Welcome to Abandoned Projects Week! I was going to post about fairly recent projects that I might conceivably still feel responsible for, but this one is such a classic that I couldn’t resist.
Forward into the past!
The Project
Yeahhh boy-ee! It’s the summer of 1987, and I am so down with the hip hop that I’m bustin’ out rhymes like Capone doin’ crimes! Which is to say that I am writing rap lyrics and occasionally inflicting them on friends. A germ of an idea forms: maybe I could record my own rap album.
I realized at the time what a ridiculous idea it was. But that was exactly what appealed to me. I love stupid, grandiose projects. When I heard that some college students were translating the Bible into Klingon I thought, “Of course! Why wouldn’t you translate the Bible into Klingon?”
Why it was abandoned
It turned out that recording studios were expensive. And they were run by people who might make me feel like a real idiot for doing this. And what would I do about backing tracks? Would I have to become my own DJ, too?
Also, what on earth was I going to do with the (no doubt terrible) finished product?
I came to my senses and spent the summer hanging out at the 7-11, playing Bubble Bobble and eating Klondike bars.
Now, 20 years later, the situation would be completely different. Book time at a recording studio? Pfft. I would just open GarageBand on my iBook, call up some beats, and lay down a few tracks. Then I’d create a MySpace page and upload the results.
Hell, it would probably attract fans nowadays. Strange, sad, wrong fans, but fans nonetheless.
Wade Rockett 
You know, in 1987 I was pretty certain that Haim was my favorite Corey, but now I realize that I was a fool. A fool. Corey Feldman is clearly the superior Corey. I wish Tarantino would just give him a call already and put him in a movie where he says lots of clever things and kills people. LOTS OF PEOPLE.
Nine out of 10 times stupid, grandiose projects are just that, but the tenth has the kind of genius that smart, pocket-sized projects never will: just ask any genius. (No, not me. :)