Category: memories

Today’s Theme Music

Despite the sobering news out of Europe regarding terrorism and the most recent attack, we go full on pop mode streaming today, with a pause to think of those who were died or injured, those who lost someone, and those now distraught by the latest.

It’s part of the world wide web that we can know such news with the immediacy of video and audio recordings and feel others’ grief, but experience a much different reality on a personal level. A legacy of our immediate wired world is that we reach across the connections to offer ourselves and our resources, no matter how meager they are or their nature, because we feel helpless to do much more.

A cold front bulled in here, shooing the rain away and sweeping out the clouds. Except for some high, feathery cloud remnants, the weather is blue sky sunny. ‘Walking On Sunshine’ has already begun streaming in my brain, establishing itself as the song for the day.

I know, like, five things about this song.

  1. It’s by Katrina and the Waves.
  2. It was a hit in 1985, while I was driving around the southeastern quadrant of the continental United States.
  3. It’s the only song by KaTW that I know.
  4. It’s a bouncy melody with easily learned and remembered lyrics.
  5. The song’s properties lends itself to popular culture, so it’s been part of movie soundtracks, television shows, and advertisements.

Stay strong, everyone. Let’s do this.

 

 

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Disgusting

I’m going to break a rule.

I’m blogging about body functions and human habits. Other than a few books, like “Our Bodies, Our Selves,” and “Everybody Poops,” we prefer that our body functions are kept secret.

I’m writing about one of the things I do that most disgusts my wife. Now, I’m sure several things will come to your mind, depending upon your age, history and sex.

It’s in my thoughts today because I did it today. The habit in question is blowing my nose in the shower.

The water is running. I’m blowing into my cupped hand. Then I’m rinsing.

My wife has informed me several times that it’s a disgusting habit. One time when she told me that, I complained about it to female friends at work. Did they find it disgusting?

“Oh, yes, absolutely.”

Astounding. “Why?”

“Because it’s a filthy, dirty habit,” they answered. “It’s disgusting.” Their husbands and boyfriends did it, too, and they wanted to know, “Why? Why do you do this? Why do men do this?”

I had an answer. “There are several reasons. One. I have hairy nostrils. Things get fouled up there. Snot hangs on and hardens.

To quote them, “Oh, gross, do you need to be so graphic? TMI.”

Undeterred, I continued, “Two, I’m in a private location. I can blow to my nose’s contentment.”

They were feigning gagging.

I think they were feigning it.

“Three. The hot water loosens everything up. And four, I can wash it all away. It’s efficient, clean and economical. If I didn’t do it, I’d be out there blowing into wadded tissues and hankies for a long time, which you would probably find equally disgusting.”

I was thinking of that conversation today, during my third day of cold therapy, because there wasn’t any steam. There was only ice water. At least it seemed so to my naked skin. The cold water was worse today because I was washing and conditioning my hair. That gave me time to think because I turn on the water, soak my head, then turn off the water to lather up. The water is then turned on again and the shampoo rinsed out. The water goes off again while I apply conditioner. I’m trying not to be wasteful. Then I turn the water on, rinse off the conditioner, soap up, and turn the water off, turning it on again for the final rinse.

It’s during the final rinse where I blow out my nostrils. Was it as effective in freezing water? Seems so.

So my logic for doing this may be partially wrong. Maybe I’m just a gross, disgusting male with bad habits.

Well, some would claim I’m now being redundant.

 

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Dream Web

A caterruption broke my sleep. I’d been dreaming of watching a high school play. I was part of a large audience in a small cafetorium. Most of the dream attendees weren’t watching the play but chatting as the play went on. It was a light comedy and I was watching and chuckling.

But now, awake, I thought about the dream’s meaning. I found nothing but dream strands returned me to high school. I’d been the lead in our junior year play, ‘Brother Goose’. At one point I was supposed to enthuse about winning a contest and a year’s supply of cereal. I always broke character in rehearsals when I said the detestable, corny line, and then, in the action’s climax, I kissed the female lead.

In rehearsal, I was aware I was breaking character. I didn’t during the performances. My ex-girlfriend was in the audience during the production for the school student body. She said that when I kissed the other girl on stage, she looked down at the floor. She could feel others in the audience looking at her. They knew we were broken up. It was a small school, with a few hundred students.

I had lunch with her yesterday after our protest against Trump’s budget outline. We’ve been married since 1975.

Meanwhile, dream threads pulled me along from the play to a creative writing class in Germany. The teacher wanted us to do a 1940s radio script. I was selected as the narrator and decided to channel Gary Owens. That surprised and delighted the class but it was a natural choice, given the exposure to him from my years of watching ‘Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In’.

I learned a great deal about creativity and active writing in that class. I consider it a breakthrough class for me. Yet, I can’t remember the teacher’s name.

That’s going to distract me all day.

I blame it on the dream.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Here we are, hump day. It’s not a national holiday to go humping but rather the middle of the week hump if you’re a standard Monday through Friday nine to fiver.

The middle is the key. You’re at the hump. Make it over this hump and the rest is much easier. This hump can be in the work week or the school term, the novel, a project, or a relationship. The thing is, this hump must be crossed.

For that, I decided more upbeat music is needed as our background sound. Timbuk 3’s ‘The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades’ seems like an acceptable fit.

The song was a hit in 1986. Reagan was President in America; Marcos was ousted in the Philippines. I was living in an apartment in Columbia, South Carolina, but ended the year living in a hotel on Rhein-Main AB in Germany. The song seemed like such a natural fit to how things were going in my life that I adopted it, cranking it up on the car stereo as we drove around.

