When I was fab

Some days you feel like it's time for a little ego massage. That's when you Google yourself - and don't tell me you haven't. If self-Googling sounds a tad naughty, I think it may well be. The urge to reinforce one's own existence and/or relive past glories is probably not a healthy one.

But then you discover that there are other people, perhaps even dozens, with your same name. And, as you read what they've done, you may get jealous. Or maybe they haven't done anything particularly interesting and you get protective of your own name, wondering if old boyfriends might mistake that dowdy French author for you.

This philosophical musing is brought to you by the fact that, two days ago, I bought myself a late Christmas gift (it was on my list, but Santa didn't bring it) - the Rolling Stone Cover-to-Cover CD-R collection, which contains every page of every issue (yes, including ads) from its launch in 1967 to May of 2007. Maybe there's a new one coming soon to bring us up to date; this old one, originally priced at $125 is now going for $24.98 in Barnes & Noble clearance (10% off if you're a B&N member and another 15% if you use the coupon emailed last week). So, under the pretense of having a good reference tool and maybe dumping some of my old copies of the magazine (as if), I bought it.

And now I'm looking up the pieces I wrote for the magazine in the period of 1984-1990. That's the first thing that took me by surprise - the smattering of articles I did for them really spanned six years? Here's what the search engine brought up for my name:


This listing doesn't include a few Random Notes bits I contributed from various DC-based events, mostly WHFStival summaries. A handy thing about having these discs is that I need not bother now with finding old magazines and scanning my articles to add them to my online archives. But I do need to figure out how to resize the pages from the database software. For now, the one piece I can screen-grab at legible resolution is a bit forecasting the death of the 7" vinyl single in the mass-marketplace. Here's that blast from the past:

Of course, I just realized that these bits are too small in blogger pic view for anyone to read. But if you click 'em, they pop up to larger, legible size. Eventually, I will convert the full list to post in my archives. If only to say, yes, I once wrote for the illustrious Rolling Stone. So there.

And yet, as if to tease me for being self-referential (in a less pejorative sense of the word?), Fate has played a prank on me in the RS search index. When I clicked on the August 1989 article entitled "Alternative Bands Make Their Stand," which is listed as one of mine (although I didn't recall it), the printed page shows that it was written by a fellow female (oxymoron?) scribe named Moira McCormick.

Hey Moira, if this blog post pops up in some search engine of yours, leave a comment and let's reconnect!

In the meantime, I am reminded that byline fame is, indeed, fleeting.