I am 35 years old today. Happy birthday to me. Happy Birthday also to Kyath Battie, my unofficial Canadian 'twin' (we were both born on this day in 1971.)
Thanks also to Kyath for sending me this "special personal baseball birthday message" from none other than Dave Stewart! (the baseball player, not the guy from eurthymics)
The tape, which lasts about 90 seconds, starts off with a bang. Dave hits a homer (from the sounds of it) and then tells me that he's heard great things about me and he knows I'm gonna go far, no matter what I decide to do in life. The audio quality then drops sharply and what sounds like an excerpt of an older interview with Dave begins. In it, Dave says that he never got presents as a kid, or surprise parties or cakes, or anything really. Just a card from the whole family saying happy birthday, and that was enough for him. Dave has a bit of trouble articulating himself here, as if the complexity of what he is trying to get across is a bit too much for him, and he ends up repeating himself a lot-especially the bit about "presents," which he hammers home so many times I started to think he might actually be speaking in code. Like those weird numbers stations you can pick up on the radio sometimes. This is the 'dark' part of the tape.
Luckily, things brighten up after that. The original Dave voice comes back on to wrap things up with a farewell "...so Happy Birthday!!" and the sound of Dave hitting another homer can be heard as the tape ends. (or is that maybe supposed to be the homer I am going to hit...with my life...?) Who knows. Sports celebrities are strange creatures who speak in their own rarified language about things we couldn't possibly hope to understand. We should just be happy to know that they are thinking of us.