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Revisiting: Rush – Hold Your Fire
The album I associate most with my first car, with my initial forays into driving on my own, going on those timid initial dates and experiencing for the first time the strangeness of a night drive home alone … is Hold Your Fire, the 1987 release by Rush. I don’t even recall why I bought…
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Talking to Myself, 22 Years Ago
The other week, the Twitter hashtag #tweetyour16yearoldself started making the rounds. At last check, it was still rolling. This was my contribution: After a bit of thought, I’d like to expand on that. So 16-year old Me, pay attention: Here’s the deal. I didn’t give you enough credit. I was convinced that if only I…
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Jobs I’ve Had – Book Slinger
(Cross-posted as a comment in this MeFi thread.) I worked for Waldenbooks when I was in college. My store was one of two such franchises in Hamilton Place Mall, the first two-story mall built in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The upstairs store was closer to the food court, which might’ve been why we experienced more teenager traffic…
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Jobs I’ve Had – Waiting At The Hut
I was never cut out to be a good waiter. So while I’ve had a number of different jobs, only one of them involved taking orders by hand and picking up tips. Like I said before, I followed a decent manager from a fast food job to a somewhat slower food job. The Pizza Hut…
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Jobs I’ve Had – Burger King Serf
Only days after my 15th birthday, I did something stupid. I don’t remember just what stupid thing I did, but I remember the consequences. I did the stupid thing and Dad decided that it was time for me to get a job. He didn’t care what job it was, just that I got one. And…
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On Boom Boxes and Being Saved By Comedy
I got my first portable stereo when I was eleven. It was a Christmas present. I called it a boom box, even though it had only one big speaker next to the single tape-deck. Box, surely, but boom was limited. The cassette buttons were on top, as was the volume, but the tuner knob was…
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My Minister Is Not Myself
I shouldn’t be so surprised to see so many who wish to graft the opinions of Rev Wright onto most famous member of his congregation. After all, there has been so little opportunity for scandal throughout the Obama campaign. But the accusations of associative racism (or worse, sedition) are manifestly ignorant, not to mention more…
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On Dungeons, Dragons, Imagination, Religion and Me
Gary Gygax is dead. He created Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. I never met him. But I owe him a debt of gratitude that requires some explanation. When I was a teenager, I was into Christian Rock up to my elbows. The genre seemed a reasonable compromise between the music I wanted to hear and…
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1983
Twenty-five years ago, I wanted to be as cool as Michael Jackson. We all did. Everything he did was worthy of our attention. I missed his appearance on the Motown special, the night that he debuted the moonwalk, but I sure did hear about it the next day at school. “Did you see that?” The…