Category: memories

Saturday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music is a 1971 song by Yes called “I’ve Seen All Good People”. It came to me as I wearied through news last night and this morning. Some good people ignored masking and distancing guidance, had a wedding, and COVID-19 spread, with those good people at the center of a superspreader event. A couple who were identified by friends as good people boarded a flight to Hawaii knowing they had COVID-19. A worker who knew he had COVID-19 didn’t tell others and kept working, spreading it through an organization.

Cynical me muttered, “I don’t want good people. I want disciplined people. I want team players who understand that part of their role is to pay fucking attention, stop being selfish, grit your teeth, wear your masks, and maintain social distance.”

Then I read of the Medford school board writing a letter to the Oregon governor to increase. This while hospitals and ICUs are filling up. Positivity is rising. Cases are rising. Death are rising. By all means, now is the perfect time to send children to school.

Topping that off was news about Mike Pompeo planning a big party at the State Department, after telling State Department personnel not to have large gatherings. And I read of the Austin Mayor tell people to stay home and stay safe, doing this from his vacation in Mexico, where he’d gone to celebrate his daughter’s wedding. On top of this —

Well, that was enough. The news had me gritting my teeth, SMH, and wondering if there is anything like instant karma. (“Instant karma: just add hot water and serve!”). Which took me to a line from the Yes song. Buried in the middle, they sing:

Send an Instant Karma to me
Initial it with loving care
Don’t surround yourself
Cause it’s time, it’s time in time with your time

h/t to Genius.com

The song is a crazy collection of harmonizing play on words and ideas. I remember it well because I listened to it often.

Please be a good team player. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and show some discipline. Yeah, it’s hard. We get it. But there are other things that are worse. I’ve read of too many good people falling sick and quite a few of them are dying.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme song choice was released in 1970, and is influenced by Mom. I’m thinking of her this week due to holidays and snow. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA, and they had a snowstorm. She told me via FB messenger that they had seven inches on the ground yesterday.

She was a big band and swing fan, but listened to a spectrum of music, with torch songs being her favorite, I think. As pop music expanded and changed, she became more particular about what she listened to as I did the same. She wasn’t a fan of the British invasion or rock. As far as 1970 pop went, she liked Glen Campbell and Neil Diamond.

Today’s song is a Neil Diamond one. Mom loved “Cracklin’ Rosie” and would sing it whenever it came on the car radio. I used to ask her what a ‘Cracklin’ Rosie’ was but she said she didn’t know. When I learned it was wine, I passed that on. Didn’t matter; she still enjoyed the song, although the words now made more sense.

Anyway, that’s today’s theme music. Remember, stay positive, test negative, and wear a mask. Cheers.

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Family Lore

I woke up thinking about Mom and being snowed in. I’d already sent her a quick, kidding message about having enough food on hand. It’s an ongoing joke that Mom always has a great deal of food on hand — especially desserts and treats. Besides, my three sisters and four adult grandchildren live in the area. They’re always checking in on her to ensure she has food. Mom’s boyfriend lives with her. His family also checks in on them. Food won’t be an issue.

Mom enjoys telling stories, and being snowed in reminded me of one. A retired nurse, she was a recurring baby-sitter for my grandniece, Amy. Once, when Amy was six (she’s graduating from college next year), Mom was driving her through a slippery Pittsburgh snowstorm on one of the back roads around Penn Hills and Monroeville. As the car began spinning and swerving, Amy shouted, “Grandma, don’t kill us!”

The car ended up off road, but a young man witnessed it and got her out in short order. However, the sentence, “Grandma, don’t kill us!” is enshrined in family lore.

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Let It Snow

Mom was born and raised in a little town called Turin, Iowa. Dad was in the military, stationed not far away when they met. When he went overseas on assignment, Mom took the children and moved in with her in-laws in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Whenever she talks about those times, it’s with delighted and happy wistfulness. Dad and Mom divorced but Mom says she never fell out of love with his family. It must be true; after we’d moved around the country while Dad was in the military, she returned to Pittsburgh and grew her roots over sixty years ago.

I’ve asked her, “Why Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania?” Now, her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren are all there, and so she’ll remain. But back then, why?

…she loves the people of Pittsburgh, its hills, bridges, and history, the change of seasons, and summer thunderstorms. More than anything, she loves it when it snows there. When big snowstorms strike, she turns on the heat, opens the curtains and watches the snow.

Back when I was a child in her household, I’d charge outside to play in the snow. Hours later, I’d return. Everything would be stripped off in the basement to be hung up to dry or tossed in the dryer. Hot soup with cheese sandwiches or hot chocolate with marshmallows would inevitably follow, depending on the hour.

