an award-winning letter

Going through some papers, I came across this, from the letters to the editor section of the Ann Arbor News, some time in June of 1988.

Back then I was a graduate student in the PhD program in mathematics at the University of Michigan. And, lest anyone say that I am trying to give a false impression, I state here clearly that I did not finish a PhD. I left with a Masters degree after two years and became an actuary.

My hobby at that point was writing letters to the letters sections of newspapers and magazines. That was a hobby that started in December, 1983 and lasted about ten years. I would go out of my way looking through magazines and newspapers to find things to write about. Some not so much. Some were sent under my real name, and some under a variety of pseudonyms.  This one was prompted by a tongue-in-cheek article about a rash of Elvis sightings, and -- if memory serves -- a book that came out claiming that Elvis was alive and living an anonymous life.

The icing on the cake came that winter, when the News selected my letter as being among their best of 1988. So, yes, gentle reader, I am an award-winning letter writer.

a blog devoted to bad records

My wife found a great blog.

A guy named Darryl W. Bullock blogs about the world's worst records. Like Bullock, I have an appreciation for truly awful records. But he blogs specifically about the topic. As near as I can figure, he sticks to a once-per -week schedule, and typically includes audio, so you can hear the awful songs.

Interesting for me, he discusses a lot of music that I have in my collection, though I typically have them on compilations as opposed to having the original single. That's true of Eilert Pilarm, a Swedish Elvis impersonator who doesn't have a good enough grasp of English to pull it off. Also of Congresswoman Malinda Jackson Parker (yes, she was a congresswoman -- in Liberia) who recorded two songs about mosquities. Here is one of them:

Aw, heck. While we're at it, here's a Eilert Pilarm doing "Jailhouse Rock" (with lyrics):

I also enjoyed Bullock's entry on The Buggs (a thinly disguised Beatles ripoff from the 1960s), largely because he discussed a truly awful record that I used to own on vinyl.

I love perusing Bullock's blog, and repeatedly finding myself saying, "Yeah! I remember that! I remember that!" Go give it a read.