a tribute to beck, jurassic park and houston texas

my musical preferences were transferred through the wall i shared with my sister. the first time i heard beck might have been on the radio, but it was that wall that taught me all the words to 'beercan' and made me envy her CD of the month club membership (the one that she was technically too young to apply for, so they never had a binding agreement so she never paid for any of the CDs she got- including that first Oasis record.)

those were the days when i made a mixtape of all of my sister's CDs and finally got bjork on my walkman. i took her and beck and the soundtrack from flashdance on a walk through the woods to the snowball stand. it was really hot, mosquitoes attacked me because i tasted like wedding cake syrup. i came home with over 50 bites on my shoulders and legs that afternoon.

i decided that i should venture into less hostile woods, where dens of mosquitoes weren't pent up to attack their next saccharine infused victim, so carly dwyer and i trekked out to the woods around episcopal prep school. when i say trek, it's more like a casual meander, but everything feels far when you're an 11 year old suburbanite. i had just finished reading jurassic park, so that i could go see the movie for my cousin coco's birthday without spoiling anything, so i narrated the plot to carly while skipping over branches and puddles, working my way through the paths where the older kids came out to smoke cigarettes and get felt up.

i took that mixtape on the bus to houston with my 7th grade class, on a field trip to astroworld. while my peers stuck pringles in their mouths so they looked like duck bills or peered over fashion mags, naming all of the models, i was boomboxing like it was 1987- dancing up and down the aisles to 'beercan' and alanis morissette.

i remember almost all of the lyrics from the songs of those days.  someone recently told me that i must have been the coolest kid in the 6th grade because i remember all the lyrics to roi from the breeders (and here and now by letters to cleo & smells like teenspirit by nirvana).  it's true, the 90s has shaped my musical taste.  to this day, beck is one of my favorites and i have mad respect for dinosaur jr.  i just hope kids growing up now have a sliver of the experience i had then, but i guess that's what fanatics of the beatles and the stones say about me.