Wonderland or Not

Since defaul­ting on last weeks Old School Fri­day I refuse to miss it this week. It’s Fri­day somewhere. The theme for this epi­sode is tenth grade.

When the facts of 10th grade are revi­ved they are color­less, a year of point­less exis­tence is now a felled branch of the gro­wing up tree. Seeing Fugazi in a D.C. park was not enough to save that year. Junior year memo­ries are vivid, they come with bet­ter music as well. In 11th grade SOAD relea­sed Toxi­city, and Fla­ming Lips relea­sed Yoshimi Batt­les the Pink Robots. I was plan­ning my escape to college that year, and the year long pre­pa­ra­tion for the clan­des­tine depar­ture of my vir­gi­nity began . Sopho­more year was a scaly dead fish in comparison.

The music memo­ries of 10th grade are of the unre­len­ting radio play of Staind’s “It’s Been A While”, and Marc Anthony’s “I Need To Know”, a big hit at those Fri­day night SG dan­ces, the ones meant to keep us off drugs and into a ste­rile form of dirty dan­cing. I was coming off my 9th grade intro­duc­tion to Car­los San­tana, via Smooth, and still reco­ve­ring from an emba­rras­singly trau­ma­tic inci­dent — blog­ged about here in a 2005 post tit­led One Hand in My Poc­ket and the Other on my Cre­dit Card — where my mother had taken me back to a store to return Ala­nis Morrisette’s Jag­ged Little Pill after I put in the pla­yer on the way home and she heard the line “do you think of me when you fuck her”.

The year wasn’t a total bust. I fell in like with the sur­fer dude’s Brush­fire Fairy­ta­les, Flake more well known, Sexi Plexi my favo­rite. Bright Eyes relea­sed Fevers and Mirrors, a CD no one but me lis­te­ned to, but they lured me in with the Poe refe­rence in “Jetsa­bel Remo­ves the Unde­si­ra­bles”.

With so many “good but not great” songs shou­ting “choose me”, choose me”, I’m going with Macy Gray’s I Try. I sang the song for two years, it’s only fair.

The Stro­kes Hard To Explain makes the cut because in 10th grade, while my libe­ral yet still RC parents are trying to con­vince me I should go to Geor­ge­town, Villa­nova, or BC, I saw the Stro­kes and thought “hell no, if they are from NY I’m going to there”.

Marshall Bruce Mathers III made the 10th grade cut because in 10th grade you felt pretty cool if you knew his real name and thought no one else did.

OSF spon­so­red by Miss Marv and Mrs Gra­pe­vine

Pos­si­ble Players:

Elec­tro­nic Village | Kevin — A Slant Truth | Mar­cus LANGFORD | irie­gal | John | Krea­tive Talk | Regina | AJ | Sha­ron | SJP | Bklyn­Queen 86 | Hey Shae | Mal­colm |
peace