Dinner is finished, and Anne is helping Nolan with some homework at the dining room table. I’m sitting outside by the fire pit, enjoying the fruits of our weekend of patio labor. I am surrounded by freshly-planted wildflowers, two types of tomatoes, and the sweet smell of lavender, roses, and just-turned dirt.

I was listening to Big Tracks on XM, through DirecTV, on our home stereo. I sang REO Speedwagon’s Keep On Lovin’ You a little too loudly while I sipped a Stone Pale Ale and digested the most amazing chicken soft tacos (marinated in tequila, lime, salsa and Tapatio) I think I’ve ever cooked, when Ryan came out to the patio from the kitchen.

“Can I turn off XM and put on Live Aid?” He said.

“No, you can’t,” I said, a little perturbed that my REO Speedwagon rocking had been interrupted.

“But you’ve been monopolizing the TV, and you’re not even inside,” he said. Very reasonable.

“ . . . I meant that I loved you foreverrrrr, and I’m gonna ke–“ I sang. “Dude. I’m trying to get my rock on, and you’re totally harshing my mellow.”

“You’re trying to get your rock on . . . to REO Speedwagon?” He said, incredulous. Tough to argue with that. “You’re the only one listening to this, so isn’t it fair to consider the rest of the family?”

Dammit. I raised him to think like this. I’m so proud of him, but . . . Big Tracks, and Stone Pale Ale, and sitting by the fire pit! Shit. Shit. Shit.

“Did you ask your mom what she thinks?” I said.

“She’s going to say that she doesn’t care, because she’s helping Nolan with his homework.” He said.

REO Speedwagon ended, and Asia began: “I never meant to be so bad to you . . .”

“Okay,” I said, “let’s go inside and ask your mom what she thinks.”

We walked into the house, and found Anne and Nolan at the dining room table. Ryan related our discussion, and asked Anne if she cared if he changed the channel.

“I don’t care,” she said.

Ryan jumped up and pointed at me. “Ha! I told you!”

“I don’t care about the radio, either,” Nolan said, with a pointed smirk at me.

“Yes! I get to put on Live Aid!” Ryan said. He started toward the living room.

“Uh, wait.” I said, “we haven’t reached consensus.”

“Oh, we totally have, Wil,” he said with a grin, “you’re 25% in favor, and mom, Nolan, and I are
75% opposed. We have a majority.”

I was done. I’d lost, and now it was time to take it like a man.

“Dude, I have, uhm, extra . . . uh . . . powers.” I said.

“What?” Ryan said.

“Yeah, I went up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start,” I said.

“Okay,” Ryan said, “so you get extra lives on Contra. What does that have to do with the radio?”

I don’t know how he knew that it was the Konami code, but I’m sure he picked it up from me, somewhere over the years.

“Okay,” I said, “just because you knew that, you win. Go put on Live Aid.”

Queen is blasting out We Will Rock You, from Wembley Stadium in 1985, as I type this.

I ended up watching a few minutes of VH1 Classic before I fell asleep last night, and, uh, i kind of watched this crazy old video of Kenny Loggins.

It was totally rad, with the whites blowing out and the occasional old VHS noise, and the slightly greenish skin tones. He was playing an outdoor concert which was just filled with girls in tube tops and guys with horrible Kenny Loggins-esque beards, and the whole thing looked pretty stinky and coked-out. If that wasn’t enough evidence that it was the early 80s, he was playing I’m Alright, from Caddyshack, which is one of my guilty pleasure tunes (I didn’t realize until last night that it contains the lyric "No, no, cannonball it right away.")

So far, we’re okay, but you may want to prepare to throw up in your mouth a little bit:  he was wearing white ankle-high boots, a huge, puffy red jumpsuit with a novelty-sized belt around his waist, the obligatory rock-n-roll mullet, and seriously rocking out with his bad self while strumming an acoustic guitar.

Maybe I’m uptight, maybe I just don’t understand the rock like I think I do, but when he ran around the stage during a guitar solo (which he wasn’t playing; he had his 12-string a-strummin’) and jumped up on a raised platform so he could kick an amp off the stage, I didn’t think, "Oh man, that guy is a hardcore rockstar!" as much as I thought, "Uh, what the hell was that all about?"

I changed the channel when the Top Gun song started. There was no way I could endure shots of L. Ron Cruise after that.

This is the second time in about forty minutes that I’ve wanted to change the title of an entry. First: "when i’m boss of the universe . . ." should be called "new slang", or "gold teeth and a curse" if I wanted to be slightly more obscure and rewarding to anyone who figured it out.

