Recycling My Past: Kiss vs. Jewel

This is exactly what it looks like.

I originally wrote this in April 2007, in an attempt to set a record for the longest column ever printed in URI's campus newspaper, the Cigar. Although there was no real way for me to check, I'm pretty sure I did, since the piece was 3,001 words. If you want to punish yourself, you can read it here. This entry is a combination of that piece with some added detail.

I'm going to tell another story about things my friends and I did in the past. Back when I was a freshman in 2002, my friend Pat was invited to a party his cousin Jen was having at her house in Newport. She went to Salve Regina, and Pat brought me along, and our two other friends, Eric and Jeff.

For some reason, even though most of us had cars, we took our friend Chris' car. I don't know why we did this, since our friend Jeff couldn't really drive stick that well, and he was driving. We also got kind of lost on the way there. Three of us were from South County, and one was from Vermont, so really, you can't fault us for not knowing Newport, it being a whole 30 minutes away from where we grew up.

I'm regrouping though: This was the first "college party" that most of us had been to, so we played it cool for the most part. You know, we had a few beers, played some Taboo, didn't get too Wild and Crazy Kids. (Yeah, that's right, I just used that TV show name as an adjective, want to fight about it?)

As the party started to break up, Pat and Eric got into an argument with Jen's boyfriend, Ian, with Jen's friends Betsy, Kate and Erica egging them on. The argument was about who was better, Kiss or Jewel.

Reflecting back upon the argument, it is now obvious to me that it is something we have all pondered in our short time on this Earth. Keep in mind, this was before Jewel went bat-S crazy and tried to become a pop diva, and also before Gene Simmons started hosting a reality TV show that revealed he was a kind-of normal dad.

As Pat and Eric came up with reasons why Jewel was better, Ian came up with what he considered the ultimate counter to their arguments. "You can be buried in a Kiss coffin, does Jewel have coffins?"

Side note: Kiss no longer sells coffins, unfortunately. The band sold the Kiss Kasket from 2001 to 2006 for low, low price of $4,700. On the plus side, the band did autograph it before shipping out a unit.

Once Ian brought up the coffin issue, the argument slowly petered out, although it is still hotly debated to this day. For what it's worth, while I was intentionally on the side of Jewel, I have become a bigger Kiss fan as time goes on. Jewel really only had that one stellar album, which had come out around the time of this argument, whereas Kiss has an entire catalog of different music that is still worth listening to. Their greatest hits and singles collection CDs has a whole bunch of music you don't even realize is theirs.

After that, we left the party, and an unnamed member of our crew demanded that we stop at Newport Jai Alai (back when it still had jai alai) to pee in some shrubs. We concluded the night with some grub from IHOP, which was utterly fantastic at 2 a.m.