Friday 17 August 2012

LINK: Barbra Streisand vs. Captain Beefheart

title or description

Forty years ago, with decidedly unhip short hair (the result of being caught between an overly enthusiastic barber and an edict from my summer employer, McDonalds; a friend wrote in my yearbook that he thought I was joining the Marines), decidedly unhip eyeglasses (all the cool kids wore wire rims; mine looked like tire rims) and clothes that were occasionally hip (I had a navy blue and purple long-sleeved T-shirt with a multicolored cloth butterfly in the middle of the chest, which I wore for a photo in the local newspaper of a handful of students who had high scores on a standardized test; not to mention a Stetson fedora, tie-dyed purple T-shirts on which I had stenciled things like “Eskimo Blue Day” on the front, and a white winter cloth coat with faux shearling collars the size of aircraft rudders), I began my college years.

My roommate had not arrived when I checked in, but when I opened the room for the first time, there was a piece of paper—a telephone service document, I think it was—on the first desk, and his name was on the paper:

Kwok Yin Chan.

The name may have had a hyphen; I can’t remember. But I recall thinking this could be cool; there were no kids named “Kwok” in my hometown. So I waited for him to show up. Later that first day? No. Second day? No. Third day? No. Never.

No comments:

Post a Comment

...BECAUSE SOME OF US THINK THAT THIS STUFF IS IMPORTANT
What happens when you mix what is - arguably - the world's most interesting record company, with an anarchist manic-depressive rock music historian polymath, and a method of dissemination which means that a daily rock-music magazine can be almost instantaneous?

Most of this blog is related in some way to the music, books and films produced by Gonzo Multimedia, but the editor has a grasshopper mind and so also writes about all sorts of cultural issues which interest him, and which he hopes will interest you as well.