Fahrenheit-182: A Memoir By Mark Hoppus (April 8, 2025)

[Knapppers]

Fuck I totally forgot this is out now. Just ordered it and pumped to read it. 

[fran.182]

That clip is great. "Chapter XIV"?

Can't believe I've never heard it before.

[Elisa]

I loved Mark's book, it's so well written, and it's an emotional roller coaster that hooks you from page one and doesn't let go.
The highs are really high and lows are way lower than expected.
The recurring “one in a million” theme ties it all together beautifully, and I love how the story starts from Mark's desert town roots and then circles back to the desert for their triumphant comeback at Coachella.

As diehard fans/self made blink historians, don't expect to find things you've never heard of, but the chapter on Robert Smith caught me off guard in the best way lol
And as Kay noted this morning, the story behind "Go" was horrifying.

I think Mark had to hold some juicier details from the TRL era and I'm sure he has a lot more to say about the pop disaster tour, but I understand why he didn't do it and kept telling us that Billie Joe and Mike are nice guys.

Scott's complete absence from the book is another thing that wasn't unexpected.
As someone who has always seen Scott as a core member despite lacking Mark and Tom's “IT factor,” I’m left wondering if maybe we should reassess his role in the band at this point.

I'm just rambling- let's say thinking out loud but in this case typing lol. I woke up at 5:30 am because my cat was crying and instead of going back to sleep I started reading the book, finished at around 11:30, it was a great full immersion, loved every second of it. blink life. for life. 😭🩷

[_Bagel]

1 hour ago, Elisa said:

I loved Mark's book, it's so well written, and it's an emotional roller coaster that hooks you from page one and doesn't let go.
The highs are really high and lows are way lower than expected.
The recurring “one in a million” theme ties it all together beautifully, and I love how the story starts from Mark's desert town roots and then circles back to the desert for their triumphant comeback at Coachella.

As diehard fans/self made blink historians, don't expect to find things you've never heard of, but the chapter on Robert Smith caught me off guard in the best way lol
And as Kay noted this morning, the story behind "Go" was horrifying.

I think Mark had to hold some juicier details from the TRL era and I'm sure he has a lot more to say about the pop disaster tour, but I understand why he didn't do it and kept telling us that Billie Joe and Mike are nice guys.

Scott's complete absence from the book is another thing that wasn't unexpected.
As someone who has always seen Scott as a core member despite lacking Mark and Tom's “IT factor,” I’m left wondering if maybe we should reassess his role in the band at this point.

I'm just rambling- let's say thinking out loud but in this case typing lol. I woke up at 5:30 am because my cat was crying and instead of going back to sleep I started reading the book, finished at around 11:30, it was a great full immersion, loved every second of it. blink life. for life. 😭🩷

An Elisa take is always solid. Glad to hear you loved it. 

[Scott.]

Just finished this. It’s fantastic. I’m now a markbot. I love how he’s blinks biggest fan. The heartbeat of the band. I felt fucking sick all the way through the cancer chapters, I’m heartbroken he went through that but my god thank fuck he’s still here and cancer free, the last chapter got me teary eyed. I fucking love this band, what a story ffs. 

I love that instrumental he made too for the audio book. I think it’s an old demo? It sounds very plus44, I hope they use it for a future blink song. 

[Scott.]

On 3/31/2025 at 10:44 PM, Russel Coight said:

Green day play exceptionally well live. It’s just the music is interrupted by BJ’s ego with the wooaaa-ohhh shit in between every song and in the middle of the songs.

They play great live because EVERY song sounds exactly the fucking same. Nail one song and you’ve nailed them all. They’re the most boring blandest overrated band ever. It’s funny that people see GD as more punk than Blink but watch them live and blink are the true punk band out of them both, not so much now but back in the day 100%, they say whatever the fuck they like and sound raw as fuck, GD are as polished as one direction, they sound like a shit musical. They can honestly get fucked. GD fans can thank blink for American idiot also. They were so threatened by blink that they wrote their best album after touring with them 🤣

[Scott.]

On 3/31/2025 at 10:45 PM, thongrider said:

Green Day got to have the last song in the most iconic show in the history of sitcoms about a friendgroup in New York City! Friends!

No they didn’t?

[thongrider]

Wait! I have a false memory of this!

[Sgt. Rainbow]

15 minutes ago, thongrider said:

Wait! I have a false memory of this!

It was Seinfeld so nothing you said was false lol 

[thongrider]

1 hour ago, Jandrew Tate said:

It was Seinfeld so nothing you said was false lol 

I remember it being both and now I read that it was the second to last Seinfeld episode. But that was basically the joke. 

[Sgt. Rainbow]

7 minutes ago, thongrider said:

I remember it being both and now I read that it was the second to last Seinfeld episode. But that was basically the joke. 

Yea I knew what you were saying my boy!

[Kay]

2 hours ago, Scott. said:

No they didn’t?

I briefly was like "yeah it was time of your life!" no it wasnt haha

 

[thongrider]

Is this Mandela effect?

[whales]

Picked up and read the book in two days last week while on vacation. I really loved it, especially the first half; the way he sets up the foundation of blink by painting such a vivid picture of how they grew up was really neat. It was really well done.

If I wanted to critique it, I'd pick the latter half; it felt like he didn't really want to talk about blink much at all during the California/Matt era, which was a shame. I wasn't looking for more tea, but I don't really feel like he said much of anything, I guess? Matt was great, we loved California, NINE was all writing with outside writers, moving on. It felt like he really skimmed over that section of their history without sharing how he felt about it in any real sense.

[boxelder]

3 hours ago, whales said:

Picked up and read the book in two days last week while on vacation. I really loved it, especially the first half; the way he sets up the foundation of blink by painting such a vivid picture of how they grew up was really neat. It was really well done.

If I wanted to critique it, I'd pick the latter half; it felt like he didn't really want to talk about blink much at all during the California/Matt era, which was a shame. I wasn't looking for more tea, but I don't really feel like he said much of anything, I guess? Matt was great, we loved California, NINE was all writing with outside writers, moving on. It felt like he really skimmed over that section of their history without sharing how he felt about it in any real sense.

He’s clearly not ready to talk about it. The slightest hint — that he had initially expressed skepticism at inviting cowriters into the once insular process — is perhaps as close as we will get for now. Was it Travis steering the ship? An evident lack of chemistry with Matt? Mark admitting he felt washed? We won’t know the answers for this until years from now. 

He compresses 2017-2020 into literally a page and a half. The fact that he outright admits that NINE “didn’t connect” is about as far is he willing to go. He somewhat hints he was just going with the flow with the label’s interests — considering they’re presumably still with the same execs/team, maybe he doesn’t feel like trashing the process? 

part of me wonders if the entire concept of accepting cowriters was an early, tacit acknowledgement that nothing could replace the true blink — Mark, Tom and Travis — and that the new era should be graded differently.

[Ghent]

So I've been avoiding this thread because of spoilers, but I read like the first 5 or 6 chapters of this last night and thoroughly enjoyed it.

So well-written and an inside glimpse of his childhood that was pretty much all news to me. I thought he was an LA suburbs guy. Had no idea he was a small town desert kid or that he grew up with that much turmoil. But in addition to being kind of heartbreaking, it was also really funny and heartwarming at the same time. I can't wait to get back into it tonight.

[Elisa]

5 hours ago, Ghent said:

So I've been avoiding this thread because of spoilers, but I read like the first 5 or 6 chapters of this last night and thoroughly enjoyed it.

So well-written and an inside glimpse of his childhood that was pretty much all news to me. I thought he was an LA suburbs guy. Had no idea he was a small town desert kid or that he grew up with that much turmoil. But in addition to being kind of heartbreaking, it was also really funny and heartwarming at the same time. I can't wait to get back into it tonight.

I loved the chapters on his childhood in that desert town. I think his childhood and all those worries and insecurities he had because of his parents’ divorce play a huge role in understanding why he feels the way he does in the band—like he’s always battling this sense of not being good enough, or how he was so lost when the band broke up. 

[Scott.]

8 hours ago, Elisa said:

I loved the chapters on his childhood in that desert town. I think his childhood and all those worries and insecurities he had because of his parents’ divorce play a huge role in understanding why he feels the way he does in the band—like he’s always battling this sense of not being good enough, or how he was so lost when the band broke up. 

You really feel for him during the box car chapter. I’d be devastated if my two best mates started another band without me. You can’t really blame Tom either imo, I think the whole project kinda snowballed and wasn’t meant to be as big as it was. I’m still devastated that album isn’t a blink album, imagine those songs with Mark on them

[boxelder]

16 hours ago, Scott. said:

You really feel for him during the box car chapter. I’d be devastated if my two best mates started another band without me. You can’t really blame Tom either imo, I think the whole project kinda snowballed and wasn’t meant to be as big as it was. I’m still devastated that album isn’t a blink album, imagine those songs with Mark on them

Honestly I feel like you kind of CAN blame Tom based on almost everything we know, which is quite a bit.

According to the book, he deliberately avoided telling Mark and waited until the project was well into development to even tell him about it, only then underselling it as a simple acoustic thing. He then also left him in the dark as the coterie of agents, managers, label execs and Travis (!) got involved. part of me feels like Travis hasn't been as truthful regarding his participation. is there something we don't know about mark then? was he annoying or pissing people off, driving people like rick, tom, travis, even jerry finn to want him absent?

then, for Tom to play both sides — this went way beyond my control, but also I’m fine with doing radio, tour, promo, videos — is telling. that and he had originally asked for time off after his back injury… Mark says this in the book, but you’d think that if he really needed the time away from touring, he wouldn’t mount two full-scale tours back to back like BCR did in 2002. what seals the deal is that after having sort-of buried the hatchet,  two years later, Mark was mistakenly copied on emails about Tom’s secret solo project (this was in 2004, right before they broke up). why would tom again be looking for the door or planning something solo without being truthful to mark about it? Mark even writes: “The message to me was clear: Tom thought I held him back from greatness.” 

while it sounds like conjecture and somewhat parasocial to analyze, i've always felt like it was entirely duplicitous of him. it feels like tom got what he wanted -- fame and fortune -- and became embarrassed with their image and sound. maybe he got tired of sharing the limelight with mark. mark mentions the wife and life arms race they were having in '01. he even says that tom became secretive when he wasn't previously, and if you read between the lines, it's not hard to glean that a lot of tom's problems stemmed from his marriage. perhaps there were people in his circle like jen that pushed him to do things like BCR and later AVA that made *him* more of the star.

at the end of the day, it happened and there was no obvious reason for it to happen. it's just fucked up it did and i'm surprised to this day that mark can forgive him, honestly. way to humiliate him at the peak of their success on the world stage.

