Random Shuffle - The Grateful Dead, Depeche Mode and Andrew Bird - Page 3

At the Christmas party everyone was sizing up the gifts and they all quickly noticed that my gift looked very much like a cassette. I was quick to add it was my brother who picked it out and not me to extend it some cool cred. This made it the gift to get. We drew numbers and played a game that was something like "Dirty Santa" except that no one was allowed to open anything until the very end. As each number came up a person could choose a new gift or steal it from someone else. My cassette was passed around and around and the excitement grew as to what it could be.

For some reason I pretended like I didn't know which cassette we had purchased and kept telling everyone that it was my brother who picked it out. I guess I was enjoying the fact that my gift was so popular and didn't want to burst that bubble with admitting the song sucked. Eventually though, of course the tape was opened and everyone saw that it sucked. There was, quite literally, a groan. I then quickly emphasized that I didn't know what it was and that it was my brother who picked it out. For sure I wouldn't be so lame to get a crappy single.

Man, there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not glad to be out of high school.

"Fake Palindromes" by Andrew Bird
From The Mysterious Production of Eggs

For a number of years my wife and I lived in Bloomington, Indiana. It would be just another dusty, back-woods country town built up by the limestone production in the area were it not for Indiana University. With the university comes a great chunk of culture. Downtown there is the usual university strip with its greasy spoon joints, pseudo-hippy head shops and more than a few record stores. It also contains some really wonderfully unique things as well including some fantastic ethnic restaurants (including one owned by the Dalai Lama's brother) a great old book store with volumes literally falling of the shelves and a really magnificent public library.

It is the library to which me and my wife darkened the most. I simply love a library. A building full of books is something out of a beautiful dream. This particular library not only had a great selection of books, but a marvelous media library as well. Rumor had it that they had purchased an old movie store when it went out of business and thus its movie library was full of obscure and marvelous titles. They might have bought a record store too for all the CDs that lined their shelves.

Article Author: Mat Brewster

Mat Brewster is a periodic ex-pat wondering if he'll ever find a home. You can find him musing on pop culture, and obsessing over concert bootlegs at The Midnight Cafe.

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