You know you've married the right man...

...when, on your second wedding anniversary, he arrives home from work in the midst of a heated phone conversation with a friend about the new Smashing Pumpkins video, and says this: "...it's so stupid that it's kind of cool, except he's wearing that fucking wedding dress."

Overhearing this, I was suddenly struck by how lucky I am to have married such a strange man.

The "He" being spoken of is Billy Corgan, of course, the eternally angsty rock 'n roll idiot savant behind the Smashing Pumpkins, a grunge-era anomaly that captivated many a moody adolescent back in the mid-nineties. Mike was one of those moody adolescents: he listened to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (both discs, and even the songs sung by James Iha and D'arcy) every day after high school and considered Billy Corgan to be a great voice of our generation (never mind that Billy is actually a generation ahead of us). "The world is a vampire..."; "I fear that I am ordinary..."; "We only go out at night...": these are musings that had Mike pumping his fist while crying a single tear in his bedroom every evening as he mourned the injustice of his middle-class, suburban existence.

I laugh at him, acting superior, but really, I liked the Pumpkins a lot, too. And I was, in many ways, the quintessential moody adolescent of that era: I wore black every day; I stayed up late, reading and writing existential poetry by the glow of my blacklight; I snuck clove cigarettes from the older boys I hung out with; and most importantly, I feared that despite these things (which I hoped made me soooo much more interesting and complicated than anyone else my age), I was, nonetheless, ordinary. Billy, who had reached the age of thirty by this time, legitimized my adolescent angst.

But, although I think I'll always appreciate the memories the Pumpkins evoke, and I'll always think that some songs (such as my favorite, "Tonite, Tonite") are fantastic, I'm done with them. I refuse to forgive Billy for quitting Zwan (which I really liked), making an atrociously embarrassing solo album, and then getting the Pumpkins (ie, himself and Jimmy Chamberlin) back together for a new album with the unfortunate title Zeitgeist. To me, grunge-era reunions are a sad cliche at this point. In fact, they remind me of Ethan Hawk, the grunge posterboy. While Ethan had it goin' on in Reality Bites and Before Sunrise, he refused to quit while he was still hip and now tries to write introspective novels and screenplays that are, of course, mediocre at best. Similarly, the Pumpkins of old were iconic; they should have left it at that. But no: Billy's got to beat the proverbial dead horse.

All this to say, I disapproved of the new album in theory even before I saw the horrible artwork and read the quasi-political lyrics. In my mind, there was no WAY it could possibly be good. Mike, while wary, had hope. The Pumpkins had always meant more to him than me: like many adolescent (and adult) males, music wasn't just music to Mike; it created an identity. While I mulled over Billy's gloomy, egocentric lyrics for a while and then called it a day, Mike obsessed over Pumpkins trivia, became part of a Pumpkins web ring, and bought rare Pumpkins imports online. [Mike claims that none of those things actually happened, but I think that's the embarrassment talking.] Clearly, for him, there's much more at stake.

But, while Mike claims that the new album is growing on him, there's still one thing that he can't forgive: Billy's dresses. Or, to quote him accurately: "Those fucking dresses." Billy started wearing them in the late nineties and no one really knows why. When the Pumpkins performed at the MTV awards circa 1996 or 97, Billy wore a long black sheath. Soon, he had a silver one, too. The melancholy adolescent boys, still nursing their homophobia, became disillusioned with their solipsistic hero. Mike tried to ignore the dress, but just couldn't. It began to symbolize everything that was going wrong with the latter day Pumpkins.

So this is why Mike is so pissed: he was hoping the album would be good, and it's not. Even worse, Billy's brought back the dress with a vengeance. It's apparently a wedding dress with all sorts of odd accessories. I haven't seen it myself, because I don't care. What I do care about, however, is Mike describing this dress and his feelings about it, because it's hilarious. And on our second wedding anniversary, it reminds me again why I fell in love.