Ten Things (part 1)
I’ve done that you haven’t. Ready? Go!
1. Flown across the country for a single concert. Granted, this was the (held in Providence, RI) and it featured literally my favorite music at the time (including the only US performance by Flying Saucer Attack, whose performances in the UK were rare enough as it was.) It cost a small bucketful of money but would’ve been a value at twice the price. Breakfast in the same café as and being called a “coont” by Nick Saloman of the Bevis Frond? Priceless. The Magic Hour reunion set? Transcendant. Bardo Pond ripping skulls open with “Yellow Turban”? Sublimely sublime.
2. Driven 9000km in two weeks. In Australia. Post-college-graduation, myself and three friends flew to Australia to visit another friend who was spending a year abroad there. We rented a car. We rented a car with unlimited mileage on it. They said so right there at the counter as we shambled off the plane. Then they gave us the keys, the fools. Point of origin, Wollongong. To Brisbane in the north, then Townsville, then inward to Mt. Isa and on to Alice Springs, the Rock, down to Mt. Gambier and the shocking greenery of Victoria, to Melbourne and shotgunning back to Sydney and to Wollongong, returning on a Saturday night just as the pubs let out and the streets were filled with drunken zombies.
3. Designed the official website for one of my musical idols. Okay, “idol” might be a bit strong, but he was certainly a musician who’s work I enjoyed and writing I respected. This being, Stan Ridgway, who I’ve mentioned before here. A chance posting on USEnet back in the day got him and I talking, and I took the opportunity to set up a website that matched up the sensibilities of his music (particularly the album WORK THE DUMB ORACLE, which had come out right around that time.) This was back in the days when Yahoo had something like fourteen hundred websites devoted to musicians. Fourteen hundred. Hell, there’s probably fourteen hundred pages about dust mites now, but back then, having a website was just a little unique.
4. Worked for one of the scientists who helped invent The Bomb. Yep. That bomb. You know the one. Kept the world on pins and needles for nearly fifty years. My first real job out of college was working for the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, which was filled with interesting people. Too bad the work itself drove me nuts with boredom (so much so that I actually wrote most of the first drafts of my first three novels while on the job—ssh! Don’t tell anyone!) Herbert York didn’t actually work at Los Alamos, but at Oak Ridge. He was a cordial guy, very friendly, talkative. I kinda miss hearing some of the stories that he used to tell, and really for me, he put a human face on this chain of events that so dominated life in the US through the “end” of the Cold War.
5. Eaten * two * Tommy’s double chili-cheeseburgers from the original stand on Rampart in LA. Before eight in the morning. Yeah, I was young and foolish once, too.
The other five will be forthcoming, but this seems quite sufficient for now, doncha think?