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?
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