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all in good fun

In January 2000, my friends and I decided to take a 2 week trip from San Diego to New York as we had just turned 21. I don't remember the full lineup, but I believe it was myself, Chris Lewis from Pivit (who went on to be in Fenix TX and now Unwritten Law), Mike Levinson & Greg Schneider from Agent 51, and Rick Savage (who went on to be a DJ at KROQ). We didn't have any real plans other than to be New York tourists, and I got us tickets to see a taping of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I found out at some point that coincidentally Blink-182 would be on Saturday Night Live the week we were in town. I hadn't talked to them in quite some time, but I sent Mark an email to an old email address that likely didn't work anymore. Getting no response, I thought I'd roll down to the NBC Studios on random weekday as they do rehearsals all week. No luck randomly running into any of them, that'd be some crazy luck, but I figured I'd come back on Saturday afternoon and try one more time. My friends were nice enough to humor me and see what would happen. Saturday afternoon rolls around and the lobby of the NBC Studios are a MADHOUSE! I only wish I had a cell phone camera to capture the vibe, but it was no secret that Blink was playing the show. Like 100 superfans in the lobby trying to meet the band. Nobody had any information on when they were coming, or even if they were already inside the studio or not. All of a sudden the crowd of girls starts going nuts as it's Beatlemania in the year 2000. Blink walks through the front doors and there is a lot of screaming going on. No chance I'm going to be able to talk to the guys. Somehow Tom happens to notice me there and is like, "ROB! I NEED YOU TO FIX MY COMPUTER!" Me: "OK, Tom, get me in and I'd be happy to!" And just like that, they're gone. Hmmm. I see Rick Devoe, the band's manager, and go over to say hi. "Hey Rick, what's up man? Think you can get me in?" Rick: "I need to get MYSELF in!" Oh, right, why is he outside the studios while the band is inside? He's talking with security to explain he's the band's manager and eventually gets cleared to go up. As he leaves, he tells me he'll "see what he can do" about getting me in. I wait around a few minutes but start feeling bad for wasting my friends time. I suggest we bail, and we're discussing our next move for being tourists in NYC when I get a tap on the shoulder. "Are you Rob Perelman?" says the NBC employee. Me: "Yes, I am." NBC guy: "Come with me." Me: "Can I bring my friends?" NBC guy: "No." Me: "See ya, guys!" Nobody had a cell phone and I had no plan for how to find my friends or the place we were staying at, but I didn't care at that moment. I was going up to see Saturday Night Live! The NBC employee brought me up to the green room and explained that there weren't seats in the crowd but I could hang out here. I was stoked with that! I met back up with Rick, and eventually saw the guys from the band. It had been almost a year since we had last talked so I made awkward small talk with Mark as his life had changed dramatically. Met his girl for the first time, and then I met Carson Daly at the the height of his TRL fame. I guess he was tight with the band. Show time was approaching when a different NBC employee came in the green room and asked if anyone wanted to sit in the crowd as they had a few seats. I was like oh hell yes and jumped up to volunteer. They sat me at the way back of the theatre and I got to see the entire episode of Saturday Night Live. Two other people came from the green room to sit next to me and were DYING LAUGHING at everything host Jamie Foxx said, so I think they were in his crew. I was stoked to see Blink play such a big deal TV show. It was totally awesome. When the show was over, all of the crowd was being let out of the theatre and I ducked back into the green room to say thanks. "Dude, Rick, thank you so much for this, it was a totally awesome experience." Rick: "No problem, are you gonna stay for the show?" Uhhhhhhh, I was confused. Didn't I just see the show? Or did I just imagine the whole thing? "No, that wasn't the show, that was just the dress rehearsal." An entire new audience comes in for dress rehersal so the jokes are fresh for the actual show. "Hey, Rick, if I stay for the show I'll miss my train. Is there any way I can crash on your floor?" "Of course!" Guys, as well as being a fantastic movie concessions actor, Rick Devoe is a rad dude. So I chilled in the green room. Same deal: no seats available in the actual crowd, but I was OK with that. A short time later, the same scenario played out. "Does anyone want to sit in the audience? There's just one