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I like this. But: Do you mean with or without my name/return information? Am I supposed to make this person a penpal of sorts or just leave them an anonymous letter that we’ll both always wonder about?
That’s a good question. Either way would be good. If it were me, I would put it in the tree with out my name.
Here’s a story as to why.
I have a friend named Aaron who, when he was around 9 years old, found an abandoned cassette tape. On it was a recording of two kids that he had never met doing an audio parody of Star Trek using a home tape recorder, sound-fx toys, and a record player for background music.
The two boys forget their lines, forget who is playing which charecter, and squeal with laughter at their own jokes. The fact that they changed the name of the starship from “Enterprise” to “Boobyprize” should give you idea what kind of parody it was. I’ve listened to the tape. There are parts that are legitimately funny, parts that are ridiculous and silly, and parts that are so obscured by noise that you can’t really tell what’s going on.
Yet, for all it’s flaws, the 9 year old Aaron fell in love with the thing. He once told me it was one of the most hysterical, amazing things he owned, and that it had profoundly impacted the kind of art and music he’s made in the years since. He quotes the funniest lines from it to this day.
But beyond the entertainment value of the recording (which, to some, might be questionable) Aaron was fascinated with who these kids were, why they had recorded this thing, and thrilled to found something so uniquely strange.
“If I had found Boobieprize today would I have liked it as much? Probably not. But there was something magical about finding that tape when I did. It’s a parody of Star Trek by people that don’t really know much about Star Trek. It’s not full of inside jokes that only treckies would get, they change the charecters, it makes no sense. Back then, before the internet, where I lived, it was so rare to find strange stuff. It seems, now that we have the web, that theres a bit of magic that’s gone, because it’s lifted so many barriers to things. I’m not really into exclusivity, I don’t need to be the only one who knows about something to enjoy it, but the web kind of takes away from the magic of doing the legwork.” Aaron told me.
Aaron originally played me the tape several years ago when we were in a band together. He told me it was one of his goals with the music we were making. He liked the idea of making something for someone else to find someday and have the same experience that he had with this crappy parody. It’s creators didn’t use their names and asking for nothing in return. It was mysterious.
More than a decade later Aaron decided to try and hunt down the creators of the tape. After questioning people in his home town he discovered the name of one of the boys, and with that found his contact information on the web and called him.
“Boy, was that a mistake.” Aaron told me.
The kids on the tape turned out to be Eric Ebbenga and Aaron J. Higgens, two school friends who were now full grown adults. It turns out, had recorded sixteen of these adventures between grade school and collage. They were so surprised and excited to hear that someone they had never met had taken such an interest in their tape that they sent Aaron copies of their complete archive.
Predictably, none of the new episodes measured up to the magic Aaron had found in the original. He suspects that a lot has to do with the time and place that he discovered it but I suspect that part of it is related to the mystery about who made it and why being solved.
Aaron got permission from the tapes creators to put the audio from his tape and one other episode it on his Interview Press website. You can listen to a preview (which takes quite a while to start playing) or download the whole thing.
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