February 1, 1993

Don't U hate it? Songs running thru your head. It's gotten out of control. This is really weird: I've been getting up in the morning and these songs going thru my mind are coming from nowhere. Last Friday's song was "The Best Things in Life Are Free", last June's #10 song for Janet Jackson and Luther Vandross. A fine song, of course, but where the hell did it come from? When was the last time I heard that? This morning's was Bobby Brown's "Good Enouh," slightly more current, but still, I don't even like it that much. I would've thought it would be something like (this gives me a chance to subtlely announce my top five) "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)" or "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang" or "Hip Hop Hooray"¹ -- I mean, what gives? Okay, Dallas won the SUPER BOWL, and although it has nothing remotely to do with my topic o' the day, I thought I'd let U know so U can look back in 50 years, and say, "Oh yes, the Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl in 1993 by trouncing the Buffalo Bills 52-17, and it should've been 59-17, but there were too many damn fumbles and this defensive player who recovered a fumble and was about to score fumbled, too, and it gave Buffalo a touchback." Of course, U wouldn't know this unless I told U, but I'm not about to tell U since U can just read your quote for yourself. So now I'm sitting here at 12:46 am [sic] and am getting reading to tell U about a dream I had last week, but forgot to write down, or somsethin becuz VOLUME I was chock full o' them. "Here's the deal, see?" That was my famous Ross Perot impression.² Pretty good, eh? But, anyways, the dream is as follows: I'm going to THEATRE class one day, except when I get in there, Mrs. Will3tte -- Sally Will3tte, I should say, from Humphrey³ is conducting a class on economics. Actually, it isn't even Sally Will3tte. I mean, everyone calls her that and I know it's her, but she looks exactly like Zoë Baird, the subject of the great American attorney-general scandal of 1993. Anyways, my theatre class is in the band room, so I began to exit the auditorium -- but wait, Mrs. Will3tte-Baird is beckoning me to stay. All of a sudden, she turns into Mr. Fer@k⁴ and the class is a history / current events course. I'll fill U in on the rest later on in the day.
- JMC 11:54 am

So where was I? Oh yes. Mr. Fer@k. Anyways, he led the whole class down to the basement of the school and we were all standing amidst three doors, one of which was ROOM 109 -- which if funny becuz last week there were these banners proclaiming "Come to Room 109 for the Leisure Group", an obvious ploy by the seniors to get some dumb-ass freshman to humiliate themselves. So, naturally, we opened the door to Room 109, and vóila, we stumbled across a huge damp, dark boiler room w/oil and septic tanks and all this other shit -- And that's when the dream ends ... Black History Month YAY! Like I'm going 2 do anything. Well, actually, I might actually try 2 do something this year becuz it's so important. They're including black history trivia questions in the announcements -- such as today's "Who was captain of Christopher Columbus' Nina?" The answer is some guy named Pedro Alonzo - something. I don't know. Well, I must leave now becuz lunch is over, so I'll try 2 write later on 2day. If not, then --
JMC 12:25 am

[MARGINALIA: 1. I Will Always Love You - Whitney Houston 2. If I Ever Fall in Love - Shai 3. A Whole New World - Peabo Bryson & Regina Belle 4. In the Still of the Nite - Boyz II Men 5. Saving Forever For You - Shanice]

1 Digable Planets, Dr. Dre, and Naughty by Nature, respectively. Within a few months, the Digable Planets debut record (Reachin': A New Refutation of Time and Space) was competing with, and perhaps edged, P.M. Dawn's similarly new-agedly-titled Of the Heart, of the Cross, and of the Soul: The Utopian Experience as my favorite album ever (to date). The Dre single is significant in that it spelled the dawn of G-funk and gangsta within a mainstream context. I stuck with hip-hop long enough to catch these first few whiffs, but had abandoned it by the time Doggystyle was released later that year, which means I'm still pretty foggy on Tupac and Biggie's entire careers.

2 And by "my" I mean directly swiped from Dana Carvey.

3 Mrs. Will3tte was a teacher at Hubert H. Humphrey Middle School; I never had her for class, however.

4 One of my favorite high-school teachers, J0hn Fer@k taught 9th-grade world history with an arsenal of good-natured cliches at his disposal.