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That’s what Facebook is turning into. It’s cool to catch up with people, but sometimes it’s just so weird. Maybe because they’re all in the same place. People I know from church, from high school, from music web forums, family, from teenage friendship books…it’s just weird.

When my older brother and I were teenagers, we were really into music. And not too many people we knew in real life were into the same music we were. Underground stuff—4AD, industrial (back when industrial meant banging on sheet metal with chains and not Nine Inch Nails disco), punk, new wave, Some Bizarre, batcave, goth, etc.

There were teen music mags in the 80s you could get at the grocery store that had personal ads in the back. Kids would advertise for penpals in them. At least, that’s how I remember it—maybe my brother will correct me. But we would write to other kids from those magazines. And once you had one or two penpals, you didn’t need the magazines anymore to find new ones—we’d make friendship books, or FBs, instead.

We’d take some paper and cut it to about index card size, or smaller, and staple it together. Decorate the front however we wanted. Then decorate the first page inside with our name, address, bands we liked, whatever, and send it to a penpal. They’d do the same thing to the next page, then send it on to a different penpal. It’d get sent around until whoever filled in the last page was supposed to return it to the creator. And you’d have a friendship book full of potential new penpals.

There’s some groups on Facebook now for people who participated in friendship books in the 80s. It’s such a trip—people still have some of them and are posting pictures. People got really creative with decorating their FBs.

Kids also got creative with mailing labels. You know how you can order address labels? Kids would order them and have pictures of bands and lyrics put on them, rather than an address. Then use them in friendship books. All of the pics above of friendship book pages have mailing labels on them.

Since the labels cost money and most of us were broke teenagers, usually people would go halfsies. Here’s one my brother and I had:

The band was the Chameleons. Still one of my favorite bands today…

People used pen names, too. Bugle Boy was one my brother used. I honestly can’t remember if I used a pen name. Just seeing these friendship books and mailing labels is kinda freaking me out. So weird to see it, when I’d completely forgotten about it, after all these years.

People used to decorate their envelopes too. My brother had some penpals who were amazingly gifted at it. Always used to wonder what the mail man thought of the mail art he was passing around. And it really was art.

– OK I’m out of here until Monday! Laterz skaterz.

Remember that show? It was a short-lived teen drama in the early 90s. And one of the best TV shows ever written.

I picked up the DVD box set of the series for my daughter Cat for Christmas. Daniel laughed at me because it was sort of one of those gifts you get someone else because you want it for yourself. But I knew Cat would love it.

Any teenage girl would love it.

Funny thing is, even Daniel likes it. It’s that good.

If or when you have teenager daughters, you have to get this series and watch it with them.

It’s the only TV show I’ve ever written quotes from in my journal. A couple examples of lines from the show I jotted down when I first saw it:

Out of darkness, hope is born.

No one should hate who they are.

The best thing about the writing is how circular it is. In every episode, there’s always parallel story lines. One character will be going through something, and complaining about it to another character, without realizing that the other character is going through the exact same thing. Example: Angela will be complaining to Brian about how Jordan treats her, without realizing she’s treating Brian the exact same way.

And lines that one character says will be said again later by another character, sometimes in different episodes. In one episode, Angela says to Jordan, “Why are you like this?” and he says, “Like what?” and she says, “Like…how you are.” And in the next episode, in different circumstances completely, he says to her, “Why are you like this?” and she says, “Like what?” and he says, “Like…how you are.”

Sometimes it’s so subtle you have to work to catch it. Like Angela saying to Brian, “You kinda had to be there.” Then in the next episode, he says the same thing back to her—but not intentionally. (He doesn’t say it because she’d said it to him earlier.)

And sometimes it spans several episodes. When Ricky first meets the new English teacher, the teacher keeps calling him Ricardo, when his real name is actually Enrique. The teacher thinks Ricky hates his real name. Ricky finally says, “I don’t hate my name!” And the teacher says, “Good. Because no one should hate who they are.” And then a couple episodes later, when the teacher isn’t brave enough to help Ricky out of a really bad situation, the teacher says, “I hate myself.”

The show deals with all the teen issues—sex, drugs, peer pressure, lame parents. It’s a good one to watch with your teenage daughter. Not sure I’d recommend it for younger girls. Catherine loves it. We both get giddy talking about how great it is.

One of my favorite scenes is in the school dance episode, when Ricky and Delia are both rejected by their dates, and they start dancing together:

Go Ricky!

