12 Again on April 10

My friend Renny is the biggest Duran Duran fan in the Philippines. She hasn't stopped fantasizing about drummer Roger Taylor since 1981 (guess who the bigger spinster is?). I had a thing for bassist John Taylor from age eleven through thirteen, and then quite forgot all about it. I didn't even remember going to the "Big Thing" concert at Araneta in 1989(?), until Renny showed me the pictures of us seated in the patron box with my sister and their good friend Olivia. There I was indeed, in my light-colored jeans and white Tretorns. Once upon a time I was a Duranie!

A couple of Christmases ago, Renny gave me a dvd of the band's 2004 comeback concert at Wembley. I didn't expect to be caught up in nostalgia for the long-gone eighties, and I certainly didn't think I'd find any of the members worth looking at now that they were well into their forties and likely to be sporting wrinkles and beer guts. But whaddya know, I enjoyed that dvd and watched the whole thing from start to finish. By the time the end credits were rolling, I'd begun to think that the band sounded even better than they did twenty years ago. And they looked good, too, for a bunch of old farts in their forties. John Taylor's got more lines on his forehead than a sheet of Size1 paper, but he's still a good-looking guy.

Thanks to Renny's obsessive trolling of the internet for concert info, I have now been roped into our simultaneous purchase of two front-section tickets, paid more than a month in advance, to the "Red Carpet Massacre" concert at the Araneta on April 10. Total madness, but I intend to exhaust all four thousand, four hundred and twenty reasons to be twelve again, and mad about the bassist with the beautiful smile.

Oi, Renny! This concert had better be good or I'll be swinging it over your head for the rest of your natural life :)