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Obsessions and Devices

Thing I love tonight: the original version of Obsession by Michael Des Barres and Holly Knight, from the soundtrack of a really bad 1983 movie called A Night in Heaven. Most of you, if you know it at all, know the much more popular Animotion version, which actually cracked the Billboard Top Ten, but I always liked the original much better.

Thing I vaguely knew at the time: Holly Knight was also the lead singer of Spider, who recorded one of my all-time favorite pop songs, New Romance in 1980.

Things I didn’t know: Holly Knight was also in Device, a short-lived mid-1980s band whose biggest hit was “Hanging on a Heart Attack,” the vinyl version of which I just happened to digitize on the same day as “Obsession” above. In addition, Holly Knight wrote, or co-wrote, such diverse songs as “Never” by Heart, Better Be Good to Me by Tina Turner, and Love Is a Battlefield by Pat Benatar.

Reason you should care: None, really. I was just bored.

Where’s the Post Office?

When is a post office not a post office? When it’s the one in downtown Statesville, evidently.

I walked into a big, institutional structure with a huge sign that read “United States Courthouse and Post Office” above the front door. There were two armed guards inside blocking the entrance. They asked if they could help me. I told them I was looking for the post office. They told me, a little rudely, that it wasn’t there. With the slightest trace of irony, I apologized for having been misled by the big sign out front. They didn’t look amused. I left.

FYI, the actual post office in downtown Statesville is about two blocks away in a dumpy office supply store. I guess I was just too stupid to have known that from the start.

Mmmm. Squash.

In the spirit of historical revisionism, I’ve added some photos to this post. It may be the only chance you’ll ever have to see me in a suit.

On a completely unrealated note, who’d have thought that two little squash plants could produce so much offspring for so incredibly long. Squash jam, anyone? Squash casserole? Squash stew?

For those who have asked, the answer is no. Things haven’t really calmed down all that much, although I’m almost to the point of only driving to Greenboro every other day now, and I haven’t been to Reidsville since Saturday.

Where Was I?

Assuming that I did the following, where was I this weekend?

  • Photographed the former Safeway at Westland Shopping Center.
  • Ate at the only east coast location of San Francisco’s Extreme Pizza.
  • Saw the home of Sauer’s Vanilla Extract.
  • Shopped at Ukrop’s.
  • Drove down the ridiculously-named Hull Street Road.

Yes, it’s something of a rhetorical question, since it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out with a Google search or two. Thus you needn’t email me your answers.

Pictures to follow.

17 July 1982

Can it really be twenty-five years ago today that I did the college radio thing for the first time? God, I’m old.

I’m gonna stop now before I get depressed.

Goth, 1970

I was so goth back in first grade.

When Mrs. Mahaffey passed out the crayons, I always drew haunted houses, with neat little rooms containing mummies, bodies, and “kanables”. In retrospect, I’m rather proud of my bulk vampire storage area with its slide-out coffins. The little squggly things are lightning bolts, and the Collins family in question was, of course, the one from Dark Shadows.

My signature item, though, was the room full of blood which appeared in all of my drawings. Sometimes it was labelled “blood bank” and other times it simply bore the inscription “room full of blood”, as if every self-respecting (haunted) house had one.

When I was looking at this picture with my mom earlier tonight, she asked me if it meant I’d been a “weird kid”. I respoended that I’d felt more “normal” in first grade than I ever have since. Which is pretty much true.

Twin City Sentinel

Submitted for your approval: The Twin City Sentinel, the newest site in the little universe my betrothed and I have created for ourselves, and the first site on which we’re actually collaborating.

The Twin City Sentinel is devoted to Winston-Salem and its environs and to urban commentary in general. There will be restuarant reviews, road trip journals, articles on history, and essays on urbanism as it is expressed locally and globally. There’s also a message board.

Give it a look if you get a chance. You may decide to move here too. Or at least to visit.

Randomly Monday

I could’ve been in a mild funk yesterday, due, among other things, to the fact that my new part-time gig is not turning out to be evertthing I expected it to be. Which is sad, since my expectations were fairly low to begin with.

However, I lucked into a surprisingly entertaining film on TCM, about the misadventures of a philandering Welsh librarian, played by Peter Sellers. Who’d have thought such a thing could exist? It’s right up my alley, since I’m planning on being a philandering Welsh librarian in two years.

OK, I’m not really planning on philandering. It’s just one of those words that amuses me. And, actually, only my surname is Welsh; my background is really more English and Scotch-Irish. But it was still an entertaining movie, all the same.

Today’s things that also make me happy:

  • My dad is officially out of the nursing home rehab facility and is now at home eating barbecue.
  • Because of this fact, I have strawberry cobbler from Stamey’s for dessert tonight.
  • It’s only a few days until my boy is home.

Just to balance all this happiness, though, an extended middle finger (OK, a second one) goes out to the guy who passed me on the right on I-40 near Kernersville today while I was already doing 75MPH. Mind you, I was in the right lane at the time, so passing me on the right meant that he did so using the onramp and part of the shoulder. And the guy was about fifty years old, so he presumably should’ve known better.

But there’s no moron like an old moron, I guess. Especially when it’s an old, hypocritical moron like Coy Privette, who not only messes around with prostitutes despite his assorted “Christian values” stances, but who messes around with African-American prostitutes, even though much of his core constituency teeters about half a double-wide away from active Klan membership.

Dang. Could this journal entry have rambled just a little bit more? Why yes, because I could’ve also used it to push the new website one more time.