When I was maybe 10 or 11, there was this girl at summer camp named Leah Spieler. She had straight brown hair down to her shoulders that curled in at the bottom, feline eyes and pouting lips, and breasts — real, actual breasts — and so I was in love with her. We hadn’t actually talked or anything, but I was still hoping to ask her to the camp dance, so when another boy, taller and more popular than me, beat me to the punch, I was devastated. I spent the night of the dance hiding in my bunk, listening over and over on my Walkman to borrowed cassettes of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s first three albums.
I grew up — learning, among other things, that there is better breakup music in this world than “Slime Creatures from Outer Space” — but thankfully “Weird Al” never did. Today, from DKNY, the link for the video above arrived in my inbox, along with this note:
I’m sort of amazed that he’s managed to sustain a career for, jesus, 23 years now, not to mention that he actually manages to pretty capably flow (shit, better than Fiddy). Plus it references the Star Wars Holiday Special, which I appreciate…
Likewise. And in case you’re not familiar with the original song, it’s “Ridin'” by Chamillionaire, featuring the ever-incomprehensible Krayzie Bone, and you can see the video here.
Where did you grow up? I know a Leah Spieler was an early developer (by her own accounts) who I’d estimate to be about your age.
Good lord! I never really expected anyone to read this who actually might know Leah Spieler. In any case, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, up in Marin, and met Leah (or watched her from a distance, anyway) at Camp Arazim, then in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
So what’s Leah up to these days?
Google Alerts are so rad.
That is totally her. She’s a physician living in NYC with me. Here’s a picture:
http://flickr.com/photos/99996214@N00/211767842/
Though this one:
http://flickr.com/photos/99996214@N00/231186948/
better showcases feline eyes and pouting lips.
She also says the boy she went to the dance with was “kinda dumb”.
Wow. Nice to see I actually had decent taste back then, even if I did have posters of Heather Thomas on my bedroom walls.
And yeah, I remember the guy as pretty dumb too, which was galling at the time. A few years and a bit of serious puberty later, I worked out that being smart and funny was actually more attractive than being mildly goodlooking and dumb.
So this is all totally random and kind of fascinating, and if you’re interested, I would love for us all to meet for drinks some time. You can email me at josh@palaverist.org. Then Leah and I can reminisce about mostly not knowing each other 20 years ago.