Janet’s janet.

I had to reload my iPhone the other day as I connected it to my work computer to play music from the phone and in so doing, that made the iPhone think I had dumped my home computer and latch onto the work computer as its master.  Well, if you’ve done that before, you know that iPhones only  have one master.  So I connected it to my home laptop and was confronted with this ugly message that “this iPhone is synced to another library.  If you want to erase this iPhone and connect to this library, click OK”.  UGH.  Thus I had to restore and reload all my music.  In the ensuing hours later, I was scrolling through my library for albums to bring over and saw Janet Jackson’s janet. album there.  Love that album, so I brought it over.

Cut to this morning’s drive in to work.  I consult the cornucopia of music in my phone and remember uploading janet. into it, and decide it’s time to enter the time machine back to 1993.  Wow.  I know it’s going to be funny for most anyone else besides me, but this album really REALLY defines 1993 for me.  That year was when I really became great friends with Veronica Andersen as well as her family.  We would tool around Los Angeles all the time during that year and the next, and it was when I really got to know LA beyond just the San Gabriel Valley life I knew.  It’s strange to realize that before these excursions, I had very vague perceptions of what Los Angeles had to offer.  I had traveled some, mostly to visit my Dad wherever he was living, but my perception of LA was really just the mall in Arcadia, my elementary school in Pasadena, and then what I knew of Monrovia.  Life was all about what me and my friends were doing at MHS as well as school.  A social scene outside of that?  Huh?  That’s for the movies.

Through my time spent with Roni and her family, I got to see the world of LA you do see in the movies, mainly that being Hollywood, the Sunset Strip, Zuma Beach, and probably most importantly, UCLA.  During all these fun travels, especially in 1993, the soundtrack we lived by was janet.  Oh man, was that album such a blast to listen to.  That’s the Way Love Goes, If, Again, ….and all the Marcia Brady-esque songs meshed up with some of the more sexxxy tunes she eventually devolved into full time (I definitely mean devolved – after Velvet Rope, her albums became sad sad lovemaking records….where did the fun go, Miss Janet???).

While driving this morning listening to the album play, my mind was immediately immersed back in 1993.  I could remember that sense of discovery of seeing the world of Los Angeles for the first time in a more adult, more open-minded way.  The fun times I had with Roni.  The fun with her family, much to her chagrin.  And that led to me thinking about how much is different now.  And then in a melodramatic turn, I started thinking about all the family and friends that died during the 90s that I miss so so so much to this day.  I teared up in the car and I’m even tearing up now writing this thinking about my grandparents, my good friends Tom & Jean….  yeah, it feels like an eternity ago thinking about how in many ways the world was so different for me back in 1993.  No kidding, right?  It was nearly 2 DECADES ago at this point.

I could try to go on a diatribe about all the paths my life has taken since that point of when I was just a 16 year-old kid.  But that would probably be interesting to only me at this point, yet in a way, I think one day I will write all about that.  As while maybe it is just interesting to me, no one else is going to write my biography except me and I think there are some interesting stories to tell, even if it’s just for preservation’s sake.