My summer with Eddie Money: A lyric memoir experience

To begin, here’s one of my old AIM profile. I made this one after I walked in on my computer whoring it up on cyberspace:

Note: In the past I know my computer had a reputation. I'm well aware some "casual downloading" went on, persisted with a few lascivious file transfers and culminated in a myriad website gangbang. But that is an epoch of my computer's life that's over now. My computer has changed. If you want to send a file you better get to know my computer first. What music does it listen to? When's its birthday? If you think that you're going to just waltz right on up to my computer and start inserting your goddamn filthy, virus ridden files in my computers hardware you are going to have to goddamn answer to me. Please AIM community, treat my computer right, I don't want it to end up on some street corner sucking down MP3s for loose change.

Anyway, a few thoughts for today….

First, I went back to work after being out two weeks for jury duty. Obviously the hilarious details of jury duty require a post in itself, but, for now, I’ll say jury duty is basically the real world’s equivalent of spring break (waking up at 10 a.m., two hour lunch breaks, dismissed at 4:30, getting to watch outrageous lawyers battle each other). In any case, I spent about half of today telling my co-workers about the trial, and the other half staring into space; glad to see nothing’s changed…

Anyway, fast forward to tonight.

Place: Classroom of my 17^th Century Lit seminar.

The event: I’ve answered two consecutive questions correctly.

At this point, I knew it; my professor knew it; the other people in the class knew it (even the kid who feels compelled to say “mm-hmm” after every fucking thing the professor says knew it): I was heating up. Then, like Stockton to the Mailman, the profess turns to me, throws me the L.A. Oop:

“So Bobby, do you think the first stanza of Crashaw’s ‘The Flaming Heart’ echoes anything in Book I of Paradise Lost?”

I closed my eyes, took a long chew of my gum, and went up for the tomahawk slam:

“Now that you mention it, there is a similarity in the amalgamation of conventional religious themes with a sensual, almost blasphemous, subject matter handled by both poets. Furthermore, the invocation to the muses in Book I of Paradise Lost carries the same hubristic tone as Crashaw’s opening stanza to ‘The Flaming Heart.’”

The profess looks at me. He should have just said it: He’s on fire! Instead he nodded. You know the nod. The ‘We’re-obviously-humoring-ourselves- with-this-simplistic-subject- matter-for-the-sake- of-these-simpletons’ sort of nod.

Okay.

If I were a pretentious prick, I’d end this post here. If I really wanted you to believe I actually said the statement I attributed to myself above, I wouldn’t still be writing. But I am. Because:

a.) that statement is totally fabricated; and

b.) after slightly acknowledging me, I let the professor down when he called on me again, but I was so busy day-dreaming that, in order to bring me back to earth, he had to say, “Bobby…Bobby…where’d you go on us now, Bobby?”

Though, when I tell you my day-dream, you’ll totally understand why:

So I was thinking back to a summer. A summer I went to an Eddie Money/REO Speedwagon/Styx concert at Jones Beach. A summer I got my face absolutely rocked off my body by Mr. Edward Money. “Btw” when I reference Eddie Money, I’m pronouncing his last name ‘Monet’ like the Impressionist painter, since I believe it better conveys Mr. Money’s serious commitment to art. (Also I’m going to have to change my writing style to convey the frenzy of this concert.)

Okay…so like Eddie Money is the opening act…all the 40-somethings are in the parking lot….smoking their kid’s weed…it’s me, Dan, and Hogan…fucking wilding the fuck out…Hogan spots a dude…front and center….not ten feet from the Money-man…the dude is disgustingly overweight, sweating profusely, and wearing an oversized sports jersey with a number 78 on the back….then the amps explode with the opening chords to ‘Two Tickets’…Eddie and the boys are taking us to paradise…number 78 starts dancing…not even dancing, that mother fucker was grooving….Eddie is telling me to pack my bags…we've waited so long, waited SO long…I’m screaming…I’m screaming like a girl…I want to leave TONIGHT…I have a boner….suddenly the music lulls…Eddie walks up to number 78…but number 78 doesn’t miss a beat, he's still grooving, still flappin’ his money-maker…fat is flappin’ everywhere, also…Eddie doesn’t care…he’s talking right to number 78, but, at the same time, we all know Eddie is talking directly to all of us…he’s shaking his head…we all know something profound is about to happen….I’m ready to ejaculate in pants…Eddie is smiling at number 78…and I gotta believe number 78 is beaming right back at Eddie…Eddie opens his mouth, proclaims these wise words of wisdom…words I’ll never forget…words I want on the epitaph of my tomb stone…he said:

“Michael Jackson, he may have a lot of fans, but me, Eddie Money, I got a lot of friends.”

Then he took me home. Tonight.