Dr. Frank's What's-it

Did you know they still made cassette Walkmans?

Well, they did, up to around just now, but they've finally stopped. (They is Sony.)

On tour in pre-iPod days, I used to travel with a trash bag of tapes, though in practice I rarely ended up removing the default one (Soft Boys/TVPs), listening to it over and over in a kind of semi-autistic daze. That's one reason I know Underwater Moonlight in such precise detail -- it was first -- and also why I was known to exclaim "Toast!" at seemingly random moments from my little corner of the van. The surrounding punk rockers were presumably a bit puzzled, but they never asked and I never told, till now.

Also, does anyone else remember the days when to say the word "Walkman" was to provoke immediate hostility and the imperious correction: "walk THING!" (I don't remember the "walkperson" phase that logically must have preceded "walkthing," but presumably that euphemism was felt to be too entity-ist, and a whole new way to be mad at people for saying stuff was born.) Good, if weird, times.