made-up m3m0ries

What a sad day. The Beastie Boys brought me in to hip-hop; it’s not that they were the first rappers I heard. (Eric played Snoop early-on; Dan bought the cassingle for “Boom! Shake the Room.”) But there was a definitive moment for me, when I had heard the Beasties on the rock station enough times that I knew I had to turn the dial. Seeing the “Sabotage” video changed my life. I was nine.

They were funny; they were cool. They were everything I wanted to be (and, it should be said, everything I still hope to be).

Somewhere, there’s a video of my friends and me in ninth-grade, acting out — beat for beat — the “Intergalactic” video. (A genuine version of “Be Kind Rewind,” I suppose.) Dan played the giant robot; I was Adam Yauch.

RIP.