It’s not completely upbeat, though. Some lyrics are ironic and satirical, and about the world getting blown up. Some of it seems like a graduation theme song. But mostly, I hitch myself to that refrain, “Things are going great and they’re only getting better. The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades,” and take the spin that it’s not a nuclear explosion that drives the need for shades, but bright prospects for a happier and more prosperous era.

Yeah, right on, brother and sister writers. Think of a future so bright, you gotta wear shades while you type.

 

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Thoughts of Spring

Theoretically, spring kicked in once again in America. As a blogger, it’s required that I post something about it. It’s in the Internet’s Rules for Blogging that you must do at least one blog post per year regarding a season change. I thought I’d get mine out for 2017 before too much of the year elapsed.

Being an American baby-boomer with liberal tendencies, movies came to mind. I thought this one pretty much summed up the situation in America, Spring, 2017.

 

Bad taste? Probably. I’m in an acerbic mood. It was either this or ‘Dr. Strangelove’.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s music is dedicated to Tucker and Pepper.

Tucker is ‘my’ cat. Sick, hungry and lost, he came to us through the smoky summer haze a few years ago. We were in a drought. Wildfires surrounded our valley. Temperatures were running one hundred degrees Fahrenheit plus. Going outside without a mask wasn’t recommended. Two of my cats were dying with cancer, as was one of my best friends. It was a challenging period.

Tucker

Tucker is sweet but he fights other cats. They know this and fear it. We’re vigilant to keep him away from all of them except Quinn.

Enter Pepper, the long-haired black and nutmeg calico with a black face and green eyes. Pepper lives next door but enjoys our porch. She’s always hanging around the front door. Although she’s well-fed and healthy, she begs for meals. I feed her because, as my my wife claims, I’ve never met a cat who doesn’t need a meal.

Pepper terrifies dogs, raccoons and other cats. She has the battle cry down, loud and furious, like she’s going all ninja cat on them. She rarely fights, issuing the cries and making a lunge or two. It’s enough to intimidate other cats.

Except Tucker. He and Pepper sit side-by-side on the front mat, peaceful and relaxed. Open the door and they lift their heads and look up and back over their shoulders with synchronized perfection.

It seems like a strange little love affair. So for them, from 1972, is Billy Paul performing Me and Mrs. Jones’  on Soul Train.

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

I put the mental stream on shuffle and then sorted through the tunes. Two ended up as potential for today’s theme music.

One was The Blues Brothers singing ‘Rawhide’ in their movie. I’m not certain how the stream came to that.

The other was ‘Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)’, released in 1991 by C+C Music  Factory. I’d just returned from a tour in Germany and was settling into the SF Bay Area when I first heard it. This song was ubiquitous. I found its sound intriguing but more, enjoyed going to a club and seeing everyone’s reaction when the song was played. The floor could be empty, with people milling around, chatting and sipping. Then, “Everybody dance now,” blared out. People reacted like they’d be ordered, moving and rushing the floor. Amazing.

Of course, I also adapted this song to my cats, ‘singing’ “Everybody eat now,” when I fed them. They reacted just like the dancers at the clubs, eating like they’d been given an order that must be obeyed.

It’s a good, energetic Friday song. You heard Martha. Everybody dance now.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s music arrived with the sun. ‘When Doves Cry’ by Prince is pretty well known so I’ll eschewed any mention about what I was doing and where I was at when it came out. This is especially so with Prince’s sudden death last year. Instead, I’ll mention that it’s one of my cat songs.

Now for the embarrassing aspect. Ahem. A cat song is one I sing to my cats. I typically change the words to reflect that it’s for or about cats. In this instance, some of the words are revised to be, “This is what it sounds like, when a cat purrs.”

And the song arrived with the sun because that’s when a cat arrived with an introductory purr, pretending to be friendly, when he was really inquiring about breakfast.

Here it is, ‘When Doves Cry’, 1984, by the amazing, amazing Prince. Feel free to sing it to your animals.

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Today’s Theme Music

We listened to a lot of music while I was stationed on Okinawa in the early 1980s. Drank a lot of beer, too. Smoked a lot of cigars, played a lot of Risk and worked a lot. We also went to college.

Anyway, back to the music thing. The Internet wasn’t around. CD players and Compact Discs were just emerging. For reference, the hot new computer was the TRS 80.

So we played a lot of vinyl, recording it onto more portable, user friendly formats. One album that came out then was Foreigner 4, by Foreigner. Several hits were on that album, including this song, ‘Juke Box Hero’. Later generations and listeners might be familiar with the song through its commercial use.

Stream it in your head as you’re walking around dreaming of heroes and villians.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song, from the Cure, came out in the early nineteen nineties. I was fortunate to be stationed at Onizuka Air Station when it did. Originally called Sunnyvale Air Station, it was located on Lockheed acreage that was rented from them for one dollar a year. The Blue Cube dominated the site. I wrote about it in another post.

The location had been renamed in honor of Ellison Onizuka, an astronaut killed in the Challenger disaster. Dedicated to space operations, we were wedged between roads just off of Highway 101. The area was interesting for the Internet boom just underway at the time. Navigator, Yahoo, MapQuest and other new companies were part of our landscape. It was an energetic, prosperous time, and the music coming out seemed to reflect that.

Except for this song. I actually find it repetitious and inane. That’s true about many rock and pop songs, which is why I like Weird Al’s parodies of them. This song seems like audible sedatives. That’s my opinion; you may really enjoy it.

Either way, it’s been stuck in my head since last night. Basically, I realized that I’d passed anniversaries of several major life events. March, 1991, was the first year that I lived in the SF Bay Area/Silicon Valley/Peninsula after returning from duty in Germany. Memories from that period have unearthed songs and invaded my dreams this week.

Here’s the Cure with ‘Friday I’m In Love, from 1992.

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