texas is the reason, behind the music

January 09, 2003, 02:15 pm

Jackie and I went to LotR: the Two Towers last night. It was good, as usual. And I gave her back her husband's copy of Paper Mario, as well as a Super Nintendo controller I was supposed to make a parallel port interface with. Of course, that was almost two years ago! I also gave her some A/V Club stickers... colllector's items, I guess. And she gave me my copies of Texas is the Reason's Do you know who you are? and Appleseed Cast's the Ring Wars.

The story of where I got that TitR album is actually kindof interesting. I was going to school at UK at the time. It was Spring semester and most of my friends were either at some party or had left to go see the Matrix, so I was sitting under this tree in front of Patterson Hall, playing my friend Carl's acoustic guitar.

And as I was playing, four people stumbled my way. They were two girls -- twins -- and their dates, and had just left somewhat drunk from this bar across the street. The girls approached me and asked if I would play them some songs. So I played them some Radiohead and the Promise Ring and maybe some Bruce Springsteen.

And while I was playing, one of the guys gave me a five dollar bill (I guess he was trying to look fancy in front of his date). Since it was just five bucks and they were drunk, I took it. But a couple of songs after that, one of the twin girls handed me a fifty. And I asked her if she realized that it was a fifty and not just a five.

Then she went on this long story about how I have to buy new strings and buy music and buy instruments and that I should always keep playing and blah blah blah. And I told her I wouldn't take the fifty bucks, but she kept insisting.

So ultimately, I took the fifty. I went out the next morning and bought the Texas is the Reason album, as well as Bruce Springsteen's the River and Born in the U.S.A..

I've always imagined that the girl woke up the next morning and wondered what the hell she blew fifty dollars on.