me’s blog

Picture it.  London.  August 1997.  A beautiful young peasant boy with clear, olive skin…

While perhaps not as domestically earth-shaking an event as, say, when JFK was shot, I have a feeling that most U.S. Americans - shoutout to Miss Teen South Carolina! - remember exactly where we were when we found out that Princess Diana died.

Where was I, you ask?  I was in London, coincidentally enough.  I had just been released not 24 hours earlier from a three-week stay in the cardiac ward of the University College of London Hospital.  This was a year before I started doing drugs, so this particular verge-of-life-and-death drama of mine was in no way related to that.  I’ll post the details of this story over the weekend.  Here’s a link to download a song called "Goodbye" which I wrote on the last day of my hospital stay.

My father and I stayed at the Bonham Carter House for the night following my release from the hospital, and it was 5:00am when we got into a cab to take us to Heathrow Airport.  On the cab’s front passenger seat was the early edition of the daily newspaper, whose cover indicated that Princess Diana (and that ever parenthetical Dodi dude) had been injured in a paparazzi-fueled car accident in France.  It seemed as though our cab driver, my dad and I were the only people awake in London at this hour, and therefore the only people who knew of this news.  Needless to say, the long ride to Heathrow through the sleepy London ouskirts was more than a smidge surreal.

The cab driver had the news playing on the radio.  Before we made it to Heathrow, it was announced that Princess Diana had died.  And this will no doubt sound strange, but in that moment and for a while thereafter I felt like my very recent battle with - and subsequent triumph over - a mysterious near-fatal illness in a foreign country was provided with some sort of weirdly symbolic closure by Princess Diana’s death.  I mean, the timing of it all was just too perfect.

Often I’ve wondered, if I had died in that hospital, whether Elton John would have rewritten his song about me.  Perhaps he’ll rewrite it (again) when I do die someday.  For as Sandra Bernhard once said: "Your candle burned out long before the royalties ever did."

As my flight departed the awakening city through that surreal August dawn, a nation began to mourn as it had never mourned before.  I guess I just have that effect on people.

Do you remember where you were when you learned that I left England Princess Diana died?  Let me know in the comments section below.  And stay tuned this weekend for the rest of the story…

The e-mail message below - with its rather direct come-hither opening and its awkwardly incomplete bitchslap-n-run conclusion - greeted me this morning in my AOL inbox.  If either of my two faithful readers knows this Jennifer Gervasio woman and/or has the moxie to send her an email on my behalf, please tell her that regardless of how many case [sic] she’s prepared by (?), in my estimation she’s even less than zero.  Emailing strangers to tell them they’re nothing?  Child, please.  At least I know the difference between "your" and "you’re". 

I’d email her myself, but I’m afraid my computer might catch an STD.

—–Original Message—–
To: medc2la@aol.com
Subject: He’s also observed

Hallo. How is it going? I am young female Jennifer Gervasio.  Email me at ucmrp@mailmessagecenter.info only if you would like to see some of my pictures.   It is clear that  prepared by two case. Your zero

Time for another long-awaited game of Let’s Analyze Matt’s Dream!  In this dream (from which I just woke up at the ungodly hour of 6am - ugh!), apparently I had some temp assignment in the city, and I was using a car to travel to and from work.  I had to park the car in a garage for the day, and there was some asshole of a guy who ran the parking garage.  White, middle-aged guy, kinda sizable but not huge, with a brown, almost Jheri-curlish semi-mullet and a moustache.  He didn’t remind me of anyone specific from my life, though he did perhaps bear a fleeting physical resemblance to a white(r), thicker, much more imposing Lionel Richie with way less class.  Which basically means he bore no resemblance whatsoever to Lionel Richie, so let’s leave him out of the interpretations, shall we?  I have no issues with him.  The guy in my dream was more like a Sal.  Or a Louie. 

This particular morning I had to leave my car behind another car under the garage entrance while I took the key up to the asshole in charge.  The next thing I remember is coming back to get my car at the end of the day and seeing it still sitting behind the other car exactly where I’d left it that morning.  I noticed that the other car, however, seemed to have been destroyed from above by something or other, either by some giant piece of the garage’s ceiling, or by some kind of garage door apparatus.  Kind of like in that presently ubiquitous "Life Comes At You Fast" commercial (which I loved the first thirty-seven times I saw it), except that whatever had fallen on the car in my dream hadn’t just repeatedly dented one spot on the roof - it had demolished the entire length of the car, seemingly in one fell swoop.  Naturally I was concerned, both because the car in front of mine had been completely smashed in, and because my car was still sitting there where I’d left it hours ago, mere inches behind the other car’s now ruinous remains.  So I hastily went to retrieve my keys from Sal or Louie. 

