avenue_b raze some people end up embedded in your memory for the strangest reasons. take mr. swintak, my grade eleven math teacher. i failed his class. and i mean miserably. after doing better than i had any right to in a subject i never learned to love for as long as i'd been saddled with it, here at last was a language i couldn't speak or interpret at even a rudimentary level. i could unpack an equation, but parabolas were beyond me. so while the other students were taking notes and earning their credits, i wrote lyrics and developed a system of half_asleep hieroglyphs that must survive on a few sheets of loose leaf paper buried in the basement somewhere. and when iggy pop put out a new album the critics didn't care for, i found a friend in an unexpected place. it was the way iggy crooned the title track, somehow sounding exactly like mr. swintak would have if the man had chosen music as a career instead of ministering mathematics to turbulent teenage minds. after that, whenever i saw him i would sing with the voice inside my head: "i am gonna need a miracle tonight on avenue b." i needed one then like i need one now. i just wasn't awake or aware enough to know it. 260512 what's it to you? who go blather from