Posted: Beware of Doug

I've known him more than twenty years, and almost from the get-go I've been thunderstruck by what he knows about what could only be termed quasi-history. From calling a car's make and year from eighty feet away to ticking off not just the Presidents, but what they actually did, he continues to be a source of amaze- and amusement to me. It's not like he was actually alive when some of those cars rolled off the line, so how does he internalize their lines as well as any 50s teenager? Here's his latest, an emailed answer to one of my as-usual befuddled requests to know what he was casually talking about:

D: After having a WONDERFUL time chasing a funny little ball in the 100 degree heat I found myself at home watching VH1 classic as it reaired videos from the earliest years of MTV…back when a shitty garage band with $150 could have a video produced and the station would show it. A few items of note... in the Cars video for Dangerous Type Ric Ocasek could be brother to both Dan John Miller and Marilyn Manson, and that the video for Calling All Girls was mislabeled as a Who song… I initially thought that the singer was Ian Hunter, well..because he looked like him, but I was wrong…it was Hilly Michaels. Hilly having played with Ian in the past an obviously stolen his look. I’m still waiting for the Joe Walsh video with Joe tooling around a dump in a tank.

J: ?!

D: Ian Hunter was in Mott da Hoople and went off on his own briefly in the 80’s…I’d never heard of Hilly Michaels until I googled calling all girls ian hunter and found that hilly did the song. I just looked up Joe walsh stuff and the video that I’m patiently waiting for is for Life is an Illusion from There Goes the Neighborhood.

Oh. Mott da Hoople. That clears it up.

J: I continue to be astonished by your grasp of things strangely historical.

D: Speaking of strangely historical….for some reason when it’s hot like this I grab my book The Pessimists Guide to History and read about the Great Fire of Peshtigo, Wis.

http://www.library.wisc.edu/etext/WIReader/WER2001c.html

http://www.rootsweb.com/~wioconto/Fire.htm