While en route to his little booth, I heard a thunderous noise behind me.  I turned around to see that something else had fallen from the ceiling and completely totalled MY car.  I looked on in horror, and ran up to the booth, furious.  I started yelling at Sal or Louie, screaming that he could’ve prevented this and that he knew this was going to happen.  He laughed at me, basically making fun of me for even bothering to yell at him.  Then he kind of dared me to fight him.  I was more than a little scared, both because I was carless in a parking garage with a falling ceiling, and also because I’m a lover not a fighter.  Good old pacifist me would completely get my ass kicked by this dickhead who basically could not wait to beat the crap out of me.  He approached me and was pulling back his arm to take the first punch… when I woke up.

Which of my two faithful readers wants to take a stab at this one?  As always, I look forward to reading any and all feedback - no matter how potentially insane - in the comments section below.  Just know that I’ve already considered and discarded any interpretations related to "Dancing On The (Falling) Ceiling".  And I’m also fully aware that now, with this morning’s subconscious Henny Penny antics, my poultry-themed nickname trifecta is finally complete.  Um, yay?

I momentarily contemplated posting the following stand-alone sentence as a blog entry today:

"The last time I smoked a cigarette was exactly four years ago."

But as those of you who have been reading my entries have undoubtedly noticed, I’m not one to leave the blanks unfilled-in.  And besides, what if one of my faithful readers wants to know how I did it, perhaps because he/she is struggling with the desire to quit as well?  Then read on, faithful readers.  This is how it happened.

I spent most of 2003 on a long-term temp assignment at the American Association of Medical Colleges at 23rd & M, assisting a handful of other overqualified temps in the verification of transcript information on medical school applications.  My boss was named Shanequa, and her boss was named Cleashay.  I shit you not.  I could never come up with a name quite so - for lack of a better word - cliché.  Not that I haven’t tried.  I think the word "debris" would make a pretty name.  Of course it’d have to be spelled like DeBr’is or something, but still, I think it’s lovely.

Anyway, it was an oppressively hot, humid, downright unpleasant morning in late July 2003.  I had a 10-15 minute walk from the Metro to the office, during which I would suck the life out of a Parliament 100 every morning without fail.  Which reminds me, can anybody explain to me why 100’s cost the same as regulars?  It always seemed completely counterintuitive to me.  I mean, you get like WAAAAY more bang for the buck, right?  Or am I missing something?

ANYWAY - focus, Matt! - it was disgusting outside on that late July morning, and I realized that I was already going to be pretty much soaked with sweat by the time I arrived at the office.  I simply could not make any logical sense of the desire to voluntarily add cigarrette funk to the general disgustingness in which I’d be stewing for the duration of that particular workday.  And while I’d never performed studies or conducted research to test this hypothesis, somehow I independently arrived at the conclusion that inhaling something while it was on fire would probably raise my body temperature even higher than the day’s weather already had.  So I decided not to have a cigarette on the walk to work that morning.

The day progressed.  When it came time for my regular morning smoke break I went through the same thought process as I had on my walk to work.  Knowing that the heat and humidity were only climbing higher, I decided to stay at my desk.  When lunchtime rolled around I crossed the street to the little buffet place to grab a bite to eat, but chose not to hang around outside ingesting fire while schvitzing my tits off.  Afternoon smoke break and the walk back to the Metro, same thing.  It was simply too nasty outside to smoke.

Which brings me to one last tangent.  Why do smokers get built-in smoke breaks at work?  And why, then, do we non-smokers not get "fresh air breaks" built into our schedules?  When it’s nice outside I’d love to go stand in front of the building and loiter, enjoying the fresh air for 15 minutes before going back inside to work.  But I can’t just stand there.  I’d look like an unprofessional idiot.  If my boss happened to be entering or leaving the building at that time - or in the office, looking for me - she’d think I was slacking off.  If I were a smoker, however, I’d have a perfectly valid excuse.  There’s this one guy who works in our building who is literally ALWAYS either in front of the building on a smoke break, or stinking up the elevator en route to a smoke break.  If he ever gets any work done he must be staying until midnight, which I kind of doubt is the case.  Both of my faithful readers already understand how these types of workplace inequities rile me up.  I’m not sure which is worse, allowing flip-flops for women or smoke breaks for smokers.  I should write a(nother) letter.

