And yeah, yesterday was one of the big, gut-wrenchingly sad news days in which the news channels go into overdrive and we get bombarded with lots of headlines and tags with things like "A Nation Mourns." No snarkiness will be coming from this end as it is indeed a pretty sad and tragic thing.

On days like those, I always get weirded out about those moments when I don't know anything, when I'm blissfully unaware that anything is going on. All of the major channels are covering the story, millions are watching the coverage, the President flies back from Camp David to deliver a speech to the nation and despite it all, I had no clue. I was safely tucked in bed, watching Fletch (under-rated classic) and a bit of HBO: Inside the NFL (you can never heap enough scorn at the Raiders), totally oblivious what was going on mere ten or twenty clicks away on the remote.

I only found out hours later, after I had showered, had lunch and turned on the computer to check e-mail. By then, the story was hours old, but I had no clue whatsoever. I was lying in bed, being lazy and watching Fletch.

The story also brought me back- as I'm sure it did with everyone else- to the Challenger crash in '86. One of the reasons for my '80's hate is that pretty much nothing happened the entire decade. There was the Reagan and Lennon assasination's in the early 80's and then bupkus until the fall of the East Bloc (which, admittedly, was pretty fucking huge) in '89. Other than that, nothing. And here I was, some angst-ridden, ennui infused teenager living in some upper-middle class WASP enclave bored out of my skulll and desperately wishing for something exciting to happen. Anything. Keep in mind too, that this was when the Baby Boomer's were getting all Big Chill and misty-eyed about the past couple of decades and force-feeding those who weren't members of that generation to live their nostalgia. All through the '80's, you'd constantly hear about how groovy it was back in the '60's. About the Civil Rights marches and the Kennedy's and the Vietnam Protests and Woodstock and the Beatles. Is that Freedom Rock? Well, turn it up!

And then the Challenger blew up. It was news. It was big. It was different. Which is why when I was told by a friend what happened while walking down the hallways of my high-school, my reaction was one of excitement. I thought it was cool. Something was actually happening. Here we are now, entertain us.

These days, of course, it's pretty much the opposite. As the ole Chinese curse says "may you live in interesting times" and right now things are probably a little too interesting.