Tag Archives: Tommy Lee

After The Beep

Answering machines were a form of technology in use before telecommunication was monopolized. At first, they were huge, then they used micro-cassettes, then regular cassettes, then a computer chip, then they went in the garbage. Telephones were not generally mobile prior to the year 2000. The average home had a room where the phone and answering machine resided.

The answering machine was the predecessor to the ringtone, in terms of personal expression through phones. There was even a default recording of a robot intoning “please leave a message after the beep”, which is how you knew your dad or grandpa wasn’t at home. Older relatives were confounded by the damn things, and would require the aid of sons or nephews, just as with smartphones today. A family would retain an answering machine until the tape wore out, meaning that for much of the 1980s, there was a phantasmagoria of wood-paneled plastic boxes, varying in quality. “Wireless” meant “unreliable”, which meant that the telephone station generally resembled an improvised bomb, to 21st century eyeballs.  Continue reading

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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions

Generation Swine

I never really dug Motley Crue. I was aware of them, thanks to MTV’s saturation (well in full swing already) and kids at my school who were freshmen when I was a sophomore. As I observed in art class, they were often unabashed Crue fanatics. But for whatever reason, the appeal of Motley Crue completely passed me by. Maybe I wasn’t part of the proper generation.

Years later, in 1997, I Nineties nineties nineties the nineties, by which I mean I was working in a Media Play’s CD department as a glorified stockboy. This was the time during which I consumed so much of the now-extinct 90’s soft drink SURGE that a sore the size of a dime opened up at the back of my throat, and where I learned to channel my anger by discreetly smashing merchandise with a rubber mallet. Much of the Media Play era has been depicted in Bands I Useta Like strips, like the Squirrel Nut Zippers one. There’s still enough left to fill a book on its own. Continue reading

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Filed under Bad Influences, Eatable Things, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions