Now this one's a doozy, so watch out and pay attention.

So yesterday, on my way home, I drove to an outlet mall about ten minutes away from where I work. I remembered there was a little used CD store and I felt like treating myself and browsing through their selection. However I had forgotten just how much going to an outlet mall North of Chicago is like being on foreign, almost alien, soil.

First off, time has been largely frozen in this place and the year is 1982. I remember 1982 and I can tell you that it wasn’t that great a year for mainstream fashion. Tight jeans, big hair and beer t-shirts rule the land. I swertagod I also saw a 16 year old with a huge tattoo along her lower back; you know, the place that most girls deem appropriate and “sexy” to add ink nowadays. (Okay, it IS sexy…but not on a sixteen year-old. I think what bothered me even more was the realization that there was a good chance her boyfriend was my age.

This got me to thinking about how Photogal has fallen in love with a more rural area in Michigan as of late. There’s an older artist’s community – much like her favorite Mexican city San Miguel de Allende – and she enjoys the country space and fresh air. She loves it and she has been nosing around and looking at property here and there over the last few months and I can tell she really wouldn’t mind moving there full-time if she could. She knows that it would probably just be a weekend getaway though.

What she can’t figure understand is why I might not be so hot on living someplace further removed from the city. Now you have to understand that Photogal has lived within sixty miles of Chicago her entire life. I haven’t. I’ve lived on a farm. I’ve lived eight miles from the Mexican border. I’ve lived five block from the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve lived with a small wooded area that I and some friends built a tree-house in from scratch in my backyard. I’ve lived above a coffee shop. I’ve lived in a neighborhood where gunfire is more common than cricket chirping. I’ve lived a lot of places.

I remember what it was like to live in a more rural area though and know that isn’t for me. The people bewilder me (even when I was six I was confused with how simplistic some folks seemed) and I truly believe that things are more complicated in a further removed area. People tend to be more judgmental because there aren’t as many folks to distract or dissuade you from a particular point of view.¹ I don’t know. I don’t really want to elaborate because I think my feelings on this are so intertwined in events from my past I can’t really speak as objectively as I would want to. Suffice to say that there is a difference between the country mouse and the city mouse and I am most definitely a city mouse now.

Anyway, so there I am at this outlet mall, shuffling though CDs and finding absolutely nothing. I’m just about ready to leave the store when I see a wall of 50% off CDs so I walk on over and what should be taking up its own little section than the debut Loud Lucy album! Now I was never a huge Loud lucy fan back in the day but they had their moment of fame based on a solid single named “Ticking” that I still spin when I DJ and the fact that one of the guys in the band dated Louise from Veruca Salt until he dumped her for Alanis Morissette.²

Most importantly though, the drummer of Loud Lucy was a man who years later would become a friend of mine; Mister Mark Doyle.

So I buy one of the CDs – and was tempted to buy the whole lot and hand them out at Ten56 but in the end I contained myself – and to my delight I discover that there are photos galore of the band on the inside booklet. I have decided to share a few of my favorite snaps of Mark with you today.


First we have Flying-though-the-air-Mark:

And then we have oh-so-thoughtful-Mark:

Okay, okay…I’ve teased him enough. This one actually looks like Mark:

Handsome devil, eh? By the way ladies, yes Mark is single and he holds the rare distinction of being one of the few of my male friends I would allow – even encourage – to date my sister…if I had a sister. He also currentoy plays drum in the most excellent rock and/or roll band The Cells and if you’d like to meet him they’re doing a show sponsored by me at Subterranean on Friday may 13.

Wow. From outlet malls to country mice to gross generalizations to the Chicago signing frenzy of ’94 to embarrassing my friend to shameless self-promotion! I am a god among men.

¹To be fair the same can be said of urbanites on many subjects, but I think that has to do with a more willful close-mindedness than with a lack of options available to them with which to form an opinion.

²For the record, I’ve always thought Louise was the hot one in Veruca Salt and couldn’t figure out why she kept getting so publicly dumped. Last I heard she was dating a friend of mine, who’s a solid guy, so at least now she’s being treated like the hottie she is.