I don't need friends.
Really? Gosh, I thought you were a genius.
----From the movie Powder

I dig things like that. I actually own an Ace of Base CD. I have an Eeyore stuffed animal on top of my CPU to my right, and a bendable Jack Skellington dangling from a lamp to my left. On top of my wardrobe closet I have a sign with the symbol for a pawn shop that fell from its fixture on Magazine Street. I have cheap paper lanterns in each corner of my room: yellow, pink and orange. I still tape things to my walls instead of buying frames. I still consider Christmas lights cheap and applicable home decoration.

I have sentimental cubby holes in my heart for the cheesiest of things, and I am aware that they are not always of the highest caliber. I know that lots of people have more dignified tastes and that my existance, by comparison, could be viewed as base, old fashioned or downright cheesy. I remember the words of my old college pal, Zombie, as we drove off to swim in the lake behind Randolph Macon's Women's College, the only survivor's of an all nighter. He was this smarmy Cuban with a head of kinky brown hair and long nails. He looked like a troll with a handful of redeeming qualities that would learn if you were only brave enough to coax him out from under the bridge where he was hiding. He was a death metal freak, and he loved to air drum. We were driving in his mother's station wagon and he put in the first Jane's Addiction CD, amazed that, like himself, I knew all the lyrics. He turned to me and asked, "Do I look like the kind of guy who owns every single B-52's album ever put out?" No, I thought, far from it.

I own DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's first album, the one with Parents Just Don't Understand on it. My favorite video game is Galaga, because I despise video games that make me think. I reminisce about One Day At A Time and the Hubba Bubba cowboy commercials, about Tinkerbell cosmetics and the royal blue muscle shirt I owned when I was 9 that had a glittery iron on of Michael Jackson on it. For Halloween, I dressed up as Madonna that year. I was a pop child, true to the end, until I discovered the movie Pump Up The Volume. I curled my bangs in that awful frozen claw look (our rural high school in Delaware was WAY behind the times), for goodness' sake. I was cheesy, almost, out of the womb.

And still I am proud. From atop my milk crate, I salute you, fellow cheese heads. You are not alone.