:tap tap tap: Hello? Is this thing on?

Welcome to my inaugural license plate blog! I have always had an interest in personalized plates. It keeps me alert while driving, always on the lookout. When their text is not immediately obvious, it’s nice to get that little mental “zing” when you figure out what they mean. And when they are seemingly indecipherable, then you either get an even bigger ‘zing’ if you make sense of them, OR they annoy you to the point that you want to pull the owners over and say “what the heck does your plate mean?” Any way you look at them, personalized license plates make driving more fun.

I got the idea for this when my job changed, my daily commute alternated due to multiple work locations, and I started to notice more and more personalized plates. Here in Arizona, the yearly fee for a vanity plate is only $25, and their affordability makes them extremely prevalent. I see them almost every day. And rarely do I see the same plate twice!

I myself have had a couple of vanity plates. They both involve my favorite musical group, Styx. I was so excited to discover how affordable these plates are here, so took the earliest opportunity to publicly declare my affection for the band that has meant so much to me for so long. STYXFAN was available, and became my plate sometime around 2004. To my delight, when the package with the new plates arrived, I discovered that there were TWO of them. This was a surprise, because Arizona only requires a plate on the rear of the vehicle. Apparently they give you two when they are personalized, so that you can choose to put them on the back AND front. I chose to do something else: make it my mission to get the second plate autographed by Styx members! I attend every concert that I can, and thankfully they visit Arizona at least once a year, so I have had quite a few opportunities. My first of these autographs happened in September of 2004, at a concert in Sahuarita, which is just south of Tucson. Tommy Shaw signed my plate on stage at the end of the show. Earlier in the evening, Lawrence Gowan, their keyboardist, posed for this photo after he grabbed my plate from me and held it up to show the crowd.


*swoon*

Signature number two happened in Myrtle Beach, SC in May of 2005, when Lawrence was kind enough to stop outside of the tour bus for the fans that had lingered, as I had.

While it didn't affect my autographed plate, on Martin Luther King Day in January of 2006, my car's STYXFAN plate was stolen while I was at work. When I went to the MVD, they said that I could keep that same plate, but I would risk getting pulled over because I had reported it as stolen to the police. AND until the replacement arrived, I would have to put my autographed plate on the car! I decided to forgo those options and get a second Styx plate instead, which is why my car now features personalized plate number two: GOTSTYX.

The saga continued in July of 2006. I got home from work one evening, and checked my caller ID to see if I missed any calls. There was one from Dan Zelisko. That name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it right away. I checked to see if there was a voicemail, and there was. It was from Danny Zelisko, a local concert promoter, who saw the little blurb in that day's paper about my STYXFAN license plate, and wanted to help me out with getting the rest of the band's autographs....

Back up a sec! I didn't even know that my plates had made it into the paper that day, because I hadn't read it yet. I madly scrambled through all the Sunday sections, to the Valley and State section. And there they were, on the front page. Both of my plates were pictured: STYXFAN and GOTSTYX. Woot! Some background info... our paper occasionally runs pictures of people's personalized plates, and what they mean to them, as a human interest kind-of-thing. The week before that I had finally gotten around to photographing mine, and e-mailed them in. Here's the text of the blurb:

"Sara Rebennack of Chandler obtained her STYXFAN plate two years ago, but it was stolen in January. She didn't put the duplicate plate on her car because it was autographed by Styx band members. She doesn't have all the band members' autographs, so she takes it to every Styx concert she attends. Meanwhile, she ordered another vanity plate for her car, GOTSTYX."

I recognized Danny’s name from concerts I've attended. He said in the message that he's promoted the guys for a couple of decades, and he'd like to see about helping me get the rest of their autographs on my STYXFAN plate. Can you just imagine my jumping up and down and screaming? There was no one at home to scream with (my husband was out of town), so I had to call my friend Regina, whom I woke up. And she screamed too. I spent the entire next day grinning at work, much to the amusement of my coworkers.

I spoke with Danny a few days later, and he offered to take my plate to get it signed by the rest of the band. I told him that it would mean more to me if I could be there in person. So he said to contact him the next time they are going to be in town, and he'd hook me up. Squeee! I never got to take him up on his offer, though. The next time Styx came to town, I was on vacation. Then in May of 2007, I attended a Styx fan convention near Toronto, Canada, which coincided with three consecutive Styx concerts at Casino Rama. After a fantastically fun three days with fans, and plenty of Styx live music, I was lucky enough to get both of my plates signed by all of the current band members. You can read more about THAT excellent adventure here: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=24097780&blogId=269824137



I have been meaning to start this blog for about six months, but one thing or another kept getting in the way. Because of the delay, though, I have a LOT of source material to work with! I don’t have photos for every plate, but I keep a notepad in my car so I can write them down before I forget them. I haven’t decided on a posting frequency yet, but I hope to put up new plates at least once a week. I can’t promise they will be as wordy as this submission, either! But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.