Category: memories

This Sunday

Sunday morning started with the usual Sunday morning white man with cat issues, which is replying to the demand, “Feed me, feed me, feed me, and get these other cats away from me,” in surround sound because I have three of them. They didn’t care that we’d fallen back an hour, clock-wise, here in ‘Merica. Their clocks weren’t affected.

Eventually, the beasts were fed, watered, and released back to the backyard wilds, freeing me to be me. I slid to the computer. That’s when the morning took an oomph turn. My mighty HP laptop wasn’t connecting to the net. Everything else in the household was connected; why was I selected for this cruel honor.

Something about the machine was off. Memories of being a younger person and working on my cars were awakened. I started car life with a 1965 Mercury Comet sedan. Forest green and automatic, a lively 289 V-8 was under the hood, as we said in those days. It was a stoutmobile. She’d run.

She was like my first girlfriend. I learned to do things, and did the standard stuff, from gapping and replacing plug and points (and all the wires) to brakes, muffler, and shocks, and all the fluids and fuses in between.

I think, because of that car, I’ve always since tried to fix things myself. Tried is a key verb in that sentence. (Is it a verb? I don’t know. I used to know these things.)

Details of what I did and the results will be avoided. No need to restore my stress levels by recalling those excoriating details. I worked on the computer for hours, returning it to connectivity. Doing so demanded a need to run recovery, a Microsoft Windows 10 process that’s not as nice as it sounds. Lots of personal files were removed (yeah, they said that wouldn’t happen, and they were wrong), along with apps and programs that I’d installed.

I had back ups of files, and MS does have some file recovery stuff. Eventually, though, I had almost everything. For some reason, I lacked the bible for the latest novel in progress. Don’t know what happened to that doc.

Reading old files slowed the process. Oh, there was The Soul Stone written years ago, never submitted nowhere. I read and enjoyed its first pages, along with Spider City, Everything Not Known, Everything in Black and White, and some stranger works, and the first draft of the self-published words, like the Lessons with Savanna series and Returnee. All still there, waiting for me to turn my attention back to them and do something more with them.

Not on this Sunday, though.

0

Thursday’s Theme Music

Okay, take me to court. Today is a repeat from 2017. Sue me.

I awoke with Billy Idol blasting “White Wedding” into my mental stream. I knew I’d posted it before and looked it up.

It was a brief post pre-NC (novel coronavirus).

But, then, naw…”Rebel Yell” began streaming, and quickly segued into one of my favorite Billy Idol tunes, “White Wedding.” “It’s a nice day to start again.”

It’s cooler today, with a projected high of just eighty-eight under clear blue skies. Definitely a nice day to start again. Here it is, Billy Idol, from nineteen eighty-two, when I was just a wee man of twenty-six years. Boy, what would need to be sacrificed to be twenty-six again, hey?

Which is exactly where my mind is today, you know, the start again part. It seems like we’re always starting again, beginning again. You clean the house, and then it’s time to clean it again. For me, it’s the bathroom and the yard. Did the front yard on Monday, went polished the wooden cabinets in the kitchens and bathrooms, and polished the furniture in the master bedroom. Now it’s, clean the bathroom, vacuum the office, and work on the back yard.

Oh, yes, and there’s writing.

“It’s a nice day to start agaaaiiinnn.” Right after I have a cup of coffee. Maybe two.

0

Bag It

Tucker Carlson has a problem with disappearing papers. From NY Mag Intelligencer:

On Wednesday night’s show, Tucker Carlson reported that his team had acquired incriminating documents. However, they sent them from Washington to Los Angeles, and the documents disappeared. And they neglected to make any copies. So now the only copy of the documents that would nail the probable next president of the United States are gone:

Few believe poor Tucker. He’s being mocked to hell and back.

I understand, though. I’ve been there.

I was taking university classes with the University of Maryland (go, Terps!) around my schedule when I was stationed with the Air Force at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, back in the eighties. My wife and I lived with two cats in a tiny place off base outside of one of the gates.

Finishing a paper, I put it on the bookcase by the door so it’d be there when I departed and I was less likely to forget it. This was pre-computer days. I’d pounded out the paper on my used government IBM Selectric II typewriter. Our cat, Jade, jumped up on the bookcase and puked on the paper. Gross as was, there was no way I could turn that in. I thought about bagging it for evidence but laughed that off.

Abashed, I reported what happened to my professor and asked for another day. Dismayed, he said, “Well, I’ve heard that before, or variations, but I never expected to hear it from you. Well, okay, I’ll give it a day.” It really pissed me off that he clearly didn’t believe me, but he gave me the day.

Next time, I’ll bag it and turn it in.

2

Monday’s Theme Music

Owe this song choice today to the second season of Fargo. That was the season about the Sioux City massacre, introducing us to Molly Solverson as a child, and her father, the medically retired state trooper. Keith Carradine played Lou Solverson (Molly’s father) in season one; Patrick Wilson played the younger iteration of him in season two. The story of this year is briefly mentioned by Lou Solverson in year one.

Anyway, the song is “I Got A Line On You” by Spirit came out in 1968. I had to look that year up. I was twelve then, and the song was a regular on rock stations for a long time. Yet, I’ve not heard it in a while, until Fargo brought it back to mind last night.

BTW, I enjoy Fargo. Its characters and non-linear style speaks to me. Each of the seasons I’ve watched featured strong casts. Year one included Billy Bob Thornton and Martin Freeman as main characters, along with Colin Hanks and Allison Tolman. Jordan and Peele show up as FBI agents. Stephen Root is a murder victim.

Year two includes Ted Danson, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Jean Smart. All do the impressive job that you expect of them, along with Bruce Campbell as Ronald Reagan. My favorite, though is Zahn McClarnon. Although I’ve seen him in multiple films and television shows through the years, he really stood out as Matthias in Longmire. Where we knew exactly who he was in Longmire, he’s enigmatic, smart, and unreadable in Fargo, yet manages to portray sad weariness.

Okay, on with the music. This is a fun live version. Hope you enjoy it as I did, as a sharp look back to what was. Please wear your masks. Cheers

0

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.

3

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.

0

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.

0

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.

0

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

1

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