December 30, 1998
Happy New Year to one and all.
The cyber-greeting is intended to avoid unnecessary strain on our disgruntled postal workers and thinning forests. To make up for the lack of something pretty to stick on your fridge, please accept my recommendations for random cultural products encountered in 1998.
Aaron Caplan
Our heroes compete to win a truck in a keep-one-hand-on-the-prize marathon. Faith, greed, endurance, fellowship, envy, random urinalysis, hallucinations, and a surprise ending!
More hallucinations, this time brought forth by irrational numbers. If you can only get your computer to generate the right digits, the secrets of the stock market and the kabala will be yours!
How to keep one's perspective in trying times.
Sorry for the preponderance of multi-disc sets, and absence of anything actually recorded in 1998)
A collection of floor sweepings that beats most anyone else's greatest hits.
Instrumentals from the soundtracks to various low-budget Italian action movies and softcore sex comedies, 1966 to 1973. Highly addictive trash for those who couldn't get enough of last year's recommended soundtrack from Vampyros Lesbos. Fellow junkies may seek out the Mo'plen series.
More trash, this time from American garages, 1965-69. Loads of loud fuzzy guitar riffs from various disciples of Bo Diddley. The hidden relationship between the Chocolate Watch Band and the Strawberry Alarm Clock revealed at last!
Not trash at all, but as with Nuggets, the one-off tracks by artists you've never heard of are the most memorable.