180464/9 or My Interesting Problems!
By Clay Allen

The CD John made for me came through the mail. It arrived on my door in a package that included a letter, baseball cards, a short story, some medium format photo negatives and racket grip tape. The song list is written by typewriter onto a list of Standards and Procedures for employees of the Equinox Hotel. It appears to have come from a training packet. Procedure 4.e reads "Fulfill your job description and more." John underlined that last word in red felt ink and wrote beneath to reiterate, "MORE???" Across the page, in the part where the rules don’t reach, John has typed "Mull of Kintyre"....Wings." He’s using manual machine. You can tell by the way the period mark punches through the back of the paper. I stood there smiling and suddenly started at the marvel of receiving something so complete.

I’ve since played the CD on several good occasions. Song eleven, "Long Promised Road" by the Beach Boys is new inspiration, though every track truly delivers something special. I’ve decided that it will provide the perfect soundtrack to the Canasta game Elizabeth and I will play Saturday morning. We’ll sit at the game table next to the open windows and fresh spring will pour in and John’s CD will play in the background. That’s the kind of CD it is.

Earlier this morning, I made a shocking discovery. The actual CD wasn’t labeled. The CD itself bore no marking other than the one Memorex gave it. Extremely unusual. This man wrote on everything. He wrote on the grip tape. "Racquet Grip Tape" it said. How could he have not labeled the CD!

I agree that there’s something strange about living in a world where the unlabeled, homemade CD is cause for concern. I remember (and still have) my first "burned" CD. Conrad, the elder Albrect-Buehler, pulled it off for us in 92. He made a grunge compilation and we were wowed. (Ironic parenthetical: Though I still have the CD, it doesn’t play without skipping; however, Summer Mix 89, a cassette made by my cousin Kim in her last year of college, plays perfectly [if you kill the bass and jam the treble]) Conrad has just quit his job in the computers division at Oakridge Nuclear Facility to get a graduate degree at Northwestern.

Now I have six homemade CDs. I’ve only ever made one. I’m pretty sure I labeled it, mostly so that Elizabeth would never make the mistake of playing it for someone else. The CD of me playing ukulele and singing. I know what you’re thinking, but it was a gift, so lay off. Anyway, I’m pretty sure I labeled it.

I knew that it would be in my best interest if John’s CD was labeled. Unlabeled CDs slip through the cracks way too easily. One minute you’re juking to "Life is Grand" by Camper Van Beethoven and the next thing you know the CDs crammed behind the jacket for the Slick Rick CD you lost. You’ll never find it there. So it was up to me.

It’s a difficult thing to label someone else’s mix. Sure, you could just call it John’s Mix or John’s Spring 01, but it doesn’t have the panache as Summer Mix 89. The 01 just seems bogus. Thinking of some poetic phrase is equally impossible. I can’t put words into the mouth of a guy who, after circling procedure 5.a. Never say no!, wrote "This out to be rememberer."

I turned to the jewel case. The list of Standards and Procedures and songs was missing, probably because of its unweildiness. Homemade sleeves are often extremely clumsy and so John’s folded sheet of workbook was promptly buried in the files. I flipped over the case and looked at the back. John had provided a clue.

Underneath the CD tray, the was a piece of paper that read, "On April 18th, 1964, Sandy Koufax struck out the side on 9 pitches." When did he start knowing stuff about baseball legends? Why the sudden interest? Why was there grip tape why was Starman on the mix? Why was the CD unlabeled?! In giving me something almost perfectly complete, John raised a riot of rattlesnakes.

And so I decided to label the CD something confusing. Something you have to think about a bit to get. When you do, satisfaction is not guaranteed. It’s what John did for me and I can’t thank him enough. It’s a good approach to life and relations, I think, comparable to a knuckleball. Give em something weird, but still something they can swing at. Why not? It’s a good way to play the game.