I’m thinking of this today because she sent me a video via FB. It’s Frank Sinatra singing, “Let It Snow”. I laughed immediately; I’d seen the weather forecast for Pittsburgh and saw the forecasts for snow, and thought, that’ll make Mom happy.

She always claims we have a psychic connection. Here’s the video. I know all the words. Mom played it back when I was growing up in Pittsburgh whenever the snow began to fall. Listening to it and thinking of her, I just need to smile.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Yes, this song was featured as theme music back in 2016. Four years later, it seems more appropriate.

“Riders on the Storm” by the Doors was released in 1971. I was ninth grade. The baseline, lyrics, and keyboard mesmerized me. I later ended up taking a philosophy in pop culture class in Japan where this song and its line, “Into this word we’re thrown,” was discussed. Ah, good times.

Seems like we’re riding a storm of uncertainty now as much as ever. The song came to me in the middle of the night, when I surfaced out of a dream. While I was reflecting on the dream, the song just rose up as a soft, subtle background. Later, we were out shopping just after sunrise. The song came to me again as I stepped out of the store into the silent parking lot and faced the sun illuminated the valley, mountains, and valley to the north. After I was home, I listened to it.

It’s an evocative tune. Hope you enjoy it. Remember, stay positive, test negative, and wear your mask. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Back in 1992, when this song came out, I’d listen to it on the car radio while commuting and think, WTF are they singing?

My commute was short in those days. Assigned to Onizuka Air Station in Sunnyvale, CA, I lived in NAS Moffett base housing in Mountain View. Using the base roads and back gates, it was about a five or six minute drive to work. I didn’t get to hear much of the song.

The net was growing then, but had a long way to go. It was years before I was able to find the lyrics for “Ignoreland” by R.E.M. and verify that it was a political scree, mostly against Republicans, but also against the press for regurgitating whatever was fed to them.

The lines which brought the song to mind this morning were:

I know that this is vitriol
No solution, spleen-venting
But I feel better having screamed
Don’t you?

h/t to Genius.com

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lot of mornings in the last four years have featured spleen-venting mental rants for me — or rants to my wife, who ranted back at me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As an antidote, I always look for humorous, non-political stuff or take refuge in sports, or warm animal stories. Anyway, it seems like a song that’s a political scree about ignoring what’s really going on and just voting for a party seems apt as a theme song.

Why’d the song come up today? Trump fatigue. He rants on without evidence about the same crap, apparently doing his own spleen-venting. He never seems to feel better for venting, carrying a bitter, hostile expression on his face and vowing to never change his mind.

What a way to go through life, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wear a mask, stay positive, and test negative, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Monday’s Theme Music

I awoke in the early hours with a cat tapping at the pet door and a dream lingering in my head. After peeing (my bladder said, “Well, since you’re awake,”) and drinking some water (because I’d just peed, obviously, right?), I returned to bed (after letting the cat back in because it was cold outside). In the moments before falling asleep, I thought about the dream I’d left. In that time, too, my brain started singing, “When you close your eyes and go to sleep, everything about you is a mystery.”

It took a few moments of sleep-fogged thinking to identify it as The Romantics song, “Talking in your Sleep”. I thought it was released sometime in the early 1980s, which led me on a mental chase of other facts from that era to pin it down. (Like, where was I living when I heard that song? Okinawa?)

I looked it up this morning because I needed to know (1983). So, that’s the music for today.

Stay positive, test negative, and wear a mask. Cheers

The Romantics – Talking in Your Sleep – YouTube

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Saturday’s Theme Music

The holiday season is striking the U.S. once again. Technically, we’re celebrating several religious holidays, with secular, commercial spins. Christmas is the biggie, as wish lists and black Friday sales begin in October and run through New Year’s Day. Buy, buy, buy, you know. I have friends and family who had their Christmas decorations up in November this year. SMH, you know?

I always become introspective in holiday periods. This morning’s introspection after Thanksgiving brought up the 2019 Maroon 5 song, “Memories”. My stream was hooked on this verse:

There’s a time that I remember, when I did not know no pain
When I believed in forever, and everything would stay the same
Now my heart feel like December when somebody say your name
‘Cause I can’t reach out to call you, but I know I will one day, yeah

Everybody hurts sometimes
Everybody hurts someday, ayy-ayy
But everything gon’ be alright
Go and raise a glass and say, ayy

h/t to Lyricsvyrics.com

Stay positive, test negative, and wear a mask. Cheers

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Just Sayin’

I think some people miss the point behind cutting the cable.

