Left: David Cassidy's wonderfully sexy ROLLING STONE photo, by Annie Leibowitz.Truth be told, I don't particularly enjoy knowing it's David Cassidy's birthday, but this bit of arcane knowledge remains stuck in my head.
Ellen Goodman once wrote a good piece about old folks' memories. She said she realized what the problem was: we can't erase things like you would from a hard drive. She said we'd have more ROOM to remember stuff if we could erase the detritus, such as old songs from childhood, capitals of countries that no longer exist, and other meaningless gibberish. My God, I now know how true that is. I can't remember the names of any of these new bands and tend to get the names all botched and morphed, i.e. Coldboy and Fall-Out Play rather than Coldplay and Fall-Out Boy. Sigh. Meanwhile, I can tell you that David Cassidy was born today in New York City in 1950. He's 5'8" and his favorite song was The Thrill is Gone by BB King. I do not WANT to retain these nonessential facts, yet inexplicably, I do--since I memorized this junk when I was 12. It shall therefore remain forever, since we have not perfected a delete function for the brain.
In person, David Cassidy was cute as a button, and I shrieked like the hysterical young fan I was. At some point I intend to write about full-fledged teenybopperdom and its undercurrent of violence--as an adult I read Cassidy's book (C'mon, Get Happy: Fear and Loathing on the Partridge Family Bus) in which he confesses his fear that he would be literally torn apart by the screaming-girl-hordes, and I daresay, he could have been. At what point does adulation and recently-turned-on estrogen turn into dangerous mob hysteria? And need I tell you, it's a lot of fun to be in that mob? (Or it was, I certainly wouldn't do it now.) I had the time of my life!
Thanks, it was fun, and happy birthday.
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Listening to: Yo La Tengo - Moby Octopad
via FoxyTunes