Preface To Connections: Missed Connections

Spoiler alert: one of the fake interviews I'll be doing tomorrow involves that section of the old classifieds (which one can now find on Craigslist) called "Missed Connections."

Did you ever peruse this section of the paper?  I never did - like Morrissey, "having learned my lesson, I never left an impression on anyone"* - but I remember working for a time in a hip video store in Austin, & the hip boys who worked there often read that section every week to see if they got any shout outs.  (If that's what you call a mention in a "missed connections" column.)  They struck pay dirt once (maybe more than once, but only once when I was there), & the "missed connection" co-worker went through a bunch of customers' accounts to see if he could figure out who had placed the ad.  As far as I know, nothing came of it - the people there made very little money, & certainly not enough to respond to an ad in the classifieds!

(Is it me or has that section always leaned heavily on men looking for whatever?  Even in the Craigslist link it skews heavily toward dudes.  I guess men are still more aggressive in our society.)

My favorite section of those kind of classifieds was the "Variations" section.  Not because I was ever into that sort of thing, but because when I used to do long, long fills on KVRX back in the 1990s - I'd be on the radio from midnight to 9am sometimes - I would often run out of things to say during airbreaks, & would also be delirious from lack of sleep, & one thing that would focus me was reading the Variations column from The Austin Chronicle  to weirdos who might be listening late at night or very early in the morning.

Luckily no one ever got mad at me for reading their ads!

& probably no one ever had a Missed Connection that began: "You: very tired, on the radio, trying to figure out what BDSM means..."

* After I wrote this, someone on Facebook noted that today was the 28th anniversary of Viva Hate, the record from which the song I'm quoting comes.  I'd like to believe Morrissey was working his magic through me on this special anniversary.