Category: memories

Twelfth Night

A friend gave us tickets to Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s ‘Twelfth Night’ as a thank you gift.

We attended the play last Sunday night. It was updated to take place in 1930s Hollywood. That premise seemed a little thin at times, as characters were still called the count and the jester, and the studio was referred to as a land. Overall, it was well acted and enjoyable…for as much as I paid attention. For as the lights dimmed and the play began, I thought, “What does Handley’s imagination look like?”

Almost everyone (future studies estimate over ninety percent of people) in the future have an augmented memory. The augmented memory has a variety of options available. One of them includes creating an avatar of your external memory. This presents you with the opportunity to talk to your memory about your memories and life. Your memory can also be a memorable companion, so you’re never alone. You always have your memory, which is useful in space.

Madison Handley, however, went a little further than the norm. Although she embodied her memory as an avatar, she also embodied her imagination as an avatar. Thus, she and her memory played with her imagination as well as her friends when she was young. But, as her mother warned, “Someday your imagination is going to get you into trouble,” her imagination caused trouble and Handley took the fall. (It is her imagination.) After that day arrived, Handley banished it. Now her memory is requesting an audience for her imagination on its behalf because her imagination has some suggestions to help Handley out of her current situation.

All of this led to the standard use questions about the character. As I developed the background to this while at the play, I thought of other imaginary characters and the troubles they caused. A movie was semi-recalled. It seemed like it was in the 80s or 90s. The imaginary character was green and male. They had disappeared, but now they were back.

That’s all I could remember. I thought I would google it sometime but didn’t get around to it. Then, today, while thinking about the imagination and shaving, I remembered, ‘Drop Dead, Fred’, Phoebe Cates, Tim Matheson, Marsha Mason, 1991. Then, remembering those sudden details, I searched for confirmation on the net. Yea, verily, I was correct. The movie only received 9% on Rotten Tomatoes, so I wondered, why do I remember it so well?

All of this cogitation, delays and results – the process – amused me. Took a while of circling but the memory finally landed.

Now back to my novel. I still don’t know her imagination’s appearance but I believe that will come. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

I woke up with this song in my mind so I went with it.

It was written before I was born but it’s a pop standard, and has been used in movies. Lots of famous people covered it, and even some later groups, like The Cure. I know it from my mother playing it. I primarily grew up in the towns, townships and suburbs surrounding Pittsburgh. This was the 1960s. Hi-fi stereo was the iPad of the day and vinyl was emperor.

Mom listened to many records on her hi-fi stereo console and I became familiar with many artists through her enjoyment. This song was one of her favorites. I always enjoyed these lines:

“And if you should survive to 105,
Look at all you’ll derive out of being alive!
And here is the best part, you have a head start
If you are among the very young at heart.”

(n/t to Lyricsmode.com)

That’s what I awoke to in my mental jukebox today. Don’t know why. I slept well and had interesting but common dreams.

Here is Frank Sinatra with ‘Young At Heart’. He didn’t write the song but it was his hit, and it seems most associated with him. Enjoy. Cheers

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Today’s Music

So many songs call me today. My spirits are high, but we’re bracing ourselves for a storm. The remnants of typhoon Songda is heading our way up in the Pacific NW, so thoughts drift that way as we prepare for high winds, power outages, and possible flooding. We appear to be on the fringe as we’re inland, but we’ve gone through storms elsewhere, so we prepare.

As always, though, I’m looking forward and back, riding the wave of the day. Some John Cougar Mellencamp creeps through my mind, as does Boston, Pit Bull and Farrell. But then comes a memory from 1971.

‘Riders on the Storm’ was the last song The Doors recorded before Jim Morrison’s death. I vividly remember the first time I heard it in Pittsburgh. I was fourteen, on the verge of fifteen, on the verge of moving out of my mother’s house to join my father. The day was overcast, with a slight drizzle, and this song played. It seemed perfect for my mood and the moment. After hearing it, I sat in a small shed I’d made out of found construction plywood and huddled as the rain finally opened up to full throttle.

1971 seemed like a continuation of harsh years and fast change for me. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin had died the year before, and now Jim Morrison was dead. Listening to rock, drawing, and reading were my escapes, and one leg of that tripod was breaking down. It may sound depressing. I don’t consider it depressing but enriching, and the beginning of my growth as a more introspective person. Of course, I also became more withdrawn then, and socially awkward, trends I still continue. It probably didn’t help that I was reading books like ‘Catch 22’, ‘Catcher in the Rye’, ‘War and Peace’, ‘Cancer Ward’, and ‘Crime and Punishment’ in that period.

