Monday Toonage #11

Nine days before Christmas means I have to go with something seasonal for this week's Monday Toonage, and it's a toss up between the usual suspects (sorry but the download links are long dead). It could be either of them. They are both majestic. However, this day . . . this week . . . this year, it's Graham Parker's 'Christmas is for Mugs':

A Firing Offense by George P. Pelecanos (Serpent's Tail 1992)

I first met Karen in a bar in Southeast, a new wave club near the Eastern Market run by an Arab named Haddad whom everyone called HaDaddy-O.

This was late in '79 or early in 1980, the watershed years that saw the debut release of the Pretenders, Graham Parker's Squeezing Out Sparks, and Elvis Costello's Get Happy, three of the finest albums ever produced. That I get nostalgic now when I hear "You Can't Be Too Strong" or "New Amsterdam" or when I smell cigarette smoke in a bar or feel sweat drip down my back in a hot club, may seem incredible today - especially to those who get misty-eyed over Sinatra, or even at the first few chords of "Satisfaction" - but I'm talking about my generation.