The most buxom of repdigits! The curviest of semiprimes! I'm bringing sexxxiii back.
Did you know our kid 33 is the boiling point of water on the Newton scale? It's also the atomic number of arsenic, the amount of vertebrae we have in our spine, the numerical representation of the Star of David and the numerical equivalent of AMEN.
Today I turn 33⅓. A significant moment in my timeline; not only am I a third of my way to 100, I've vinylly reached the coolest age for any vinyl lover.
Let us talk of the record.
The ultimate musical lingua franca: Colourful, weighty, documents that belie the nano capabilities of today's collections...They look and feel more alien by the day.
Don't worry, this isn't a nostalgic beard-tug. I'm so digital I these days I talk off the mp3 and .wav to people in the street. These days the stylus is simply the chap who trims my beard every week. But I have done my time with vinyl. Thanks to my music-loving dad, I was brought up on 7s and 12s, and as a DJ I once boasted thousands.
Sure, my piles of wax have dwindled, both literally and in my list of priorities. But that doesn't mean I can't celebrate my precise age today and remember a few occasions when records still reigned supreme.
1981: A 3.3 year old Dave was spotted jumping around the living room to The Police, holding records in the air calling them 'gungs'
1988: Dad gives me his old sprawling table top record player with cassette and radio. I break the needle within 3.3 minutes and don't have the bollocks to 'fess up for 3.3 weeks.
1990: I buy my first vinyl album. Guns n' Roses Appetite For Destruction. (I had other albums on tape before but they were shite so we'll ignore them eh?)
1992: I steal some Iron Maiden picture discs from a second hand record shop. And so a life of petty crime started for 3.3 years.
1996: I accidently burn my bedroom down. Madly, my sizeable collection of grunge and heavy metal vinyl survives and is largely untainted.
1997: Over the course of one night I go all ravey Davey, declare myself a DJ (they are my initials after all) and get a pair of wobbly turntables and mixer. An acute addiction to vinyl proceeds, lasting the best part of a decade.
It wasn't just the records, it was the whole experience. The excitement en route... What new tunes had come in? How many copies would they have? Could I get anything exclusive? This was before the internet crash landed; besides diligent research in the then biblical prose of the press and chatter with fellow DJs, there was no way of knowing what you'd find.
And who would be there? Would I bump into that friendly promoter who gave me a gig last week? Would I find out about a naughty little rave near the M32 next Saturday? One thing was certain; I'd see mates there. Standard. Mon to Sat, 9-6, I was guaranteed to bump into like-minded souls. Eventually I found them on both sides of the counter.
Of course to get this level of record shop in-ness, there were challenges; it's been scientifically proven that every DJ's virgin trip into an independent record shop will lower his self-worth by 33.3%. Those aloof dudes don't even crack a smile for less than two examples of nerdy knowledge or known association with bigger DJs.
Llearn the patter, keep up the chatter, make regular appearances and plough some serious coin their way before you'd even get a sniff of the acetate. Sneaky trial presses and white labels weren't just passed to the casual window shopper; you had to be a face who could guarantee the rare black circle some airtime in a local dancehall.
It took me a year to really feel part of my local record shop gang. Weekly payments of over £33.3 for tunes I felt essential to my repertoire ensured a smile and privileged first dibs. Sometimes I'd just pop in for a chat if I passed by. A community of opportunity.
But times change... By the early noughties we'd hit the modem ages, dialling up our discs and engaging in a much larger community on forums and chatrooms, scoring gigs and sharing tricks nationally. Ironically the first few years of internet vinyl gave its final flourish, connecting diggers with crates the world over, before being overtaken by compressed codes available at the click of an illicit button.
Even when my weekly visits to the record shop dropped, I still experienced a huge passion for vinyl. Yelping to the sound of the postman trying to force a square envelop through my wheezing letterbox. I'd run to the front door, wobbly of moob and bleary of eye, to sign for my latest consignment. Shucks, I'm not even ashamed to admit at least one postie caught a flash of my willy in my vinyl loving haste.
Neither the streaking or phonograph infatuation lasted. For me the arrival of the CD turntable revolutionised the art of DJing, its creative properties far outweighing any die-hard vinyl purism. By the middle of the decade I'd gone fully digital and any offerings of vinyl were reluctantly accepted, knowing I had no desire to play with what quickly felt like a clunky, awkward format. Plus I was running out of space to keep them, and, most importantly, girlfriend's patience.
Eventually I sold most of them. As a parting gesture they seemed to pass the clutter curse on to my sprawling CD collection. And I now fear my CDs are in negotiations with my mp3 collection, hoping to pass the curse to my hard drive. But that's a problem for another post. Perhaps I'll write about it the day I turn 45. And I'll no doubt chuckle about it when on my 78th birthday too.
So here's to vinyl lovers and the three unique ages we can nerdily salute. But how do I celebrate my 33⅓? How do I acknowledge how much of an impact it's made on my life?
Easy. I'm off to splash out on a load of mp3s.