21 Years On

You can see my high school. Thanks andy in nyc!

Dearest Friends, I'm off. Yes, FiL is going back to the old house; on Thursday I'm jetting off to the town where I was born, Noo Yawk Siddy. Now some of you know that I don't really have much love for the Big Apple. Indeed, though I grew up in New York, I am not a New Yorker. I gladly left behind the in-yer-faceness, the noise, the rush, the dirt, the crush some twenty-one years ago, when I graduated from high school.

But you see, that's precisely why I'm going back now. For it is my my twenty-first high school reunion on Friday.

Yes, I'm off to see what more than a score of years has wrought amongst the Class of 1986. Of course any visitation to one's past comes with a spot of trepidation. Old memories of youthful awkwardness are awoken. Uncertainty lurks as to how old interactions will be reflected in present ones. But I must admit that I'm looking forward to the evening, and seeing how my cohort has progressed, evolved, changed. There will be a harcore of folks with whom I will delight in catching up, particularly Dearest Bishakh (though I last saw him some three, and not three times seven, years ago). I am also looking forward to seeing Mr Banton, my beloved English teacher, who is retiring this year and is in large part to blame for enabling me to generate the screed that I slap up here on this virtual wall. And I have awfully fond memories of my high school; it was a wonderful place with an internationally and culturally diverse set of students and faculty that made the place hum and buzz.

My ace-in-the-hole, or insurance policy, if you will, is that we will be spending most of the night on a booze cruise around Manahttan. So if the unthinkable happens and it turns into a dreadful bore Bishakh and I can hole up somewhere with a bottle and watch the skyline slip past while the DJ rocks da beatz.

Speaking of music, I thought it only fitting to offer up twenty-one tracks that instantly send me back through a time/space vortex to the mid-1980s. Dearest Friends, these choonz helped form the soundtrack of my teens, and I offer no apologies if the odd song seems cheezy or cringeworthy. Each makes me salivate like one of Pavlov's dogs over a Proustian madeleine...

China Crisis - Working With Fire And Steel (buy here)

Blancmange - That's Love, That It Is (buy here)

The Cure - In Between Days (buy here)

Adam Ant - Goody Two-Shoes (buy here)

Specials AKA - Free Nelson Mandela (buy here)

Madness - Wings of a Dove (buy here)

The Beat - Hands Off... She's Mine (buy here)

The Monroes - What Do All The People Know? (buy here)

B52s - Strobe Light (buy here)

OMD - Enola Gay (buy here)

After The Fire - Der Kommissar (buy here)

Ministry - I Wanted To Tell Her (buy here)

Time Zone - World Destruction (buy here)

The Clash - This Is Radio Clash (buy here)

Killing Joke - Love Like Blood (buy here)

Dead Kennedys - MTV, Get Off The Air (buy here)

Ramones - Bonzo Goes To Bitburg (buy here)

Love & Rockets - It Could Be Sunshine (buy here)

Gene Loves Jezebel - Desire (buy here)

The Nails - 88 Lines About 44 Women (buy here)

Dominatrix - The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight (buy here)

Edit 7/7/07: Sorry, but this post was draining my bandwidth like a leech. So I fear I've had to remove the song links...

But that's not all folks! For you see, in addition to the reunion I wil be heading over Brooklyn-way on Saturday. First I'll be partaking of some luuurvely cheese and ale with Dearest Bishakh, then we're going to to see and hear ma chere Colleen Crumbcake and Dearest Hot Chocolate Boy (a/k/a Bryce) spin da wheelz ov steel at the Last Exit Bar. I'm so excited! And I just can't hide it!!

While the reunion dictated the timing of my NYC foray, the main purpose of the visit is to see My Mother. There is much unfinished business, but I prefer not to dwell on that here - I'm hopeful it will be a pleasant visit. That said, I'm calibrating my compassion generator in anticipation of possible adverse conditions...

So that's it for me for a bit. I may post during the next fortnight, I might not. But I will check in with you all every now and again, and should be back to regular programming later in the month. And I'll have stories to tell!!