I smile at faces in a picture parade

Those following bunny_hugger less closely than I do might not have noticed, but she's picked up a case of Buggles fandom. It built casually over the past couple of weeksand was fed by several things, among them the discovery of their video for ``Living In The Plastic Age'', a festival of New Wave music and cheap Chroma-Key effects and weird editing and video game references which dated so rapidly we could probably pin down to about a fifteen-minute stretch of time just when it was recorded. bunny_hugger said that from that video the Buggles ``could have got a patent on the 1980s''. (This even though ``Living In The Plastic Age'' is a little early for the 1980s.) It's worth looking at. It keeps rewarding watching with more and more wonderful New Wave imagery. Oh, and music.

But I think I'm most enjoying that I get to sit nearby and watch her fandom catching like this. She's been effervescent with cheer and enthusiasm and the remarkably complicated story of the Buggles and their albums and the songs of theirs which other bands recorded and even more remarkable things, like resemblances between their songs and a particular theme of the Kinks. I'm not as overwhelmed with the band as she is, but I feel the induced thrill of being around her, and am glad for it.

I'm a fan of many things, certainly, and I pick up new things here and there. But I tend to be more reserved. Stoic is too strong a word for it, but I lean in that direction. It's as though I'm afraid being too enthusiastic will use the thing up, or that I'll come back to feeling ridiculous two years from now when I wonder what I ever saw in the thing. There's some good traits about that solidness, but, there are wonderful things in diving into something with wild enthusiasm. I'm glad that she's so near me that I can feel the hopping about with excitement, even if I'm not quite ready to leap myself.

Trivia: The evening of the Great Blizzard of 1888, exactly four paying customers --- at 25 cents each --- came to vaudeville pioneer Tony Pastor's Music Hall. Pastor invited them into the orchestra seat, and invited Tammany politicians to see the show for free. Seventy accepted. At the end of the night Pastor brought out sandwiches and champagne for a midnight party with the four paid and 70 unpaid attendees. Source: The Epic Of New York City: A Narrative History, Edward Robb Ellis.

Currently Reading: The Triumph Of Numbers, I B Cohen.

So If You Can't Win The Clock Game You Should Feel Bad: I conclude most of the big stuff about The Price Is Right, for now at least.