My Amazon Account Turns 22 This Year. What Did I Buy On the 'Net Twenty Years Ago?

I recently took a cyber trip down memory lane by reviewing my Amazon.com purchase history. I stumbled on it while looking for an old order. My first Amazon.com order was in July 1998. I had a couple chuckles and a few guffaws looking back and seeing what the young buck version of TR got excited to buy on-line at the end of the last millennium.

My earliest memory of Amazon was that it was a "CD and book" outlet. I also remember buying things in bundles to save on shipping. No idea if this was accurate. But let's review my first three orders of 1998, as well as a bonus one from 2000.

Order 1 (7/9/98): Filling in some musical gaps. I was still living with Zman in the sad upper story of a sad house in the sad town of Mt. Vernon, NY. I was driving an old Jetta with a dented rear fender. I would escape the sadness in this Jetta by driving to the beach frequently to get blacked-out drunk with my high school friends. So I was listening to a lot of tunes on the Discman I plugged into my car via the tape player. I bought three CDs in this, my very first, Amazon order: Maxwell's Embrya, Widespread Panic's self-titled album and the Beatles' Let it Be. Two for partying and one for lovemaking. I guess. I paid $39.51 for this order. Today, I could download all three to my phone in a minute, as part of my monthly Apple Music subscription.

Order 2 (7/30/98): Seeking profundity. Later that summer, I spent $34.56 for William Burroughs' Yage Letters, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and a Bob Dylan biography called No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan. I distinctly remember reading each of these books, so I guess it was money well spent. This was well before I started buying high-brow non-fiction that I wanted to read, but lacked the discipline to finish (looking at you, 1,152 pg Winston Churchill bio collecting dust on my shelf).

Order 3 (12/31/98): Wish I could get a mulligan on this order. I spent $28.53 on Ozomatli's debut CD and a book called The Bodybuilder's Nutrition Book, co-authored by Franco Colombu, who trained with Arnold back in the day. In reality, Franco's diet was a steady intake of anabolic steroids, but that chapter never made it into the prose. While I did like Ozomatli a bit at the time (remember Como Ves?), the money used for this order would've much been better spent at the White Horse Tavern, which was around the corner from me at the time.

Bonus order (3/27/00): I survived Y2K, so time to lean into drugs. I spent $44.55 on The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, On The Bus: The Complete Guide to the Legendary Trip of Ken Kesey..., and Stir Crazy: Cooking With Cannabis. I remember this order because it shipped to my work address b/c I didn't have a doorman at my Manhattan apartment. Thankfully it arrived at my cubicle unopened. I learned a lot from that cooking book, but only ever made brownies. My brownies always turned out good - too good some times. I was living with Spoid at the time, so I knew I was in a judgment-free zone to pursue creative baking.

What gems do you all have hidden in your Amazon's order history?

The Twelve Days of Gheorgemas: Day Four

On the fourth day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe gave to me 

Four Random Thoughts
Three Punk Rock Playlists 
Two Digits Throughout History 
And the debut of Mac McFis-ty

I get to follow Clarence's opuses (opi?). Sweet. No way my effort comes across as half-assed after his anthology of punk. But let's plow ahead, shall we? I have four random thoughts I want to share. Some are long, some are profound, some are sophomoric. You get the drill by this point. This is TR you're reading, after all.

Thought 1: 2016 was a year of ups and downs, but was also a year that brought me three weeks of bliss. 

2016 was the first calendar year in a long, long time for my wife and I that we did not have to deal with a parent that was severely ill or passed away. Our family is now, sadly, much much smaller and it's still heartbreaking to acknowledge that. 2016 was also a year with one big suckfest of a job loss for me. It was an odd, protracted affair with a company slowly and visibly combusting in front of me, where I needed to formally be fired to extract the maximum amount of nickels from my employer. So yeah, that kinda sucked.

