Thursday, Nov. 14, 2002
I felt like I was buying porn..., posted at 11:50 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Since the last entry:- We lost our soccer game, ending at our season with a less-than-stellar 1-7 record.
- Mike and I went to Soundgarden afterwards, where I bought the 8 Mile Soundtrack and the new Justin Timberlake album. I finally used the $15 gift certificate that Michelle and Rob got me, and ended up only spending $8 of my own money. I figured this was worth it.
Anyhow, with the Justin Timberlake CD, I felt like I was buying porn. Since the single - with its instantly addicting acoustic guitar loop, vintage Michael Jackson sound, and the part where he says "drums" in the middle of it and the drum machine starts up - grabbed me more than any single has this year, I'd decided a while ago that I wanted to own the album. After Rolling Stone gave it 4 stars, I was convinced.
This is sort of a big step for an independent music loving sort of dude like myself. With music, I've always been about "keeping it real" and love lack of production and a sense of immediacy in my music. I love folk music and singer/songwriters who lay it all out there without much separating their words from my ears. It wasn't until the last year or so that I've begun to admit my love for unadulterated, sugary, mega-produced pop music. Destiny's Child's Survivor is a fun CD, for example. But I still hadn't "stooped" to getting any boy band music, save for the mix CDs that Kinetix graciously sent me of *N'Sync stuff.
I went to the store with my punk music loving friend Mikey, who is the type to sneer at the boy band and Britney types. I wasn't about to buy that CD in front of him. But the new Tracy Chapman CD was $13.99, the new Aimee Mann CD was $13.99, while Justified was just $9.99. That cemented it.
I walked up to the cash register hiding it under the 8 Mile Soundtrack, feeling like I was buying porn. Keep in mind that this is a hip, alternative type of music store. I was completely prepared to admit that I was buying the CD for my sister. I made sure Mikey was off in the back of the store so he wouldn't notice I was checking out.
Cigarette hanging from his lips, the multi-tattooed and pierced sales guy grabbed the CDs and begun ringing them up. He stopped at the Timberlake CD, and asked me if I'd heard it yet. I said no, and was about to go into my spiel about it being for my sister, when he said, "I heard it was really good. It was produced by those guys in N.E.R.D., and I've heard lots of good things about it."
"Dude, that's good to hear. I kind of feel like I'm buying porn or something, being all secretive and all."
"No man, no worries. This CD has been selling very well here."
I breathed a sigh of relief.
I guess now I can no longer be considered a music snob. I still hate Britney and Christina, though. And the Backstreet Boys. But buying a "boy-band" CD - even if the band technically isn't there - is crossing some sort of threshhold that the old Epiphany would have looked down his nose upon.
Is this a good thing? Hmmmm. Well, the old Epiphany also weighed 300 pounds.
I brought the Justin Timberlake CD into school today to listen to before first period started and the kids started filing in. I didn't put it away after they got in, and in the afternoon this girl came over to my stack of CDs and said, "Mr. Epiphany, what CDs you got?"
"Um, I really don't want you looking through them, thanks." I was grinning.
"Why not, Mr. E?"
"It's not appropriate for a student to know what their teacher listens to." Still with a chesire grin. She knew I wasn't serious. She found the Justin Timberlake CD case, and joined my grin.
"Mr. E, this CD is hard. You don't know how many white girls I had to fight off to get it. I got myself two copies in case I lost one."
So, yes, a bonding moment with a student. Isn't it nice that I now share the same listening traits as my 15 year old black female students?
- Otherwise, the day went okay. Very, very long. I spent all day teaching my ass off, and my planning period was taken up by my pre-observation meeting. I get formally observed by my department head on Monday (no school, only professional development tomorrow). I'm a little nervous about it, but if things have been going how they've been going in my classes, things should go very well. My dept. head is a wonderfully nice woman, almost to the point of being too nice.
After school was the Open House, where prospective students and their parents come into the classrooms and we put on little presentations for them. I had my videotape of the Of Mice and Men mock trial on, and had planned on answering questions throughout and keeping that on in the background. With the first group, it went very well - the parents had lots of questions. The second group, though, was dead silent. No questions at all. Randy, the other English I teacher, and I didn't know what to do. We all just sort of watched the video, which wasn't very high quality and probably didn't show them much. We were both grasping at straws. "Hey, anyone wondering about the baseball team here?", I asked. "What are you all reading?", she queried. Nothing. Dead silence. It was bizarre.
- Bill, the new guidance counselor at school, won a free happy hour at this bar at the Power Plant Live, and we headed off to there after the Open House ended at 8:30. It was a pretty fun time, although I'm exhausted now. This one woman at school was hitting on me pretty heavily, but I wasn't interested. She might be a good friend; I'm just trying to be a friend without showing too much interest, if you know what I mean. I didn't dance, both because I didn't drink very much, and because I didn't much like the music they were playing when people were on the dance floor. When the dance floor and the place were dead, they played plenty of songs I would have loved to dance to - "Like I Love You" (which I'd been wanting to dance to ever since I'd heard it), "Hey Ma" (Cam'ron), and "Sweet Dreams." But, alas, timing is everything. If you play weird European sounding stuff that just isn't catchy, I probably won't be on the dance floor. Your loss. Maybe there will be some dancing at Recher tomorrow, where I'll be seeing The Samples with Ryan, Felicity, and Bill. I've missed Felicity, and am looking forward to seeing her again. But that's not before I attend a month-in-advance planned Happy Hour Social after work with the English and Math department at Brewer's Art, probably my favorite bar in Baltimore.
When did I become such a damn social butterfly?