The Police, Live on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert

When I was twelve, I was not seeking out live rock n' roll, on television or otherwise.  I much preferred a good episode of Magnum P.I.  I don't even know whether we got Don Kirshner's Rock Concert (or its cousin, The Midnight Special) here in Honolulu.  My only exposure to live rock  at the time was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, which more often than not I would use as the opportunity to go brush my teeth.

Pity then that I never saw this performance from February 1980 by the fledgling lads from the U.K. then diminutively known as the Police.  It would be a few more years before they were known world wide as The Police, and decades before they would triumphantly return in the new millennium as THE POLICE (without question, I could make the same grammatical point about the bass player, then curiously calling himself Sting).

But check this 34 minute concert out, 10 months before they release their third album, Zenyatta Mondata.  Here in America, they only really have Roxanne to hang their hat on, and maybe Message in a Bottle.  It is remarkable for how undeniably determined these three young musicians are to show to the world how brilliant their music is.  This is Sting before he became too big for the Police, too big for the world.  This is Andy Summers before his own unique guitar style became a cage he would eventually want to escape.  And this is Stewart Copeland demonstrating that he was beyond great well before anyone else ever realized it.

It's all there.  The "Ee yo yo, ee yay yo" and "jah! jah!" refrains.  The reverb triggers on the snare.  The Mickey Mouse scoop-neck t-shirt and green nut-huggers.  The glassy leads from that iconic tobacco Telecaster.  Whether for someone like me, who never watched Kirshner or much paid attention to the Police until after the hype disappeared, or for longtime fans, these are not the familiar arrangements of their hits.  Heck, the improvisational vamp alone in the middle of Can't Stand Losing You is memorable in that it's not what they did in their reunion tours in the 21st century, much less when they were doing it fresh in the Eighties the number of times I saw them live.

This is something entirely different than what Police fans are used to.  This is them before they took over the world.

Vinyl Adventures Redux

The hit parade of vinyl continues, and consequently a Mood Room is developing.  I enjoyed the first couple of weeks of vinyl as played through my Eighties era Sony, when I suddenly got the hankering for analog knobs and buttons and the blue glow of Non Specific Warning Lights.  As luck would have it, a 1978 vintage Sansui G-6700 showed up on Craigslist and in two shakes of a lambs tail, said knobs, buttons, and NSWLs were mine.  It now serves as a 100 watt per channel traffic cop for all the audio signals my growing 70s and 80s record collection can produce.

Finding the Sansui was fortuitous for another reason.  As I was driving home from the purchase through an unfamiliar neighborhood, what should I spy but the often-replicated (often poorly) Eames lounge chair, waiting to be picked up by the bulky item sanitation crew, in a condition that can best be described as Not Quite Ready for the Dump.  It's sumptuous naugahyde was only a little sunbaked and cracked.  Shook that lambs tail again, a screech of the brakes, and it was in the back of my truck.  Only made the neighbors a little nervous.

Now, I know this particular chair was nowhere near an original example of the mid-century masterpiece by Charles and Ray Eames, manufactured by the Herman Miller Co., and extant in the dens of Mike Brady, Don Draper, Tom Corbett and his son Eddie, and Maj. Anthony Nelson and his Jeannie in a bottle.  It's armrests and base were all wrong, and the quality of the materials was barely residential grade.  In fact, I already have another one, also a copy, of much better accuracy, which I keep as a placeholder for when I have a spare five grand laying around for a real one.  So I could've taken a pass on this one.  But in an instant an alternative vision developed in my mind for this dumpster find.

Sometimes, with good fortune comes the blessing of freedom; the departure of limitation that zero overhead affords.  This vision fit in perfectly with my idea of the Mood Room, where I was already doing my most profound thinking, whilst listening to vintage New Wave.  The iconic lines and proportions of the Eames chair would serve as a framework for something edgy, and "out there" at least for the Reagan Era.  Something graffitied and hot pink, maybe, and that goes well with the post-apocalyptic simulacra of Billy Idol music in its very prime.  Something that the Warriors wouldn't be afraid to hide behind during their odyssey across New York's deadly five boroughs, while fleeing the Baseball Furies.   Something that Lord Humongous of the Wasteland could use as a campaign chair while laying siege to Mad Max and his friends.  You get where I'm going?  Something that rocked.

