High Eyes

Not to put too much pressure on him, but M is the reason I will never completely stop drinking. It is too goddemm fun.

The only thing missing Saturday night was my better half- J, who has been out of town on business for FREAKING EVER. To digress slightly, J has an executive office that is HUGE and a perfect playground for M and me to take unprofessional pictures with my camera phone and immediately text her the images. The intent for these pictures is to (1) teach her to never leave us again and (2) to make her know that we miss her terribly. We “punish” because we “love”. This is probably why J is a mom and we are not. To further demonstrate this, we often yell at Feefers for walking into the room in that “cat” way of his. It’s infuriating. (we're usually laughing when we do it, because he's a beautiful and lovely baby.) Anyway, the last series of photos we sent was to celebrate June 6, 2006. M and I both wore black and took turns prostrating ourselves on her floor in crucifixion poses while wearing a homemade mask her daughter had made. It was HILARIOUS. To us.

In retrospect, J would probably have been glad to have missed it. I had just received my second HIM dvd that had a couple of “making of the ________ video” special features. I love the making of’s with Bam Margera because during the shoot something always seems to go wrong, i.e., a keyboard has not turned up and then there are hours to kill. It’s these moments I love because it usually entails Bam and Ville showcasing what hilarious drinking buddies they are. That night I had brought two HIM dvds, one that the band officially released (the mother lode) and the one that Bam Margera released. The latter was what I had gotten in the mail that Saturday morning.

After our first bottle of wine M threw the first pack o’Marlboros across the living room, signaling it was time to open the second. We noticed an ominous storm approaching. The windows were open, of course, and so there was a breeze coming into the loft that set the mood for the night ahead. It lasted for much of the evening.

We finished the making of’s and were locked in. It started with M’s request to watch the featured videos after each making of, and then went downhill from there. By the time we crashed, we had studied Wille Walo for four hours straight. After the videos came the live performances, then the special feature live performances, then the laptop came out and youtube happened so that we could see other versions of the videos that will never be seen on American tv. It was a multimedia event in the highest degree. I think with every question M might have had I could answer with a click of a button. It was incredible. There is a special feature where HIM performs 'The Sacrament' to a HUGE audience in Russia. As we watch Ville play with his nose and forget his own lyrics, M comments “yup, those are ‘high eyes’”. That’s not funny to anyone, but us. This comment was said with such deadpan conviction that we both looked at each other and exploded in laughter. I would love to immortalize these quotes in a book, but honestly you have to hear him say it. It’s M’s delivery of these very unspecial quotes that is so memorable. “High Eyes” is one, and J has one: “Gorgeous”.

What I remember, with a bit of humility, is pointing out how in charge Ville is on stage, how effing romantic and perfect “In Joy and Sorrow” is as a song and how the live performance is at the Rock Am Ring festival in Germany and how you can see Nurburg’s (not Nurnberg, where I lived) castle in the background “uch, look at that. IT’S SO PERFECT!”, my explanation for the song “The Beginning of the End” and how it was about an ex-girlfriend who was hospitalized for anorexia, immediately followed by me asking “did I just yell that?”, and replaying the live performance of “This Fortress of Tears” for M a few times.

Ok, so we really watched a lot of HIM that night. But, we also studied Suede and tried desperately to get through MCR’s Life on the Murder Scene (which we had already studied with wine on a previous night). It was unfortunate because by the time we put that on I was already starting to fade. Once The Fade engulfs me, the end is near. But I was still rendered speechless at the opening of Helena. That song will never fail to kill me just a little bit.

At M’s request, I created a perfect HIM playlist to be played at our respective funerals. Here it is:

The Beginning of the End
When Love and Death Embrace
Death is in Love with Us
This Fortress of Tears
In Joy and Sorrow
The Sacrament
Play Dead
The Funeral of Hearts
Join Me in Death
Resurrection
The Path

-K