Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Musical Taste

This is me as a teenager. In this picture I was trying to perfect the come-hither look that Vivien Leigh had employed so well in Gone With the Wind.

As this picture so rightly displays I was sort of a weirdo. Not like the weirdo I am now. Which is to say I talk a lot less about my preoccupation with selling out and just realize, I am a sell out. iPod please!

These days I am more of a geek. You know, the people who are good with computers, and who have made it cool for people everywhere to admit that they love Lord of the Rings. Back in high school admitting you knew what LOTR was could get you killed before the end of home room. If you didn't wear Levi's with an Op shirt and Sun Ice jacket you were social road kill.

Back then I was known to lament the fact that I didn't have the exact dress that Molly Ringwald worn to the dance in Sixteen Candles. I also thought that Depeche Mode was singing Blasphemous Rumours directly to me. And only me. Of course, I was also prone to drinking in my bedroom closet. Like the time I got suspended from school for 3 days for going to a dance after mainlining 3 straight tumblers of lemon gin.

After my parents spatulaed me off the teacher's staff room couch I totally lied my ass off about what had happened. The next morning when my Mom felt she needed to bring closure to our talk, I had NO idea what sort of crap I had told her the night before. I was actually appalled at the depth of my own depravity. Of course, my night was a lot easier than my friend Kim's. Her parents drove her home, dropped her in front of the drain in the laundry room and turned the hose on her. Thankfully, my mother only extracted a promise from me to take math the following semester. Evil.

Mark on the other hand was so good you could operate off his ass. Except when it came to his music. He didn't have a shirt that wasn't inscribed with 'world tour'. He also didn't know that you could listen to music that didn't require an electric guitar. He thought The Smiths were a local family.

Except for the time he got shot in the head with a bb gun, he remained resolutely quiet in high school. Which is probably why he got directly into University and I had to do 2 years at the Community College.

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