We left from Brick, New Jersey, jammed into a tiny red Datsun, very early on the morning of October 3, 1980 on a trajectory straight through to Ann Arbor, Michigan where Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were starting their first tour since 1978. There were five of us, and we were on a mission. And we had a fresh supply of zucchini bread thoughtfully prepared by someone’s mom for the journey. We pulled into the parking lot at Crisler Arena just as the band’s tour bus was rolling in and frantically jumped out of the car to join the small group of fans waiting there to shake hands with Bruce as he walked into the venue. It was the opening night of The River Tour. The album itself would not be released for another week.

I’d be lying if I said I remembered a lot from that night, but I do remember it was the first time I ever bought a concert ticket from a scalper. I blindly grabbed the first one that was offered to me, for $50, which was a huge amount of money when the base price was at most $11. But I would have paid whatever was in my pocket. You see, I walked into a concert hall on August 26, 1978, and my life was changed. That was the first time I ever saw Springsteen and the E Street Band present the glorious medicine show that was the Darkness Tour, and I walked out a different person.

Here’s what I do remember of October 3: the show was on the campus of the University of Michigan, and the security consisted of over zealous and totally obnoxious college kids who were drunk with power. The show started with “Born to Run,” which was unusual and had never happened before, but I was too much of a newbie to realize that. Bruce forgot the words but the audience chanted it until he returned to the groove. Eleven songs were apparently played from the new album. The show ended with “Backstreets.” The encores were “Rosalita” (which Clarence began with the classic opening lines from “Stagger Lee”: the night was dark / and the moon was yellow), “Jungleland,” “Detroit Medley” (we were, also, but a stone’s throw from Detroit), and “Thunder Road” (a repeat from earlier in the night, but this time featuring Bob Seger).

My friends and I were on the road for a week nonstop following the tour, which was a whole new experience for me. To save money we mostly slept in the car (in October, in the Midwest!) in hotel parking lots, so we could go inside in the morning and wash up in the lobby bathrooms. Once or twice, in big cities like Detroit and Chicago, we sprung for a hotel room and lied about how many of us there were in the room so we wouldn’t get charged extra. After Ann Arbor, we went to Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago, and then back home to the so-called real world. It was sublime.

But that first night, 31 years ago today, was really the watershed moment for me, when I really gave myself over to a force a lot bigger than myself and just went along for the ride, smiling all the way. Ramroddin’ forever more, you might say.

Hey, little dolly won’t you say you will
Meet me tonight up on top of the hill
Well just a few miles cross the county line
There’s a cute little chapel nestled down in the pines
Say you’ll be mine little girl I’ll put my foot to the floor
Give me the word now sugar, we’ll go ramroddin’ forever more
(Ramrod, © Bruce Springsteen)

It’s 1959 in San Francisco’s low rent district. At the local beatnik hangout, Walter Paisley busses tables and pines for a comely hipster artist chick named Carla. He’s an outsider the hip kids make fun of and he can never seem to fit in. The place is full of beat poets who recite their self righteous, overly hip poetry to bongo drums. One night Walter is home trying to become a sculptor so he can impress Carla and accidentally kills his neighbor’s cat. He decides to cover the cat in clay and calls it “Dead Cat,” which Carla thinks is genius. This spurs him on to kill other living things and make sculptures out of them. This is the inspired plot of Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood, which was shot in its entirety in five days. Corman and writer Charles B. Griffith developed the basic plot and idea for this film in a single day. The sets would later be used for Corman’s next film, The Little Shop of Horrors, in 1960.

Last week Roger Corman received a long overdue honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement from the Academy for his life’s work - 350 movies. He crafted incredible, low budget, lurid B-movie spectaculars starting in the 1950’s and provided career launches for artists like John Sayles, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, Ron Howard and Martin Scorsese. His films featured the nascent talents of Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro, William Shatner, Charles Bronson, Sylvester Stallone and others.

I salute the genius of Roger Corman. And that’s my Way Cool Item of the Day.