Stop and listen to the storm as we brace. Stay safe, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing.

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The Cat in the Bush

Evening was drawing down on Half Moon Bay. Swirling and descending night fog crept in from the ocean. Some dim light remained from sunset and I’d opened our front door to step out and smell the night. The ocean’s fragrance was strong and fresh and beautifully mingled with the scents from Half Moon Bay’s damp vegetation and soil, a pleasing libation for the nose. Cars were heard on Highway 92 less than a quarter mile off but cars heard on 92 almost all hours of day and night. People liked our small town. It benefited from being located on the Pacific Coast Highway between Santa Cruz to the south, Pacifica and San Francisco to the north, and the Pacific Ocean owning the west. Our beaches presented precious beach access.

Noises drew my attention to the right. I wasn’t wearing my glasses but saw well enough to spot a small animal dart between bushes. It looked like a young dark colored cat.

I love animals but cats manifest a hypnotic power over me. My wife likes to claim that I’ve never met a cat that wasn’t hungry. Naturally, this was my first thought. I wanted to see the animal to determine who it was, that it was physically okay, and that it wasn’t hungry. Well, I also just wanted to visit with it. So I went after it, moving slowly but quickly in a crouch and softly calling, “Here, kitty, kitty.”

The animal rushed from one bush to another. I followed, closing the gap to it. Then, it did a weird thing, shaking the entire bush. Perplexed, I lowered myself and moved closer to see. It shook the bush again. I realized, in my half blind state, that it was stamping its legs. That’s odd, I thought. I’ve never seen a cat do that before….

Because this wasn’t a cat.

Skunk.

Carefully, I backed away.

Very…very…carefully.

Once a few feet from the bush, I ran back to the house on my tiptoes, gingerly closed the front door and locked it. You know, in case the skunk came after me.

And then I laughed.

Yeah, I know how lucky I am. I’m a little more careful when approaching unknown animals in the dusk, without my glasses.

You never know what it might be.

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A Bullshit Free Day

I’d like to declare a national day free of bullshit. We can call it National No Bullshit Day. NNBD. Although bullshit is spelled as one word, some call it as BS, or more colloquially, B.S.. So we could do NNBSD. Naturally, I like my idea better. We can have shirts and tee shirts, and raise money, or some other bullshit.

You know BS when you hear it and you call it by your expression. Mularky. Bull. Bullshit. B.S. Garbage. Crap.

We were used to it in the military. Bullshit inundated us, which, if you think about it, which I try not to do, is actually a lot of B.S. We had our bullshit meters. Hearing something that we knew as bullshit, we’d say, in a sort of laconic way, “That just pegged my bullshit meter.” That statement meant that the needle went all the way to the right. Another expression used was, “That buried the needle on my bullshit meter.” Buried the needle was an old expression referencing tachometers and opening throttles to the point where the needles entered the red zone or went as far as it could. Of course, the ultimate bullshit expression was, “My bullshit meter just broke.”

Most bullshit meters used to go to ten. Mine, of course, went to eleven. It was the Spinal Tap Special. (rim shot)

I suppose, in this precise digital age, that bullshit meters are way more accurate. They’re probably on a scale of one to a thousand, enabling the ability to assign a more accurate bullshit value to a given statement, action or news. There are probably apps that can be downloaded and installed on your smart phones, iPhones, iPads and tablets. Being sixty, I don’t need a bullshit meter, and will tell you, with a sniff, “I don’t need a meter to tell me when something’s bullshit. I’ve experienced enough bullshit to know bullshit when bullshit is around.”

But many naive and gullibles do not recognize bullshit. They believe you can get something for nothing. I, of course, believe that’s bullshit. Of course, the problem with bullshit is, once it’s in your system, you can’t get it out, debilitating your immunity to bullshit. You soon can’t even detect it.

Still, there times when my bullshit meter gets broke. For example, when a car manufacturer, like Ford, declares they’ve completely re-invented a car, I think, that’s bullshit.

When they announced literally no longer means literally, I shook my head and said, “What bullshit.”

