Category: memories

Friday’s Theme Music

When I was growing up in the sixties, music was usually heard on the AM bands on my transistor radio, bedroom radio/alarm clock, or in the car. This was augmented by Mom’s music on her console stereo, and my sisters’ music on the older sister’s portable phonograph. It was red and gray suitcase with a record player inside.

By the end of the sixties, we were listening to more sources, including cassette tapes and 8-tracks. FM was coming on a purveyor of pop culture, though.

Overseas in the military, I depended on the Armed Forces Radio and Television Services. We had a heavy dose of popular songs. I listened to some local radio but not understanding the language was often a turnoff.

By the time I returned to the United States from overseas for the last time, it’d all changed. CDs were on the scene. Digital and the net were rapidly emerging. Radio stations became more segmented. I had three primary music stations in the SF Bay Area. One each for alt rock, classic rock, and top forty rock, which included pop. I had buttons for country and western, young country, R&B, soul, rap, gospel, along with the news, sports, and talk stuff. It was an amazing plethora.

Yeah, just thinking and remembering, that’s all. Today is sooo different.

All of was triggered by Genesis as my theme choice yesterday. Early Genesis with Peter Gabriel was much different than Phil Collins’ Genesis but I enjoy both. Fascinating how Peter and Phil also found solo success, along with Mike Rutherford of Genesis.

As they were all on my mind, I’m going with another Phil choice. This one combines Phil Collins with Phil Bailey of Earth, Wind, and Fire. Here’s “Easy Lover” from 1984.

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Closure

First, a commercial interlude. I’ve been watching Hulu late at night, streaming Fargo. Interesting commercials come on, then. One of them is about Peyronie’s Disease. In the commercial, men are holding up carrots, bananas, and cucumbers. The fruit and vegetables look straight, but the men then turn them to reveal sharp curves. A voiceover says something like, “Does your erection have an unusual curve or bump that it didn’t use to have? Your erections shouldn’t hurt.”

It’s eye-opening.

I never thought about what my erection looked like. Naturally, this commercial made me wonder. Also, my erections never hurt. It’s scary, though. Nothing is safe.

The things I learn from commercials. Maybe I should watch less television. (Sure, that’s the answer.) I pulled out my computer (did you think I was going to put another noun there?) and googled PD to confirm it existed.

It does.

Okay, on to the main event.

I’m a Do-It-Yourselfer.

I’m not a very good one.

Whether it’s writing a computer program or a novel, fixing a car or a wall, painting a house or building a computer — which are things I’ve done — I usually achieve decent results, but it’s a messy process.

I have a few reasons that I think is behind all this.

  1. I’m self taught, but I’m not a very good teacher.
  2. I’m an impatient person.
  3. Whenever I asked for help as a child, Mom told me, “Figure it out.” Like most moms, she thought I was smarter and more capable than I really am. I started believing her.

I was painting our kitchen when I broke my arm in July. Painting the kitchen can be violent, can’t it? What transpired is that our kitchen window is five feet wide and four feet tall. The window looks over the front proch.

A blind was installed for privacy, light, and all that. The blind is one of those that can be pulled up by a cord on one end, or let down by a different cord on the other end. I think the official name is something screwy, like two-way blinds. I don’t know. Look it up.

The thing is, when I re-installed the blinds with my wife’s help after painting the kitchen, one end didn’t get correctly placed in the bracket. Whenever you pulled the cord to raise and lower the blind on that end, the blind bent down. That irritated me. Thus, “I will fix!” I decided.

Climbing onto the counter, I removed the blind and discovered that the brackets weren’t properly aligned. Easy fix, yah? Off I went for the appropriate screw driver to loosen and adjust the brackets. Except, I couldn’t turn the damn screws. They…WOULD…NOT…TURN. But I’d reinstalled the brackets. If I screwed them in, I should be strong enough to screw them out.

Damn it. With rising irritation, I turned to jump down off the counter to get a better tool. When I did, I caught my foot on the counter, setting into motion the awkward crash that broke the bones in my arm and twisted my hand up against my arm, sandwiching it between arm and body.

After that it was pain, hospital, splint, recovering, therapy…

Here we are, three months later. That damn blind was still down. It was driving me crazy.

