples. This seems like a real broad swath of humanity to deal with, and I honestly don’t see that much common ground between all those groups.
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with spending a ton of money on a romantic meal, but I guess the beekeeper angle at least explains the flowers.
Things to Read
Notable baseball journalist Pedro Gomez passed away this week. Ray Ratto wrote a fantastic obituary of a man who seemed to be beloved by all. Or, at least all of those who weren’t the subject of his BALCO investigations. https://defector.com/pedro-gomez-without-pretense/
This New York Times article about KAWS is absolutely fascinating. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/magazine/the-surprising-ascent-of-kaws.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage
I adore this article from The Takeout. While people normally spend all their time arguing about which regional version of pizza is the best (the answer is Chicago’s tavern-style, sausage and hot giards), this article just looks at each different version and celebrates them, which is refreshing. St. Louis style is hot fucking garbage though, please don’t forget that. https://thetakeout.com/a-guide-to-americas-regional-pizza-styles-1846061908
I’m not sure what I think of this article looking at the complicated legacy behind John Kennedy Toole’s “Confederacy of Dunces,” but I think it’s an interesting read nonetheless. Also, if you haven’t read the book, do it. Now. https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/the-uneasy-afterlife-of-a-confederacy-of-dunces?mbid=social_facebook&utm_social-type=paid&utm_brand=tny&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&kwp_0=1853131&kwp_4=5434716&kwp_1=2327709&fbclid=IwAR0irDJp30EkysADPlqlzEAalKJ8jeM7jfLMlPZPCGgej2HkLnAzzrpKMmE
That’s it for this week’s Mornitude! I’m not going to bother ranting about sports, as I often do at the end here, because I’m pretty sure it’s going to be the focal point of next week’s newsletter. Happy Valentine’s Day, friends. Thanks for subscribing and please share Moronitude with your pals!