The yucky day recounted above was July 29, 2003.  The heat and humidity were the same and/or worse the next day, so my simple logic persevered and kept me from smoking that day as well.  And the day after that.  By the third day it dawned on me:  I think I’ve just quit smoking.  It was not a plan, nor was it a decision.  It was really kind of an accident, but once I’d accidentally quit, it was definitely a conscious decision not to start again.  A conscious decision informed by a handful of delightfully immediate realizations about my newly smoke-free self.  My fingers were no longer yellow!  My clothes no longer reeked!  I was no longer giving myself lung cancer!  Besides, once I’d quit, it just seemed easier to stay quit than it would be to try quitting again in the future.  I hadn’t planned it, but the timing worked out just fine for me.

So there you have it, dear readers.  That is how I accidentally quit smoking.  To celebrate this four-year milesone, I think I’m gonna go hang out in front of the building now to enjoy some fresh air.  And of course to glare at that other, far more fetid slacker who really should be out of a job by now.  Stinky asshole.

After linking to Craig Ferguson’s illuminating clip in my last post, I feel a skosh guilty using this post to point both of my faithful readers to this far less eloquent one from Tuesday night’s episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.  It’s interesting, however, because it just helps to drive home the idea that, at a certain point, kicking a celebrity while she’s down - not to mention riddled with a disease that could kill her - is just plain cruel.  And in this case, painfully unfunny.

I promise this will be the last post on this topic.  If not, may Rob Schneidner himself come and take my sense of humor away from me.  Lord knows he needs it.

Usually I try to keep my humble little blogs away from the realm of celebrity gossip.  There are already hundreds of bloggers out there devoted to that crap, and it’s just not what I do.  Don’t get me wrong.  Of course I read puh-lenty of that inanely ubiquitous drivel, however I prefer to regard myself as wholly incapable of the vapidity required to write it.  That said, an item in today’s news hits a tad close to home, so I feel obliged to share.

In yet another unsurprising turn of events, Lindsay Lohan has gone and gotten herself arrested again.  According to cnn.com, this time she has been charged with "driving under the influence, possession of cocaine, bringing a controlled substance into a jail facility, and driving on a suspended license."

Okay, um, first things first.  "Bringing a controlled substance into a jail facility"???  Apparently times have changed in Los Angeles, because I’m relatively certain that when I was arrested there nearly 4.5 years ago, all drugs had been removed from my person by the time I crossed the threshold of the jail facility.  Isn’t it the responsibility of the arresting officers to ensure that all drugs are confiscated prior to escorting a scofflaw onto the premises?  And is the negligence of the police seriously something they can add to someone’s list of charges?  Hardly seems fair to charge a person with the cops’ own oversight.

But I digress.  I like Lindsay.  I’ve seen a handful of her movies, and it has become quite clear to me that she does indeed have the potential to someday become a truly great actress.  If she lives long enough.

Many recent articles about the newly legal 21 year-old have mentioned a new high-tech alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet which she allegedly volunteered to wear upon her release from rehab a couple weeks ago.  Each article is accompanied by photographs of Lindsay partying her ass off at some hot club in Las Vegas, fashionably dressed in floozy chic, whooping it up until dawn with said ankle bracelet in plain view.  Captions hail that this "new Lindsay" - who bears an uncanny resemblance to the old Lindsay - now merely sips on Red Bull all night long, and that her whooping has become more tame than before.

We recovery folks have a saying.  Well, we actually have a lot of sayings, but one of them is that if you keep hanging out at the barber shop, eventually you’re going to get a haircut.  After seeing so many pictures of recently rehabbed Lindsay hanging out at her metaphorical barber shop, I sensed it was only a matter of time before she’d get herself a metaphorical haircut.  (At least she didn’t shave her head… yet.)  I can’t honestly say that I expected this to happen so soon, but I also can’t honestly say that I’m surprised.  If we addicts keep doing what we’ve been doing, we’ll keep getting what we’ve been getting.  It applies to the good times as well as the bad.  It’s not exactly rocket science.

