#56 (of 365) "I'll Be You" The Replacements

The summer before I went away to college, I worked at a new Italian restaurant in Washington Township, NJ (south Jersey version) called Pastarelli's, which was a horrible name and I don't think it lasted very long after that first summer I worked there. I remember I worked every Monday night (in addition to regular other shifts) but what I remember about Mondays is they were dead, like dead-dead. I think maybe every few weeks the Rotary Club or something came in and then it was busy but otherwise, nothing. So I think it was staffed by just a single waitress and me (the bus boy) plus a couple kitchen staff. And we found ways to pass the time, because you weren't really getting paid if you didn't have customers (restaurant staff famously relying on tips) so it sucked but also I didn't really want to work my ass off like I would on the weekends so I didn't mind sitting in the back doing crossword puzzles and playing board games or whatever else we did to pass the time. Charades? I don't remember now. I definitely remember crossword puzzles. This was pre-Internet. And we didn't have a TV there. So you had to use your mind. Amazing. Anyway, we also used to write messages on the chalkboard in the kitchen, leaving them there at the end of the night for the Tuesday shift to see. Our way of passing on the horrible tedium that was a Monday night at Pastarelli's in Washington Township during the summer before I went away to college. That was also the summer I discovered the Replacements. The summer I discovered alternative music that would become indie rock that would fuel my music love the rest of my life.

I don't remember too much from that summer, but I remember when it was my turn to write on the board, in August, the last time I wrote on the board before I went away to college, I scrawled the opening lines from this song, my 56th favorite song of all-time, according to this list, written 37 years later.

If it's a temporary lull
Why am I bored right out of my skull?

​"I'll Be You" - The Replacments // Don't Tell a Soul (1989)