On Thu, 9 Sep 1999, Chris Devers wrote:

On Wed, 8 Sep 1999, muppet wrote:

Chris Devers wrote:

1976. 4 Feb. Same as Rosa Parks and Alica Cooper. And Dan Quayle.

rosa parks lives in the back of my refrigerator. *cough* long story.

...I'm listening...

*deep breath*

this is actually the story of my roommate.  he's the drummer in my now defunct band.  he used to live with the other guitar player.  the other guitar player had a thing for photography.  while living in the dorms an der uni [just for the britons who might be confused by ``college'' ;-)], he once took a black and white photo of a solitary lemon in the back of his 1 cubic foot microfridge.  just a lone lemon, sitting on the top rack, all the way in the back corner.

a year or two later, he and the drummer are living together.  we're all talking about album covers for our first album.  we're looking at photos. the lemon photo comes out, and we kinda laugh, and he puts it on the refrigerator in the kitchen.

then a few days later he says, that would be a pretty funny picture for the cover, you know, a fridge-front with a picture of the insides of the fridge, but all that's in there is lemon.  [very strange guy with a very cerebral sense of humor.]

then the drummer, being a drummer [insert your favorite drummer joke here], looks at him and says, ``that's not so funny.  if it were something like a rosa parks doll in the back of the fridge, that, now /that/ would be funny.''  and he proceeds to chuckle to himself for a few moments on this incredibly funny joke he'd made.

in the meantime, the first guy (and i) just stands there, looking at him. he laughs in disbelief, saying, ``rosa parks?!?!  how the fuck would anybody know it was rosa parks?!?!''

``'cause she's in the back, stupid!''

``but nobody will get that!''

``of course they will, didn't you have any american history classes?''

it went on for quite a while, becoming funny not because of the actual humor content, but because the entire conversation was so ridiculous.

so this has become quite an in-joke over the last couple of years.  we explained the story to another friend earlier this year, and for the drummer's birthday, the other friend got a baby doll from goodwill and some nametags from office depot, and (after washing the geri-curl out of the doll's hair (that was freaky in itself)), put the baby doll in the back of the refrigerator with a nametag readin ``hello, my name is rosa parks.''

the drummer, being tall and not having reason to bend down when getting into the fridge, didn't see the baby doll in the back for several days.  this was frustrating, because we all got up to watch him when he went to get something from the fridge, of course.  when he finally saw it...  well...  the circle is now complete.

it's just a little difficult to explain to houseguests and people who don't know my friends why we have a rosa parks doll in the back of the fridge.

(incidentally, we wound up using a photo of magnetic letters on the fridge as the album cover.  we didn't even have our name on the cover, just the name of a really bad movie we saw on mystery science theater 3000 (the oblique album title), spelled out in brightly-colored magnetic letters....)