Baby, if you ever wondered…

If you’re a frequent habitué of Facebook, you might be familiar with the social media’s meme Throwback Thursday—in which FB denizens are encouraged to post photos taken of them in the past so that we might equally share in the glee of laughing hysterically at people’s hairstyles and asking: “What the hell were you thinking with that outfit?”  I don’t participate much in the festivities, only because I don’t have a lot of pictures of me from my irresponsible youth days…and what I do have on hand is collecting dust in my Dad’s storage area.

But like the Borg, everyone is assimilated into Throwback Thursday, and resistance is futile…as witnessed by the photo above, which a dear FB chum of mine found in a Marshall University yearbook from 1982.  It features members of the staff of WMUL-FM 88—“the Mighty Mule,” as we called it—and the fellow wearing the hat may look familiar to some of you.  (I showed this to my father, who asked: “Why are you wearing a hat?”  I was stumped for an answer, so I returned: “Somebody had to.”)  I’ve talked about my experiences at the ‘MUL here in the past—once in a post about my paisan Jeff Lane and the other about a pledge drive I worked—and I just have to say that seeing this picture brought back a flood of wonderful memories for me, because hanging out at WMUL was unquestionably one of the best times in my life.  (My parents are not convinced of this, because my time spent at the student station was directly proportionate to the amount of time I didn’t spend in class.)  Another Facebook compadre (he’s the one looking away from the camera) said it so sweetly and succinctly: “No way to get people to understand just how much fun that place was…just very glad to have been there.”  Amen to that.

Once again, my eBay auctions have been taking up a good deal of my copious free time but the response has been truly phenomenal…and I’d like to thank some of the members of the TDOY faithful for finding things they like and taking them home: longtime friend of the blog Matt Hinrichs (of Scrubbles fame), The Lady Eve (positively the same dame!), my lowcountry paisan (and personal Ron Jeremy friend) B. Goode at Gonna Put Me in the Movies, and comedy writer-critic Stephen Winer (Late Night with David Letterman), a frequent contributor at Criterion.com and author of an essay included in that company’s The Freshman release…which I swear I’m going to open up once the eBay furor dies down.  (I promise.)  But a major shout-out is reserved for my Savannah homegirl Faustina, who was nice enough to drop a mention of my eBay auctioning into casual conversation on Facebook.  (Sales skyrocketed as a result.)

With the eBay stuff reaching its peak, I’ll be able to climb back into the ol’ blogging saddle this weekend with an edition of Serial Saturdays (and Doris Day(s) this Monday), but in the meantime I invite you to check out my latest “Where’s That Been?” column at ClassicFlix, A Life in the Balance (1955), and the latest installment of the Boston Blackie movie roundup, One Mysterious Night (1944), is up at the Radio Spirits blog.  I now leave you with a scene of a boy and his dog (namely, nephew Davis and Willie the Wonder Dachshund).