"i call the big one bitey" is a nice homage to a long ago time when The Simpsons was still consistently funny, but "antmusic" would be cooler. "dirk wears white socks"  would be even better, but "kings of the final frontier" would probably be the most obscure and rewarding (the ant habitat was originally designed by NASA, and I’ll let you figure the rest out on your own.)

Now this is a little weird: iTunes must know that I’m writing about music, because for the last seven songs, it has taken me on a little time warp to my teens. These songs are listed in the exact order that they came up. It was set to shuffle through my entire library (currently organized by album title), which is pretty eclectic, so the choice of tunes is particularly eerie.

Songs with their associated memories:

Cinderella Undercover – I am driving my brand new 1989 Honda Prelude Si 4WS to work on Star Trek. I don’t know why, but in all of my memories, it’s early morning, it’s cold, and it’s a little foggy. I loved that car, and it’s the same one that was just slightly better than Patrick Stewart’s, if you’ve heard that story.

Don’t Be Square, Be There – My friend Guy (who was also my stand-in on TNG) introduced me to Adam and the Ants via the Kings of the Wild Frontier album. I can still see the tape, an old TDK number with "Adam and the Ants" on one side and "Kings of the Wild Frontier" on the other, written in Guy’s realy cool architect writing, in a smoky grey case with no paper insert. Guy lived in Costa Mesa, and after I got my Mac II — in color, with four fraking megabyes of RAM, man! — I’d put it in my car and drive down to Guy’s on the weekend so we could appletalk our machines together and play NetTrek and Spaceward Ho! People often asked me in interviews how I avoided the drugs and partying scene that claimed the lives and futures of so many of my peers; I’ve just realized that this is a major reason why: when they were getting high and courting the paparazzi in night clubs they were too young to be in, I was sitting in Guy’s house playing really geeky games.

Still Ill – When I was in my very early teens, I had one of those massive teenage crushes that consumes your every waking moment and requires you to listen to endless hours of The Smiths in your bedroom wondering why she doesn’t like you "in that way." This particular crush was on Kyra, who was so beautiful, and so smart, and so cool, and so a senior when I was a freshman it was never going to happen. Kyra introduced me to The Smiths (on Vinyl, no less), the Violent Femmes (in her BMW 2002 while we were driving to see Harvey at a local college) and was goth before goth was goth. Though I had such a massive crush on her, we were great friends, and she never broke my heart.

Pale Shelter – I heard this on the radio in my mom’s car on my way to my first day of public high school at Crescenta Valley High School, and it will always remind me of that day. I was terrified. I remember sitting into first period history class, and not even knowing that I was supposed to write "per. 1" on my papers. I remember that it was nothing like I’d seen in movies and on TV, and how the kids in all my classes were so cruel to me. I was shy, I was scared to death, and I was so withdrawn as a result, they all decided that I was aloof and arrogant and I never got a chance to correct that first impression. Wow – as I write this, I can feel that terror all over again. I feel it in my muscle memory and in my soul. Gods, I felt so tiny as I walked across the quad on that first day, like a little kid who lost his mom in the department store. The time I spent at CV was the absolute worst in my life.

How Beautiful You Are – Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me was the first compact disc I had, and it’s a good thing, too. I love this record so much, I would have worn it out in any other medium. This was also during the "W + K 4EVR" phase, and, nerdly little artist that I was, whenever I heard this song I longed to go with her to Paris and dance in the rain together. You know what I just realized? I don’t think I ever told her that I was so fiercely head over heels for her, and she either knew and didn’t call me out, or I had the perfect combination of infatuation and insecurity to keep it to myself. I wonder where she is today, and how she’s doing? Hrm.

Charge of the Batmobile – My best friend, Darin, lived just over one mile from my house, across windy streets up in the hills above La Crescenta. We were such Batman geeks and we were such stupid teens, we frequently put this song on my tape deck and drove way too fast across those windy streets late at night between our two houses. It’s a miracle we never crashed or hurt anyone or anything.

Phonetic Alphabet – NATO – This is from disc 2 of The Conet Project. I never heard a numbers station in my teens, but I spent a lot of time listening to my shortwave radio and my police scanner (I told you I was a geek) so it reminds me of sitting in the dark (because shortwave listening is so much better when you’re in the dark, for some reason) late at night when propagation was better, spinning the dial and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world to hear transmissions from the other side of the planet. I’m glad the Cold War is over, but boy do I miss the SW propaganda broadcasts.

And the Conet Project is the perfect coda to this trip in the wayback machine. That invisible woman’s voice, sending a message to some unknown person in an unknown land, shot into the ionosphere and back, captured by someone else in another time is almost too perfect. If I saw it in a movie, I’d never believe it. Good thing this isn’t a movie.

"romeo, romeo, lima, yankee, november, oscar, oscar, zulu . . . end of message end of t–"