In the last post I mentioned that the subject of my next post would be the roommate (technically, housemate since we shared a 3-story dwelling and had separate rooms) whose friend brought the LSD.
Even though we lived on separate floors of the house, my 3rd floor bedroom had the nicest bathroom which of course meant that Toney and all his drag queen friends would be using it to get ready for a night of clubbing.
I had seen Toney do a phenomenal Grace Jones once. I finally coerced him into doing a replay just for me and my camera which was surprising given how much time it took for him to make this transformation. I got several photos and then we went for a drive around Little Rock with him still in drag!
Check out those heels!
It's entirely possible Grace is taller than him though!
Out of drag you'd never imagine he could pull this off. He was quite the artist.
A couple of years prior to this was when I was living in London and working at the HMV Shop where a VHS collection of Grace Jones video was played almost daily on a wall of TVs. That was my first introduction to Grace and after the first couple of weeks at the shop, I began to pop that video in almost daily. Some of my co-workers got very annoyed after a few months of that.
In retrospect, my life in the farm house was great. I miss that house a lot. I lived there until I went away to college at 18, and lived there periodically after that until I was in my 20s. Life on the farm gave me plenty of opportunity for contemplation. It also made me feel restrained by the time I was a teen. I wanted to get away and see the world.
Even at two, I looked like an angry demon. I thought life was hard then. It was nothing compared to being 48.
One of the things I loved about life on the farm were the sunsets. Here I was around my 14th birthday. The sunrises were often more spectacular but I wasn't often awake for those. Damn, this is a young kona.
My dad prided himself on what he could build. One day I was out with the shovel in the backyard digging a hole. My parents asked me what I was doing and I said I was digging a hole for a swimming pool. Well, that was about all it took for my dad to decide he could do that, and he did.
Here's another kona shot at 14, living the life of leisure, and probably plotting how to be rich and retired and driving a Mercedes by the time I was 21.
By the time I was 19 going on 20 I had already been to Europe on my own several times. You can see the pins in the map on the wall showing places where I had visited. England was taking a toll on me musically. I wanted to be so very British. I just didn't have the hair for it. That would plague me for years.
Oh, and that kick-ass stereo rack? My dad built it.
And that damn hi-fi was one reason I rarely saw a sunrise. I was up too late listening to punk rock, and various other British bands. Interesting that I was into the Jam because later I would actually see Paul Weller, the front man, in London. But that's a later post on another home series.
Here I was in the front yard. I still remember that windbreaker I was wearing. It was an odd, almost plastic-like material. I bought it at a department store in Stockholm either going to and coming from Finland where I visited a pen-pal.
My mother sold that farm house and 5 acres for something like $65,000 a few years after my dad died in 1982. I harbored notions that someday I could buy it back for about the same price. I would love to live in that house today. My dad and his dad built it. Unfortunately, it burned to the ground a few years ago after the new owners spent a ton of money renovating it. I have suspicions about that but we won't go down that road.
And I may not have been rich or retired by 21, but at least I achieved one of my objectives.
Spoiled brat. Damn I liked that car though. A 1969 280S if I recall. May have been a 68.
This meme is going to run in conjunction with the meme on the konagod blog. Because this meme is probably difficult at best, consider this to be your clues, and it's a damn fine idea for a meme on its own.
Here's der rules:
Set your MP3 to random play. Find a photo of the album cover of the first 20 (or 10, or 5 if you're a lazy fucker) albums Photoshop it to distort the image. Make people guess the artist and album name.
Way better than that other meme because you can't cheat!
txrad told me I had a box from amazon.com today. I knew I hadn't ordered anything (well, I did and I'm not getting it yet, but that's a long story) so I was curious to see what it was.
JackGoff, Droll Jester of Tomatoey Goodness (another long story, don't ask) sent me a package.
Note to record label executives: Can you stop it please with these annoying anti-theft sticky labels on the spine? At least ship them to mail order vendors without those nasty things. They are a pain in the ass and often leave a sticky residue on the CD case which grates on my very last anal nerve.
Lucky for me, this one came off rather cleanly.
I'll report back later on the music. Getting ready to play. I must say, I've been extremely impressed with the Telarc label since I worked at the HMV shop in London 1983-1984. I'm psyched. And txrad has told me interesting stuff about this CD.
