A.P. Miller

PRINCES OF THE UNIVERSE

Posted on 24 Jan 202519 Jan 2025 by A.P. Miller in Blog

I remember working for a company, 2012-ish, and every morning the leadership of the company would have their “Princes of the Universe” coffee meeting. Truth be told, it felt good to be invited to that meeting, to sit down, and grab a cup of Joe. If you were on the outside of that congregation, it was a bad feeling. I found myself on the outs for reasons that are completely my own—I earned my exile. One morning, I hear them talking about the song “Friday” by Rebecca Black, and how the youth didn’t care for the song. White men, between forty, and eighty, discussing pop music as if they had influence on popular culture. Now, I may have still been raw from being frozen out, but the concentration of audacity felt like it was going to give me tumors. Those men were completely oblivious to the fact they were no longer relevant. I was about twenty-eight years old, and I felt irrelevant from having an opinion on what influenced popular culture. There probably should have been a nurse at those meetings, to determine if it was testicular cancer, or just ego.

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I Was There: The Influence of the Grunge Movement in Popular Media

Posted on 10 May 20245 May 2024 by A.P. Miller in Blog

Recently, I was doom-scrolling TikTok (add me, @Millerverse), and the question was posed: “who is more influential, Taylor Swift? Or Kurt Cobain?” A lot of folks said Taylor Swift—and I’m not knocking them, at their age, Taylor Swift has been a point of influence—but I disagree. I started to film a response, but honestly, the diatribe was meant for my blog.

There are a few misconceptions the Pro-Cobain movement has incorrect:

Nirvana didn’t invent Grunge; they were certainly the mainstream catalyst of Grunge’s embrace, but they weren’t the first ones to don flannel & play through sub-par equipment.
“Influence,” in context of the question asked, isn’t necessarily the fact that people are still wearing their merchandise—I still see people wearing AC/DC, Ramones, Misfits, etc. I would agree that Kurt Cobain was more influential than Taylor Swift, just not for that reason.

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A Storyteller’s Dharma

Posted on 5 Jan 20242 Jan 2024 by A.P. Miller in Blog

Dharma (n); Hinduism: 1. Essential quality or character; as of the cosmos or one’s own nature. 2. Conformity to religious law, custom, duty, or one’s own quality or character. ¹

Happy New Year and welcome back to the Millerverse! Sincerely, I hope this year brings you more joy, and success, than you could possibly be prepared for! I hope your 2023 ended on a positive note, I hope your 2024 isn’t a fraction of the dumpster fire the last few years have been, and I hope you look forward to the coming year with positive expectation. If 2023 wasn’t kind, I’m sorry, and I want you to know that you have every reason, and right, to believe that 2024 will treat you with reverie.

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I Hated 90’s Pop Radio (And Now I’d Do Anything to Have it Back)

Posted on 6 Oct 20239 Sep 2023 by A.P. Miller in Uncategorized

Do you remember when the CEO of TikTok was dragged in front of a Congressional Panel and the world had to watch a bunch of dinosaurs figure out how technology worked? I’m honestly shocked the poor man wasn’t taken to Salem, tried for being a witch, and burned at the stake. I will say I think the CEO of TikTok was paraded in front of the wrong panel—that man should have had to face the highest spiritual leader of every faith system on this planet—TikTok is sucking life from people like someone chose the wrong Holy Grail in an Indiana Jones movie. I’m guilty of it too. I’ll sit down after work, commit to a few minutes of doom scrolling, and realize it’s time to get up, and file for retirement.

No one ever prepared me for the young people on that app gushing over songs from the 80s and 90s, saying shit like “this song hits me in the feels.” It hits me in the feels too—mostly how it felt to have to hear the same song on the radio for the 47,952nd time on the radio. Let’s be perfectly clear, there was no skipping songs, hitting next, or streaming another channel. When you’re eight years old, locked in a vehicle while your mom is smoking her second pack of Marlboro Reds of the trip, and in the driver’s seat, there was nothing to listen to other than the radio, or the minutes of your life being stolen from you. Sure, we had cassette players, CD players even, but can you imagine how far that gets you when you have ADHD so bad you’re giving the people around you a learning disorder? Worse than that, if you caught a brief glimpse of a song you might like, and someone changes the station before you can find out what the song is, your only hope is that you’ll find out what the song’s name is in the next life.

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The Viceannual Emancipation of Mr. A.P. Miller (Don’t You Forget About Me)

Posted on 29 Sep 20234 Sep 2023 by A.P. Miller in Blog

I looked at the calendar and realized school is about to begin soon. As the almost-40 parent of none, the commencement of the new school year means little outside of traffic patterns in the Greater Wilmington, NC area changing with the onset of school bus routes resuming. Nostalgia doesn’t hit me as hard as it did when I lived in Pennsylvania. North Carolina doesn’t quite have the Appalachian chill in the air that says “football season is upon us,” or “time to collect wood for the bonfire.” In fact, I’m looking at the thermometer, and it’s almost 80 degrees fahrenheit. It’s been quite a while since I stepped out my front door and been reminded of the first day of classes.

Upon further inspection of the calendar, I realize that it has been twenty years since I’ve graduated high school. To date, I haven’t heard anything about a reunion, but I can’t tell you that I’d go—not yet, anyways. There is a lot more living I want to do before I go see those men and women again. I want to be able to go back and tell stories of an authentic life worth living. I want to be able to celebrate their lives, in earnest, not feeling like I’ve missed out on any of mine. Simultaneously, I don’t want to discredit anything I’ve done, either. I only want to go back to the Moshannon Valley Junior-Senior High School with a heart full of things I would have never imagined I’d see while living in Clearfield County.

For this week’s blog, and specifically for my own benefit (if I’m struggling to think about what I’ve done approaching the thirty-year anniversary since leaving high school), I wanted to do a “Where is he now?” to compare myself now, to who I was.

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