Friday, May 29, 2020

Supersonic by JJ Fad

When we first moved to Turlock, my dad found an after school program at the Rec Center which had a roller skating rink, a putt putt course, an enormous slide, arcade games, and a snack bar.  There weren't any organized activities we generally had the run of the place.  It was honestly a very cool place to spend time after school and all summer. Way to go Dad!  I became a pretty decent roller skater who could skate forwards and backwards and sideways and even shoot the duck.  I also became quite the Super Mario Bros expert.  This was on the arcade, not the Nintendo.  In other words, my dad's change dish never had any quarters in it.  My favorite part of the Rec Center was getting to man the DJ booth on occasion, which was mostly when there was next to no one there that I could potentially impact.  It was literally a tiny booth on the side of the roller rink.  There were 45s (these are small records for those youngsters who may be reading this) lining the walls and in cartons.  Each 45 was a "single" which is what it sounds like - literally a single song on one side and another song on the reverse side.  Records are not for the faint of heart.  You have to handle them with care so they do not scratch.  You place it on the turntable, turn it on so it starts spinning, then carefully place the needle in the correct place.  There is risk of scratching, which is a horrible noise, putting the needle in the incorrect place, the record skips, you aren't there in time to quickly replace it, leaving dead silence.  It's an art form!

One day a very popular girl in my class hosted her birthday party at the Rec Center.  I was not invited to the party, but since that was my place where I spent my afternoons, I could skate with the girls at the party and show off my skating skills.  At one point in the party, I convinced the DJ, a teenager who I found ever so worldly, to let me show off how cool I was to work the DJ booth.  I probably took a request or two and I most certainly spun a song that I thought would make me look super cool.  Supersonic was a super hot song in 1987.  In the song you get spell out SUPER and any song where you get to spell something out (B-Double E-Double-R-U-N) or count off (a 1-2-3-4!) is a winner in my book.  After the SUPER part, she starts rapping so quickly it turns into nonsense.  It's the best song ever honestly. 

Flash forward to last November.  My son was invited to a birthday party..... AT A ROLLER RINK.  They still exist people and they are exactly the same.  To get in the mood on the way there, I played some roller rink songs in the car.  I could recall every single lyric to the song to my kids' astonishment. The roller rink even had MTV Music Videos from the 80s playing on screens and this guy in his long flowing locks and bell bottoms, skating around like he just jumped off the screen of Boogie Nights.  It was perfection.  Making this even better, if that is possible, is that the mother of the girl celebrating her birthday is on a Roller Derby team. If you have never seen or heard about Roller Derby, check out the movie Whip It and then tell me you want to meet Margaret because she is kind of a badass! 

You see the S is for Super and the U is for Unique.  The P is for Perfection and you know that we are freaks!  The E is for Exotic and the R is for Rap. Supersonic!

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