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5fe60db
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So you get less shy about how hard you have to try. And you don't bother hiding your Kotter tapes. Sure, they expose some of my appalling deficiencies. But my appalling deficiencies are all I have to offer. Is there such a thing as romantic love that does not depend on someone embracing my deficiencies? I hope I will never find out.
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Rob Sheffield |
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0ee3307
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That's why I never married. Marriage is lonely, but it ain't private." That was always my most intense fear about getting married: When everything sucked and I was by myself, I thought, Well, at least I don't have another miserable person to worry about. I figured if you give up your private place and it still turns out to be lonely, you're just screwed. So I felt safer not even thinking about it."
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Rob Sheffield |
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f65767a
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Getting a Dog: She won this one easily, as I've already mentioned; I thought my graceful surrender would win me a concession or two down the line. i was wrong. Renee saw the dog not as a personal victory for her, but a huge favor she was doing me by teaching me the joys of being pissed on by an animal. This is just one of the adorable quirks of the dog, best friend God ever gave humanity in this crazy little world.
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Rob Sheffield |
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485b97e
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There are millions of songs in the world, and millions of ways to connect them into mixes. Making the connections is part of the fun of being a fan.
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Rob Sheffield |
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5aa7775
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Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of a life.
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Rob Sheffield |
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610dea0
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This is what they call "hitting rock bottom," and they call it that because it rocks."
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Rob Sheffield |
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8766287
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Everything was changing, that was obvious. The world was so full of music, it seemed we could never run out. 'Twas bliss in that dawn to be alive, but to be young and overworked and underexposed and stuck in a nowhere town was very heaven. It was our time, the first one we had to ourselves. It was a smashing time, and then it ended, because that's what times do.
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Rob Sheffield |
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0bb0a12
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Human benevolence is totally unfair. We don't live in a kind or generous world, yet we are kind and generous.
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Rob Sheffield |
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98ee5a2
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At that moment, I knew she was the girl for me. Of course, we'd already been going out for a few weeks, so I wasn't, like, shocked or anything. But still, it's never not nice to to keep realizing.
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Rob Sheffield |
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51484f0
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He sang about girls in space-why not? That's where all the cool girls were. (They weren't where I could find them, that was for sure.)
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Rob Sheffield |
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dd63fd4
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I felt indestructible, or at least undestroyed, more alive than I'd ever been.
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Rob Sheffield |
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06974b7
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My ears rang all the way home and I didn't want them to stop. It made me want to start something.
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Rob Sheffield |
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44ade12
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For all karaoke freaks around the nation, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is one of those sacred anthems. It's the kind of song that announces, "Dearly beloved, we have so totally gathered here today."
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Rob Sheffield |
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4982cbf
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It started off as a playful fantasy we talked about. Then the fantasy became a plan, the way fantasies sometimes do, and the plan became a future. It didn't hit us as the climax of anything, just the celebration of something that had already happened to us. I guess we hoped the celebration would help us understand what had happened.
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Rob Sheffield |
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b85e91d
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But "ma'am" doesn't translate in the North, where it just startles and offends." --
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Rob Sheffield |
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991ca89
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There's only the one, see. When you fall in love with a girl, she's the bloody White Album. That is what you whisper to yourself, when you don't understand her at all. You just keep telling yourself, she's the bloody Beatles White Album and there's only one of her.
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music
beatles
girl
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Rob Sheffield |
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973d170
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Planet Earth is blue. Blue blue electric blue, that's the color of my room. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues. I never did anything out of the blue. Now my Blue Jean's blue. See these eyes so green, I could stare for a thousand years. See these eyes so red. Oh you've got green eyes, oh you've got blue eyes, oh you've got gray eyes. I'll give you television, I'll give you eyes of blue. I looked in her eyes, they were blue, but nobod..
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on-bowie
rob-sheffield
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Rob Sheffield |
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0eccb9e
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But I never stop playing my mixes. Every fan makes them. The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with - nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of a life.
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Rob Sheffield |
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eba2db1
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I believe that when you're making a mix, you're making history.
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Rob Sheffield |
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68d8fb4
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I always envied my friends who had older siblings who could guide them through the teenage wasteland.
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Rob Sheffield |
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89c733e
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Being a husband is scary....We have everything to lose. We have made promises. We have given hostages to fortune and challenged fate to a dance-off. We have chosen a future full of loss....when you marry somebody, you are guaranteeing that you will have real problems, a future full of them, the kind that involve death and disease and grief. As husbands, we have *planned* on major anguish. We can't afford to use up all our patience at once, ..
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Rob Sheffield |
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60b69b2
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H]e asked Renee, "What does rock and roll have today that it didn't have in the sixties?" Renee said, "Tits," which in retrospect strikes me as not a bad one-word off-the-dome answer at all. The nineties fad for indie rock overlapped precisely with the nineties fad for feminism. The idea of a pop culture that was pro-girl, or even just not anti-girl -- that was a 1990s mainstream dream, rather than a 1980s or 2000s one, and it was real for ..
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Rob Sheffield |
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0d8ad40
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I try to stay in touch with my friends who are far away, and I do a bad job of that, but I carry them with me.
