Yesterday's News

i have a unique talent, it seems, for catching wind of and embracing a trend, months (sometimes years) after it's out of style. Fashion, music, books, tv shows, and movies; if it was popular say, 6 months or a year ago, chances are i'm just finding out about it.

many are the time i'll see someone wearing a cool shirt or nice sneakers, ask where they got them, and then find out the store hasn't sold them in months. recently i went to Best Buy to try and find a couple of CD's and DVDs, only to be told that that they had been out of print for years.

take, for instance, my recent brush with the wonderful world of the iTunes Store; after finally uploading my rather extensive library of music to BTZ, most of which is stuff i've been listening to, in one form or another (read: cassette or homemade CD), for years, i decided to embrace the idea of finding new music on iTunes. i typed in "Rufus Wainwright" 'cuz i know he has more b-sides and odd tracks than anyone else in my library, and was not disappointed. amongst the CD's i already owned were some tracks he'd recorded for both Brokeback Mountian soundtrack and a Hedwig and the Angry Inch tribute CD (which has awesome covers by Cyndi Lauper and Fred Schneider, both of which i downloaded last night). All three Rufus tracks are amazing, and i highly recommend you download them; chances are, though, you already have and you've been sitting there shaking your head thinking "jeez CB, i've been listening to La Wainwright's cover of Origin of Love for years! where y'been" but that is precisely the problem...somehow i missed it.

my friends (namely Jenn and John) have been laughing about this odd phenomenon, independently of each other, for years. Jenn still laughs about the time i dressed as Harry Potter to go to the Village Halloween parade, six months before the HP explosion hit the US; it was the one and only time i was ahead of the curve. John, in particular will give me music or a movie and tell me, with 100% certainty, to take it home and listen to it because in 6 months i'll love it. i used to fight him on it, thinking that my musical tastes were slightly different than his, that i was an independent listener; but 99.9% of the time he's right. it happened with Kristine W and Natasha Bedingfield; when i he 1st told me about the latter, i was all "whatever another Anastacia white-girl-with-soul-diva-wanna-be"; 6 months later i was begging him to find me more of her remixes.

i'm lucky enough to have friends on the cutting edge; people who always know where to go, what to listen to and how to dress. it must be so terribly tiring, keeping up with the latest and newest in music, clothes and movies; personally, i prefer to let them do all the work and call myself "retro"; people have been doing that for years.