The Decline of Western Civilization: The Metal Years
Thursday, June 22nd, 2017
There’s a period of my life that rarely comes up any more. I’ve been a music lover, no, music adorer since I was a young kid, spinning record after record on my old portable record player. As a youth I’ve gone through phases of liking all kids of music – from Sesame Street tunes to Barry Manilow to KISS to the Beatles and on and on. These days my music palette is tremendously huge, and I’ve even let in certain rap and country artists (just CERTAIN ones), and my enjoyment of music has never been greater or broader. But there was a period – let’s just call it 1987 – when the only thing on my mind was heavy metal. Read the rest of this entry »
Sometimes I absolutely relish the little ironies of my uniqueness. The way actors usually work their way to stardom is start out making brief little appearances in such productions as commercials, music videos, maybe the occasional sitcom, and then they start getting meatier and meatier roles, and then work their way into something really famous, especially these so-called genre shows that can be found on cable channels that I don’t even get. That’s how it usually happens. But I work in complete reverse. The celebrity has already achieved this fame and as I browse their filmography, I start at the beginning after breezing back their current starring roles and look for the little obscure appearances that they may have done in some of my favorite TV shows or films that have stood the test of time. 
I feel like I might be getting redundant as I talk about my ever-evolving hobby of ‘celebrity collecting.’ Many things have changed in the last ten years, including tolerance of higher prices, willingness to bypass autographs in favor of photos, less stipulations on whom I get (meaning they didn’t have to do quite as much as once required before forking over money), and in this case, adding people to my list whom I had skipped in the past. Joan Severance is one such example of the latter example. Twice before I had seen her at events and twice I had skipped her.