We have an itunes gift card and the other night the wife and kids were on the computer trying to decide what songs to buy. I threw out a couple of suggestions that were immediately and unanimously ignored. For some reason they had no interest whatsoever in rock classics such as Metallica (the black album) or Alice in Chains (Live in NY – a must-have in my humble opinion).The more I thought about it the more I began to revert back to my high school butt-rocker days. This didn’t give me the urge to make a late night run for the border (please tell me you know what that means) or shave the sides of my head just above the ears (I only did that once) but I did, nonetheless, decide to head to the basement to pull out some old tapes. Yes, I said it…TAPES. I loaded a small selection into a bag and placed them in my car to listen to on the way to work.
Before we proceed there is something I must explain. I never get embarrassed. I have no shame and have often been known to humiliate myself (or my kids) in order to get a laugh. My brother, let’s call him Larry the Liberal, once told me about how he covers his mouth with his hand when he sings in the car so no one will catch him singing. I, on the other hand, firmly believe that if you are feeling Carrie Underwood when she is digging her key into the side of that pretty little souped up four wheel drive then you should let the world know. I think the only time I have ever turned down my voice while singing in the car was when I was particularly into Notorious B-I-G as I pulled up to a stoplight alongside two African American guys. Before you judge me, try to imagine yourself as an African American male rocking out to Kenny Rogers when you pull up next to a jacked up Dodge with a picture of Calvin relieving himself on the Ford logo with two mullet-heads inside. Do we understand each other? Good.
Where was I? Oh yeah, I don’t get embarrassed. So there I was in my car on Monday morning holding up a tape case trying to figure out how to get to the song I wanted to listen to and which side of the tape was playing, then overrunning the songs as I hit fast forward and rewind four hundred times until I finally decided to give up starting the song from the beginning. I don’t know if it was how inept I felt trying to skip through the songs, the fact that I was actually holding a cassette tape case in my hand in the year 2010, or the realization that any song by Poison should have been put away forever with the neon clothes, hairspray and makeup but suddenly I was overcome with a cloud of humiliation. I stuffed all of my tapes back into the bag and quickly hid them under the seat of my car, never to see the light of day again. As fast as I could I tuned my stereo to the best (and only) hip hop radio station in town. I’d like to say I plugged my ipod into its port in the dash but hey, as you can see, I’m not all that into cutting-edge technology.
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