[_Kyle_]

Long ass rant here, I'm still in 97 in Mark's book but it has me thinking... 

I've often wondered if Dude Ranch and Enema had come out in 94-96, would they be even bigger or was 97-99 undisputedly the perfect time for them. Hard to argue it could have been better, but I'm open. 

On one hand the 2000-2005 years are during the emergence of Napster and thus their literal numbers in album sales are punctured by that. They had an insanely ravenous fanbase for sure, but the changing of the times/lack of album sales probably hurt their overall reach despite being a big fish in the rock world circa the new millennium. Blink was big, but not Limp Bizkit big, not Red Hot Chili Peppers big, they were not Creed big. Yeah I had to look this up, cause this may surprise you, but Creed outsold all these bands by a couple million in 1999. Truly they were taking butt-rock higher than rap/rock or pop/punk were. But blink was strategically smart about what they put out in that TOYPAJ was a grand summation of blink at that point and displayed how far they had come and knew their strengths. 

They didn't seem to have a real identity crisis until 2002 and really lead them "going for it" with untitled. It again, suited them and the times. They weren't Radiohead, but they actually brought something to the table and dare I say it, were pretty unique in their sound. Then they crashed along with the music industry. It's kind of perfect, but the industry was a pale imitation of its former self by that point and blink wasn't going to sell 5 million albums on a singular continent anymore. However, compared to Limp Bizkit or Creed, they were way more alive and re-inventing themselves for newer audiences and old fans to dig into as controversial that record was at the time (I distinctly remember people not getting it on first listen and felt betrayed by their ill-conceived efforts to sound more "mature").  

In 1999, being "punk" was harder to quantify nor did it actually matter to most consumers/tastemakers. Blink were never tethered to ideals beyond playing their music for as many people as they can. They just loved punk music and made something resembling that. It's pure in a way. But they had no broad, strident morals or codes in terms of who they were (beyond maybe being on Girls Gone Wild compilations or something, who knows what they actually turned down during that time) and were in the music industry to be anti-rockstars by removing all pretenses of being "cool" or "above it" or devoid of even caring about social awareness of .. anything. Largely if it was funny, or maybe cool, blink was into it and for it. The skate-surf community was like this throughout the 90s and was getting bigger and bigger. You had the rise of surf-shop turned mall stores like PacSun, and shows like Jackass, who all came from this movement. If there was a poster-band for this movement, blink 182 was kind of it despite really having nothing to do with them. 

Looking at Blink in 99, the big takeaways from their music, image, and interviews were "we're stupid and gross, and who cares, nudity is funny, the backstreet boys ARE pretentious but our pseudo-contemporaries which is weird, can you believe we're paid to do this? who wants to see the new star wars/south park movie?". Seeing them next to antics of Tom Green (who you could argue influenced skate culture or vice-versa) was not surprising. You kind of forget Mark and Tom had a show called You Idiot! that was the most MTV in 99 thing. It was the kind of thing that you would be made fun of if it was 94 and I wonder why the show largely didn't work (I have a feeling Mark doesn't even mention it in his book). 

The most deep thing you got from them was a suicide song (that was rather brilliant on Mark's part) which felt whip-lash inducing when you look at the track list on Enema. It allowed them to have a dark ballad in their pocket. It showed there was something underneath. Not everything was burritos and porn stars. It also perfectly coincided with the youth who were shellshocked by columbine. While this was right after TEB's Jumper, Mark's version of the end was some Pagliacci shit. It's rather stark coming from a group of guys who seemed to big on the upswing and seemingly forever grinning at their own puerile nature and exploits. And with that, the album really was the perfect encapsulation of the horned up, prosperous but depressed American male teen archetype of the late 90s. 

That's the big secret sauce with the band, they seemed like normal dudes who got off on being immature and funny. They wanted to be in movies, they wanted to be in any magazine, they were above being embarrassed or "un-cool", undercut themselves constantly, etc. They didn't care if you liked it or not, or found it needy, or found it annoying. It was them. That was perfectly in fashion because the dream of the anti-corporate 90s was all but dead in 1999 and buying in with ironic detachment was the best way to "win" really. MTV had the pulse of the 15-25 year-olds from 91-96, and then shifted to 12-18 year-olds by 97-99 because they didn't know what a MP3 was. Timing is everything.

So basically, did everything kind of work out perfectly until they broke up or what? Could they have been bigger?