Nice. Better description than Dazed and Confused dialogue, and on par with Over The Edge!😂. But, what about the “cute eighth girl with perfectly feathered jet black hair”? 🤙🏽
I too was a 'Hat Head. Still am! Think I told you about the unfortunate t-shirt choice I made in middle school when everyone else was wearing Rush and the stylized logo of Foghat made it easy to ridicule... Great read man, as always.
Oh yeah — I'm sure those Rush fans at your school thought the 'Hat's meat and potatoes approach was pretty weak, too. I loved both at the time (and still do), but I never bought into the idea that technical proficiency = superior music.
So now I get to find out what life at JB Jr. High was like for a 7th grader from AnnArbor! JB is still there, a middle school now, with huge restoration and new construction going on....and, of course, few of the many middle-schoolers who live in the area you lived in go to LA public schools after 5th grade! and we all know why.
Great blog, I can so relate to this. I first got high on hashish at an amusement park...let's just say that it was very amusing. Bullies at school? Oh yeah, I went to a school full of rich socs (not me), and quickly learned how to become invisible, a practice I still use today. I LOVE Foghat! Loved the edition of Savoy Brown that they evolved from too. They also come in a close second place to a 1970s hard rock band that knew how to swagger style in satin and velvet, with first place going to Uriah Heep. Dolls don't count, they were a different thing altogether, and from a different planet, as were Marc and Ziggy.
Oh yeah, I love the Heep - though I wouldn’t get hip to them until much, much later. “Stealin’” and “Easy Living” got a bit of play on WLUP, but I don’t think I heard a full album of theirs until I was well into my 20s.
Very enjoyable... Why do these stories make it sound like every American high school movie was actually really close to the truth? Also, there is NO WAY anyone would have lit up a joint on a London bus. Smoked a cigarette, drunk a beer, started a fight, bullied other kids, swore? Sure. But no reefer. Or even cannabis (we did not know what a "reefer" was, different words...)
Also, this: "like a junior anthropologist hoping to one day fit in with the tribe he was studying, I silently observed the way they dressed and carried themselves"... Sweet.
That's funny, because my own high school experience was very atypical — a small, liberal arts-oriented private school with about 65 kids per class year — and life there bore little resemblance at all to your average American high school movie. But my public school/junior high experiences were definitely another story!
Nice. Better description than Dazed and Confused dialogue, and on par with Over The Edge!😂. But, what about the “cute eighth girl with perfectly feathered jet black hair”? 🤙🏽
Hahaha - interesting slip there. Thanks for the catch; now corrected!
I too was a 'Hat Head. Still am! Think I told you about the unfortunate t-shirt choice I made in middle school when everyone else was wearing Rush and the stylized logo of Foghat made it easy to ridicule... Great read man, as always.
Oh yeah — I'm sure those Rush fans at your school thought the 'Hat's meat and potatoes approach was pretty weak, too. I loved both at the time (and still do), but I never bought into the idea that technical proficiency = superior music.
All the shit we go through as adults, only to realize nothing will ever be as intimidating as junior high.
Seriously.
So now I get to find out what life at JB Jr. High was like for a 7th grader from AnnArbor! JB is still there, a middle school now, with huge restoration and new construction going on....and, of course, few of the many middle-schoolers who live in the area you lived in go to LA public schools after 5th grade! and we all know why.
I will say that their AP program was pretty good - though they wouldn’t let me into it until eighth grade.
Great blog, I can so relate to this. I first got high on hashish at an amusement park...let's just say that it was very amusing. Bullies at school? Oh yeah, I went to a school full of rich socs (not me), and quickly learned how to become invisible, a practice I still use today. I LOVE Foghat! Loved the edition of Savoy Brown that they evolved from too. They also come in a close second place to a 1970s hard rock band that knew how to swagger style in satin and velvet, with first place going to Uriah Heep. Dolls don't count, they were a different thing altogether, and from a different planet, as were Marc and Ziggy.
Oh yeah, I love the Heep - though I wouldn’t get hip to them until much, much later. “Stealin’” and “Easy Living” got a bit of play on WLUP, but I don’t think I heard a full album of theirs until I was well into my 20s.
Very enjoyable... Why do these stories make it sound like every American high school movie was actually really close to the truth? Also, there is NO WAY anyone would have lit up a joint on a London bus. Smoked a cigarette, drunk a beer, started a fight, bullied other kids, swore? Sure. But no reefer. Or even cannabis (we did not know what a "reefer" was, different words...)
Also, this: "like a junior anthropologist hoping to one day fit in with the tribe he was studying, I silently observed the way they dressed and carried themselves"... Sweet.
That's funny, because my own high school experience was very atypical — a small, liberal arts-oriented private school with about 65 kids per class year — and life there bore little resemblance at all to your average American high school movie. But my public school/junior high experiences were definitely another story!