Every once in awhile I run across a website that completely sucks me in and before I know it… hours have flown by. Such a site is the Meeker Museum, dedicated to actor Ralph Meeker, who started in musicals in the 1950’s and had roles on both TV and in feature films through the 1970s. He played Mike Hammer in the 1955 Robert Aldrich classic film of Mickey Spillane’s Kiss Me Deadly. The Meeker Museum lovingly recounts Meeker’s career as well as other movie stars of yesteryear. It’s stated mission is to be ‘a non-profit, non-existent organization dedicated to the pursuit of inner peace through movie stars.‘

Other essays on the site include a tribute to Troy Donahue, the films of Conway Twitty, a Sandra Dee retrospective, and a lengthy multi-paged mini-site about the book, movies, and TV series Peyton Place. The site’s creator, Jack Stalnaker, apparently created the site in an early version of Frontpage. But you know what? It kind of works. When you’re poking about in dusty library stacks, you want retro, even if it looks like the web in 1999. It’s cool.

In fact the Meeker Museum is the Way Cool Item of the Day.

Somehow we’ve gotten around to that time of the year again when all of a sudden Halloween gives way to Thanksgiving and then five minutes later it’s Christmas. So if you’re looking around for interesting gift giving ideas why not also give back to the community and support Girl Power at the same time? The Lower Eastside Girls Club Sweet Things Bake Shop can hit both those notes for you. Celebrate autumn with their hand-painted leaf and acorn shaped butter cookies. Order an Autumn in New York Cookie Tin, or a City Winter Tin (which includes an oversized brownstone cookie made of gingerbread among other goodies).

The Girls Club also sponsors number of great free community events and a Fair Trade and Girl Made Gift Shop at the Essex Market. They continue to present programs that build Ethical, Entrepreneurial, and Environmental awareness and leadership among girls from the 4th grade to the 12th grade. They’re doing great work and really deserve your support.

And that’s my Way Cool Item of the Day.

If you’ve been reading SDJ for awhile you’ll know that occasionally I predict that Amanda Palmer AKA Amanda Fucking Palmer AKA Force of Nature / New Media Goddess will eventually be a name everyone knows due to her most awesome talent as a singer, songwriter, and performer. Well it’s that time again because AFP is about to embark on a short tour of the East Coast which begins tonight in Burlington, VT and ends on November 22 in Knoxville, Tennessee. New York is sold out for the show this weekend, but if you’re in Portland Maine, Northampton MA, Philadelphia, Falls Church VA, Carrboro NC, or Knoxville - do consider spending about $20 for one of the greatest musical experiences of your life. Because she may not be a household name now - but she will be. And someday you’ll say, why the F didn’t I get a ticket to that show when I could?

Just sayin.’

More info here. And here. And here.

And that’s my Way Cool Item of the Day.

In case you didn’t know (for shame), Joan Jett is one kick-ass, gorgeous, amazing, hard rocking, original riot grrrl beeyotch. To my great surprise and delight today I found out that Mattel (who are, apparently, still swell) will be presenting the Joan Jett Barbie Doll to the world in December, as part of the Ladies of the ’80’s Collection. I can hardly think of a better role model for the Barbie doll-playing-set, hella yeah!

The text description of the doll reads - and no, I did not make this up: Have you ever said (or sung) “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll”? If so, you’re gonna love this doll! An acclaimed guitarist and one of the greatest leading ladies of rock, Joan Jett is a legendary singer and songwriter. Featuring her look and rock ‘n’ roll spirit, the Joan Jett Barbie Doll is part of the Ladies of the ’80s collection and a must-have for her many fans! Includes doll and guitar, and stands approximately 11 1/2-inches tall.

The Collection will also feature Cyndi Lauper (in flouncy red skirt) and Blondie’s Debbie Harry. As for Joanie, this is one of those rare items that I think I might have to actually pre-purchase on Amazon. I can’t stand the thought of not being able to have my Joan Jett Barbie. Although I am deducting swell points from Mattel for not including Patti Smith in the collection. Imagine a Patti Smith Barbie dressed in white man’s shirt and loose tie, kind of like the Horses cover shot by Robert Mapplethorpe. I think we could have eschewed Cyndi and made this Joan, Debbie, and Patti. Cyndi’s kind of fluffy next to those other original riot grrls, n’est-ce pas? They could have called it, instead, The Riot Grrl Collection.