When I see the price of my quad shot mocha is five dollars, I think, that’s outrageous bullshit, even though it’s not, really. Bullshit often depends upon your frame of reference. I have some years behind me so my frame of reference has gotten pretty damn big. First, I would tell you, “Nobody sold mochas when I was a kid. We didn’t have a Starbucks or coffee house on every corner. Coffee houses were part of the beat generation. Only artists and poets went there, not people.”

And then I will tell you, “I remember when a cup of coffee cost less than a dollar.” Someone with a bigger frame of reference will naturally top that and declare, “I remember when it cost ten cents a cup,” and another will say, “I remember when it was free.” I’m not sure if coffee was ever free, so that moves my old bullshit meter needle a little bit, but that’s okay, because they’re old, and it’s honest bullshit.

The Internet doesn’t help. I mean, come on, there is so much bullshit on it that it seems possible that the bullshit will take it down. Which would be a pretty good news lead: “In today’s top story, bullshit broke the worldwide web. More coming up, after this word from your sponsors.” Which is bullshit in its own right, to need to wait to hear about this important news until you’ve heard someone try to sell you something.

I may be showing my age there.

You’d think some tech company could design an application that not only detects bullshit but blocks it, just as intrusion detection and prevention software works. Then, as you’re downloading a page, a little popup arrives on your screen and says, “Warning. Bullshit was detected and blocked.”

We could even assign the bullshit levels of threat: faint, mild, average, serious, dangerous, and OMGWTF infuriating.

I dream of a time when television commercials could contain the disclaimer, “This commercial contains no bullshit,” and you can sit back and listen and know, you’re not hearing any bullshit. Because if they were spreading bullshit when they made the commercial, some great Bullshit God would zap them with a laser and declare in a thunderous voice, “No bullshit allowed. Not on my watch.”

But, yes, that’s a fantasy. For now, I’ll dream of a bullshit free day, or even just, like an hour when I don’t read something and say to the cats, “Can you believe this bullshit?”

I don’t think it’s going to be until after November 8th.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

I first heard and saw today’s song while I was in an Osan City donut shop in Korea in February, 1986. I was there on temporary duty with the Air Force during the annual Team Spirit exercises. This little mocking gem was an MTV staple for the late Robert Palmer, a song that was sexy and debasing as it called your attention to models pretending to play instruments and told you, “You were addicted to love.”

Yeah, it was the love that had you watching, wasn’t it?

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‘Speak, Memory’ and Me

‘Speak, Memory’  is a recounting of one person’s creation of a bot based on a friend to cope with their grief. The bot is based on her friend’s emails. It is a fascinating read into how one person turns to clever use of technology and information to bridge her loss.

The tale has meaning to me for my writing. Memory is an enormous aspect of the future in ‘Returnee’ and ‘Long Summer’. While death is conquered through complex machinations involving resurrection, regeneration or cloning (multiple paths exist), and diseases and illnesses are staved off by embedded nano-meds (which use compilers and teleporters to seamlessly import medicines and treat you without pause), memory is a larger problem. First, your pre-death memories must be stored and accurately restored to you when you’re returned to the living. People living longer need to remember more, especially as space exploration and colonization exponentially expands and technology keeps racing ahead. Memory thus becomes augmented with biological drives as well as networks. You’re constantly connected.

As part of this extrapolation of what might be, memories of specific people, such as grandparents, are further developed through big data/social media mining. This creates a far deeper and broader database of their personality. Further, the database is housed in an avatar and AI dedicated to being that person. So, for example, your grandfather can be summoned into your presence as an avatar and converse and interact as your companion, even though he passed away several hundred years ago, or still lives, but is on the galaxy’s far side.

Last, as people struggle to remember specifics, many have created a separate avatar that houses the augmented, expanded personal memory. For Brett, his memory is an attractive tan blonde. He does not name her but calls her ‘memory’. Madison Handley, however, once based her memory on Mal Reynolds from ‘Serenity’ and ‘Firefly’. After out-growing it, she changes her memory’s appearance and disposition several times. By the time of ‘Long Summer’, when she’s become a pirate, her memory has taken on the aspect of Grutte Pier, the Frisian pirate formally known as Piers Gerlofs Donia.

As a further component of memory and extended living, I had to determine what route memory will take. Are future people’s memory perfect? What does it mean to perfectly recall a moment? Recent studies show that our memory is very imperfect, and those imperfections help us cope with existence and survive. Oh, the lies we tell ourselves. As part of that, which version of memory is collected? The perfect, unbiased version, or our personal edition? In the end, both are collected but only law enforcement normally accesses the perfect memory to resolve conflicts and solve crimes.