So I resurrected some long dormant graphic design skills.  Wielded them poorly.  Took my time.  Two weeks later, I have this, the listening throne to go with my crown jewel Sansui.

Reduce.  Reuse.  REBEL YELL!

 

On My Wall: Shy Luchmand's Harley Girl

In 1990, George H.W. Bush was drawing a line in the sand, Twin Peaks was preparing to jump the shark in its second season, and culture was still very much locked in the Eighties.  I had landed in London for my second year of law school, where me and me mates had managed to rent the top two floors of a Clapham row house belonging to an elderly Irish couple who always made it available to Notre Dame students abroad.  One look at the price of burritos in the Taco Bell on Piccadilly and I knew I needed to watch my pounds sterling, at least enough to keep my local willingly pouring pints of Guinness for me between classes.

Of course, this frugality didn't last long, and soon enough I was spending as frivolously as ever.  A poster of a Harley Girl was probably one of the first luxuries I treated myself to.  I found her at the Camden Lock flea market one sunday, so I must've still been trying to pinch my pence a bit.  Nevermind who Shy Luchmand is; apparently he's some photographer, somewhere south of Man Ray, and West of Nagel.  I liked her because, like the Eighties, she radiated style, rebellion, and edge.  Flannel and combat boots was still a good couple of years away.  Leather, chrome, and shades, and studiously tousled locks of blonde were still not ironic.

When I left London, I left her on my wall in Clapham along with an empty bottle of Beaujolais covered with a year's accumulation of candle wax.  If I could find an actual poster sized image of her, instead of this blown up thumbnail, I'd pay the equivalent worth today of what I paid then, on the cobblestones of Camden.

If this is your image, you must be Shy Luchmand.  Please let me continue to use it.  However, if you disapprove, feel free to let me know and I will take it down.

Summer Mixtape 2013: Pre-1984 Springsteen

Here I am halfway through this summer and I still haven't put together a Mixtape to play in my truck for those morning drives to the beach, or along Ala Wai Blvd. at night while the hookers congregate three at a time on the sidestreets to stay off HPD's radar.

Then I find this post at The Trad, images of New Jersey in the early 80s.  As a kid I spent several summers with cousins in Cranford, NJ, and we would always go down to Wildwood or Seaside Heights for a day or weekend.  Those Jersey kids I hung out with, Mickey Marino, Dave Levy, and Frankie Williams (the strongest kid I ever ever met) and the inimitable Schlick and Styszy -- I can't say we became friends for life, but it sure felt like we would be. Sneaking into the community pools, raiding my uncle's bar, collecting newspaper money to spend on the weekend, lifting weights in somebody's basement, trying not to get into a fight with the bigger kids at the community center.  Crowding onto a field on July 4 with just about every other kid in Union County, waiting for the fireworks show to start.  During the day we'd sleep in, then hop on our ten speeds and ride uptown to the Pink Submarine for sandwiches and soda and to spin Bruce Springsteen's "Prove It All Night" for about the billionth time on the jukebox.

This was before Born in the USA.  A fine album, sure, but Springsteen before then will always be those summers to me, before he was the world's, he was Jersey's.

What I Wore Twenty Five Years Ago: What Paul Weller Wore

Twenty five years ago, I was fully beneath the sway of the Style Council, a pseudo-collective of self proclaimed modernists led by one Paul Weller.  Like him, you can bet that I was frequently shod in the versatile black beefroll loafer.  I wore them with shorts.  I wore them with jeans.  I wore them with pegged chinos. Mostly without socks.  Utterly without irony I once wore them with my first purchased tuxedo, a shawl collar from Jos. Banks.  I refused to shell out for the useless patent tux slippers to go with them, and couldn't afford them anyway.

Weller started with the Jam during the first wave of punk in the late 70s.  Here he is at the close of the Jam era, dressed much like I was in a button down oxford, chinos with surcingle belt, white sox, and the aforementioned black loafers.  At least I'm about 95% certain that's what he's got on his feet, as anything below his Rickenbacker is obscured by the crowd.



