Riding on the Escalator of Life...

...Or rather out of it. Here at the Café, we were sad to hear of the untimely death of Philadelphia New Wave sensation Robert Hazard.

Back when I was a tiny tot (relatively speaking) living near Phillie, my crowd of punk-wannabees, drama-club dropouts, and nascent ne'er-do-wells and I were all very excited, because, my dears, through a friend of a friend, we knew a Hero!*

In those days, you see, he was Robert Hazard and the Heroes, and about as big as you can get in that part of the world, and the Heroes were his band, and we knew one of them. Big stuff.

Time passes, he goes on to write "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" (that alone reason enough for immortality, really). Our Hero friend went on to another, much bigger band and is still going strong.

And as for me - I still think "Hey girl, I'm a personal friend of Gloria Vanderbilt!" one of the great throwaway lines of all time. I'm having a spot of trouble getting videos to post, but you can throw yourself into a nostalgic frenzy over the PatrickNagelische extras lip-synching the Heroes here.

*AND, he was that way! Hard to believe, in this Elton John, Lindsay Lohan kicky kind of world we live in now what a big deal that was, isn't it? For the record, he was the Hero above with the only haircut you'd still be caught dead in today, and, then as i have a feeling now, totally dreamy. Sigh...