seat." Of course I was ready and willing, but this time I don't think I could have asked for a better seat. They put me front and center, about 3 rows back from where the host comes out and does the opening monologue. I got to see most of the same sketches, though some lines had been changed and a few had been cut. It was cool seeing eveything from a diffent vantage point, mainly the shooting of the show rather than the show itself. The show let out, and this time I was pretty sure it was all over. I went back to the green room and everyone was celebrating. I wasn't too familiar with the cast, but a bunch of the cast members came back to the green room to high five Blink and have a drink. I wish I had watched more SNL then as I would have probably had a chance to meet Jimmy Fallon and Will Ferrell, but I didn't know who they were then. Anyway, everyone was on such a high (and perhaps on other things) as was I. I needed to use the bathroom but had a weird fear that I'd come back and Blink would be gone, and I'd be lost in NYC at 1am with no place to stay. Weird fear, right? "Hey, Rick, I'm going to go to the bathroom, DON'T LEAVE OK?" Rick: "No worries, I'm not leaving." I go the bathroom and when I return, I don't see Rick. Wait a second, I don't see Mark, Tom, or Travis either. Uhhhhhh... maybe there's some post-show business they need to do? I ask an NBC employee where to find the band. "Oh, they left." WHAT? I said it was a weird fear, and here it was coming true. I had no idea where the band were staying, I had no cell phone number, maybe even no cell phone at that point. I mean I could go throw a credit card down and buy a hotel room, but that would have been a pretty expensive thing to do at 21. Then I saw Carson Daly with a couple of his friends. "Hey, Carson, so Blink apparently left and I was supposed to crash on Rick's floor, is there any way I can crash on your floor?" Half of me just wanted this to happen because it'd be an amazing story one day. "Sure, man, any friend of Blink's is a friend of mine." I didn't want to mellow his parting, so I said, "OK cool, I'll just be chilling over there, let me know when you're ready to go." A short time later, his friends came over and said, "Hey, sorry, you can't stay at Carson's place." I didn't really understand as he said I could, but they claimed he was staying on their couch or something? "We got the name of Blink's hotel" and he handed me a piece of paper. Great. There's no Google Maps to make this easy, so I have someone else give me directions on how to get to the subway, which subway to take, and where to get off. To this day the hotel name is committed to memory because it was my life's mission to get there: the Soho Grand. I brave the cold and the perhaps dangerous NYC subways (this was 2000!) and get to the hotel at like 3am maybe? The problem now is I don't have a room number, and hotels don't just give you room numbers when you give them a guest name. But I guess this was pre 9/11, so I gave it a shot. "Hi, I'm looking for Rick Devoe's room number, please?" "Sure, it's 303." Are you kidding me? How did that just work? I go up two flights of stairs and knock on the door. Nothing. I knock again. Nothing. Shit, they went to some cool afterparty and who knows when (if?) they'll be back. I decide I'm just going to head down to the lobby and sit in a chair until they show up. Hopefully they show up! I start my way down the stairwell and who's coming up the stairs but Blink! Rick's like "OH MY GOD ROB I'M SO SORRY! THEY RUSHED US OUT OF THERE I HAD NO CHOICE!" No worries, man, it's over now, I found you guys, whew. Tom: "Dude, I need you to fix my computer!" Sure Tom, in the morning I'll take a look. I'm exhausted and amazingly fall asleep on Rick's literal floor, with like half a blanket. It was not a great sleep. Their wake up call was super early, so I only slept a few hours. Rick and I are in the lobby and eventually Tom comes down and guess what? He wants me to fix his computer! Rick says there's no time, and Tom wants me to jump in the van and help him out on the way to the airport. I want to help, but I'm tired and don't really want to go all the way to the airport and then figure my way back to the city for an hour-long train ride back to where I'm staying. Sorry, Tom. They were out the door and that's where the story ends. This was one of the last time I got to hang out with the guys. I was on tour with Midtown for 3 days a year later when they opened for Blink-182, but they were so big at that point I don't even know if I got to talk to Tom or Mark. I did run into Tom in Vegas years later, and I saw Travis a few times. But I think that conversation with Mark in the SNL green room might have been our last.

