this is probably the best way to do it, too - all at once.
the last post was for friday aug 6th. i want to do one per week in the alter-reality time frame, so that's:
- aug 13th: [month of august, 1989] [4 weeks]
- aug 20th: [month of sept, 1989] [5 weeks]
- aug 27th: [month of oct, 1989] [4 weeks]
- sept 3 : [month of nov, 1989] [4 weeks]
- sept 10: [month of dec, 1989] [5 weeks]
- sept 17: [month of jan, 1990] 4 weeks]
so, that's 26 texts in the list, which is basically all of them.
i'd say this is an underestimate of the amount of reading i did in the summer over those years, although maybe more like 1990/1991. i may be starting a year early, but i'm not going to obsess over that sort of thing. it's a mechanism. i remember getting through 2 novels a day, on some days. i was one of those kids that they tested at a grade 12+ reading level when i was 10.
but, it's an overestimate of how much reading i did in the school year. so, i'm balancing out for presentation purposes - it obviously wasn't that steady.
i'm also going to need to look at the music issue.
iirc, i got a ghettoblaster for christmas in grade 4, which would be the next year. but, we'll fast forward it a year. that's something that will happen in december, 1989.
i was eight years old, so you might be disappointed in my tastes, but i'm not going to pretend i was an 8 year-old skinny puppy fan, or that i grew up listening to joy division. my mother was a sunset-strip style 80s hair metal junkie [she used to listen to stuff like whitesnake and poison and guns 'n' roses], and it's one of the biggest reasons i ended up into punk, in kind of typical gen x fashion. i thought she was retarded, and it turns out the government agreed with the perception, in the end. she was a huge metallica fan, as well.
my dad was into prog and 80s blues-rock like dire straits. srv's stint with bowie turned him into a big srv fan.
i was eight years old, and i listened to the radio and watched mtv (or, muchmusic). so, i liked michael jackson and tears for fears and the bangles and genesis and gowan. there are roots here in what was called "college" or "jangle" rock at the time, which was one of the foundational points of alternative rock, and in that sense my music tastes aligned with my reading comprehension. i was the 10 year old kid with the same record collection as your average first year student, but you might be a little surprised to realize what that meant, if you don't remember it. there were also some delves into things that i'd never touch nowadays, and i'm going to be as honest as i can in telling you what they are. is the fact that i knew how to play quite a few bon jovi songs, as a kid, of some relevance to my guitar style? it's at least as important as the sober realization that i avoided anything labeled metal.
so, i'll focus on radio songs for the second half of 1989 and start looking at the records in the first part of 1990.
i'll need to go through the school year as well, and the karate lessons. i didn't take karate for very long, and i wasn't very good at it, but my dad bought a black belt from the corporate dojo he was paying because he thought it would generate some confidence in me - and i happened to be perceptive enough to realize it. so, it actually turned into something rather embarrassing, this charade of putting on a black belt that i knew i didn't earn, and going into a class of other people with it on. so, the guitar was initially a way out of the dojo. that's the reason i'll be focusing on that.
