I have been reading some crass comments on the death of Richard Jeni and the singer from Boston (who if I was a dilligent blogger I would look up his name). What I have to say about that, is that they were so good at what they did, which in some ways was creating lowest common denomenator entertainment, that they inspired others to push the boundaries other ways.

Boston will always hold a place in my heart if for no other reason than the song Amanda. In high school, I had a killer crush on this girl Amanda and one day I was going to take her by surprise and make her realize....

That actually didn't happen, but I did on my Senior trip in the worst motel in Kissimmee, Florida share 30 minutes in the hot tub with where at the end she gave me a kiss and told me I was a sweet guy who would make someone happy someday. (In the hip movie version of that story we would have talked about some irony of the Partridge family or some obscure 80's cartoon, In the coming of age movie the conversation would have been about our hopes and dreams. in both versions we would then have gone and made out) In the reality version I remember we actually kind of talked about other people in our class who had snuck alcohol on the bus and how we weren't partaking. Me, because I was vice-president of the class and didn't want to risk my reputation, her because she was more stoned than a witch in Salem (if the metaphor fits, its been a long time since I read the Crucible about how they kill witches.) This is one of those stories that reminds me how young I really was once. Some will immediately say stupid, but I was young and at that time in my life 30 minutes in the hot tub with Amanda was better than anything else, until later in the same trip when some other girl from my class gave me the 1994 version of a lap dance and told me what she would do to me if I took her to the Prom, she ended up going with an exchange student from Spain. That all being said I saw Amanda once more the summer following my Freshman year of college at a Papa Genos in Concord NH and she was pregnant. I knew she would never be mine, or less macho-ly that there would never be an us, but whenever I hear Amanda there is more than a feeling.