FREDERICK, Md. — Local single man and self-proclaimed hopeless romantic Noah Reveis has at last identified what he described as “the perfect” song to close out a mixtape started in 2011 for his crush Katie Dalharter, cringing sources report.
“The final song in your mix is the one that closes the deal — you have to take your time and get it right,” insisted Reveis, who either is in denial that Dalharter got married six years ago and is now a mother of two, or believes The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” will somehow make all that irrelevant. “You try finding a mixtape finale that pairs well with Radiohead, Slayer, and DMX. It’s a real painstaking process to pick out a closer that gives off a ‘let’s make out’ vibe. Either way, it’s totally going to be worth the wait when she hears this cassette and falls in love with my music curation skills.”
Dalharter, who played on a local co-ed kickball team for a few weeks with Reveis in her early 20s, initially had no memory of him.
“Noah? No idea. Wait, Noah ‘No Nuts’?!,” Dalharter asked, bouncing her giggling toddler daughter Calathea in her lap. “The backup first baseman who got so drunk after semi-finals that he cried when we lost? Okay yeah, that tracks. So he’s just been sitting there working on a playlist for me all these years. That’s sweet, albeit creepy. Great, now I have to make sure all the video security cameras in our house are up and running. Kind of a weird move, and I haven’t had a cassette player since 2007, so I’m really not sure what he’s expecting here.”
Anthropologist Lenny Sandisfield, Ph.D., said that courtship through song has a long and beautiful history, at least until Reveis came along.
“From caveman times through modern cassette era and beyond, and throughout the animal kingdom, music has always been used to attract romantic partners,” Sandisfield explained. “This delayed mixtape is the most pathetic evolution that I’ve ever heard of. It’s like if a male nightingale started warbling Bright Eyes’ ‘First Day of My Life’ at a mother bird sitting there depositing chewed-up worms in her babies’ mouths. Get a clue, buddy. He’d probably have his head bitten off. Which maybe is what should happen to this guy. Especially for picking such a total cliché song.”
At press time, Reveis was preparing to spend the next eight months deciding whether to title his completed mixtape “Songs for Katie” or “Katie’s Mix.”