I always say that for the time I spent in State College in the Nineties, Smashing Pumpkins were the Chairmans of the Board for me and most of the people I knew, rock-wise. Radiohead were second in command. Yet when I look back at my time in Central Pennsylvania, it occurs to me that, towards the end, which for me was 1998, Radiohead had taken a lead over Corgan & Co. When OK Computer was released in the summer of 1997, it pushed Radiohead onto a new, lofty plateau. I cared enough to buy OK Computer the day it came out. This is a tune that illuminates my final year in State College. The environs of and around State College are full of country lanes. I also did have a way, first in '96 and then again in '97, of being abducted by aliens in State College. An uptight, hallucinatory scenario, indeed. This is a tune, also, that brings me back to one night, in the summer of '98, I stayed up all night with a friend of mine, doing random, meaningless tasks, as one might do in a small town in summertime. We wound up on the roof of the Weaver Building. At dawn, we got free donuts from a bakery where another one of our friends worked. Then I went back to my South Atherton Street sublet and crashed. Were aliens watching, and taking notes? Small town life sometimes does feel like living on the moon, or on another planet. Yet that's where I earned my stripes towards being the writer I am today, for whatever that's worth or not worth. What are all of these words worth? To small towns, aliens, donuts, and the Nineties. Peace.
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