(this is going to seem hate filled but bear with me) I've spent a lot of time being angry at Tom Delonge - for more than a decade, at this point. that anger has lessened in the last couple of years, mostly because it seems silly to be angry at someone who's clearly delusional - and also because I'm almost 30 and maybe having so many emotional responses to someone I've never met is not healthy for a normal adult - but it's also lessened because California, and the later AVA releases, allowed me to slow my roll a little and re-evaluate. So now, I look back over blinks history and in some ways I can appreciate it more now than I have for a few years. I usually have a mad eye-rolling session when people make a big fuss about Tom as a guitarist, for example. because he's fairly rubbish in that area. his lyrics are awful. his voice is a cheese-grater at this point in time. The thing I always skip over though, is that he's a bloody good songwriter. He takes incredibly mediocre, and at times just plain bad parts and puts them together and can write amazing songs with it. I listen to older blink stuff, even stuff on Neighborhoods now, and I can see them as full songs more than I ever could - before these odd little parts would poke out at me, distracting me, and they'd be all I could hear when I listened to those songs. now that I'm less angry about it all it's like I can listen to the songs completely, on each level, without getting irrationally mad. Truthfully, I miss his songwriting a lot. I think his songwriting is always at it's best when he can bounce off of Mark and Travis, but even without them there is often some 'spark' of him in there, sometimes it's buried under total rubbish but he's still rocking the core of it. Since starting up a new band and taking up the role of the only electric guitarist and vocalist (something I have never done before) I'm now realising how embedded Tom's influence is on my writing and playing style - how every idea I have is borrowed or adjacent to something I learned from him - how my ideas for catchy melodies and chord structures are entirely down to his own limited expertise. and I kind of love it because Tom took what little he had and made a whole career out of it, in it's own way it's very inspiring - it makes me feel less like some kind of stupid, talentless kid who's just copying what they know, and more like a 'student', a product of influence and passing on the energy at it's core, sprinkled with my own individuality. My point is, I spent years hating Tom and I don't anymore. I spent years slamming his style and now I accidentally emulate it. I don't want to be angry, even when he chases aliens and scams people for money. he's not a hero, he's not some Guitar God, he's a high school drop out who likes punk rock and has far too much money on his hands. and it's fine if my biggest influence is someone I probably couldn't hold a full conversation with - the musical conversation is entirely different, and I'm comfortable and happy to have just that. What Tom accomplished in blink, the songs he wrote, the influence he had, is irrefutably powerful and impressive - and on a personal level, blink-182 and Tom in particular have played a major part in shaping me as a person - my sense of humour, my music taste, my clothing taste, my love of graphic design, my entire musical career, my choice of online friends - I would not be who I am without them and thats pretty huge. TLDR, I love Tom, I love blink. regardless of what negative crap I say.