–

I’m leaving for Vegas Friday morning and will be gone til Monday. Getting together with some blogging friends, we’re all renting a house for the weekend. Should be fun. I’ll be posting pictures and stuff next week, I’m sure. Cheryl, Flip Flop Mama, madhousewife, and bythelbs are all going, plus a couple others I think. Cheryl planned it for her birthday. If you weren’t invited, blame Cheryl!

Are you familiar with Nickel Creek, the contemporary bluegrass band? They’re really excellent. They’re on my list of musicians where I need to own everything they’ve ever done. Which is why I picked up a solo album by their guitarist, Sean Watkins, a few years back. It’s all instrumentals except for one song, which has guest vocals by Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket.

It’s such an excellent song. I tried to find it on seeqpod or youtube and couldn’t. But it’s on Last.fm:

Listen to it here.

What are some other songs that should be more well-known than they are?

(I didn’t take these pictures.)

Maybe you recognize it from the movie, 10 Things I Hate About You.

It’s a high school in Tacoma, WA, called Stadium High. It was originally a hotel until the school district bought it.

My niece went there when she was living with us as a teenager. We lived in downtown Tacoma (total ghetto). It was a nice-looking school, but not a good one. All the kids called it Stay-Dumb-and-High.

Coolest looking school ever, though, huh?

There’s this other building I’ve driven by lots of times in downtown LA. Here’s a picture someone else took of it:

I just found out it’s also a high school. Here’s an article about it. Mind-blowing that they spent over $200 million on a high school. And the state budget cuts will probably result in teacher layoffs. It boggles the brain.

What is wrong with people?

From the article:

I don’t dismiss the value of investing in a school as a work of public art — even if it’s just a bathtub short of looking like the board game Mouse Trap.

But given the district’s budget problems and the extreme needs of roughly 700,000 students, most of whom are poor enough to qualify for reduced-price lunches, a pricey jewel in the glittering Grand Avenue necklace is a badly timed extravagance.

To put it mildly.

I like graffiti, too. Am I alone in that?

Yesterday I took Nathaniel and Dillon to Amoeba Records in Hollywood, and also stopped by Hollywood Forever cemetery. I’ll post about that when my pictures are developed. We saw some cool murals that I pulled over to snap pictures of, and it got me thinking about all the other murals I’ve recorded on film.

Most recently were some at Hobby City, a little plaza with all kinds of hobby stores. There’s a mural on one building of an old lady frowning at a rabbit that’s about to get into her garden. Kinda bizarre:

Then there were these animals painted on the side of the Children’s Living Nature Museum:

A lot of stores have murals painted on their walls. Here’s one in Newport Beach:

Another in Newport Beach:

Detailed shots:

Mural on the other side of the same store:

Here’s a wizard painted on a psychic/palm reader shop:

Mural on Amoeba’s wall:

This one cracks me up—this is on a building in San Luis Obispo:

This one is in Pomona:

So is this:

I took this one the other day in Sunset Beach/Huntington Beach. Notice the pipe is painted as well as the wall:

This one is just down the street from us, in the parking lot of a McDonald’s. The building it’s painted on is actually a liquor store, though:

Then there are the schools. This one is Hollywood High:

This is on a preschool in Santa Ana:

But I think this mural (not on a school) is my absolute fave. This is in LA, near the convention center:

Cool, huh?

Like anyone cares, especially now that it’s like what, a week past? But oh well, an excuse to post pictures.

I got together with a Flickr contact to do a photo walk in Downtown Disney. She takes awesome pics of live bands. She’s also just starting to get into using film rather than only digital. It was really fun to have someone to talk photography with and to have someone to walk around with while I took pictures. I’ll often drag a kid along when I go out photo-taking, but it was fun to have someone who wasn’t being dragged around along with me.

I used a couple different cameras, two film, loaded with expired slide film. One of the rolls of expired film was very old and it made the colors turn out all magenta.

One from my digital camera:

Daniel went snowboarding that day with his friend Dave. He got home in plenty of time for us to go do something for Valentine’s, and we were going to go see Twilight in the dollar theater, but he started feeling unwell. And that was the start of him catching a virus. So we didn’t go out after all.

I managed to survive both of the boys being sick. But then Daniel caught it. And there’s no way he’s not going to give it to me.

So yeah, I’m sick. But that doesn’t stop me from running kids around and working. It did stop me from blogging, for a day or so.

Here’s some random stuff.

1. A couple more pics from our Salton Sea trip over New Years. This is from Salvation Mountain:

Everyone needs a Jesus bumper.

This is from Bombay Beach, which is worst than a wasteland. It’s like the apocalypse hit a trailer park.