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Rob Sheffield |
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718b056
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i'm very expressive. i deserve to feel pretty. i kissed the blarney stone. i am strong. i am brave. im a good friend. I'm a good sister. I'm a good wife. i am a good in-law. I'm a good daughter. i am a good niece. I'm a good beagle mother. i am a good granddaughter. i work hard for it, honey. im superfly TNT motherfucker. im a pilot of the airwaves. im a better third baseman that brooks robinson. I B-E-A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E. i have exceptiona..
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Rob Sheffield |
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7855767
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You lose a certain kind of innocence when you experience this type of kindness. You lose your right to be a jaded cynic. You can no longer go back through the looking glass and pretend not to know what you know about kindness. It's a defeat, in a way.
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Rob Sheffield |
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ddd9fcd
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When you want to start living, what do you do? How do you start? Where do you go?
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Rob Sheffield |
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7797c7a
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Anything can be a love song as long as two people care about it.
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Rob Sheffield |
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d944d5a
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As the old saw goes, the Irish songs are full of happy wars and unhappy lovers.
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Rob Sheffield |
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5e78163
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THE TOP TEN: David Bowie and Mick Rock, Moonage Daydream. Universe, 2002. David Buckley, Strange Fascination. Virgin, 1999. Kevin Cann, David Bowie: A Chronology. Simon & Schuster, 1984. Kevin Cann, Any Day Now: The London Years, 1947-1974. Adelita, 2010. Simon Goddard, Ziggyology. Ebury, 2013. Chris O'Leary, Rebel Rebel: All the Songs of David Bowie from '64 to '76. Zero, 2015. Nicholas Pegg, The Complete David Bowie. Titan, 2011. Thomas J..
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Rob Sheffield |
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287e9bd
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Whatever doesn't kill you makes you incredibly annoying.
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Rob Sheffield |
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a94d8b4
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put the "freak" in "frequently drunk and belligerent."
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Rob Sheffield |
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f191d4a
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My ancestors spent centuries in the hills of County Kerry, waist-deep in sheep shit, getting shot at by English soldiers, and my grandparents crossed the ocean in coffin ships to come to America, just so I could get possum rabies?
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Rob Sheffield |
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a31b8b2
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I get sentimental over the music of the '90s. Deplorable, really. But I love it all. As far as I'm concerned, the '90s was the best era for music ever, even the stuff that I loathed at the time, even the stuff that gave me stomach cramps. Every note from those years is charged with life for me now. For instance, I hated Pearl Jam at the time. I thought they were pompous blowhards. Now, whenever a Pearl Jam song comes on the car radio, I fin..
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Rob Sheffield |
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519cfde
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It was a smashing time, and then it ended, because that's what times do.
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Rob Sheffield |
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7b4f2a8
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And being a husband made me helpless, because I had somebody to protect (somebody a little high-strung, who had a tough time emotionally with things like the lights going out indefinitely).
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marriage
husband
protect
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Rob Sheffield |
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e7879b0
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On the way we talked about the road sign Bridge Ices Before Road. I always wondered, If that's a problem, why don't they just build the bridge out of the same stuff they use to build the road? Drema explained that the bridge isn't made out of different material than the road, but that the bridge ices quicker because it's alone, hanging there without the land under it to keep it warm.
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bridge
heat
warmth
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Rob Sheffield |
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66d6f52
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Sometimes you lie in a strange room, in a strange person's home, and you feel yourself bending out of shape. Melting, touching something hot, something that warps you in drastic and probably irreversible ways you won't get to take stock of until it's too late. I felt myself just melting in Renee's room that night.
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Rob Sheffield |
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9506ccb
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Problems that don't get fixed, situations that neither get resolved nor go away, and annoyances you live with year by year--that's the engine knock of a long-running relationship.
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Rob Sheffield |
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911cb94
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We want to freeze the perfect moment, hold on to it, at least long enough to understand it. But it dances on with us or without us, so we jump in and try to keep up. The universe is expanding and we are just two of a billion stars.
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music
life
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Rob Sheffield |
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832e3ca
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I'm sure the Sixties Beatles were great. But I bet not as great as the Nineties Beatles.
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Rob Sheffield |
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56425e1
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She also told me about the night one of her astrophysics friends went to a bar trivia contest where the final question was "What does Kelvin measure?" The winning answer was "heat," but her friend explained that Kelvin measures temperature, not heat, since heat is energy and is measured in energy units like joules or ergs. The astronomer refused to back down, until the battle had to be settled with a chug-off. These astro people are hard-co..
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Rob Sheffield |
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6bddcc6
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The songs were all either fast or sad. Because all songs should be either fast or sad.
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songs
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Rob Sheffield |
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3f6b15c
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I remember the summer of 1996, at a drunken wedding with one of my professors, a Hendrix-freak baby boomer, when he was complaining about the 'bullet-in-the-head rock and roll' the kids were listening to today, and he asked Renee, 'What does rock and roll have today that it didn't have in the sixties?' Renee said, 'Tits', which in retrospect strikes me as not a bad one-word off-the-dome answer at all. The nineties fad for indie rock overlap..
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Rob Sheffield |
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fb33139
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I realize it's frowned on to choose a mate based on something superficial like the music they love. But superficiality has been good to me. In the animal kingdom, Renee and I would have recognized each other's scents; for us, it was a matter of having the same favorite Meat Puppets album. Music was a physical bond between us, and the fact that she still owned her childhood 45 of Andy Gibb's "I Just Want to Be Your Everything" was tantamount..
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Rob Sheffield |