In Which I Aspire to Be Lester Bangs By Not Writing Like Lester Bangs.

So, I should be writing a final for my class in Journalistic Ethics. Instead, I'm listening to Dare! by the Human League. How did I get here?

The above picture is of Philip Seymour Hoffman, playing Lester Bangs in Almost Famous. That happens to be one of my favorite movies; a dream job, if time travel were not an object, would very closely mirror that of Patrick Fugit's character.

In addition, I may or may not have drunkenly cockblocked my roommate this past weekend when I overheard him talking to some girl about that movie and cut in really hard. Sorry, Jeremy.

Anyway, after watching that movie kind of recently, I started looking stuff up about Lester Bangs, and found this, compliments of Wiki:

"Bangs died in New York on April 30, 1982, overdosing (through drug interaction) after treating a cold with Darvon and Valium. According to the Jim Derogatis biography, Bangs was listening to The Human League's album Dare! at the time of his death."

And this, dear readers, is why I'm listening to fucking "Don't You Want Me?"



I have to assume that this couldn't have possibly been the way that Lester wanted to go out, unless this was a brilliant, artsy statement that us peasants weren't meant to get. This is a song that really couldn't have been recorded any time other than 1981; seriously, listening to this, I feel like I should be doing lines of blow and wearing a piano key necktie. Recorded by a band that consisted of an outlandish four synthesizer players and, umm... nothing else, this one's far from timeless.

Unless, of course, you work for Nabisco:



Sigh. And on that, back to ethics. Ideally, I'll be headed to the Thermals concert tomorrow night, and if so, I'll have an entry afterwards.

Love,
Jim.