Unbeknowst to me for a very,VERY long time, I have been a Duran Duran fan.

How do I know this?

For the longest time I have liked the song, "The Reflex." Only knowing that it was a very Eighties kind of song, and I liked it because it had all these cool echoes in it, and I used to sing "why-y-y-y-y-y don'tcha use it?" when I was in a particularly Eighties mood, to my brother's exasperation.

Only recently did I learn that yes, "The Reflex" was one of the many gems of the Duran Duran catalog.

This summer, I was working 40 hour weeks, mostly on a honors research project being funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Pretty big-league stuff. I hope my research will get published sometime in the near future. (If you're wondering, I am doing genetic research with fruit flies - Drosophila melanogaster.) Research is very tough work but I'm always looking ahead that maybe someday I'll find the cure for some disease. A lofty goal.

I was ill this past July - what happened was, my best friend came to visit me from Kentucky, and she's never been to the D.C. area. So I ended up walking all over town with her, becoming a tourist for a week, checking out museums and such. We went clubbing at the Cage one night, so that was pretty exhausting as well. It was a lot of fun, me and my 'N Sync friends (my best friend came b/c she was going with me to an 'N Sync concert at RFK) went out to dinner with my school friends. I guess I wore myself out when she came to visit, because a week after she left, I went back to my normal work routine, and practically fainted one morning in the lab. I got rushed to the hospital, they didn't find anything abnormal or anything, so I was sent home and told to rest for a couple days.

For two weeks, I stayed at my parents' house, trying to relax. I had been living on-campus in an apartment with my friends, but for those two weeks I stayed home. Staying home is nice - because the fridge is always fully stocked, and there's cable! So I was flipping the channels one morning after breakfast, and it was 10 o'clock - so all the shows were changing, and I checked MTV and VH1. I noticed VH1 had its orangey screen for "Behind the Music" and figured it was probably something I didn't want to watch, like the story of Vanilla Ice or Ice-T. Blah...

But no. This time they were going to show "Behind the Music - Duran Duran." The songs they played in the intro were vaguely familiar...who are these guys? Maybe I'll watch this for a little while...

Wow, did I really know that many Duran Duran songs? Guess so. And John Taylor (then and now, mind you) is truly a handsome sight. No wonder he and the rest of Duran Duran set a million hearts afire two decades ago - can I just say that the man looks so yummy you want to eat him up with a spoon?

Since then, I have bought several albums, bid on lots of Duran Duran stuff on eBay - I have two Japanese photo books, thank you very much! And now I've gone one step further by working on this club with Sara (thelionforreal - who runs this lovely site), and it's been great interacting with younger fans. We aren't original Duranies but we're every bit as fanatical than our older Duranie counterparts. We want to be taken seriously.

I can't wait for the International Duran Duran Convention set for next July. It's going to be a blast - to have that many people who share a love for Duran Duran, from all walks of life. You don't have to be a certain age or have a certain mindset to enjoy Duran Duran.

Duran Duran has always stood for fun, at least that's what they always said all these years.

For me, Duran Duran has been much more than that. Duran Duran has given me music to fit my every mood, lyrics to fit every emotion. And I'm very grateful for that gift.