No more Ellis Brooks Chevrolet, it seems. The longtime dealer on Van Ness Avenue is apparently switching to used cars only, which probably means it will be gone and replaced by a big box retailer within a year or two. The really sad thing will be the loss of all those great bits of neon on the building, most of which will now refer to a brand the dealer no longer sells and will have to be removed.
It’s like watching an old friend die all over again.
S-Express
Theme from S-Express, 1988
There’s always a point near the end of the semester when you have that sort of breakthrough and realize that, even though you still have a ton of stuff to do, you will get it done and live through it all. That point came at about 3:00 this afternoon for me.
Unfortunately, it was also tempered by some sad news as I found out that my friend Taylor Green had passed away this weekend. I met Taylor via email back in 1997; he’d wandered into the website and noted that we were both Greensboro expatriates, and conversation ensued. I met him in person on the 1997 US Tour a few months later, and several more times over the years, often when I was visiting North Carolina over the holidays, etc. He was a truly original sort, and at the same time something of a archetype representing much of what is intriguing about southern culture. He was fun to be around, and he’s probably the only person I’ll meet in my lifetime who knew Tennessee Williams. I’ll miss Taylor.
One of my big, pressing projects right now is to create an EAD-compliant finding aid for the papers of the man who was chancellor at UNCG when I was an undergraduate there. I’m not sure if I’m more disturbed by the fact that my undergraduate years are now officially part of university history or by the fact that my undergraduate years are now officially part of university history and that I’m the one documenting them. Either way, it’s nothing but a really big XML file anyway, I guess.
One of my other big, pressing projects is my exciting annotated bibliography on the history of the America shopping center. No, I’m not really sure what it has to do with what I’m studying, either, but at least it was more fun than most of the stuff I’ve been doing the past month or so. I’ll post it here when it’s done. There are pretty pictures and a nice history essay as well.
This may be the last you hear from me for the next couple of weeks.
Sheryl Crow
All I Wanna Do, 1994
I always just liked this song. It makes me think of mildly hungover nights driving around San Francisco, which begs the question of why I like it so much. But still…
When you put a lot of graduate students in a room together, what you usually wind up with is a pissing contest where everyone tries to prove that he or she is the busiest person in the room. Screw that. I know I’m the busiest person in the room, so I have nothing to prove.
Our front porch has a new column. Actually, it’s a restoration of an old column that disappeared sometime during the 45-year history of our house. Yes, the house is old enough that I’m speaking in terms of “restoration”.
And my mom has a new Hyundai. Which means that I’ll soon be inheriting her six-year-old, very low-mileage Buick. Which means that our garage will now house a Buick and an Oldsmobile. Which means that Mark and I are well on the way to being the old codgers we desperately so long to be.
Strangely enough, that six-year-old Buick will be the same age my 1991 Toyota was when I bought it, not to mention the same age my 1974 Firebird was when I bought it. I’m not a fan of brand new cars. I’ve only ever bought one, and it was the worst piece of shit I’ve ever owned.
Spider
Better Be Good to Me, 1981
I didn’t even know that before this was a 1985 hit for Tina Turner, it was a 1981 hit (if that’s the word) for Spider, who also recorded “New Romance”, one of the best pop songs ever. I knew Holly Knight wrte the song, but I somehow missed that they’d also recorded it.
I Dream Alone
The Graphic, 1984
That’s The Graphic, a/k/a the Triad’s own Treva Spontaine and the Graphics, via Duncan. I didn’t even know there was a video for this song, although I have a nice recording of a WUAG station ID that features it, and them, and was assembled by him.
I leave you alone now, both to dream and to decipher those pronouns.