In other really great Joan Jett news, Kristin Stewart will play the part of JJ in the upcoming Runaways movie to Dakota Fanning’s Cherie Currie.  But who will play Kim Fowley? Inquiring minds want to know!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-CHERRY BOMB! The Joan Jett Barbie doll is my Way Cool Item of the Day.

Today’s item is dedicated to the memory of Norbert Pearlroth, head researcher for Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, who sat in the same spot in the research room at the New York Public Library for 52 years - just about every day.

Thank you Robin Finn, who wrote the terrific column Secrets of the Stacks last week for The New York Times. I adore pieces like this one where you learn bizarre and quirky facts about such a place. There’s Norbert of course. And also The Cabinet of Curiosities, which apparently contains the cane that Virginia Woolf left behind on the riverbank before committing suicide - and the original Winnie The Pooh. And the fact that the library contains a collection of 40,000 restaurant menus dating back to the 1850’s. Read the article for other interesting tidbits.

And that’s my Way Cool Item of the Day.

Very very early on the morning of October 3, 1980, I got into my friend Kim’s little red Datsun in a driveway in Brick, New Jersey. I think there were actually five of us packed into that tiny car. We proceeded to drive from the Jersey shore straight through to Ann Arbor, Michigan, parking the car just in time to see Bruce Springsteen’s tour bus roll in to the parking lot of Crisler Arena. We jumped out of the car (which, after hours of travel, seemed to have gotten smaller) and lined up with other fans to shake hands with Bruce as he went into the venue. It was the opening night of The River Tour. The album itself would not be released for another week.

That night was the first time I ever bought a scalped ticket, and I blindly grabbed the first one that was offered to me at $50. This was a huge expense since the base price was I think $11. It was my third Springsteen concert, the previous two being in 1978 during the traveling medicine show that was the Darkness Tour.

I traveled to Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Chicago that week in Kim’s car seeing shows, for the most part either sleeping in the car, or renting one hotel room for the five of us and sneaking the others in to save money. We were young.

There were many other shows on that tour, many trips out of town, and at the end - a year later - I actually quit my boring soulless job typing art auction catalogs to go to the entire last week of shows. The tour ended almost a year to the day it began: September 14, 1981 in Cincinnati.

There have been many concerts since, and many Springsteen concerts, through the past 17 years. I know it’s a cliché but Bruce Springsteen changed my life in too many ways to count.

All of which is to say that I am thrilled beyond belief that Sunday night November 8 at Madison Square Garden for the first time since the long ago River Tour, and never before in album sequence order, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will play the entire River album onstage.

And that’s my Way Cool Item of the Day.

John Cooper Clarke is an English performance poet from Manchester who came to fame in the punkish late 1970’s, reciting his rapid fire poems whilst opening for such bands as the Buzzcocks, New Order, the Sex Pistols, Joy Division, and the Fall. His sparse, urban, bleak and beautiful “Evidently Chickentown” memorably ended one of the episodes of The Sopranos, launching it forever into the cultural zeitgeist - where it definitely belongs. Excerpt follows:

the bloody pies are bloody old
the bloody chips are bloody cold
the bloody beer is bloody flat
the bloody flats have bloody rats
the bloody clocks are bloody wrong
the bloody days are bloody long
it bloody gets you bloody down
evidently chicken town
LYRICS © JOHN COOPER CLARKE

Thanks to the bloody great blog Stupefaction, who posted this yesterday, I’m making John Cooper Clarke’s poetic genius the Way Cool Item of the Day.

The new media magicians at Sawhorse Media, who brought us the amazing site Muckrack awhile back (which curates twitter feeds by journalists all over the world, sliced and diced and categorized every which way to Sunday…totally addictive) have now unveiled Listorious, a site which curates twitter lists. Talk about falling down the rabbit hole…

Listorious is a site which curates the best lists of Twitter users on any given topic. How about a list of Employers Recruiting? Onion Editorial Staff? Staff at the New York Times? NFL Players? Los Angeles Food Trucks? Angel Investors? Catch my drift? It goes on and on. You can spend hours here.  And after you’ve registered on the site, you can add your own lists, recommend twitter feeds for posted lists, see if you’re on anyone else’s lists, et cetera.  So go. Tweet. List. Curate.

And that’s my Way Cool Item of the Day.