Happy Birthday Kurt Co-baaaiiiinne

If he were alive today Kurt Cobain would be blowing out 40 candles on his birthday cake. We were 19 when he died, and were sleepwalking through a higher education that we never asked for at a university in central Illinois where life, frankly, sucked, and it was made worse when we heard that the guy who single-handedly saved us from the ridiculous crap we were filing our ears and minds with until then had gone and got shot in the head. By his own trigger finger. Later that year we woke up and got the hell out of there. We were 19, he was 26. Feels like last week.

If you're looking for some way to commemorate the occasion above and behind throwing the catalog on your iPod for the next few weeks, a reader wrote us with plans to visit the Denny-Blaine house Kurt occupied for a time in Seattle. The current residents there have got to be wondering by now how long every anniversary of the birth or death of the former resident will be remembered. There's also a park near there that some people visit. Or, try heroin.