POP-A-LOOZA: The Beatles And The Green Hornet For MEESTER TACO

 

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is a look back at a couple of silly little radio commercials I wrote for a fast food restaurant in my college town of Brockport, NY: "The Beatles And The Green Hornet For MEESTER TACO."

One of these days, I should post the script for the one actual, broadcast radio commercial I ever wrote and got on the air. One of these days. Meanwhile, my college and post-college experiences in Brockport gave birth to posts concerning Main Street Records, the Flashcubes, the Flashcubes again, the Kinks, the Kinks again, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, the Ramones, the Ramones and Flashcubes AND the Runaways, Lou Reed, the Damned, the Romantics, Hamilton, the Go-Go's, the Jam, the Monkees, the Flamin' Groovies, the Sex Pistols, Yoko Ono, the posters on my wall, my own pathetic attempts to make music, my all-time favorite songs from when I was a junior in high school (1976) through two years after snaggin' the ol' BA (1980-82), and my freshman year roommate. There's more, including even some jukebox musicals I fantasized about writing, and several separate entries from my college Fantasy and Science-Fiction class journal (Parts 1, 2-3, 4, 5, 6, 7-9, 10-11, and 12-14, stopping at The Rocky Horror Picture Show). Brockport memories often show up in my writing, across all manner of subjects.

Irwin Shaw said that writers are charged with the responsibility to report where we think we are and what this place looks like today. Our life's own stories inform the stories we write, whether fiction or nonfiction. I've written my autobiographies of growing up in the 1960s and trying to make my way through the 1980s. I have not yet been able to fully address the subjects of my life in the '70s and the early '80s, my years in middle school, high school, college, and post-college life in a college town. After all this time, lingering memories of where I thought I was and what that place seemed to look like in those days...well, it all remains intimidating. I've only written the first few introductory paragraphs of my '70s memoir, and I've so far been unable to continue it.

I might get to it yet. Meanwhile, here's me at the age of 20 in 1980, goofin' around with some pop culture icons on behalf of a Mexican food joint in Brockport, NY. "The Beatles And The Green Hornet" for MEESTER TACO" is the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.

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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

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