I've spent way too much time compiling this list of Blink-182 related locations. It's always a popular post on Reddit, so I figured I'd bring it here too in case it hasn't made its rounds here yet. M+M'S -The boardwalk/amusement park they filmed at -The shootout scene at the end of the original video JOSIE -The high school DAMMIT -The movie theater WHAT'S MY AGE AGAIN? -This is the sidewalk they run down -from the right to the left- at the beginning of the video -This is where the florist lady soaks the kids on the bench with a hose -This is where they turn the corner and see Janine walking up the sidewalk -This is where they filmed the banana man -The cafe they run past -The scene with the valet -The scene with the little girl looking through the magnifying glass -The construction zone they run past -The antique store that the old man with the TV is sitting in front of at the end of the video -The closing shot, they run up this sidewalk ADAM'S SONG -Blink walks from the right to the left down this sidewalk at the start of the video Fun fact: the buildings next to the loan company is where Blink dumps cash onto people on the sidewalk in the "Rock Show" video. -The Mexican food restaurant they eat at in the video -The gas station they're looking at magazines inside of while the lady is outside on the payphone MAN OVERBOARD -Little Blink runs down the same street as in the WMAA video -This is where Little Blink chases Banana Mark -Where the live shots were filmed -The concert venue at the end of the video THE ROCK SHOW -Where they took the homeless guy to get a haircut is at the business to the left of the nail salon -Where they dropped the car -it was before the building on the right was built -The building they were on the roof of when they dumped all the cash -This is where everyone was skateboarding and jumping over the van -Where the pet store was that they bought the doves from -The building they bought the TV they smashed FIRST DATE -The burger place -The water park STAY TOGETHER FOR THE KIDS -The mansion FEELING THIS -The jail AFTER MIDNIGHT -The hangar where they filmed the live shots in BORED TO DEATH -Where the live shots were filmed RANDOM SHIT -The infamous light pole that Mark climbed and jumped off of when he first met Tom -The old Sombrero restaurant they would eat and get fan mail at -The house they did all of their early stuff like print shirts, fold up Buddha tapes, etc. -The old location of DML Studios, where Blink wrote and demoed Dude Ranch, Enema of the State, and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket -Westbeach Recorders, where Blink recorded the majority of Cheshire Cat -Doubletime Studios, where Blink recorded their early EPs, Buddha, and additional recording for Cheshire Cat -Signature Sound, where they recorded Enema, TOYPAJ, Untitled, and also Box Car Racer's album -EastWest Studios, where they recorded some of Take Off Your Pants and Jacket -Rolling Thunder Studios, where Blink recorded some of Untitled, and where Tom smashed his Fuck guitar -Tom spotted on Google Maps walking into a Mexican restaurant that used to actually be a Sombrero's location -Mark spotted on Google Maps walking down the street with his wife and a friend - EXPIRED -The venue they played their final show at before going on hiatus in 2004

It's SOOOO bizarre and gross to see people making up these insane theories about a woman who has been completely out of the limelight for her entire 20+ year relationship. So many comments about her being a bitch, a gold digger, she's a "chick who got between a dude and his friends." Whether it's projection, trolling, whatever, you guys freak me out and have pretty blatantly skewed views of women.

Says the guy who doesn’t like experimentation and wants the same thing over and over again...

Oliver constantly takes harsh stances on unpopular opinions -> Everyone else is a contrarian Oliver makes wild claims and presents them as facts with no evidence -> Everyone else must provide bibliographies for all of their posts Oliver was supposedly in a relationship with a woman who ripped him off -> Jen Delonge, monogamous partner for over two decades who started dating her husband before he was famous, is a gold digging bitch who would "chew up and spit out just about any man" Oliver my man, I think you have a habit of projecting.

But hey, what really matters here: Iis Leo Dehoe going to ake off his wedding ring too?

