When I was in high school Jeremy Gress dressed in black, had painted his bedroom black, and listened to Depeche Mode. He wasn’t really that goth or such. This was all pre-Japanese-Lolita and such, the right time for Sandman but neither of us read it. Another thing about Jeremy was the car accident in which he had been involved, in which he was thrown from the vehicle and skidded along the gravely road. The lasting effect of the accident was his ability to dislocate one of his shoulders on demand, an instant get-out-of-the-straight-jacket free card.
What Jeremy had was a huge — ginormous, I like to say — collection of Depeche Mode cassettes, many legit, many bootleg, but enough to fill more than one shoebox. How could one group have produced so much music?
My interest in D.M. could be satisfied with a “best of,” “greatest hit,” “the singles” style CD. Violator was the only album I more or less knew by name. Thus when I started through my relatively small D.M. collection this afternoon as part of my listen-to-everything project, I only had three or four hours of music through which to wade; I had as much or more Def Leppard, actually, and I finished that by 2p.m.
As a freshman in college I would walk “to town” on weekends with friends and recently acquired acquaintances, and often that first fall we would stop by Rhino Records, where, during one outdoor sale, I picked up Def Leppard’s Retro Active, their first album since Andrenalize, which, at that point, I did not have. Hysteria was my entrance into the world of D.L. back in the 8th grade. During the winter in P.E. we did our weekly mile indoors, and Daniel often brought a Walkman to class. It was his Hysteria-loaded Walkman that introduced me to Joe Elliot and the one-armed drummer. At that point Hysteria was getting a lot of airplay, even though it had actually come out a full year or so earlier. Long shelf-life, really. The album is still comfort food of sorts for me, and there are only a couple tracks for which I do not really care. I got Pyromania, High ‘n’ Dry, and On Through the Night on cassette while an exchange student; or rather, I copied them from friends. That and AC/DC. On Through the Night is a bit rough, not over-produced, and still a joy after all these years. I eventually picked up the CDs. Retro Active is excessively produced and at times feels like a concept album with its multiple takes and acoustic versions. While occasionally a bit thick or heavy, it is still pleasant to listen to. And I’m fond of the cover art.
Later this evening, if I don’t take a music break to read without the interruption of noise, I should make it to Dire Straits; it will still take another day or two to make it to “E,” which is, curiously enough, a larger group of musicians than I originally thought.
This afternoon, while drinking four cups of coffee, I managed to get a short piece of fiction written — all part of the Sunday Brunch Writing engagement. I also had a dozen short pieces by others to read, evaluate, and vote on. What is arguably the best piece also ignores one of the important rules of the competition into which the pieces were entered: there as a 1250 word length limit, and this piece exceeds it by 500 or so. Thus, it didn’t get my vote. The cover I designed for the competition is leading the voting in that category, but my story is languishing in a four-way tie for 2nd.
I want to bake, but I have only two eggs and only one packet of yeast. With the eggs I could make one loaf of carrot-nut bread, but then I wouldn’t have ann egg for the Honey-Mustard Oatmeal Bread, which takes only one packet of yeast, and without more yeast I won’t make multi-loaf bread recipes. I could go shopping, but I think I’ll wait to do that until Tuesday, my next “day off” … but a day on which I should focus on dissertating.
Last night I made it to Aaron’s place around 9:30 or so. It had begun to snow again, and the streets and sidewalks were treacherous. I managed not to fall on the walk there. I arrived about the same time as Eric, someone I’ve seen many times in my years on campus and with the Union. A friend of Aaron’s and Liz’s was there, but I’ve since forgotten it; she eventually left to go see her boyfriend. Then a woman who writes her name in Arabic but transliterated it to Latin characters for us, and a couple from the English Dept., arrived. We discussed 80s nostalgia: toys, TV shows, and video games. The beer was good; the wine probably was but I didn’t have any. The salsa, a spicey mango affair, was magnificent, but I could have done without the hint of lime on the salty chips. Aaron and Liz have two adorable cats: Soulpatch and Bryher (the former is friendly and always seeking attention, the latter was a stray who is a bit shy and still undersized); I also think her name should be Bryher Patch. Of the two newer English grads, one was Jay, but let’s just call him J., since his girlfriend, who was the spitting image of a younger Erin Grey (see: Buck Rogers), but probably taller, was named Kaia or such. Let’s just call her K., so that we also had Liz as L., and the woman who left early had a name starting with M. Later another couple arrived, but I never caught their names. The weather was bad, so more people did not show, and right before midnight we all called it a night.
On the walk home I did slip once near Routledge and had to wipe snow from my knees.
