Walk On By

Hesitant to post anything here, for fear that the difference in the ages of the other contributing writers to myself will be evident in my taste of music, art, and love of my puppy snowglobe collection, I've stepped out of the retirement home of fear to post my first entry on Magical Metal Playground. There are 6 big years between myself and the other writers, I believe. What's 6 years, you ask? It's the difference between ironically liking Wham! and ironically liking Kyper. It's the difference between boasting a new pair of zcavaricci's and boasting a new pair of JNCO's. It's the difference between secretly watching your parents watch "Moonlighting" and secretly watching your parents watch "NYPD Blue". It's the difference between New Order and New Kids On the Block. (Embarrassingly, I actually loved NKOTB in the day.) I could go on and on. So, better for me to announce my age from the onset than find out later that you all have secret impersonations of me that include JELLO and dentures. 28. Case closed.

A brief history: I married a mediaphile in 2002. If you question whether or not marriage is for you, keep in mind that you are legally sanctioned the right to claim the more sophisticated interests of your spouse as your own after you say your vows. I claimed Terry's iTunes playlist as my own after he made an honest woman of me. I felt it safer to assert ownership of his Magnetic Fields albums over my (I can't believe I'm admitting this on my first post) Marcy Playground album from my vaulted pre-Terry years. But before you go thinking he was the chief benefactor in this relationship, let me inform you of the super-rad cookbook collection I brought to this holy union. Oh yeah. So, why am I, the scarlet-lettered "MP" (Marcy Playground, that is), writing here? It's because I believe there's something to be said for people who are inspired by music and art outside of a knowledge of music or art history or the realm of esoteric analysis found in smarmy music 'zines (ahem, Chunklet)... just normal people who get chills when they hear this:




And for the record, I love Chunklet, I delight in knowing obscurities of all kinds, I have an appreciation of art and music history, and I never really owned a Marcy Playground album. Ok, yes, I did. However, I'm coming to terms with that natural lean towards what we label in public "guilty pleasures". Why gulity? Just pleasure. Lisa Lisa, baby. You dig?

If I were to put a bumper sticker on my car (which I've actually yet to do), it would say, "Life is short- listen to more Burt Bacharach." Or somethin.