I was too disconnected to be a Jam fan contemporaneously, but when Weller disbanded them for a new, more mature, jazzier and more soulful project, I was on board from the get go.  My trajectory as college punk morphing into urbane intellectual followed his.  Known as The Cappucino Kid, Weller and the rest of his councilors cultivated an air of cafe culturalism steeped in Godardist politics and style, and seasoned their records with britpop versions of soul, vocal jazz, piano jazz (Weller's collaborator at the time, Mick Talbot, was a huge piece of the puzzle), and eighties era rap.  Without a doubt the Style Council writ a blueprint followed later by groups such as Oasis and Vampire Weekend.  Now, Weller knew that I knew that he knew he was posing, but nevermind that now.  Here they are, dressed well and bringing it all together in style.



As you can see, towards the end of the video, what is Mr. Weller shuffling around in rather stylishly but a pair of beefroll loafers, probably in black to match the checks.

Anyway, in short order Weller closed up shop on the Style Council and moved on to his third act, the solo career.  He has turned out a truly monumental catalog of solo work of depth and quality, more focused than his Jam or Style Council years.  His voice too has matured and the anger of the 70s, and the flash living of the 80s, have caught up to him and thus imparting, what - more gravitas?  We should all mature as well.  Perhaps it's the black beefroll loafers he no doubt - here - pairs with his take on the 70s slim look.

Walking a Tightrope

Only James Brown can do James Brown. Well except maybe for an 80's era Eddie Murphy (anybody got a link to Eddie's "James Brown Celebrity Hot Tub"?). As a matter of fact, any one else trying to do James Brown had better be joking. Because no one could do it like the Godfather of Soul. Just ask Prince.

That being said, sometimes there is an exception that proves the rule. Ladies and Gentlemen, submitted for your approval: Janelle Monae.

I can't get this song or video out of my head and I don't want to.

Mid-Sixties Honolulu

My parents married two years before I was born and I know a bit about their story. After the wedding my parents travelled often. Here are some pictures I have of them in the Honolulu of 1965 or '66.

I wonder what it was like for them before I was born. I imagine in their lines of work, without me to chase around, and at that time in Manila, life was pretty cushy. It shows in their faces, if you know them. Here they are at the Ala Moana Shopping Center, once known as the largest shopping mall in the world.


I love the way Mom is standing in the picture above, still at Ala Moana. Like one of those sixties models. Below, I don't see a bit of the game face that Dad almost always wore around me when I was a kid, nor do I see the stiff "parade rest" that I think was always for my benefit. I also love his trim trousers, Florsheim loafers (always Florsheim. The day he stopped wearing Florsheim, I knew he was mellowing), and the French aviator sunglasses. By the way, the parking lot below later became the location for one of Mom's medical clinics in the Eighties.


I also can't ignore Dad's shirts. Not exactly cheesy, but certainly not traditional either. I imagine those are the same shirts the Mercury 7 were wearing whenever they hit the Cape back then.

Next, they are with another couple in front of the apartment they bought. Pilots used it as a crash pad well into the Eighties, and I remember going there occasionally and finding three or four of them at a time. A new flight crew would move in every few days. After my father left the airline, he kept his interest in the place until the end, although he never used it other than to see old friends. We always referred to it as "The Apartment". We still see the other couple regularly.

The other "star" in the pictures is definitely old Honolulu. The sky seems emptier, more exotic. Today, there would easily be three times as many buildings in the background if you were to stand in the same spot and snap the same image. And this Savings & Loan failed long ago.

If I can steal some from Mom's albums, I'd love to show you some pics of them in Europe. Dad looks like a secret agent and Mom looks like Jeannie Shrimpton.

I Hate to Admit This

Twenty five years ago, I was an arrogant high schooler who thought he knew everything about everything. I knew that nobody over 30 could ever be reasoned with, that nothing good ever came out of my school, and that I would never come back to Honolulu to live. And I knew that quality music was never broadcast over the commercial airwaves. Back then, when I drove a 20 year old Ford Mustang with a factory radio, broadcast was all I could get, because I was loathe to cut into the original dash to install an aftermarket cassette player. I was forced to listen to the local "album-oriented rock" station. I scoffed at most music that I heard. Even this song. Especially this song.

