I am, for better or worse, a pack rat. This is mostly for worse, as I accumulate piles upon piles of personal effluvia (cards, pictures, ticket stubs, etc.) and have no place to put them. I’d gotten into the habit of stashing everything at my parents’ house, in a single enormous drawer under the bed. When something went into that drawer, it never came back, man. It never came back.
Alas, my parents plan to move soon, which means I have a limited amount of time to organize and curate this magnificent archive of worthless shit. When I was home a few weeks ago, I grabbed several armfuls of stuff and lugged them back to NYC.
My wife did not agree with this decision.
So far, I’ve found many items of dubious provenance, including a pen (attached to a piece of paper reading “happy birthday, asshole”), a two-pack of pantyhose (unopened) and an unsanded square of wood that reads “1994 VESPY award for Achievement in Music” (actually, that one I totally earned). In short, my archival material rivals anything you might see in the Smithsonian. Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Vega pales beside the mom-scrawled invitation to my 21st birthday party or the Playbill for the 1996 Goodspeed Opera House production of “Annie,” in which my sister played the role of “Star To Be.”
As I rifle through the pile, I’ll share some of its more notable (and scannable) treasures. This one came courtesy of the nice publicity folks at Atlantic Records. It dates back to the mid-1990s.
