The AV Club has a pretty intense thread running about art that people feel was made just for them, replete with confessions of bad breakups, bipolar diagnoses, and love for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I was trying to think up something that I could confess in the same vein, and had a hard time with it. Anyone who has read this blog for five minutes is probably pretty aware that I don't believe in shame when it comes to pop culture. We love what we love, our hearts are pierced unexpectedly, and there's no arming yourself against that. There aren't a lot of things where I feel like to confess that I like them is to open up the raw meat of my innermost self to examination. And those things, I'm not going to dissect in public.
I will say, though, that I am somewhat annoyed that loving "The Boy With the Arab Strap" is so hip and cool and I hate that it in any way associates me with (500) Days of Summer. I just dig that "what did you learn from your time in the solitary / cell of your mind" question, since I think what people figure out during the times when they're really alone is a good sorting mechanism to test for thoughtfulness and growth. And I've always dug the lines, meant to describe the boy of the title, "We all know you're soft 'cause we've all seen you dancing / We all know you're hard 'cause we've all seen you drinking / From noon until noon again." I think that pretty adequately describes some of the ways in which the people who know me very well know me. And besides, no matter how hipstery and twee Belle & Sebastian are, the song's basically an updated "Penny Lane." And I think that independently of whether or not I've parked a car in the lot at my high school, turned up the speakers, and twirled around to "The Boy With the Arab Strap" at midnight.