I remember this song playing over and over my senior year and I thought I hated it. But it was the right song for that time in life. And I found it hard to ignore.

Don Henley crafted a perfect song when he wrote and recorded The Boys of Summer, and I was too immature to acknowledge it for over a decade, maybe more. It's a song full of ghosts and loss. The snare is unwilling to let go and the music that drapes around the lyrics is translucent, like lace on a closed coffin. It is adolescent and worldly at the same time.

Now I'm 42, loving life in Honolulu, and I am proud that my kindergartener son has started at my alma mater.Top: My son strolling the same walkways I walked on his first day of kindergarten. He's preppy in the RL Polo, pegged cargoes, blue argyles, and skechers loafers. And Speed Racer backpack.
Bottom: His homeroom, with Ms. G, who was there when I was.

He is in for thirteen years there, and I am just over the moon that he got accepted and wanted to go there. Hopefully, by the time he graduates he's more mature than I was as a senior so he doesn't miss some universal truths that I missed.

Go here for the original video, which can't be embedded out of YouTube.

The Unified Theory of Pop Music

There’s been a general lack of one of those Unified Theory posts of late. Fancy cars, movie reviews, and the occasional witty bon mot do not a good read make. I suppose this can be attributed to nothing in particular. Or it can be blamed on one specific thing.

On December 18, 2006, I had been married for four years and my son was not quite three years old. We had just taken on a new mortgage and my law firm was just getting its legs. Possibilities stretched out before me, my bachelorhood a distant and uninteresting past. Then the world came crashing down. Tower Records closed its doors worldwide, including the three locations in my town.
This doesn’t have to be an Eighties Nostalgia blog in order to highlight the importance of Tower Records. Tower was born in the Seventies. It grew through the Eighties and Nineties, during which time it saw the transition from record albums to CDs, Beta and VHS tapes to DVDs. When I first started going to the Tower on Keeaumoku Street (pictured above), disco was still a living, breathing, pulsating beast. Aside from Cheap Trick, Devo, and Cars records, I was only ever interested in the hundred or so albums in the “import” bin. Adult contemporary was a vast expanse that I never explored. At the dawn of the MTV era, “imports” disappeared as a category and the more obscure artists that interested me (which included the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, the Police) found their way into the general population. There was a time that the only place one could find a copy of the Clash’s Sandinista was at a genuine communist bookstore near the University. When it appeared in Tower’s stacks, I knew a new era of pop music had arrived. In the new millennium, there was little evidence that we were seeing Tower’s final years.

No matter where I lived, D.C., London, even northern Indiana, the location of the nearest Tower Records was one of the first navigation points I committed to memory. It was that important.

In 2006, Tower was unceremoniously shelved, its stock unloaded at ever-plummetting discounts. There were many items I acquired cheaply during these final weeks of liquidation before that December 18. Things I wouldn’t otherwise have bought at retail prices. AC/DC. Pink Floyd. Jack Johnson. But there were things I failed to secure only because I was waiting for prices to drop further before the axe fell, but they never fell far enough. I had my eye on them, though. The Heavy Metal movie soundtrack. The updated Criterion Collection boxset of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (I had already owned the previous edition and wouldn’t justify the repeat expense without deep discounting).


This last ditch flurry of spending at Tower was mostly afterthought, and really, for me an unfitting farewell to an establishment that I used to wander through, often for as long as time would allow. Hours? Maybe. The better part of one for sure. Stack after stack after stack? Definitely. I used to love the unscheduled stop into Tower, when I had nowhere else to be. Maybe I had an inkling that a new CD had been released and I wanted to find it and snap it up quickly, so I could immerse myself in the new music, headphones on and liner notes open. Maybe I had absolutely nothing in mind and I would just let my thumb and forefinger do the searching. That’s how I discovered the Violent Femmes back in 1984, and Pearl Jam in 1991.

The protagonist in one of the books in my canon, High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby – a man as adept at observing the immature male of the species as Britain has ever produced – finds comfort in organizing his record collection not alphabetically but autobiographically ("How did I get from Fleetwood Mac's Rumours to Howlin' Wolf in just seven moves?"). Similarly, I tell you, for example, that I bought Husker Du's Warehouse: Songs and Stories in the Tower in D.C.'s Foggy Bottom neighborhood amidst a lengthy bout of angst.

I find that my acquisition of music is slowing down and more focused. I think in general, once far away from bachelorhood, musical tastes have cemented, and that is probably the biggest cause of this narrowing. But also, when the journey of discovery is no longer tactile, across the stacks at a record store, and more often on a website like Amazon or at a brick and mortar like Best Buy (which is unabashedly set up for the Transaction, and staffed with generalists), something is lost.

The further away I get from December 18, 2006, part of the enjoyment of music is lost. The act of discovery part. Which is a damn shame because then the sharing of music part eventually also diminishes. I used to play music for my wife all the time and once, she had a friend steal my truck so she could have a new stereo installed as a Christmas gift because (a) she knew how important music was to me and (b) my old stereo was really only a radio.

I can’t share music that I’ve already shared, otherwise it becomes a crusade. That would be like a Jehovah’s Witness coming back to knock on the same door twice.

Reflecting on this I realize that, as much as I love my wife and as much as she completely dwells in my heart, I don’t believe I’ve ever made her a mix tape. High Fidelity very nearly fetishizes the mix tape. The mix tape is a proclamation. It is a love letter. It is a seduction. It is an entendre. I’ve been known to make mix tapes in my time, and they’ve always had meaning (it’s like that conversation between Jackson and Travolta in Pulp Fiction: “I’ve given lots of foot massages and every one of them meant something”).

Now, without Tower Records, I’m not sure if I can really make that mix tape for my wife with the meaning it should have.

Two Wheels Good, Redux

My bicycle is 20 years old this year. In 1989, mountain biking was a fledgling sport done mostly by hippies in Northern California, not the billion dollar industry it is today. One of the cool bikes back then was the all aluminum Cannondale - a fat tubed, light-weight hard charger. Still an elite bike today, in the Eighties they intimidated. They looked purpose built, unlike the other ones manufactured by Specialized, Trek, or Giant. Those were still great bikes, but with the thin chrome-moly tubing, they still looked like paperboy ten speeds. My friend with the Honda Passport had one, and I wanted one too. Problem was they were pricey.Then one day, I was flipping through the latest spring L.L. Bean catalog and noticed they had branded bikes, and their top of the line looked an awful lot like a Cannondale. Turns out it was, and, with slightly downgraded components, it was priced right for this unemployed college senior. Even better, it wasn't badged as a Cannondale but with the familiar L.L. logo. Back then for me, going brand-less - the road less travelled - was my kind of trip. I still haven't seen another like it. It was the largest credit card purchase I made to date and arrived a week later in screaming red, with yellow accents. I assembled it myself in the front room of our rowhouse on Dent Place. First thing that went on it was a bat-signal sticker (before Batman was cool I stress) for its huge down-tube.

I took it everywhere, and unlike my skateboarding, I was pretty fearless with it, both on trails and in D.C. traffic. I took it to law school and enjoyed the quietude of riding through the deep woods on newly fallen Midwestern snow in truly freezing cold. It always lived indoors in those years, enjoying a favored place against a wall either in a dorm room or an apartment. When it got too caked in mud I just threw it into a bathtub and showered it down.

I brought it home to Honolulu and, sadly, I let it sit for many months until the months became years. Once, following a long distance canoe race, I pedaled it halfway around the island alongside a friend. But for the most part it stayed hidden in storage, at my parents' house, receptacle of all things old and mine. It still has the tires I put on it when I was in South Bend.Recently, my five year old was given a great BMX bicycle, also red, by his grandparents. It's great. It's not one of those kiddie-fied pseudo-bikes from Wal-Mart made by Red Chinese for Fisher-Price with pictures of Dora the Explora all over it and hard rubber tires. Toys. It's an honest to goodness machine, scaled down to my son's size, made by Redline in Washington State. It's got real brakes, tube tires, and anodized rims. We ride together now. Mostly at a nearby elementary school, or a park that has a mild hill he likes to pedal up then charge back down. Or he follows me around the big block that his preschool is on. We go 'round and 'round and 'round.So here's to my 20 year old and my 5 year old. What a time I've had and will continue to have. I think I'll go out and get some new tires for the older one, and a bat-signal sticker for the younger one.

