holiday end | i was the 80s

The lethargy that had gripped me the rest of the long weekend seems to have finally worn off. I was up until 3:00 last night watching the I Love the 80s specials on VH-1. There was even a segment on Member's Only jackets, of which I'd owned and been proud of several--give me a break, even the celebrities on the show were admitting to having owned Member's Only wear--but which I'd forgotten all about until watching the special. The shows also brought back a lot of other memories from high school and college. Then today my dad called and chatted with me, and my nephew got on the line to talk to me afterwards--he told me that he'd been looking at my senior high school year book, from 1980. So I pulled it out this afternoon and was looking through it, laughing and reminiscing.

So here for your amusement are two pictures of me from 1980. Yes, I had big 80s new wave hair--my dad's mother used to manage to inadvertently and simultaneously insult me, my sister and my female cousins by telling us, in effect, "what a shame it is that Tommy got the pretty curly girly hair and the girls got long ugly straight hair." In the photo to the left, captured in my valedictory vestments at graduation (and the big hair is showing its unmanageable curliness in the humidity of the Virginia summer; my college graduation pix show much the same in the humidity of a rainy June day in Boston, which is why now I keep my hair relatively short), the caption reads, in part, that I am "expressing [my] real emotion for the camera." What a gay pose! Fortunately, the picture of me wearing a white pinstripe polyester leisure suit as part of our senior skits is much too small to scan very well.

After dad and Matt and I chatted, the phone rang again and it was my cousin Allyson. She and I talked for a while, and then I tried to call my grandfather--my father said he'd been asking about me, and dad asked me to give him a call. I let the phone ring ten times, but no one picked up. I answered a couple of emails from friends I'd been neglecting, though I still need to reply to some responses I've received recently to my Match.com and PlanetOut personals.

I also dropped the Star Trek movie back off at the video store, and picked up Spirited Away, which is the movie I'd most wanted to get when I walked over there on Saturday, but all copies of which were rented out at the time. I've already watched it this afternoon, and it was so totally awesome (ok, yes, I've probably OD'ed on the 80s today); I definitely want to get that DVD for my collection.

I also got two loads of laundry washed, dried and folded, and read half of Candace Bushnell's 4 Blondes. And Roger and I made plans to spend some time together online later tonight. So while it's been a somewhat lazy weekend, I did get a few necessary things accomplished, while managing to relax quite a bit and catch up on some movies and reading at the same time.

And another holiday weekend begins to come to a close. Fortunately, with Independence Day coming on a Friday this year, it means there will be another long weekend not too far away.