Sometimes you just can’t

Despite starting out life as an introvert, I’ve grown into being quite the opposite. Except for when they totally suck and I want to kill them, I like people. Mostly. (Mostly….)

I enjoy meeting people and talking to them, but I also enjoy talking at them. I like the sound of my own voice. That’s probably why I got into college radio. Monologue is the preferred form of discourse in that arena of the unwell.

My fourth grade teacher once told me that I had a good radio voice. I took that complement and ran it all the way into spending ages 18 until I-don’t-wanna-mention-it DJing at my university radio station, WNUR. In future posts I’ll talk more about the time I spent there, but for now I’ll just say that I met some nice people that I wish I got to know better, others that became friends that I hope I’ll keep for ever, others still that I could always count on for knowing where to get decent weed and also some total motherfuckers that, in all honesty, deserve to get their asses beat to this day.

At the end of the day, though, I had a good radio voice and I liked hearing it. But more importantly, I had a good name: Dave Knapik. daveknapik. All one word. @yourmomshouse.com. Actually it was a totally retarded polack name, but by a bizarre twist of fate it actually rolled off the tongue rather nicely.

Here I should stop and give props to a fellow WNUR DJ from the old days, Leslie Hellman. She always called me “Daveknapik” instead of “Dave” or just “Knapik”, as in shouting “Hey, Daveknapik!” if she saw me walk past on the street. I liked the idea of it being this one solid phrase and so it stuck. I think maybe I actually feel slightly anxious now when I hear “Dave” or “Knapik” said separately instead of as one solid mass of syllables.

As the years rolled past, the self-deprecating indie kid had his battles with the egomaniac and eventually they balanced each other out. But I never stopped liking the sound of the phrase “Daveknapik”. I like to think it’s okay to be a little egotistical as long as you’re not a total dickwad about it.

I like inserting it in place of lyrics in my favorite songs. For example, it works pretty well with the 70’s Dr. Pepper jingle. “I’m a Knapik, you’re a Knapik, wouldn’t you like to be Daveknapik, too?” If you don’t remember it, just Google the 70’s or consult a retrowiki. The internets remembers.

Similarly, it works in, say, “The Reflex” by Duran Duran in place of where, well, the phrase “the reflex” appears in the song: “Daveknapik is an only child, who's waiting by the park/Daveknapik is in charge of finding treasure in the dark”. Weird. Dude. I was an only child. I was also a fat kid. But I never waited in parks because my parents didn’t let me wait in parks for fear I’d be abducted by some fat kid molesting child molester. And I was only ever in charge of finding Little Debbie snack cakes in the supermarket, which come to think of it, were pretty good treasures to a fat kid.

Lately, however, due to my Tilly and the Wall obsession, I like plugging it into their new song “Rainbows in the Dark” from their Bottoms of Barrels album. It’s a beautiful song and I know I pay it a horrible injustice treating it this way, but how can I not give into the temptation to sing the line “Sometimes you just can’t... hold back the river” as “Sometimes you just can’t... hold back Daveknapik”?

I mean, sometimes you just can’t hold back Daveknapik.

And let that be a lesson to you, one and all, but especially the total motherfuckers that, in all honesty, deserve to get their asses beat to this day.