I was about to post this in the New Album thread because Jar Jar was derailing things in there, but it seemed more appropriate here haha. All the talk from our resident California fans about how they wish the negativity would go away so there could be normal conversations seems like BS when they just shit their pants and mock people any time there is ANY discussion that doesn't align with what they think about California and Feldmann. The post Jar Jar is being a baby about wasn't trolling or anything, the guy just gave an honest assessment of his thoughts about Blink right now and how he thought the new lineup had more potential than we've seen so far. For some reason these guys want to control every single conversation but never bring up anything to talk about in the first place because they'd rather complain about the "negativity." I don't have personal feelings about someone based on whether they like or dislike the current direction of the band, I like Ghent's posts and thoughts about a lot of things, and I think Oliver's theory about Feldmann's sexual habits was ridiculous. And I do understand why someone with a less popular opinion would feel like they're being ganged up on, but it seems like every pro-Cali person only posts about why they're being persecuted or something lately haha. There was the beginning of a good convo recently about which lyrics on Cali seemed honest and what we'd like to see them write about in the future and it got derailed almost immediately by Ghent mocking someone by saying that if he liked the intro to Cynical, it meant that he hopes the band breaks up. Stuff like that is way more annoying and derails way more threads than anyone just voicing their well-thought-out opinions, even if they're negative. We all like Blink here for some reason or another, some people are down on the current version of the band and some people think they're as good as ever, I think both of those perspectives are totally fine! I just wish more people could debate honestly and talk about the actual music and the band instead of stupid quips and drama.

I just stumbled onto this old interview from 2000 and Mark describes Tom perfectly haha "Tom is totally, 100 percent faithful to his girlfriend. He's pretty straightforward: He hangs out with his girlfriend, and he believes in aliens. Honestly, he believes anything he reads. You could say, 'I read in a magazine that an alien landed in Australia. A doctor found him and did an autopsy – there's footage on the Internet.' And Tom wouldn't even question it. He would take it as gospel and go around telling everybody." https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/how-blink-182-went-to-the-top-of-the-charts-by-keeping-their-minds-in-the-gutter-20000120

I do not like talking about my engineering experience because i dont want to sound like a know it all. But i cant help myself with that comment. i’ve been studying engineering for more than 15 years, have a degree in it, worked in professional studios where famous artists have recorded, i’ve mixed and recorded songs, albums, pre and post tv stuff and concerts. So of course i have a strong opinion about how songs are recorded and sound with my favorite band. And there are obvious proofs on how untitled was better recorded, engineered and mixed. But yeah, you know everything about everyone. This will be the last time responding to these “elite members” type of comments. You’re more than welcome joining conversations about blink without belittling people.

I can't wait 'til I'm off of work I'll meet my friends at the Target curb Fucking phenomenal lyrics right there nqat

Just call it a day blink, it's over, the magic is dead and has been since 2005.

Doing a great duty as owner of the forum here Oliver. A new potentially active member with potential cool stories turns up out of the blue (I don't really care about blink history anymore but others def will) - so what do you do? jump straight down their throat and call them a liar at the first opportunity - sure that'll make him want to stick around! Chill the fuck out and stop being so cynical and miserable all the time.

OK guys, I'm here. Thanks to ryan1125 for letting me know this place exists. I have a TON of information to update your timeline if you like. I have old wall calendars with a bunch of tour dates written in as well as some flyers and posters somewhere. Happy to answer any questions or clear anything up that I can. Also @daveyjones I guess you know me, who are you?

Me drumming Adam's song, taking out the parts that are repetitious. Not as good as Travis by a million miles, few are, but I can do it despite the doubt. I learned this song on drums when I was 19 y/o to teach to my drummer............. 18 years ago in 2000. . Before the youtube generation and the advent of technology that made things easier. All the shit we talk on here is only half the equation for me, the other half is the actual music, or at least it was. I know most Blink songs pre neighborhoods on drums. ##isthereanythingicantdo.

All the acclaim that went to American Idiot should have gone to Untitled

california was the worst thing that ever happened to blink

I can't believe this is what passes as "killing it" for some of you. This band is fucking awful now, not only compared to what they used to be but as musicians in general. Travis is the only one able to make this band reputable. Go show this to any one of your friends who have no idea what blink is doing now adays and ask them if they'd keep listening to them after a performance like this. Good god, and some of you had the audacity to complain about AVA's live shows. At least that band never had a reputation to uphold.

Apparently the San Diego Padres still play a montage with "San Diego" playing after wins. Tom goes to a lot of Padres games... Wonder how it feels to hear a song from your old band written about you after your favorite teams wins a game? Awkward!