Fair citizens of the Pop Cultarium, I implore you to raise Terrence Trent Darby's Q rating.

Think back to the day ... and make the dream real. I ditched my homework in 10th grade to watch a 10 pm HBO special about the man.

It wasn't that hard to make me ditch my homework.

If you had told me, back then, (whilst ditching) that I would be sitting - in a study about 8 miles from that high school house in a Rancheros Doritos/blue glow of the eMac CRT stupor, debating the funniness of the word ditching: I would say, "What?"

And if you had said that the lead singer of INXS would die the way he died, and TTD would front the band for some shows before they produced an INXS reality show to mint a new lead singer (And that Kirk Penguilly's mustache would grow more Howard Hugheish) I would say,"Whaaaaaaa?"

Sometimes, in the midst of another gray and drab commute---> the slush lapping at the cuffs of my LL Bean khaki Traveller's (Thanks Ma!): TTD will bubble to the top of the iPod random playlist and splash into my earwaves.

"Take that!" I call up to the glistening Abercrobie and Fitch billboard that glows with an odd religionosity behind the labrinthe of Porter Square T stop thin branches, growing over the odd hobo and abandoned shoping cart.