Literal Video for A-Ha song "Take On Me"

Take on Me: Literal Video Version - watch more funny videos

Usually, I try to come up with some kind of hook to the title of these posts. Don't think I didn't this time. In fact, in keeping with the spirit of the re-make for the A-Ha throwaway "Take On Me", which I found on my Facebook "Wall", I think I've hit the nail on the head. Watch the video. You decide. It's at least hilarious.

And what of Facebook? It's an excellent time-waster. It's kind of hokey, what with all the "poking" and "sending gifts" that can go on. Not to mention the fallout one can experience from "ignoring" the wrong "friend requests". It's also potentially malevolent, as it has recently come to light that from a CIA/NSA-spying-on-us point of view, it can be an actual data-mining trove. But in simple terms, it is an extraordinary means to get back in esoteric touch with old friends and acquaintances. I've reconnected with friends from high school, college (both of them) and law school, and I continue to do so on a weekly basis.

And at the risk of incurring the wrath of my beautiful wife (who now knows how to operate a shotgun, I hasten to add), my senior year girlfriend and prom date posted some incredibly sweet pictures from that time. Who wouldn't want to go there after 20 years of real life if not just to be reminded of the possibilities you were looking at from that vantage point, when A-Ha looked like the new U2. And if you can conclude, like I have, that you're still headed in the right direction, the excercise, and the time-wasting, is in fact not so wasteful.

BAND MONTAGE!

What I Wore Twenty Five Years Ago

A long time ago, in my I Didn’t Know As Much As I Thought I Did days I was a punk rock skateboard kid of the second generation (the first generation being the wiggy hippies from the seventies, and the third being today’s mind-blowing kids with no fear). Most days, I could be found listening to the Adolescents on my Sony Walkman kitted out in skatepunk attire. That would be: plaid shorts and white Hanes t-shirts, which I hand-decorated in black indelible ink with the genre’s logos and bands. Black and white and plaid all over was my leitmotif. Without fail, I was shod in Converse Chuck Taylor hi-tops in a range of colors, from classic black or white to maroon or turquoise (hey it was the Eighties). Those were great shoes, and still are. In fact, I currently have a pair in conservative navy blue. Still goes well with everything casual that I wear, from jeans, cargo shorts, or khakis. I’m eyeing classic whites for my next.

The skateboard and hi-tops marriage is a venerable one, because of the support provided to the ankle. There were my Chucks, for sure, but others wore other basketball shoes including the original Air Jordans, and others still wore the first industry-made skateboarding shoe, Vans. I myself thought Vans were a bit “on the nose” and obvious, but I’ve got a pair now, for irony’s sake.

That’s Natas Kaupas from Venice, CA, sporting a pair of unidentifiable basketball shoes. His performance on a skateboard pretty much convinced me to give it up and helped me admit to myself that I was only ever really faking it all those years.

Hip To Be Square

"I have to go return some video tapes."
- Patrick Bateman
American Psycho
1991

Back in the summer of 1991, many of you will remember the brouhaha kicked up by Bret Easton Ellis' novel American Psycho. It's in my canon. In a sentence, the novel was about a Wall Street yuppie obsessed with serial killers, pornographic sex, and Gianni Versace. In a sentence, the brouhaha was about how most people in America didn't get it. They were repulsed by its misogynistic themes and extreme violence, and the novel's detractors vilified Ellis himself as misogynistic and extremely violent.

But here's the thing: I got it. I can't honestly say I figured out, almost 10 years before everyone else, that the novel was satirizing to the extreme the conspicuous consumption and me-first mentality of the yuppie species. But I did believe, back then, that most of its critics - ranging from the liberal lefty feminazis to the right wing moralists - would have found something to agree on with Ellis if they'd only read the book.

Fast forward ten years and an art house satirist (Mary Harron) and a Sarah Lawrence lesbian (Guinevere Turner) joined forces to commit Ellis's once-despised book to film. And thanks to them, everyone got it.