My wife and I had talked about asking someone to put it up or hiring someone. Neither had happened. She was out yesterday, socially responsibly visiting friends (masks-distance-outside on a private deck). I walked into the kitchen and saw that big window and the brackets where the blind should be installed.

Time to fix it, I decided.

First, a pep talk.

One, I had to be careful. If I fell and hurt myself, I should just face up to it and end my life, because my wife would probably end it for me.

Two, I had to be careful, because I didn’t want to get hurt. I was nervous, which didn’t help, because…what if I fell? I’d never live it down. (I imagined going to the Emergency Room. “You again?” they would exclaim. “What did you do THIS time?” It’s weird that I imagined that. I’ve only been there once in the fifteen years that we’ve lived here.)

So, I told myself, BE CAREFUL. Take your time. Stay in the moment. FOCUS, fool.

I did. The brackets were adjusted and the blind reinstalled. It took about fifteen minutes.

I showed it to my wife when she returned home.

“How did you do that?” she asked.

“Just put on my splint, got the tools, climbed up there and did it.”

“Did you use a chair to get up and down?”

“Of course. I’m a professional.”

“Were you nervous?”

I smiled. “What do you think?”

It was very satisfying to fix the blind. I believe they call it closure.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I’m a pop child, you know? Born in ’56 in the United States in a lower middle-class household and living mostly in suburbs, I grew up as television and radio matured. When Mom cleaned house, she turned on her records and sang with them. Throughout the years, I heard her with Patsy Cline, Pat Boone, Johnny Cash and Johnny Rivers, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Chubby Checkers, Louis Armstrong, Tammy Lynette, Ray Charles, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Steisand, the Ink Spots and Four Platters, to list the ones that jump casually to mind.

Then there was big sis. Two years older than moi, she started listening to the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits, Simon and Garfunkel, and Grand Funk Railroad. Boys, interested in this attractive young woman and usually a year or two older than her, brought more music in, like the Spencer Davis Group, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and David Bowie.

The radio was always on in the car, and I received small transistor radios from Japan as birthday gifts. AM radio gave me some bubble gum pop like the Osmonds, the Archies, and the Jackson Five, along with Elvis Presley, Glen Campbell, Don McLean, Steppenwolf, and the Temptations. We had the Bee Gees, the Rolling Stones, and The Who. Television brought along Ricky Nelson, the Monkees, and all manner of performers via variety shows like Ed Sullivan, Hullabaloo and American Bandstand. Movies got into it. Friends introduced me to Sly and the Family Stone and Three Dog Night.

I explored on my own as I aged, discovering Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Cream, ZZ Top, Mountain, Captain Beefheart, the Moody Blues, early Electric Light Orchestra before they became ELO. More performers came onto the scene, like Elton John.

That’s just a little taste. Music was everywhere then, as it is now, always on, part of the foreground and the background, part of the scene, a topic of conversation. All of this is just on the pop and rock side. Beyond it there was country and western, soul, rhythms and blues, and the blues, and all the offshoots and variations. Beyond the United States were vast seas of music to be found in other countries and continents. Concerts gave us destination. Dancing gave us dates.

Music enriched existence. Oddly, all this came from a 1977 Paul Simon song, “Slip Slidin’ Away”. Time has fled through the year. Whether it’s because the days are less structured or because the usual placeholders of American culture have been disrupted, it seems like time has accelerated. Here it is, already more than halfway through the tenth month of the year. Just two more months and ten days to 2020 remains before we’re kissing it’s ass good-bye and saying hello to 2021.

Yet, we have an open-ended agenda at this point. COVID-19 has disrupted normalcy. The U.S. elections are due. We’re into the thirty-first named storm of the ‘hurricane season’. Climatologists are predicting wilder, more violent, and less predictable weather. With all that’s happening, water and food security for many of the world’s creatures are being jeopardized.

So, you might see why I’m thinking of “Slip Slidin’ Away” might have slipped into my thinking. Opportunities, time, and hope seem to be slip slidin’ away. Some might claim that sanity and peace are, too.

Certainly, it feels to me, probably because where I am in life, the days seem like they’re slip slidin’ away.

Here’s the song. Yeah, it’s a repeat. Used it back in August, 2018. Wear a mask please. And as they once said to the point it became nauseating, have a nice day.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

A dozen dreams and a dozen songs rock my mind’s caverns and cesspools this morning. Mostly old songs because I’m in the realm of being an old guy. Whether you’re old depends on not just your attitude but also your scale. When you’re twenty, fifty seems old. At sixty-four, I don’t feel/seem young to myself. I’m sure advertisers have a different opinion about it, as do people who are thirty years plus younger, right?

