The most fun I have had on this deployment (so far)

Another long one... you may want to sit down for this...

Let me explain something to you all, incase you aren’t aware. There is a digital revolution going on in America and the young people (how old do I sound saying “young people”) are leading the revolution. Say goodbye to CDs, DVDs and live television… no I’m not talking about IPods and Tivo, I mean gone are the days of movies and music being on a disk and TV shows being only on your TV. Everything you can watch and listen to is available digitally and can be shared with thumb drives, even passed via blogs. I came out here with an empty 250MB external hard drive (if you are already confused about what I am talking about find the nearest person under 30 and have them translate) that is now almost completely filled. Filled with what… um almost every good movie ever made, every good TV show that comes on, and thousands of songs. It is common practice for Marines (who are continually linked to the latest batch of 18 year old high school graduates) to swap out hard drives and copy the good stuff from one hard drive to another.

Now, while I watch movies and TV shows every so often, I consider myself to be musically inclined and somewhat a walking music anthology. You like 80’s rap, I got it. You like classical, I got you covered. You want the latest cool bands not on the radio, easy. You want music from when my parents were kids, I got that too (assuming you like big band from the roaring 20’s).

Recently I was going through a co-workers hard drive and I saw a folder the contained the Billboard top 100 songs for every year from 1970 until 2007. Think about this for a second. Each decade has 1000 songs. So I got the top 3700 songs from 1970 and on. Not only that this guy had the Rolling Stone (magazine not band) top 500 Rock and Roll Songs of all time as of 2007. What a music find!

Not I added them all to my ITunes, but I am too OCD to just let the song title, artist, album title and genre be filled in by the last guy. I consider the song Fame (which was song 66 in 1980) to be 80’s pop while others would consider it 80’s soundtrack or just soundtrack. I can’t have that kind of mislabeling going on. Some songs don’t even copy the title and artist into ITunes. So for the past two weeks or so (when I wasn't reading or working) I have been going song by song putting in the correct title, artist, album, and genre for each song; and I am deleting songs I already have as to avoid having duplicates. Now while this sounds on the verge of dysfunctional and tedious the fun part has been remembering songs I might not have heard in like 15 years. While that in itself is fun, the fun part has been having crazy flashbacks to days of old in my life. And since the songs are arranged by year, I am slowly going back in time. Prime example… if you asked me what girl I had a crush on in the 4th grade I would not have been able to tell you. I probably wouldn’t have even remembered having a crush back then. Girls probably still had cooties. I would have denied the whole thing. BUT, when the song “1,2,3,4" by Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine came on… I was instantly back in my elementary school auditorium for the school talent show. A girl (a 6th grader at that, ooh scandalous) and her musical partridge family-like siblings performed that song. She was the lead singer of the family which was why her family was allowed to enter the talent show-like event. I don’t think it was actually a talent show but not the point. Bam! Just like that I time traveled to the 4th grade (btw that song was song number 62 in 1988) and when I was 7 years old. It took a few mins but I was even able to remember the girl’s name. I don’t remember anything from 1988 except the LA Dodgers won the world series when Orel Hershiser pitched and Kirk Gibson hit that home run where he pumped his arm the whole way around the bases to win the series for LA. Hey, that was a big event in the life of a 7 year old boy in LA. Other than that I can hardly tell you who my teacher was in 4th grade yet alone anything else. There have been other fun moments traveling down memory lane but I will save those for some other time. The flash backs have been fun, but not enough to go back to my high school reunion. While I think it is fun to remember days of old and the silly stupid things young boys do, I like being able to cut my stroll down memory lane off when I choose to.

Now for those of you thinking “ohh, I want to know who you had a crush on in 4th grade” get over it. I’m taking it to my grave. And for those of you thinking “ohh, what does wifey think about your 4th grade crush?” Get over it. She had a boy name their pig after her when she was younger in an effort to win her affection. So when it comes to old stupid crushes from like a million years ago, I got her beat hands down. What? Was that too personal? Sorry.

Now, while the list of my past crushes is short (but growing) it is all in the past and just silly now. The whole point here was just how much fun I have had listening to the chart toping bands/songs such as:

- Sisqo’s Thong song - #14 of 2000
- Miami by Will Smith - #53 of 1999
- All For One by Sting, Bryan Adams and Rod Stweart (from Robin Hood Prince of Thieves) - #12 from 1994
- Now and Forever by Richard Marx - #23 from 1994 (memory lane story – I was in Jr High 7th grade and during his speech for Student Body President one candidate (9th grader) brought his buddy on stage and they performed this song playing their guitars. Not sure what else he said in his speech but he won. It also took a while to remember his name but I finally did it - Steve Chung. He ended up being class president at the high school too I think.)
- Nothing my love can’t fix by Joey Lawrence (whoa) - #83 from 1993 (yes that guy from Blossom made a CD and happened to make the top 100. Let’s just say 1993 was a weak year for good music, that or the power of the teenage girl was realized once again.)
- All I Want Is by Toad the Wet Sprocket - #65 from 1992 (memory lane story – this CD was the first CD I ever owned. I got a new gismo called a CD player for Christmas and got this CD and the CD from the TV show “The Heights”. You may remember their song “How to You Talk to an Angel”.)
- C’est La Vie by Robbie Nevil - #16 from 1987 (oddly enough I heard this song on the British radio station just this morning. I think the last time this song was on the radio was 1987... even in England.)
- Borderline by the then young and pre-karbala Madonna - #35 from 1984
- Who Can it Be Now by Men At Work - #30 from 1982 (oddly enough this is the ring tone my Mexican Marine friend has as his ringtone on his cell phone)
- And the number 1 song from the year I was born – 1981…
Bette Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes… some of you probably remember that song when it came out in 1981. And to those who can remember this song I say – you're old.

I will have all these files available to any of you to copy when I get home. So you can have your own fun down musical memory lane.

And I finaly got to the 7's music and I must say the 70's had crappy music. I realize that since I wasn't around to fully "appreciate" the times I may not fully "appreciate" the music. I am sure PO will have the same thoughts on music from the 80's and 90's but I won't let him utter the words "the 80'd had crappy music". A person could get beat up for something like that. Bands like Bananarama and Culture Club are timeless.

With that I'm out.