“Fahrenheit -182” by Mark Hoppus
My teenage years were filled by blink-182 songs. “All the small things” was the anthem for me and my high school friends, “First date” was literally the song that I listened to at one time while being nervous picking up my date, while years later “I miss you” was my break up song (different girl).
I like them so much that during my uni days in England, in a limited student budget I took 3 trains from Cambridge to London, to Birmingham, then to Manchester, just to see their concert. And afterwards I had to crash in a stranger’s living room floor for the night, before heading back home the following day.
Sure the songs are great, but what makes them very relatable are their jokes and banters on stage, first introduced to me by a friend when listening to the Tom-Mark-Travis show, on a cassette. This book has the same fun vibe to it.
The memoir is broken down into a crazy 66 chapters, but it still feels too short due to the past-pace of the narrative and the laid back style of writing.
It begins with Mark’s early childhood memories: his parent’s ugly divorce; the poverty that he, his mom, and his sister endured; the constant moving between cities that made him enroll in different school every year, and by the time he was in high school he’d lived in 8 different houses and nothing really felt at home; falling in love with the skateboard culture; and being mesmerized by The Cure’s bassist Simon Gallup when watching their video clip on MTV.
Furthermore, Mark also tells the story about attending his first concert: They Might Be Giants, which kicked start his flood of musical inspirations; working his ass off one summer to earn a bass guitar from his dad, and self-taught himself how to play it; the Descendents album “I don’t want to grow up” that his girlfriend gave him, which opened up his world to punk music; working part time at the coolest pizza and ice cream place; going to concerts: Nine Inch Nails, Sonic Youth, Nirvana; forming his own band; moving to San Diego for college but having an identity crisis of who he is and what he’s doing; that is, until he meets Tom DeLonge, at chapter 8.
Mark’s meeting with Tom was like a meet-cute in a rom-com, where 2 soul mates meet. They hit it off right off the bat, with them sharing a similar broken family background, the same jokes, the same music taste, both played skates, and separately create some music that together can be combined into something spectacular. The duo was formed!
The story then proceeded to the ups and downs of the band in recording their first demo album, in spreading them out, in winning some gigs at local venues, meeting a guy called O who was influential and took them under his wing, meeting a dude called Brahm who was their fan and happened to have a father who own a record company, looking for the most badass van for their touring vehicle, searching for a band manager, getting arrested for underage drinking, getting involved in a brawl, stealing a Lenny Kravitz cardboard cutout, NOT calling Allyssa Milano when he had the chance, the falling out with their drummer Scott and borrowing other band’s drummer Travis Barker, and talking about the “fourth blink-182 member”: the producer Jerry.
The book answers some of my lingering questions about the band for so long. Like did they really run naked in the “What’s my age again” video clip? Answer: no, wardrobe gave them skin-colored speedos. Damn, a bit of a bummer, don’t you think? Not about the naked stuff, of course, but just the illusion of rebelness that turns out to be slightly manipulated. Although they really did strip naked for the band-playing scene.
The book also addresses the reason why they add the number 182 behind the band name blink, after for the longest of time at the beginning their name was simply blink. So what prompted them to add 182? A cease-and-desist letter from an Irish techno band called Blink that had played in California and New York, giving them the legal right to the name Blink. And thus they had to change their name.
So what’s the 182 stands for? Mark answers, “Over the years, we’ve offered a number of reasons behind the choice of 182. 182 pounds is my ideal weight. 182 was the number of the rescue raft my grandfather floated on after the sinking of his battleship in World War II. Someone claimed Al Pacino says “fuck” 182 times in Scarface. It’s been proven wrong, but that one stuck for a long time and we still get asked about it. Maybe 182 is the number lovingly painted on my childhood sled, long before I became a morally bankrupt newspaper tycoon, dying alone among my riches. Maybe it’s a blank canvas and everyone paints their own interpretation of 182. Maybe the real 182 is the number of friends we made along the way.” Not so much of an explanation, eh? One AI search away suggests that the number was actually random.
Anyway, the book is surprisingly very deep and personal. It shows how these events shaped Mark to become who he is now as a rock star and the songs that he has written and co-written. It shows his struggle with anxiety. It shows the pressure of success, fame, and fortune, and the depression that comes with it when the star is starting to fade. It also shows the crack in the band, the growing pains, that led them to break up in 2005. And of course all the miseries that the trio had to endure, like Mark losing a dive buddy who drowned during a dive with him, Travis’ plane crash, and Tom’s business ambitions that broke the band up for the 2nd time in 2015. And then Mark’s lymphoma cancer, and the honest recollection of the worry and struggles.
Man, the book has everything; hope, despair, hard work, taking chances, rejection, triumph, friendships made, friendships broken, love, marriages, divorces, fights, deaths, joys and successes, so many dick jokes, plane crash, another plane crash, their “beef” with Greenday, his weird encounter with The Cure’s Robert Smith, the stories behind the songwriting, the making of the music videos, brutal break ups, twice, getting back together, also twice, starring death in the face, until they eventually get back together in 2022 with the original Tom-Mark-Travis line up. What a journey.
THE CHAOS THEORY 