I’m reminded of my mother when I think of age. When she was in her late seventies, she and her fiancée (who was in his early eighties) often went out dancing. They especially loved the big band sound and swing dancing. But she complained about the old people. I told her that some might think of her as old. She replied, “I’m talking about the really old people, the ones who are almost one hundred.”

Thinking of old rock, and old Eric Clapton drifts into my mind on clouds of cigarette smoke. Eric Clapton is one of my rock heroes, you know. And, ‘lo, into my head from the crucible of thoughts emerged a little-known Clapton song, “Tearing Us Apart”. Done as a duet with Tina Turner in 1987, it didn’t receive much airtime, that I know. I came to know it because I’ve bought a lot of Clapton albums and watched him on DVDs. He’s played it a few times with Turner in concert. Today, though, I found a 1996 concert where Sheryl Crow is on vocals with Eric. I liked it and thought I’d share it with you.

Enjoy your day. Wear your mask.

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Monday’s Theme Music

My dreams of late are circling a depressing track of not being seen, not being heard, confused identity, missed opportunities… I suspect it’s a lack of proper external stimulation, beyond vicariously encountered through the net and television. Although I often live like a hermit — it’s a function of who I am — I do enjoy and need some social stimulation. I’m otherwise trapped in my own woods, and the trees close in.

The first song slipping into my conscious stream today was “I Wanna Be Around”. This sixties pop music staple inundated television and radio throughout my early youth. Versions by Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, Aretha Franklin, and others drifted through. Most of my fixation was on the lines, “I wanna be around to see how he does it, when he breaks your heart to bits. Let’s see if the puzzle fits so fine.”

After playing that loop out, M

Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings” (1985) entered the stream. I thought it a better theme song for today.

Take these broken wings
And learn to fly again, learn to live so free
When we hear the voices sing
The book of love will open up and let us in

h/t to Genius.com

Yes, it’s a repeat — I may have done it twice before — but it suits my rutty mood. Hope your days and world is going better. Please wear a mask. Survive. Endure. Thrive.

Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

I use the phrase “Check it out,” often. Used it all of my life. We used it in the military, along with variations like, “Check this out.”

‘Check it out’ always meant, “Hey, look at this,” or “Notice this,” because it’s something special. In our house most recently, it’s been, “Check it out,” regarding something stupid Trump said/did, but also wildlife wandering through the yard — bucks in the day, skunks at night. Check it out.

My friend, a retired doctor, has more varied wildlife at his place. Although just a mile away, it seems further. He sends video of wildlife caught via a trail cam. Check it out, says his email subject line, and it’s a video two cubs nursing on mama bear a yard away from the camera. Or it’s a big bear scratching his back on a pine, another bear taking shelter from a rainstorm. Once in a while, it’s a cougar or fox taking a stroll.

John Cougar, who became John Cougar Mellencamp, who became John Mellencamp (the name he was given at birth), made a song of it in 1987. I saw him perform it in a soccer stadium in Germany the next year, a good show.

So, check it out.

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Secretly

The sun is beating on my head through my hat. I’m just the help. It’s a role that I enjoy.

Some.

“Boss me around, baby,” I do NOT say. I stay mute, gloves on hands, left arm in its removable brace, hoe nearby, spade in hand.

My wife is the master, planting her garlic for winter. She’s serious about her garden. Fresh bulbs had been procured, along with the right soil and fertilizer. Potatoes occupy the usual garlic winter home. A new one is required. “Somewhere in the sun,” she proclaims with steely vigor, looking around.

A song spurts into my head. Oh, hey. Did you happen to —

“We need to move the compost bins,” my wife declares.

We’re in the side yard, where most of the gardening is done. Boo, the backyard panther with a white star on his chest (like he’s sheriff) (guess, that would be a floofriff) moseys along toward us, talking as he comes. One compost bin (previously emptied) is moved to a new location. With this happening, Boo retreats to the backyard He wants nothing to do with work.

I shovel the compost from the full one to the empty one’s new location. The song resumes it secret playing in my head. Oh, hey. Did you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world. And if you did, was she crying?