Cutting the cable has been around for a while. It’s an expression used when you decide to terminate cable service. That would’ve once been unthinkable. When I was a child — yeah, here we go.

I’m a boomer, in my sixties. I’ve seen the rise of the microwave and electronics. Cable television came to my neighborhood while I was in high school. Before cable, we were dependent on ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS. One of those networks had two channels in our area.

Reruns were the norm. “Bonanza”, “Gunsmoke”, “Gilligan’s Island”, and “Perry Mason” came on throughout the day, along with every version of a Lucille Ball’s offerings, game shows like “Jeopardy” and “Password”, and talks shows like “The Merv Griffin Show”. As this was a rural, churchy area, so we also had a lot of gospel music sang off-key with with a twang, and plenty of Bible thumping.

Cable, then, expanded our ability to watch different reruns on other channels. We had, I think, thirty-two channels and we paid about twenty dollars a month. None were ‘premium’ channels; HBO, Showtime, and offerings like that were just being thought of and begun in those days. It didn’t come to my area until I’d left the area in 1974.

Still, cable offered us more. That was the point. Then, the point became, cable is offering the same thing over and over, or offering us things that doesn’t interest us. Upon returning to the United States after some overseas assignment, my wife and I subscribed to cable television. It was pretty good for a while. A&E was delivering fresh BBC television shows like “Ballykissangel” and “Doctor Who”. TBS provided reruns. “Original” programming was still a number of years away, along with reality shows.

Off we went to somewhere else outside the U.S. This time, upon returning, we signed up for cable, with some premium offerings.

It was no longer a sweet deal. The price had jumped to over fifty dollars a month. Pausing to put that into perspective, my income was about twenty-five thousand. Our new sports car cost fifteen thousand. Our phone bill (cell phones weren’t on the scene yet) was about twenty-five dollars a month. So fifty a month was a chunk.

Back to cable. Premium movies had already been seen, so I was paying for movie reruns, and they showed them over and over and over. The cable company boasted that we had one hundred channels. Our point was, there was nothing on that we wanted to watch.

That trend worsened, in my mind. We went to a hundred and forty plus channels, two hundred channels, dozens of premium offerings. Prices climbed, but nothing was on. By the time I cut the cable, we’d curtailed the premium offerings. No reason to subscribe because they offered so little. By then, we could rent videos, and then discs at Blockbusters and other places. Eventually, Netflix evolved.

We cut the cable ten years ago. I went with Roku and subscribed to Netflix. I remain a Netflix subscriber. I also subscribe to Hulu basic and Amazon Prime. Others come and go, usually for a month at a time. I’m not the demographic target, though; I have no interest in watching television on my phone.

I monitor streaming offerings, and frequently try them out on a trial basis. They’ve become bloated and useless. Let’s talk SlingTV as an example. They’re offering over a hundred channels for just $65 a month. But looking at them, I know that I’ll end up watching very little of that.

The same happens with countless offerings. They think signing on to more channels is a big deal. It’s not; it goes back to the same problem that plagued us when we had four channels: nothing was on that we wanted to watch.

Original programming helps the situation these days. So does stealing ideas from other countries or importing television series and movies from other countries. As we discovered with A&E, and then BBC America, the rest of the world has fantastic stuff. In example, one show that’s currently doing well in the U.S. in “The Masked Singer”. Just as “Survivor” was an import, so is “The Masked Singer”; it came from Korea.

In the end, this is another rant, innit? Just an aging American musing about the ways that the world does and doesn’t change.

At least with remotes, it’s easier to change the channel. You know what we had to do when I was in high school?

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Monday’s Theme Music

“Faithfully” (1983) by Journey is floating on the mental music stream this morning.

They say that the road ain’t no place to start a family
Right down the line it’s been you and me
And lovin’ a music man ain’t always what it’s supposed to be
Oh, girl, you stand by me
I’m forever yours, faithfully

h/t to Genius.com

We were out on the road early this morning, hitting a local grocery store during the special ‘vulnerable’ hours, before the invulnerable and riffraff arrive with their dirty mitts. A gray morning, the song just came to me as we drove along the quiet streets.

A good power ballad, it’s been a pleasant traveling companion for many trips. I enjoy the video, and the differences in clothing, modern technology, and traveling visible from now. Look at the phones and televisions, the shoes and jeans. Beyond that, there’s the band’s hard work, sweat, and passion.

Hope you enjoy it. Cheers

Journey – Faithfully (Official Video) – YouTube

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