This weekend, I am heading back to Pearland for my 10-year high school reunion. It's funny, I say "going back" like I wasn't there on Sunday sitting on my parents' couch watching cable and letting them feed me mashed potatoes and slip me gas money. This trip is different, though, because I will be participating in one of the strangest and endearing rituals in modern history, the class reunion.

It's to be a weekend-long affair out in the suburbs. Friday night we are all going to the high school football game, my first in a decade, and then convene back at a classmate's bar for a mixer, which means heavy drinking and hard posing. The next day is the family picnic, and since I have no children or pets - save my girlfriend's scruffy Maltese - it looks like I can sit that one out and sleep until one in the afternoon.

This being "Craig's Hlist" and all, I had to task myself with making this ultimate high school reunion playlist. At first I thought about what I was listening to back then - aside from pop radio and MTV - from August 1997 to May 2001, and realized most of it had no bearing on high school. Most of it was recorded before I was even conceived.

And all the ill will I may have felt for those four years, that was aided by all those goth, punk, and hardcore bands, has long melted away. In hindsight, Rancid and Bauhaus were just great bands, and had nothing to offer me in regards to passing remedial math or my punishing five-hour shift sacking groceries.

The person I am now probably would probably scare and intimidate the person I was 10 years ago, just as me now will make the man in 2021 laugh his fool head off. The tattoo of the monkey wearing a fez with an inverted cross on it probably won't jive well at the PTA meetings.

All these songs somehow count in large amounts right about now.