Media exposure, it will make him all the rage

A few years ago I rudely shut down an anecdote bunnyhugger tried telling me, about two guys she overheard talking in the men's room. ``You did not,'' I insisted, before letting her know about the strict DO NOT PERCEIVE ME atmosphere that dominates men's bathrooms. She had reached her tender age without knowing of such a thing and mentioning the customs of men in bathrooms has become the surest way to make her laugh uproariously.

Still, while the do-not-talk is the surest rule of the men's bathroom, there are exceptions, and the Buggles t-shirt I got at the recent concert provoked one of them. I wore my shirt for the first time at pinball league this week --- bunnyhugger debuted hers at the women'e tournament on Sunday (she won first place) --- and it's a nice design, based on the cover to Adventures In Modern Recording.

At the barcade, after the end of regular play, I went to the bathroom for the customary reasons. As I was washing, a man a little older than me said, ``I like your taste in shirts, that's a great band.'' While startled to be acknowledged by another person in there --- well, I guess it is technically a gender-neutral bathroom --- I did my best to be gracious. Yes, they're one of my and my wife's favorites. He went further, saying how he loved both their albums. bunnyhugger would, later, be awestruck by some normal person knowing the band had two albums.

So I told him, we were lucky enough to see the Buggles in concert a couple weeks ago, when I got this shirt. He was awestruck to hear that the Buggles had been in concert. ``Both Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes?'' And, my goodness, I might have just met the person whose car we once saw in the zoo parking lot, the one with the personalized licence plate 'BUGGLES'. (Or possibly the car belonged to someone who owns a beagle/pug cross.) I had to admit, no, just Trevor Horn; Geoff Downes was touring with Yes. But I told him about the ``SOLITARY BUGGLE'' T-shirt and he was delighted. And explained how Trevor Horn came back for the main show, playing bass guitar for Seal. Guy was delighted.

So I'm happy to have been able to meet the other Lansing-area Buggles fan. And I guess I feel good letting him know the Buggles, or at least a Buggles, toured and made it to Detroit just recently. I hope he's not waiting for the next tour, and I also hope there is a next tour soon enough that he can make it. It feels a bit rotten to give someone the news that a band they really like (more or less) toured for the first time ever and they just missed it.

Trivia: On the 17th of June, 1973, the mobile launcher and mobile service structure for the Skylab 3/2 launch received several lightning strikes. Damaged parts on the Command/Service Module, mostly instrumentation, were replaced and retested or waived, as was damaged ground-support equipment. Source: Skylab: A Chronology, Roland W Newkirk, Ivan D Ertel, Courtney G Brooks. NASA SP-4011.

Currently Reading: The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human, Siddhartha Mukherjee.