But you know what didn't suck? Getting lucky and landing a new gig as the old one smoldered away. By July 4th, I had inked a new contract. That left me three weeks of staycation time with the family. Since we had already committed to a family vacation in August, and since the kids were committed to camps, I just kinda hung out. I did a bunch of AM hot yoga, I chatted up the moms at the pool club during the day, I watched Zman's kids chillax in the baby pool of said club. I cranked Lionel Richie with my kids in the afternoon. The weather was mostly perfect during that stretch too. It made me long to not have to work, assuming the weather could perpetually be 80 degrees. Making lemons out of lemonade was a real joy in 2016.  And yes, I want to move to San Diego.

Thought 2: I found some great old and new tunes to dig into this year. I've said this here before, but there is no rhyme or reason to when I encounter new music. And by "new", I mean something I haven't listened to a lot yet.

Here's one example, from a YouTube mix I made to signify the decay of my old job. I cranked it almost every day for a few weeks in my office while strategizing about how to best pillage the supply closet for my personal gain. It comes from a nearly 20 year-old Dylan album that I own on CD, but I needed some real life experience to absorb the profundity of the song. This is a song that you almost have to be "olidish" to fully absorb:



Here's another one I may have referred to in a post before that gains poignancy as I age. While I like Bruce's original (even if he is a hack), the tragedy of The Band adds extra meaning to this tune. My wife and I had an epic night many years ago watching The Last Waltz, and she decided (very late in the night) that she loved Rick Danko. I was cool with that because, um, because he was no longer living.

We swore that night to name the first dog we would buy Danko. We have yet to buy a dog, and I might overrule her to name our first dog Dave Winfield. But The Band, and their bassist, remain epic. Everything dies baby, that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back.



And here's one last one because we all need to be lifted up after this death and layoff chatter. One of the closing bookends of my three weeks of glorious unemployment was a mid-week concert in Brooklyn. The wife and I went to see Broken Social Scene, the indie rock gods of the aughts who went their separate ways for many years.

The show was beyond tremendous and was the highlight of my 2016 concert experiences (although I'm crossing my fingers about the two Phish shows I'm hitting at MSG later this month).  The quality of this video is questionable, and it may mean little to you if you are not familiar with this eclectic Canadian musical collective, but it sums up the majesty of this band: 8-12 musicians on stage at any time, lots of harmonies, and a real sense of musical profundity, at least to me. As a somber book-end, this was one of two bands I listened to a lot in 2004, when my wife and I first encountered severe family health issues. It was the first time I really felt like a grown-up and listened to music as a grown-up. Fuck you, cancer.



Thought 3: Yes, I still think about my alter-ego's porn name. In Miami over Thanksgiving, one of my most vivid memories is of being at Hard Rock Stadium and hearing the PA announce the Dolphins' starting guard, Jermon Bushrod. My son who likes the Fins blindly cheered, as he did all the starters, but I stood up and started clapping, wondering why we haven't heard the Bushrod surname before in the annals of erotica. Way to go, Jermon.

Thought 4: I can't wait for my mid-life crisis to peak. 

This may only appeal to Mark, but I recently indulged in tattoo number two, after several years of apathy and sporadic consternation. This new ink is another result of my glorious three weeks of unemployment. The work was not done until October, but I laid the groundwork with the tattoo parlor (Bang Bang, which is headed by LeBron's personal tattoo guy!) in July. I'm now officially too old to give a fuck about my ink and any professional consequences. And I am already planning number three. Zero. Fucks. Given.

The enjoyment of bucking the traditional aging yuppie trend as a 40-something dude is quite enjoyable. While I still foresee a traditional mid-life crisis-type purchase on my horizon (looking at you, German convertible), I think there will be more bold, eclectic decisions. I told my wife that after our youngest goes to college, I want to sell as many of my possessions as I can, maintain a very modest home, and become a citizen of the world, traveling as much as physically possible. A 55 y/o man can take an ayahuasca journey in South America, right?

Happy Gheorghemas, ladies and gents. Let me know if you have an ayahuasca hook-up.

Technology is Neat. So is Bob Dylan.

So Bob Dylan's team just came out with something super-cool, and I want to share it. I don't think I can embed it b/c it's too fancypants. So I'll just put a hyperlink below. 