It is, however, a disease.  And like so many diseases, this one is a killer.  I was reminded of that this weekend when I learned that an acquaintance of mine named Timmy had just passed away.  I didn’t know him very well, but I do remember when I first met four years ago at the very first Crystal Meth Anonymous meeting I attended in Washington, DC.  In the time since he had relapsed frequently, but he kept coming back to meetings and trying again.  Although it seems he died from complications from an earlier suicide attempt, I’ve heard that when he died he had 59 days sober.  While that number may seem small to a few of my faithful readers, even just one day sober can be a seemingly impossible challenge to a struggling addict.  Two months is nothing short of a miracle.  Sometimes I forget that keeping such a cunning, baffling, and powerful disease in remission isn’t as easy for some addicts as it has been thus far for me.  Then something like this happens, and I remember to be grateful.

So tonight, instead of gossiping about Lindsay Lohan, I think I’ll take a page from the Aretha Franklin songbook and say a little prayer for her.  And I’ll rewatch this excellent clip of classy late night funnyman-slash-recovering alcoholic Craig Ferguson, a clip which first aired on his show earlier this year as Britney Spears was going through her head-shaving meltdown.  I hope you’ll take 12 minutes and 30 seconds to watch this incredibly eloquent clip as well.  It’s definitely worth the time.

Do it for Timmy.

This is the song I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the one I wrote for my friend Darrah.  At some point during one of my first NYC visits many years ago, she told me about a boy she had been friends with when she was a little girl.  He and his family had to move away, but before they left, the boy gave her a small wooden box filled with pieces of broken glass.  He said he was giving her his diamonds to hold onto until they saw each other again. 

Every time one of my visits with Darrah has ended, that story has resonated loudly in my mind.  So I wrote this song for her and recorded it in my bedroom back in the fall of 1996.  You can download the mp3 by clicking here.  [NOTE:  I think that download link will be good for a limited time only, but I'm not sure how limited, so just go ahead and download it now.]

BOX OF GLASS

she walked away as a cab drove out of her life and down broadway
there she stood waving smiling cold beneath the rising sun
then the teardrop raindrop took its course and the memory became real
and she lonely climbed that empty stoop where they once sat and smoked

her friendship seemed to surely pass the time and time again
the treasure won for three small days was hers upon the shelf
give it back to the owner as he drives into the dirty city dawn
to sleep beside the home that he once knew so well

she didn’t have to give him anything
just a box of glass
still the diamonds cut the memory and it shines
for centuries to pass

he loved the game but he didn’t know all the rules and he couldn’t play
but he knew that the fated ship would sink as soon as it left the dock that day
so he placed it in a bottle and he sailed it to his star above the sea
peaceful dreams inside would wake her up forevermore

she didn’t have to give him anything
just a box of glass
still the diamonds cut the memory and it shines
for centuries to pass

she gave him everything
inside a box of glass
her diamonds bring the sunlight down to earth
and the pain will pass

yes the pain will pass into the autumn air
and the night will come again someday
i know her confident integrity
i know her simple sacred sanity
i know her vision keeps him safe
until the sun drowns into the deep blue sea
and all the birds fly east to the wind’s defeat
and she will see him come alive when he is free

she didn’t have to give him anything
just a box of glass
still the diamonds cut the memory and it shines
for centuries to pass

she gave him everything
inside a box of glass
her diamonds bring the sunlight down to earth
and the pain will pass
yes the pain will pass

I want to offer BIG THANKS to all of you who wished me a happy 2nd 29th birthday yesterday.  Words can’t say how warm and fuzzy I get inside with each and every text message or email or phone call I receive from you crazy people.  I love my friends, and it’s true what they say - you get what you give. 

I’m delighted to tell you that I had an undramatic yet full day closing out an undramatic yet full week in my undramatic yet full life.  I was off from work all of last week, and even though I wasn’t working, my week was packed.  My "vacation" began last Saturday and Sunday, the first two days of my new weekly DJ gig out at the Guess store in Tysons Corner, VA.  [If you haven't yet visited me there, come by and say hello any Saturday or Sunday from 2-7pm.]  Then Monday and Tuesday involved some long-overdue bathroom cleaning and general apartment "stuff" sorting, a process which I always seem to start and never seem to finish.

On Wednesday the 4th I had a blast white-water rafting with some friends out near Harpers Ferry, WV.  The day was almost as beautiful as our river guide Charlie, a shockingly only 18 year-old soccer player (yum!) blessed with dark, curly hair (yum!) and an aw-shucks straight-but-gay-friendly attitude (YUM!).  Then came the thunderstorm and the subsequent rush to the finish line to avoid being struck by lightning, which admittedly would have been a rather fitting demise for a raftful of gay men lusting after an 18 year-old.  Storm notwithstanding, it was a fun day start to finish.

