I haven’t been feeling it, well, for a very long time, but especially today. If I could be anywhere right now, it would be in San Francisco with Nate (and walking Pete’s dog Dudley). I have been depressed for YEARS now. Years. Because I’ve been in places I know I don’t belong. So why is it so hard to get back?
My camera is that good. I didn’t do a damn thing to this picture, not even a contrast or exposure adjustment ex post facto.
My new uncle (i.e. my aunt Sara’s husband) is offering me his car at a fairly good price, with the ability to repay over the course of a few months. What’s not to like? I will finally have some measure of freedom to at long last take for granted again. A car is both a need and a want right now in my life — having a car is an essential in Texas, except perhaps if you live at Mockingbird Station. Austin is sprawling and not particularly dense, my job is on the opposite side of town as my house, the mercury has already surpassed 100 every day this week, and the transit system is infrequent and usually the sole reserve of the insane.
But this car will also be a metrosexual fashion accessory — it is a 1991 Blue Mazda Miata. It only has 125,000 miles on it, and the Mazda Miata is an exceptionally reliable car; I have heard of many examples reaching 400,000. And it’s keeping the car in the family — I know my uncle takes good care of it. I may be driving it as soon as this weekend.
Here’s a stock photo for your viewing pleasure. (Actual car not depicted!)
When I took these photos, it was still well into the 90’s, even after the sun had set. There was a point in the evening where I almost passed out due to the combination of walking steep hills, carrying a big messenger bag full of assorted computer/camera items, and not properly hydrating.
When I was younger, when it would hit 100, it would do so in late July or through August, never in June. It is so hot now that I am sweating by 9AM. And don’t let people fool you, Austin is one of the worst cities for heat, because it retains the humidity of the Gulf of Mexico, but is far enough away from a major body of water to allow for high temperatures — so you get the triple digits of Tucson and most of the humidity of Houston. I won’t see a 60 degree evening until late September, I bet.
Oh, the irony…
The most obscure pop standard of the 80’s must be John Paul Young’s “Soldier of Fortune”. I say pop standard because it exhibits every element of “popness” that should have ostensibly brought about an adult contemporary hit for Mr. Young. It contains a very memorable and addictive obbligato with a par-four synthesizer on typical glock mode, it features saccharine but accomplished vocals from a too-young-to-be-cool man of obscure national origin (à la Chris De Burgh), it contains fashionably insensitive references to America and savages, throws in a didgeridoo, and has a fairly good music video.
You can tell it was produced to go somewhere, yet it only was a hit in JPY’s native Australia. His previous hit, “Love is in the air”, was top 10 in both the US, Australia and the UK.
When you listen to it, you think you’re in an alternate universe where you are convinced you have grown up listening to this on “easy listening” radio at the dentist’s office. It’s amazing how much music, released music with accompanied videos, is out there, and how most of it is left to dry out like papyrus reed.
Shockingly, last.fm records over 11,000 listens of “Love Is In The Air” within the past 6 months, but “Soldier of Fortune” has received 11 plays, 5 of which are mine.
While the music video was easy to find on Youtube, the song itself seems to be out of print, and it took days for me to find a copy.
(He looks a lot like contemporaneous Cliff Richard in this clip if you ask me)
The song itself:
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I have officially made my first impulse buy since having returned to the world of employment. It’s not entirely impulsive, as I haven’t been the same since my Pentax Optio S70Z died after nearly 4 years and 9,800 photos of rigorous duty. I bought the Canon Powershot G10, the Bosch dishwasher of consumer-grade cameras. Here’s the first set of “acceptable to show” photographs.
