And Tomorrow's Weather Will Be ... SO COLD.

Looking out my window this evening I can see the snow on the ground and feel the icicles in my heart as I scratch my persistently itchy legs and apply my prescription hand lotion. It's all too clear; winter is here again.

I'm not a seasonal scrooge by any means, but freezing my ass off is definitely one of my lesser-enjoyed activities (right up there with smashing drum sticks into my fingers and stubbing my big toes). Yet, all this cold makes me think; it makes me think about the fragility of life, the solitude of nature, how dirty my car looks, and a particularly annoying trend in modern rock music.

The year was 2004; America had given Bush two thumbs way up with another well deserved presidential term and I was one awkward sophomore to boot. It was a cold winter that year and angst was in the air. Two bands in particular took that accumulated mass of repressed feelings straight to the bank. Breaking Benjamin and Crossfade were hardly the first bands to add the word "cold" to rock's lyrical vocabulary, but they fricken' ingrained it into the minds of anyone who heard such songs.

"So Cold" and "Cold" were everywhere, but, surprisingly, active rock radio wasn't quite the winter wonderland one might have, accordingly, expected. "Cold" was a dingy modern power ballad that took the "shut up, already" regretfulness of Ruben Studdard's "Sorry 2004" and fed it to an audience of love-lorn teenagers like my 16 year-old self. The song also made use of one of my favorite generic rock song-writing devices: the GUITAR SOLO that sounds JUST LIKE the CHORUS! What a novel idea!

WOOOO! (Busts out air guitar!)

AHHH (and ... breaks a string ...)

"So Cold" was, at least at the time, the more musically interesting selection and would have been remembered as such if 90% of the songs Breaking Benjamin penned afterwards didn't sound just like it. Tastes aside, the term "cold" was never the same. It became one of those ambiguous terms that seemed to mean everything and nothing, all at once. "This is cold, I'm cold, you're cold, my feet are cold, etc." When feelings and temperatures collide, it isn't a pretty sight:

"Hey man, how ya doin'?"

"Ehh, I've been really cold lately."

"I'm sorry to hear that, I was feeling rather lukewarm myself yesterday."

"Yeah, I don't know what's up, I've just had so many feelings, but I feel like I have to bottle them up inside and walk around being a moody turd-wich all day."

"I feel you on that. Did you watch the weather channel today? The way that cold front hit those warm South Western breezes was really something."

"I suppose, but I'm gonna go back to my room and be reflective."

"Cool, man. I mean, cold, man."

And you'd think that people would be tired of this by now. Not quite. In 2010 we had the incredibly original single "Turn So Cold" from Drowning Pool and on Breaking Benjamin's most recent outing, "Dear Agony," Ben Burnley had the gall to spit a line like, "I don't want to change the world, I just want to leave it colder."

Are you kidding me? You whine about this and that being cold and now you want it colder? Well, if I were you, I'd get on that whole global warming issue as that will, no doubt, throw a serious kink into your plans. 

Mr. Burnley- from one Ben to another, I'd just like to say that I think you can be a very competent songwriter when you choose to be, but, please, p l e a s e get over the girl already (and stop dragging the weather into your heartache). I read The Diary of Jane and, truth be told, it seems she was getting just a little tired of you moping around all day being a gloomy little shit (not to mention, never putting the thermostat above 65˚). 

*     *     *

So, I guess it's cold outside; she hands me a raincoat.

Damn you Match Box 20! You're in on it too!