Early Thursday morning I took the Chinatown bus to New York, caught up with one friend over lunch and another friend over dinner, and ended the night dancing with another friend at a gay bar in Chelsea called Splash.  My fondest memory of Splash is from the fall of 1998, when I went there while a student on the Duke In New York program.  Some drunk stranger shoved me onto the stage and I ended up in Splash’s weekly amateur strip contest.  Nine stacked-n-ripped Chelsea men and little scrawny me, me who NEVER takes my shirt off, me who would NEVER enter any kind of strip contest, standing there beet red and ready to die from embarrassment - or from the anvil I was hoping would fall on my head at any moment.  While the rest of the men thought they were hot shit and got off on the exhibitionism of it all, I laughed my way through the whole thing, covering my face in sheer incredulity that this was actually happening.  The crowd ate up my genuine humiliation, thanks in no small part to the drag queen hostess strongly egging them on.  She dubbed me "Chicken Little", which, as both of my faithful readers may recall, was not my first chicken-related nickname.  And then when she was suggestively positioning me and the other two final contestants to have us gyrate for 30 seconds in our undies as the final round of the competition, for some reason I let it slip that I could put both of my legs behind my head at the same time.  The crowd lost its collective shit, chanting "Chicken Little!  Chicken Little!"  Needless to say, I won the $250 prize that night.  Perhaps also needless to say, the $250 went up my nose by the end of the night.  This was just a few months into the first year of my drug career, while I was still in my coke phase.  Ahh, memories!

Moving on.  Friday morning I had brunch with my friend Darrah, a sparkling Elisabeth Shue-esque beauty I met in Durham the summer after my sophomore year at Duke.  Her West Village apartment became my crash pad for the frequent trips I would take to NYC during school breaks, and we had many great times talking on her stoop, hanging at Art Bar - I even wrote and recorded a song for her called "Box Of Glass".  Darrah kind of embodies New York for me, and she lives a life similar to the one I’ve always dreamed of living there.  Anyway, while brunching it dawned on us that we hadn’t seen each other in NINE YEARS, since my New York stint during the fall of 1998 mentioned above.  So I of course filled her in on the highlights of my drugalog, as well as the ongoing story of my recovery, and she of course was glad that I am still alive.  She also brought back a handful of memories from oh-so-long ago that I would have thought my drug-addled mind had completely forgotten.  That was truly a beautiful thing.  And without her even saying a word about it, I’m once again thinking about moving to New York.  The mere sight of Darrah’s stoop always plays that vicious Jedi mind trick on me.  Stoopid stoop.

I got home from New York on Friday night, DJ’d at Guess on Saturday, and then rested up for Sunday, the big 3-0.  The day started with an emotional standing ovation after my piano-playing debut as an accompanist for the incredible vocalists on the Metropolitan Community Church’s Praise Team.  Then I went out to Tysons to spin all afternoon, which is so great because I’m basically getting paid to loudly listen to whatever music I want all day long.  I love it!  And I ended up at the Bailer compound out in Camp Springs for a delicious home-cooked meal with the family and the Jackalyst.

Like I said, just another full day rounding out another full week in my full life.  I sure am a lucky old man.  It’s good to be old.  Especially since there were times when it didn’t look like I’d make it.  Now I’m gonna go home, strap on my Depends, settle into my rocking chair, and hit on younger men.  And maybe I’ll come up with some wise stories to share with you crazy young’uns.  ‘Cuz that’s what we old gay men do.  That, and identify with the Golden Girls. 

So watch out Dorothy Zbornak.  They may have called you Turkey Lurkey in high school, but there’s a new Chicken in town!

Kathy Griffin kicked ass Wednesday night at the gorgeous Lyric Opera House in downtown Baltimore.  We got stuck in traffic on the way there and didn’t arrive until 8:10, but fortunately she didn’t go on until about 5 minutes after we were in our seats, so all was well.  In her opening segment she asked if anyone had just driven from DC up to Baltimore for the show that night like she just had.  She commiserated through our hoots and hollers, saying "Yeah what’s up with all the fucking traffic?"

I won’t retell all of her stories here, because a) this blog would go on for-EVER; b) I could never do them justice; and c) they will probably all end up in one of her tv specials anyway.  I will say that a significant amount of time was devoted to her recent encounters with "too stupid to vote" Paris Hilton, highlighted by brilliantly nuanced imitations of her freaky retarded baby voice and her "half-horse/half-tarantula" likeness.  She also discussed a run-in she had with Dr. Phil, whom she repeatedly addressed merely as "Phil" in an apparently successful attempt to ruffle his feathers.  Hee.  Other targets included Oprah and her boyfriend Gayle, Aaron Carter and his methed-up complexion, Paula Abdul and her onscreen oxycontin passouts, and Larry King and his seemingly shapeshifting head.  And of course, Miss Ryan Seacrest.

