This Philip Michael Thomas Album Really Ties The Room Together

Just like R&T's John Krewson, I lived and breathed Miami Vice as a child. So much so that at the age of fourteen I convinced my father to buy me a white Armani-style (note that I wrote style there; the old man would occasionally cough up a "MANI"-labeled item for me but he kept the good stuff for himself) suit and a couple of single-button T-shirts, one aqua and one pink. I wore this ensemble to my high school where I was promptly acclaimed as the coolest kid by everybody and easily seduced the pretty girl in my Latin class.

Just kidding. As I recall, I was actually thrown down the stairs by the football team's middle linebacker, possibly twice, the head injury I sustained at the time makes remembering difficult.

Let's do what they call an "unboxing" on all the tech channels. Isn't there something pathetic about "unboxing" videos? It's some sort of advanced consumer fetishism. We've all been conditioned that we'll get our fifteen minutes of YouTube fame, but insofar as so many young men have no skills other than purchasing "nerd toys" the most they can do is an "unboxing" of something they've purchased. That, or YouTubing a run-through of a video game.

We'll use a Kershaw Leek with micarta sides to open it. Let's be careful.

The suspense builds. Or doesn't.

And here it is --- the debut record from Philip Michael Thomas, new in the vinyl wrap. Sharp eyes will note that at some point it was discounted to five dollars. I paid $21.26 shipped, which goes to show there's no limit to my idiocy. Still --- where are you going to find another one?

I'm afraid to unwrap and listen to it, honestly. I feel like Steve Carrell in that movie where the moral is that even a 40-year-old incel can nail Catherine Keener if he waits until she's a grandmother and has no other options.

We could stop the story right there, except for the fact that this morning I fired up the Tahoe and drove through a snowstorm to Muirfield Village in Dublin so I could buy an authentic piece of cocaine-and-Countach-era furniture from some super-successful-looking fifty-five-year-old who, judging by the condition of the home and the age of his cars, had long since descended into that genteel state known as "house-poor". I gave him fifty dollars and he gave me this:

Just try to tell me that nobody ever snorted a line off that table. In much the same way that General Motors managed to make a color feel cheap, somehow the people who made this table managed to make exactly the right shade of blue for 1985. You can't fuck with it. It's legitimate Less Than Zero chic.

So let's put the two together. Briefly, mind you. There's no way I'm going to let this table stay above ground.

And here's the music. If you listen to this while staring at the photo, the spirit of Edward James Olmos will appear and call you into his office.