The rest of us prefer our personal recollections.

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Old Gangs

Found some of the old gang this week.

Well, one of one ‘old gangs’, this one from my early teen years. I’ve had many old gangs as I traveled the world in a twenty-one year military career, and a few other old gangs as I pursued civilian careers after my military retirement.

This old gang is one of my earliest, formed in formed in Penn Hills, outside of Pittsburgh, PA. We attended school together there at Washington Elementary School, Penn Junior, and John H. Linton, riding the bus, sitting in classrooms, playing baseball and football on fields and streets. I knew them from fifth grade through ninth, and then I left the area. Although I returned, they and I changed, and we never enjoyed the same dynamics and relationships.

I always held them as young people alongside my young self in my mind’s crawl spaces, like home decor that was once loved and used, now set aside, but saved, because someday, I’ll pull that out again. I have tools like that, too. I used to change my cars’ oil, spark plugs, etc, what we used to call ‘giving the car a tune-up.’ These chores had specialized tools. The Porsche used one tool for its oil filter, the Audi, Camaro, Firebird and BMW used other ones. Every time I bought a new previously owned car, I bought a new shop manual and the correct tools. And I never released them back to the wild.

Likewise, I have wires for everything computer and stereo. Printer parallel and serial cables, RCA plugs and jacks in full size and mini, adapters, splits, cable wires, and now, zip drives, mice, keyboards, and fire wires. I guess I’m a collector.

I’ve been looking for my old friends through my family connections, Facebook, Google and other search engines and social media. I wanted to know what each did with their existence, talents and skills, see what they’ve become, what they’ve experienced and accomplished. One finally turned up this week, through his father’s obituary. Astonishingly, that took me directly to my friend’s FB page.

I studied what was shared for a while, confirming it was him. He’d now fifty-nine, but I saw my childhood friend in the hold of his head and the gaze in his eyes. He’d once been a huge comedy fan, outgoing with his inner circle of friends but otherwise shy and withdrawn.

Then he got a puppy, Charlie. Charlie was a small, shaggy black and brown mutt. He loved that dog, and the dog loved him, each exhibiting shining proof in their eyes. Unfortunately, heart worms brought the relationship to an early end, devastating my friend more than Katrina did to New Orleans. He was forced too early to deal with pain and loss, and it fundamentally changed him, something I think about as I watch children cope with historic natural disasters and war zones. Not all react the same to adversity but my friend’s reaction opened a chasm that was never bridged. We came to forks in the road, took different ways, and never saw or heard of one another again.

Until now. It’s nice reaching out to him, and lovely that he’s accepted my FB friend request, but I’ve escaped illusions that we’ll ever be the buddies of childhood. I’ve seen too many changes in myself and other gangs of friends. But my memory of him and our fun and growth in classrooms and summer streets and parks are part of my touchstone of being, so I reach out, to catch a firefly of youth, and watch it glow once more, however briefly it might be.

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Counter Points

It’s a quiet Labor Day Monday. Labor Day has always been on Monday in my lifetime. My adopted state, Oregon, was the first state to establish Labor Day by law. I’m not always so proud of Oregon and its history, especially up in Portland, which was yugely racist.

The Atlantic points to Utah as a powerful swing state for this US presidential election, emblematic of the larger problems voters face, that their candidates aren’t popular and most are voting the lessor of evils in their minds. I felt the Bern, myself.

Even though it’s been argued that fracking has nothing to little to do with Oklahoma’s quakes, because the fault lines weren’t mapped before the quakes started, Oklahoma shut down thirty-seven fracking wells after the 5.6 quake. Hmm, wonder why?

Atlanta recorded its second hottest summer on record. San Francisco regarded its coldest August in seventy-four years.

Poor Brock Turner, right? People are pretty pissed at the convicted rapist who spent only three months in jail. Poor guy, who would think that his fifteen minutes of fame would ruin his life after an act of violence his father blamed on a culture of alcohol and partying. Consider me one of those pissed at him.

Only one Howard Johnson restaurant remain open in the United States. They were once as ubiquitous as GC Murphy, Woolworths, Sears and Montgomery Ward. I think I ate at one once. I know I ate more often at GC Murphy, where $1.00 bought three subs. I also ate at Woolworths, as my local town had one with a daily blue plate special.