Here's my favorite scene from the movie. Patrick Bateman, the American Psycho, shows off his business card to his so-called friends, only to become bottom man in a game of oneupsmanship. Hilarious.



Following that scene, if I remember correctly, Bateman eviscerates a homeless dude.

And here's the climactic scene that clearly reveals the story's satirical DNA. Perhaps not verbatim, but it mimics perfectly Ellis's juxtaposition of dorkiness, style, and brutality. I hesitate to call it brilliant, but its pretty neat to behold.



And here's the introductory sequence, a meaningless and shallow internal monologue.



When Harron talked about her film in the commentary of the DVD I watched last night, she referred to the triumph of "surface" over "depth". I loved that. But here's my conclusion: there's no need for you to read the book or see the movie after reading this. What I've written here is all you need to know about American Psycho.

Get Blown Away

I'm trying not to make this an Eighties Nostalgia Blog, but I think I'm failing. Here's a picture that I mostly ignored back then when it hung on every other frat boy's wall, along with the Soloflex guy (couldn't they notice how homoironic that was, even then), the St. Pauli Girl, and the Nagel prints (ditto). This ad for Maxell tapes by Steve Steigman, of the Bauhaus' Peter Murphy seated in a Le Corbusier chair, is near-iconic. I tried to be cool but secretly I wanted one for my very own dorm room. Now I have one. In my garage.

King Kamehameha Club

We've spent a princely sum on my son's swimming lessons these past three years, and he's only now feeling comfortable in the water. Money well spent, though. Proof? Here's a cool video of my son doing the armed side-stroke in the pool of the fictional King Kamehameha Club, the same club that retired Navy Seal turned P.I. Thomas Magnum belonged to.


When I was in high school, Magnum fever was everywhere in Honolulu. Their studio was a few blocks from my home in Diamond Head, Tom Selleck lived even closer, and around town we would frequently see the film trucks, T.C.'s helicopter, and occasionally, the red Ferrari 308, sometimes laden with camera scaffolding. Larry Manetti ("Rick") rented videos at the same store I did and Larry Hillerman ("Higgins") lived in a friend's condo. Good times.

We didn't join the "King Kam", as Magnum called it, because he was a member, though. We joined so my son would have a readily accessible pool for his use, with a large sunken bar not five steps away from which dear old dad could keep an eagle eye. They serve everything from Guinness and Sam Adams to above-average trop cocktails (word to the wise: avoid the martini, it ain't that kind of place) and local-style finger food (sashimi, garlic steaks). You can go from cannonballs with your kid to mai tais with the mates as the sun sets and the waves lap at the sea wall nearby.

Life is good when you're a OnceABachelor who belongs to a private club on the beach and a son who can swim laden with weapons.

Free Yourself

Another one from my younger days. The late, the unknown, the Untouchables, from Southern California, knocked around with guys like Fishbone and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Much style. Much hyperactivity. Catchy tune. Hard to find, either on vinyl or in binary code (I was going to say "digitally", but that didn't sound right).

Donald Fagen's New Frontier

YouTube is a wonderful thing. It is now my go-to site when I need to hear a song I don't have a copy of in digital form and need to find fast. Since I don't have a "record player" I can't play my collection of vinyl. Moreover, there are some music videos that I'd just like to see again after decades have passed and the gossamer days of early MTV have given way to the huge corporate hydrant firehosing the Industry of Cool down our throats. The New Frontier video represents the former and not the latter, as I actually own this song on vinyl, tape, 2 CDs (one for my home and another for my car) and on the iPod. Instead, this video is one of the first to go beyond the cliches of the day, which included girls in red heels, post-apocalyptic Road Warrioriana, and lip-synching in construction sites. Check out the Elvis Costello glasses, the little watusi dance, Atomic Cafe animation, the Brubeck album cover. It has it all.

And the song itself? One of my favorites off my Number One Desert Island Disc. Donald Fagen's The Nightfly came to me as a freshman in college and was a revelation, that pop music could be evocative without being sentimental, could be beautiful without being - well, lame. I listened to it back to back to back often, particularly in the hot summer of 1988 when I slept on a mattress in the kitchen of a basement efficiency studio on S Street, NW in DC. It was my only happiness that didn't involve punk rock music, and was therefore even more special.