Also just finished reading Joe Pernice's novelette about the Smiths' "Meat Is Murder." It was like something one of my classmates would have written and pretty amateur-ly published. But it had a lot of heart and charm. It was interesting as a work by one of my favorite musicians about being in your late teens in 1985. So it goes in the same category as "Grosse Pointe Blank" and "Romy & Michele." If I had to rank these three works in terms of fealty to my version of events it would be JP's "Meat Is Murder" first, then Romy, then GPB. One interesting motif here was the development of a high school musician and how high school bands get together. Which I knew a little bit about from overheard conversations, but it did always seem miraculous that three or four teenage boys could get together and not only do a directed activity such as sports but, on their own, find mutual free time, rehearsal space, money for equipment and the guts to play in public and even to write music and lyrics and share their likes and dislikes. It still seems amazing to me that kids do this.