Out of the Blue, Indeed

I have Yahoo as my homepage on IE. During a rather random scroll down the page, I happened to notice the "Buzz Log", which was featuring the most popular music searches on the Web. Now, the WWW being a rather savvy place, I expected the fourth most popular music search to be something popular like Hilary Duff or Lindsay Lohan. No, that honor is reserved for one Deborah Gibson, once known to the world as teeny songbird Debbie Gibson. So, how does Debbie Gibson, who's been off the pop cultural radar forever, suddenly become so popular? Can't have anything to do with her being in next month's Playboy...

True confession time, here: As a tweenager, I had a thing for Debbie Gibson. Those of you who know me as a jaded and cynical individual may find this shocking, that someone who contemplated suicide on a weekly basis could be smitten by something as innocuous as a teen pop sensation, but she was my kryptonite. I've seen her in concert. I owned her records. I had a Debbie Gibson poster hanging on my bedroom door. This was my life at 12 (I will say, with no irony, that Debbie Gibson, as a sex symbol, is an acquired taste. Like Liz Phair, her antithetical peer at the other end of the musical spectrum, Debbie's not the girl in high school that everyone lusted after; she's the girl you end up marrying).

That being said, this Playboy thing is my tweenage fantasy come to life...about 15 years too late. I moved on rather quickly after those carefree days, to a point where Ms. Gibson was a forgotten memory by the time I graduated from high school. Even Debbie herself has moved on, now going by the more adult name of Deborah. It was fun while it lasted, but everyone has moved on.

So, when my issue comes, I will peruse the "Deborah" pictorial with the same curiosity that I allot to all pictures of naked women, and maybe, just maybe, think back to the days when seeing "Debbie" naked would have rocked my world.