The show ended with yet another in a long line of hilariously infamous tales from Kathy’s apperances on The View.  This was from the first day immediately following the big Rosie vs. Elisabeth blow-up, and Kathy was scheduled to sit in as a guest co-host.  Apparently one of that day’s "Hot Topics" involved the age-old (heh) issue of menopause.  Here’s what Kathy said:

Those women on The View looooooooove talking about menopause.  Menopause menopause menopause…. So we were talking about how once you hit menopause, your vagina dries up.  Little Elisabeth - bless her heart - didn’t believe us, so I told her, "It’s true!  I’ll admit it, I’m not afraid of a little K.Y."

And you know what Barbara said?

"I pwefer Astwo-Gwide."

I’d like to take this opportunity to point both of my faithful readers to the glorious return of one of my favorite online features, the Chart Flashback column on Entertainment Weekly’s website.  Every few weeks or so, EW blogger and music aficionado Whitney Pastorek lovingly takes Billboard’s top 10 singles of that particular week from some random year over the past few decades, revisiting each song with highly entertaining combs of varying fine-toothedness.  [Thanks to YouTube, she is also able to provide the often dubious videos for each song in her column.]  Sometimes she offers her opinions on how well a song and/or its video has held up over time.  Frequently she’ll throw in personal anecdotes or memories she has attached to a song.  And every once in a while, she’ll just sum up a song in one word and give it a grade.  For this particular edition of her column she has chosen to evaluate the top 10 singles of this week from 1989.  This is exciting to me for a few reasons.

First of all, 1989 was my favorite year in pop music.  It was sort of a random transition year from the hair-sprayed ubercheese-that-knew-it-was-cheese of the 1980’s to the hair-gelled ubercheese-that-thought-it-was-cool of the early 1990’s.  As you’ll see in her column, crap acts like Milli Vanilli and New Kids On The Block (sorry Amy!) cross paths with more streetwise acts like Bobby Brown and Neneh Cherry.  Throw in some veterans like Natalie Cole, Bette Midler, and Donna Summer, and you’ve nearly rounded out quite a wacky top 10.  I LOVE THAT SHIT!  Today?  A top 10 like that would NEVER happen.  Sad.

Also, for a period of time in middle school and high school I was kind of obsessed with the top 40, even going so far as to create my own weekly lists and countdowns.  (If I hadn’t done so before, I have now completely outed myself as a dork.  But a music dork, which isn’t quite so bad, right?  Lovable, even?)  Along with this obsession came a fascination with the charts in Billboard magazine.  I ended up getting a subscription for a few years while I was in high school, but this week, with this particular top 10, is the first issue of Billboard I ever purchased.

The reason I remember the top 10 from this particular issue is because it was the week that "Cry" by a Welsh band called Waterfront peaked at #10.  Nobody - Whitney included - remembers this one-hit wonder, but it spent so much time at the top of my own weekly countdowns that it ended up becoming my overall #1 song of 1989, and I was thrilled that it managed to graze Billboard’s top 10.  Perhaps even more significantly, "Cry" was the very first cassette single (remember the "cassingle"?) that I ever purchased.  These watershed acquisitions of my first cassingle and my first issue of Billboard came within mere minutes of each other.  We were on a 7th grade end-of-the-year trip somewhere downtown and we went to Union Station for lunch.  Pretty exciting, with its food court and its train schedules and its SAM GOODY!  It was there that I bought the cassingle for "Cry" (as well as the cassingle for "Let The River Run" by Carly Simon).  Shortly thereafter I wandered into one of the train station’s comprehensive magazine stores and picked up my first ever copy of Billboard.  I think I spent all of my lunch money on these purchases.  No Sbarro’s for me, thankyouverymuch!  Despite the now obvious red flags which somehow evaded this 11 year-old audiophile’s wide-eyed gaze, my heart grew ten sizes that day.

So without further delay, I invite you to take a trip back in time.  Get a Gumby-do like Bobby, prepare to dine with the Fine Young Cannibals, and check out Billboard’s Top 10 Singles for the week ending June 24, 1989.

Maybe you’ll thank me in 8 more years.