from the vault.

i spent part of today reading through some old journals, because they're fucking great. aside from registering about 1 trillion on the amusement scale, it is also amazing to see how my voice has changed over the years, and how different i am, yet fundamentally the same, in all those inceptions of me. when i first started writing a journal way back in the tenth grade, i thought about what it would be like to be able to read about myself in years to come. i had no idea how valuable it would be, both in the present as a therapeutic tool, and in retrospect as a remembrance of my past. good shit.

anyhow, i had to post this, because it is hysterical, and at 31 i can certainly laugh at my sixteen-year-old self. it's really sweet to see what i thought of myself and my present and my future back then...

in july of 1993, i compiled a list in my journal of men i loved, all of them famous and impossible to attain(for various reasons, as you will soon see, some of them far more daunting than just fame) which was both a reflection of my love of making lists and my romantic and very unrealistic personal dreamworld. my life at that point was lived mostly in my head, and i denied myself little within it's confines, which again is very sweet and endearing of me to me.

i present to you my top ten:

10. Kevin McDonald: my favorite Kid In The Hall, a show i was utterly in love with at the time(and still am). I just saw Brain Candy last night, actually and I can assure you that I am probably the only 16 year old girl to ever drool over this man, who is skinny, pasty and has a penchant for cross-dressing. obviously, it was a cerebral thing.

9.Ice-T: I loved me some Ice-T, yo. I really didn't remember this, but he shows up in my diaries a LOT, mostly in quote form(so get your mind out of the gutter). i know that i did think that he had massive amounts of integrity, although i have no idea if i had any basis for than other than some stuff i read about him in magazines and that whole time warner thing. again, i'm not sure Ice was so much of a heartthrob, to anyone but me...

8.Michael Stipe: are you starting to notice a theme here? not exactly tiger beat material, my list. in my journal i actually made a note of the fact that i didn't care if he was 95 pounds and had a crater face. did i care that he was interested in men? not sure.

7.Eddie Vedder: here you go. this one is fairly obvious. he has all the things that would drive a 16 year old girl into a pubescent lustful frenzy...baby face, nice hair, flannel, a band, and for the more discerning teens such as myself, a buttload of social conscience and that coveted integrity. i was so serious back then...

6.Henry Rollins: i loved hank. LOVED HIM. this was before he was all over MTV like a jackass, but he was probably on his way there already, i just didn't see it. again, i just though he was the bees knees for all that powerful talking he did. by that equation i probably should have been infatuated with that tony rich dude, but i liked me some boys in bands. i remember my sister and i broke all the rules and unlocked the parental controls on our cable box(don't even fucking ask, dude. that is an entire post or twelve unto itself) in order to watch hank's first MTV special spoken word thing. yes, that was how i got myself in trouble in my youth, attempting to watch/listen to artists express themselves. my family was fucked.

5.Warren Zevon: again, i would have sold my soul to the devil to have Warren, who was like fifty years old at this point, stop by my parents house and ask for my hand in marriage. i would have dropped everything and taken up with the man who wrote "lawyers guns and money" and "excitable boy". i was a weird fucking girl.

4.Lou Reed: eloquent? check. intelligent? check. socially conscious? check. crater face? check. fifty years old? check. musician? check.

3.Lou Barlow: my original indie-rock crush. i figured lou and i had a ton in common: we were both quiet and unpopular and liked songs about love and being quiet and unpopular. and he wore glasses, appeared to shun bathing and drew pictures and stuff; apparently all this was grounds for attraction.

2.Michael Penn: i had a thing for this dude for years...sean's brother who enjoyed moderate success as, you guessed it, a musician. he fit all the criteria...arcane lyrics, relatively unknown, way the fuck older than me...

1.Here it is, your moment of Zen.... MORRISSEY.

that's right, readers. i was head over heels for a 40 year old gay, celibate, severely depressed englishman, who wrote songs called "heaven knows i'm miserable now" and "the boy with the thorn in his side" and i fantasized about the day that someone, hopefully morrissey himself would act out the lyrics to "there is a light that never goes out" at which point i would melt down to a puddle and no longer need anything from this cursed world.

too funny. you can thank me later, friends, for sharing this with you. to summarize, i apparently liked my men to have bad skin and longish hair, and if at all possible, to be gay and old enough to be my grandfather. needless to say, i didn't see a lot of action back then.


*******update**********

i figured i would add a few who were on the list (it was 33 people long-i told you i had no life) but didn't make the coveted top ten:

at #12, falling right into the profile: tom petty
at #15, naturally, trent reznor. two words: leather pants.
at #16, paul westerberg, who i still have a crush on.
at#20, elvis costello. diana krall wound up getting him, that bitch.
at #18, spike jonze, back when he had yet to become an acclaimed director and was just a skater boy with, you guessed it...bad skin
at #25, perry farrell. more gender-bending.
at #27, dave letterman. come on. he's still foxy at 100.
at #29, bob mould. another unlikely teen crush, to understate it greatly.
and finally, at #33...stewart copland. he weighed 75 pounds, had farrah fawcett hair and a.d.h.d., and obviously kept time behind sting when he was still(arguably) cool. perfect.