2. We got together with an old friend, Matt, for dinner last Friday. His wife has a blog and comments here on mine as Michelle. I’ve known Matt for longer than I’ve known Daniel—Matt I knew in junior high. I wrote to him when he went on a his mission. It wasn’t like that—I was married with two kids at the time. I remember when he got home, he said to Daniel, “Thanks for letting your wife write to me.” Daniel said, “No problem. She does it all the time.”

But it was fun getting to see him and meet Michelle and their kids. I took one picture, which I later forgot was on my camera, and deleted. I hate it when I do that. If/when Michelle puts up the pictures she got, I’ll post a link.

She wanted to hear the dirt on Matt’s teenager years, but I couldn’t really think of anything he did that was wild. I guess I never heard about any of his exploits. Daniel’s exploits were legion and legendary. Daniel feels bad now for the bad stuff he lured Matt into doing when they were teens.

3. I picked up some more cheap vinyl at a local record store, one of which was Split Enz’ album, True Colours. I ripped the first side (recorded it to my computer), and when I flipped it over, I discovered the second side looks like this:

I’ve never seen that on vinyl before. Apparently it’s some sort of laser etching. The photo doesn’t do it justice, it shows up better when you move the record around. I guess Styx’s Paradise Theater album also had some etching, which means I’ve got to find it.

I love him, but I realize his voice and emotionality is probably not exactly everyone’s thing. Most people who like him really, really love him.

In case you’re not familiar with him…he’s Tim Buckley’s son. OK, chances are, if you don’t know Jeff Buckley, you don’t know his father, either. Tim Buckley was a folk singer in the 60s/70s who died young. Jeff Buckley was an indie singer/songwriter in the 90s who died young. Tragically young.

His debut album, Grace, is an album I consider essential for any fan of music. Probably the best debut album of all time. And he died before completing a second album.

He covered Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and set the standard for all the covers of it that came after.

He could sing “Happy Birthday” and break your heart with it, if he tried, I’m sure. Listening to “The Last Goodbye,” I don’t know how any woman could have said goodbye to him. The little vocal crescendo he does at the 3:02 minute mark I count as one of my favorite moments of all time in song. (It happens just when the little time marker on the player below is moving over the “a” in “track.”

Another heartbreaker: “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over:”

There’s a couple lines in that song I think are so brilliant:

Parading in a wake of sad relations as their shoes fill up water…
My body turns and yearns for a sleep that won’t ever come…
A kingdom for a kiss upon the shoulder…
All my blood for the sweetness of her laughter…

But one of the things I love about him was he wasn’t afraid to get abrasive and rock out. “Eternal Life” became my favorite song just after 9/11. I don’t thinkit was written about terrorists, but it really seemed to fit the whole situation. I used to listen to it over and over.

The title track to Grace is another great song (they’re all great songs…). It’s interesting to hear him sing, “I’m not afraid to die.”

He died when he impulsively jumped into the Mississippi River, with his boots still on. It was a part of the river with strong undercurrents, which he wouldn’t have known. He drowned.

Elijah, in the car:
“I’m one of those people who knows they’re cool, and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks.”

–

Elijah, in the car:
“He’s one of those people who think it’s cool to go around punching people in the nuts.”

Me, in the car:
“There’s more than one person who goes around doing that?”

–

Elijah, in the car (quoting Dilbert):
“If everyone else wore clothes, would you?”

Me, in the car:
“Humans don’t have fur. So we have to wear clothes.”

Cat, in my bedroom:
“Why do we have pubic hair and arm pit hair?”

Cat, leaving my bedroom:
“Sorry I ask you weird questions.”

–

I didn’t hear what Elijah was saying, only tuned in at the end, as he was walking out my door:

“Because it doesn’t drop like a rock. It drops like…silent lead.”

–

After picking Elijah up from band practice in his friend’s garage…

Me: “The Rising Dead?”

Elijah: “Yeah. We switched from being a punk band to a metal band, so we needed a name that had to do with zombies.”

The other day while driving I saw a car that had some vinyl lettering on it’s rear window. This is what it said:

I was behind the car at a stop light so I had some time to look at the dates. My first thought was about how Donna Sue was born the day after Christmas. I imagined how happy her parents must have been, what a great Christmas present she probably was for them. She was born two years before I was.

Then I noticed her death date: 2003. I tried calculating how old that would have made her when she died, but I’m not good at calculating ages. I’m still not sure—but she was definitely younger than I am now, which means in her 30s.

I assume her boyfriend or husband killed her.

Then I noticed the day she died: the day after Valentine’s Day.