TYPICAL GIRLS… ARE SO CONFUSING: Here are two X-Ray Spex songs I’d never heard until tonight! “Good Time Girl”; “Peace Meal.” The latter is… bubble-gum vegetariana plus Heideggerian “factory farms are concentration camps” awfulness. All I can say is that the X-Ray Spex were usually a lot better than that. Still, I’m a completist with them.

I still remember that August week in Rehoboth–the week I turned thirteen, or maybe fourteen?–when I failed to learn to ride a bike, uselessly called out a t-shirt retailer on his homophobia, rode the Ferris wheel, entered the Haunted Mansion (it still smells the same ten years later), won a neon parrot at Skee-Ball, had a half-donut with a cigarette stuck in it for my birthday cake, purchased the black lipstick I would need for the coming year from the Halloween store, and bought my first X-Ray Spex cassette. Also wore a stuffed frog on my head, if photographic evidence can be trusted.