Rock and Roll Scrapbooking

Happy Fall! I feel like I want to go all out for Halloween this year, though I’m not sure what that means yet.

Last month Frank Iero was tweeting about doing some August spring cleaning, and that yes, he was a pack rat, but that meant he had a lot of cool stuff, some of which he posted.

He did have cool stuff. I was particularly impressed by the funeral card from the “Helena” video.

If there is one thing we have learned about me, it’s that I get weird thoughts and will follow them through to their absurd conclusion. So the thought that came to me here was that he should scrapbook.

In one way it’s not that weird of a thought. Putting memorabilia into scrapbooks is a time-honored tradition. It’s just that I kind of hate it. When I was a kid a scrapbook meant a book with photos, and it was basically flat, and I liked looking through them. Somehow, it morphed into this thing where now they are fabric-covered, quilted things that end up pushing out accordion style due to being stuffed with two pounds of rickrack and buttons and bows and decals and they really irritate me, as I assume they would irritate all right-thinking people. Nonetheless, I got an image of Frank doing a scrapbooking segment with Martha Steward, and I could not stop thinking about it.

To be fair, I don’t watch Martha Stewart either, so I have no idea whether scrapbooking is even one of the things she does. It seems to go with crafting though, so I could buy it. All I can say is that despite an aversion to both Martha Stewart and scrapbooks, I would absolutely watch a Frank Iero segment.

I guess first of all I trust him to not come up with something unbearably twee. Also, what all would he have? How would he arrange it? What kind of decals? I guess I imagine coming up with something kind of Halloween themed. Maybe instead of the rick rack you have cobwebs or vines (or amp cables), and instead of glitter you have fake blood—not because he is gory, but in the early days of their career pretty much every photo shoot involved fake blood, to where I think they were tired of it, but it happened, so incorporate it into the album of those times. Then you could go into brighter colors for Danger Days, and something kind of Warc Cleaver-ish for fatherhood.

Most of what he posted pictures for were paper items, like day sheets and flyers, but what else? Would there be Mikey Way toenail clippings? How about a lock of hair from Gerard for every color and style? I don’t know, and I can’t recommend that specifically because then you are just tempting young girls to make voodoo dolls—maybe they should stick to guitar picks— but I am still interested in this segment happening. I know a lot of the appeal is its incongruity, but there seems to be something workable there, and I would totally watch, and now I am getting weird Martha Stewart Living Dead thoughts.

Anyway, that idea was intriguing in itself, but also I have been becoming much less comfortable with just dismissing things that I don’t like. I know some of that has come from the music that I am listening to, because I am learning to appreciate things that I don’t like, and to appreciate the mere fact that tastes do vary. Also, variety certainly exists in political opinion, and I see so much condescension there that I don’t want to be a part of the problem, even for something like scrapbooking.

See, even saying it that way kind of diminishes scrapbooking—well, it’s not very important, but I will try and treat it respectfully. Clearly, I still have a long way to go. However, that I am trying to hold back, and be more thoughtful, does allow other thoughts to come in, to where I can see that scrapbooking may be an important form of self-expression, and that will be explored further in the next post. (Monday)