Sony Music has released a video for the song "Like a Rolling Stone" with a bunch of different "channels", with the channels being simulations of banal cable TV programming, with characters lip-synching the song. There is Drew Carey from The Price is Right, a Home Shopping Network segment, reality TV, Marc Maron, etc. 

If you choose to click the link here, you should note that the "TV screen" has channels you can change. Give it a whirl. It's Thanksgiving Eve and you ain't got nothing better to do.

Full article from Dylan's official web site is below. Happy Turkey Day, fockers.

New York, NY - When Bob Dylan released “Like A Rolling Stone” in 1965 – forever shattering all pre-conceived notions for what a pop single could be in terms of length, sound and subject matter - no official music video was ever created to accompany his release. But nearly a half-century later, a groundbreaking interactive project has been created for the song, allowing fans to experience the classic recording in unprecedented ways. Today, the Bob Dylan – “Like a Rolling Stone” Interactive Video is unveiled worldwide on bobdylan.com, coinciding with The Complete Album Collection Volume 1, just released on Columbia/Legacy Recordings. 

The Bob Dylan – “Like a Rolling Stone” Interactive Video showcases a patented technology platform, created by the digital media company Interlude, which allows viewers to play an active role in the story of the music video. The experience begins when users press play and have the ability to surf 16 different “TV channels” within the video in real-time. These channels are comprised of American TV formats in which, no matter what channel you are on, the hosts and actors are all lip-syncing the lyrics to "Like a Rolling Stone" as the song continues to play seamlessly. No two people will engage with the video in the same way twice. The full interactive video can also be experienced on iPhones and iPads and is easily shared across social media platforms. 

A number of recognizable TV shows and talent can be spotted throughout the firm, and savvy viewers will no doubt make connections between some of these appearances and the song’s lyrics, as well as to certain moments from throughout Bob Dylan’s 50-plus years as a worldwide cultural figure. 

“We're forever looking for compelling, creative ways to distinguish our artists and their music from the din. The Interlude treatment of “Like a Rolling Stone” provides us with a unique, playful, highly engaging platform from which we can reach - and ideally attract - Dylan fans from across the spectrum," said Adam Block, President of Sony Music/Legacy Recordings. 

“As a musician myself, I can’t imagine a more thrilling project to be a part of than helping create the first video for ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ which is widely regarded as one of the greatest songs of all time,” said Yoni Bloch, founder and CEO of Interlude. “The song has repeatedly been voted the No. 1 Greatest Song of All Time by Rolling Stone, and is generally regarded as revolutionary, influencing both artists and popular music around the world. Like the song, we hope Interlude will inspire creative professionals everywhere to develop new and unique ways to tell stories through video.” 

With its cutting-edge interactive video technology, Interlude (repeat winner of Most Innovative Video at the MTV O Music Awards) partnered with award-winning content creator Pulse Films (LCD Soundsystem’s "Shut Up and Play the Hits" and Blur’s "No Distance Left to Run") and Walter Pictures (Best Music Video Award winner by Time Magazine, Pitchfork, and MTV Woodie Awards) to make an extraordinary first official video for Dylan’s seminal song. 

The video is being released in conjunction with The Complete Album Collection Volume 1, from Columbia/Legacy Recordings. This 47-CD boxed set contains 35 studio titles (including the first-ever North American release of 1973's Dylan album on CD); 6 live albums; the 2-CD Side Tracks, which compiles in one set previously released non-album singles, tracks from the original Biograph boxed-set and other compilations; a deluxe-bound hardcover book featuring new album-by-album liner notes from famed author Clinton Heylin and a new introduction by noted journalist and television personality Bill Flanagan. This project is also available as a limited-edition harmonica-shaped USB stick containing all the music, in both MP3 and FLAC lossless formats. The Bob Dylan Bootleg Series App was also just released, featuring over 500 pieces of rare and historical content.

Here comes the story of The Hurricane

This video seems appropriate for live-blogging the current weather ... until someone else writes a real post.