It was a good time, becoming one of a billion kids who listen to this band, but I guess that's not important.
The real big deal for me that summer was when "Feeling This" came out. I was only able to listen to thirty seconds of it for awhile, but eventually Julia downloaded it. I listened to the last two and a half minutes of it for the first time over the phone. I just remembered hearing Tom Delonge's vocals in the interlude, and I was amazed...
I got really into the song, and I learned it before they released it officially--probably like 90% of America did--when it came out on the Madden 2004 soundtrack.
The first time it was on the radio was last September, two months before the release of the album. I was in the car on the way to karate (my father was driving) and out of nowhere, after a commercial or something, Nik Carter came on the radio and just said, "New Blink-182 3, 2, 1" and the flange drums started to "Feeling This" and I acted like a teenage girl back in the 60s did when the Beatles came on the radio...minus the screaming I guess.
The best part was that I wanted to hear the whole song so badly, and I got my wish; Just as we pulled into the karate parking lot the accapella vocals at the end of the song ended and I felt happy.
THEN Nik Carter came back on the radio and said "That's a little Boxcar Racer-y, don't you think?...I wonder if Ettipus [BCN's owner, that's how you spell it...not like the real Oedipus story] will get pissed if I play it again...oh well, screw him," and thus the flanged drums kicked in again. I got out of the car, though.
I guess the song isn't really even that deep. It's about sex, I mean, but everytime I hear it, I get that same exact feeling that I got in the car last September. The best part is that the stations didn't kill the song at all. Come to think of it, none of the songs off that album have gotten killed. The closest that any song has come to getting killed was "I Miss You," and that wasn't even too bad.