| TUESDAY, 15 FEBRUARY, 2000, PHILADELPHIA |
|
You know those Mondays where you are so profoundly fatigued from whatever nasty little shenanigans you got up to on the weekend that you end up spending the first work day in narcoleptic fits, coming-to occasionally with a violent snort as you hastily wipe the drool-puddles from your desk and you look about the room at the people staring at you slack-jawed and you are flooded with a sense of wonderment and shame? Yah, you do. Admit it. I had one of those yesterday. I was certain that I would fall asleep driving home from work last night. My shitbox car has nothing but a radio in it, so I cannot even control the audio atmosphere while driving. Like a drowsy maniac, I pushed the little buttons blindly for even the LCD display on the radio is burned out. I was looking for something — anything to help me wake up. Mornings are okay because Howard Stern is on. But Philadelphia has pretty shitty radio stations, on the whole. I have programmed in a bad 80’s metal station, a “retro-disco-funk” station which rarely plays what it promises (sorry, Lou Rawls, you just don't do it for me like Barry White does), the bizarre Princeton college station, a country station that doesn’t play any of the funny, rednecky stuff, and a couple of other forgettable stations. My quest was looking bleak. My eyelids grew tiny fishing weights as I got on the highway. Then, I pushed a button and heard the manic beat of “Blue Monday”, which I don’t think I’ve heard in 10 years. Ahh — Joy-Division-cum-New-Order! I was immediately perky and lost in rêverie of the splashy 80’s. In particular I remember one gothy-industrially acquaintance from high school a million years ago bedecked in black leather with silver spikey things whose name utterly eludes me today. I remember a party at his house where he proudly brought out a cardboard box with much ceremony. Opening the box, he took out 4 copies of New Order’s “Blue Monday” 12 inch single — you remember, the big 5 1/4 inch mock-floppy disk cover art? Good, solid 80’s marketing right there, my friends! Anyway, he went on to explain each copy: 
“This is the copy I play all the time. And this is the copy that I am not opening — no! don’t touch the plastic wrap, damn you! This is the copy that I play at special occasions, like when I’m DJ’ing at Club Postnuclear, and this … this is the copy that I will be buried with. Some day I hope to have this copy [the one he wanted lying atop his chest posthumously] signed by the band.”What a goofballhead. Ohwell. We were all 17 at one point I guess. Hmm… |
   |