graceland's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mix tapes I walked home tonight, it was perfect. Nice 2-mile stretch of the legs in brisk air, it would have only been better had I been walking through Central Park. One thing I do miss from my first job out of college, located just off of Central Park, are my long walks home in Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer. I should make an effort to walk through there more often. I spent an outrageous sum of money at Sephora, I came home and I ate sushi. I spoke with my parents, mostly my mother, about my taxes (she does them for me - she's a certified tax planner - I'd be crazy not to have her do them!) and if I would be seeing her at a family event this weekend. I told her I'd get the gift from both of us. I bought the gift. Shipping is a bitch! I really need to start planning ahead. I also mentioned to my mom that I'd be moving at the end of May. She took it well. I had anxiety about breaking the news because I know they think I should stay in the apartment I have. My parents are a different generation. Older than Baby Boomers but not depression babies. WWII babies, if that's what they're called. So the are of a time of "company men," when the women attended the seven sisters colleges to pursue an M-R-S degree and frequently married without graduating. They are more hip than their time; I'd like to think I've kept them young, but the credit goes to them for not checking out and remaining open to the societal revolution. After that conversation, I started to clean up my room. I've let a lot of crap pile up. Clothes, books, mail, magazines, cosmetics. Things needed to be sorted. After the quick straightening, I decided to go through some of my stored belongings and do some thing cleaning. Specifically, I was thinking about cassette tapes. I threw out and consolidated most of my cassette tapes a few years ago, but I kept a few that are unreplacable or sentimental. My rap tapes. Loved rap in high school. I was *that* girl. I hung out with a lot of guys, because I didn't have a lot of girl friends. I made the mistake as an underclassman of accepting the entree into the cool senior cliques Freshman, Sophomore and Junior years. That didn't win me a lot of girlfriends my year. I had been a freshman, hanging at senior parties, flirting with senior guys who would seek me out and talk to me in the hall, while my classmates painted each others nails at slumber parties and huddled timidly in front of their lockers as I breezed by with a couple of football players. I was also always voted a class officer - which was a huge popularity contest at my school - mostly because the guys in my class thought I was cool because I hung out with upperclassman jocks that they looked up to on their teams and the senior girls they wanted to hook up with. High school was pretty easy for me. Needless to say that once the upperclassman had graduated and I was the senior among the class I scorned for 3 years, it wasn't so great. So I hung out with a small groups of girls who were also outsiders for similar reasons, and guys. I was invited and accepted everywhere, because the guys wouldn't have stayed if I were banned, but it was generally obvious that most of the girls tolerated me as a necessary evil. That was okay by me, I was killing time until graduation when I would leave town and never return. I knew I'd never come back to that town for any length of time years before I left it. This was suburbia, early 1990's. Every middle class white kid worth his Benetton sweater and jeep wrangler listened to the filthiest gangsta rap he could get his hands on. The dirtier the better. And there we were, me and a bunch of guys: hiding in the woods, drinking mickey's wide mouths, smoking what we called "hooch" that my now-college aged friends sold to me and I resold to my HS friends - hitting a soda can poked with a fork. Listening to the ghetto boys, NWA (loving EZ-E, RIP!), Run DMC, the Jungle Brothers. Mouthing every word. Getting what we called "zooted." Sometimes the guys would freestyle; some of them were decent. Everyone was making mix tapes. One of my friends had two turntables and recording equipment in his garage. He was a legit DJ - back in 1990/1991, he was mixing and making what we know today as mash-ups. He even had a hook recorded by some hoochie singing his DJ name. He'd scratch it and mix it into your tape. To get a tape from this dude was an ULTRA priviledge. Coveted. Only a few guys got tapes created by him and every person who got one got their own mix. He didn't create en masse. I got one of those tapes. A lot of girls were jealous. I think they asked me to dub it and although I'd play it for anyone as long as they wanted, I never gave anyone a copy. I was looking for that tape tonight. I know I have it, I remember playing it post college. I never would have thrown it out, but it hasn't shown up yet. I have found, however, that I have a whole lot of mix tapes. More than I recalled. Mostly from guys. Made me laugh. Mix tapes. Such a great time capsule. *~* Just found it! The "professional" mix tape! Still amazing... 12:21 a.m. - 2006-03-29 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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