Yes, Charlie Rich is serenading my brain with “The Most Beautiful Girl” as I do as I’m told. (We’re now on breaking up the soil where the garlic is to reside.) I blame my mother for this song. While Charlie Rich’s voice and the accompanying music is coming off vinyl courtesy of Mom’s mohogany Magnavox console stereo, it’s Mom singing along along with Rich who is actually singing in my head. She used to frustrate me by singing this song when I was trying to talk to her about it. It was apparently funny to her. The song came out in 1973. I would turn seventeen that year. I’d left home a year or two before to live with Dad, but would return to Mom for major holidays. Dad, single guy that he was, didn’t do holidays.

Why did Mom sing that song to me? Why was I singing today? These the mind’s mysteries. At least, they’re my mind’s mysteries. I don’t know what goes on in others’ minds. I barely comprehend what’s happening in my own.

“Now I just need to water them.” My wife was finished. I was dismissed.

It was a good day. Time to go wash my wife’s car. Wonder what song will be playing?

Oh, wait, Rose Royce begins their 1976 hot song, “Car Wash”. I was stationed in the Republic of the Philippines when it was out. My good buddy Bopie introduced it to me.

At least this one is task appropriate.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Today, we remember the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. While it happened around 5 PM in the SF Bay area, I was over in Japan. Stationed over in Germany just outside of Frankfurt, we were waiting for the World Series to start. That year’s series featured the Oakland A’s and its neighbors across the bay, the SF Giants. That led to nicknames like the Bay Series, the Bridge Series, etc. We were pretty excited in Germany because we were going to be able to watch it live via satellite. That sort of thing was just becoming more common for us in the military. Now, it’s pretty much taken for granted.

The film and report from that earthquake were another mind-blowing reminder of nature’s strength and human fragility. We build these things thinking they’ll be ‘forever’. Nature comes along and knocks them over with a hefty shrug. Watching on television, we saw the baseball stadium shake and said almost as one, “Holy shit.” It’s a military expression commonly used back then.

I ended up stationed in the SF Bay area, arriving in Feb, 1991. We visited Santa Cruz the next year. Its streets and businesses were still recovering from the earthquake. A drizzly day, seeing all the destruction which still remained stilled our spirits. Businesses and people were coping and regrouping.

As I remember that earthquake and those times, I remember songs, too. One of them is “Stand” by R.E.M., a catchy song with silly lyrics. “Stand in the place where you work, think about directions, wonder why you haven’t before.”

It was like, whaaat?

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Friday’s Theme Music

Haunted this morning by the Killers’ 2004 song, “Somebody Told Me”.

Basically, talking ’bout/thinking ’bout the current political environment in the U.S., I concluded with sour cynicism, anything goes in a place like this. And that led to The Killers’ song.

I especially always enjoyed the lines, “Somebody told me, you had a boyfriend, who looked like a girlfriend that I had in February of last year.” It never fails to amuse me.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Cat number two was the first encountered. He began the dance.

Number two is number one in his eyes. We don’t know what he calls himself. We call him Boo. Sometimes he answers to that.

Seeing me slack-jawed with fading dreams moving zombie-esque from bedroom through hall, Boo said, “Mrr.” Mrr, I think, means, “About time,” “Feed me,” “Good morning,” or “Hello.”

He was in a sitting position. Standing, he began singing, “You can go this way, you can go that way.” Thinking he knew which way, he shifted his body that direction to inhibit my passage and bend my will to his.

Feigning left, I slipped right. One cat passed. Not liking it, Boo sang out.

Cat number two, referred to as Tucker (but as adept at ignoring his name as Boo) was sitting just beyond Boo. Responding to Boo’s talking, Tucker said, “I got him.” Standing, he said, “You can go this way, you can go that way,” and moved to cut me off.

A deftly executed double feint was executed by me, an impressive move by a sleep-lusting, coffee-hungering moving catatonic human, though not easily. Tucker is a wily veteran and countered each movement, singing on as he did, “You can go this way, you can go that way, you can go this way, you can go that way.”

This is why Fatboy Slim’s 2001 song, “Weapon of Choice”, is today’s theme music. Naturally, I’ve spooled up the Christopher Walken dance version. It’s a little fun, a repeat, but worthwhile.

Here’s the music. Wear your masks, please.

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