Of course, computer games were once the province of children.

What were once treats are now normal. We rarely ate pizzas when I was growing up. Pizza places were small, family owned businesses with a few tables, never anything fancy. Now, wow.

And I never had a taco or burrito while growing up. Mom made spaghetti with meatballs for dinner regularly and lasagna once in a while, but it wasn’t normal to go out to dinner for pasta.

The food thoughts are triggered by dark chocolate salted caramels a house guest presented us. Wow, are they delicious. I’ve heard of salted caramel for a few years now but when did they become a thing? Speaking of chocolate, I didn’t discover dark chocolate until I was older. I’d always preferred Mounds bars but never quite realized it was dark chocolate that so attracted me. Now, fortunately, dark chocolate is as available as, say, lattes, mochas and beer. Once upon a time, growing up in Pittsburgh, PA, I thought Stroh’s, Miller, Hamm’s, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Rolling Rock and Old Milwaukee were the only beers available, and that Rolling Rock was the best! I haven’t had any of those beers in yonks, at least since visiting family in America in 1988. Fortunately, I returned to the US from overseas when the micro-brew craze was striking in 1991.

Barbra Streisand has her 11th #1 Billboard 200 album.

Some things change more slowly than others.

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‘Phooon Party

Okay, first for the schmaltz alert. This post will get schmaltzy.

Like many, Gene Wilder’s demise dredged up memories. I associate specific music, movies, actors and events with epochal life moments. Gene Wilder is a large swatch of the moments because his rising fame coincided with VCRs rising and my long term assignment to Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan.

Arriving in May of 1981, base housing wasn’t immediately available. We put ourselves on the wait list and then found an off-base residence in Kadena City. The apartment building was a fort-like three story cement structure with minimal windows and external doors. The owner/managers lived in a bottom residence, and American service personnel and their dependents occupied the ten apartments spread throughout the rest. Keeping with the local way, none of these domiciles were large, but they were well built. A water cistern was on the roof. With it and the stout walls, the building was great for enduring earthquakes, typhoons and droughts.

Typhoon watching was almost a sport. Armed Forces Radio and Television Services provided us with our news and entertainment, and we tracked the storms across the Pacific and through the various seas. Which base was it going to hit? Hickam in Hawaii, Anderson on Guam, Clark in the PI? Or was it heading our way in Japan, or north to Korea?

Whichever place it struck was a cause for intense business on the base. If it was heading for us, we scrambled to launch the aircraft out of the typhoon’s path while securing the base. If you were on duty when the typhoon struck, you were on for the duration. Otherwise, you stocked up on food, water and things to do, and settled in at home.

This all took planning. Lines grew everywhere, but especially at the Commissary where we bought our food, and the USO where we rented our movies.

That’s where Gene Wilder enters. As AFRTS didn’t offer exciting programming options and often went off the air during a ‘phoon, we bought a VHS player. A huge, toploading Magnavox unit, it cost a grand, weighed over fifty pounds and took up the top of our twenty-five inch console television. But with it, we could rent movies from the USO. Thus we could sign out ‘Blazing Saddles’, ‘The Producers’, ‘Young Frankenstein’, ‘Silverstreak’, and ‘Stir Crazy’, along with movies like ‘Blues Brothers’. ‘Absence of Malice’. ‘Body Heat’. ‘Pennies from Heaven’. ‘Eye of the Needle’. The offerings were not broad, and it was serving the entire base population stalking entertainment, so you grabbed what you could, and then traded with others in the building, watching movie after movie and trying to catch some sleep as rain deluged the island and the wind hurled items through the charcoal skies.

Back on base, working in the Command Post, it wasn’t so good. We were pretty limited to what was available to watch. Scrambling aircraft and dealing with the emergencies, nobody raced out to rent movies. Then once that was done, the phones and radios went still as our status changed to monitoring the passing storm and waiting for it to clear. We watched what was on hand. How many times did I see ‘Silverstreak’, ‘Young Frankenstein’, ‘Blazing Saddles’ and ‘Stir Crazy’? Enough that we would start going stir crazy. Enough that I remember the characters and who played them, and whole scenes of dialogue.

Yet, now, watching scenes from these movies as I remember Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, and the others, I laugh and laugh, again. Remembering these things last night with my beer buddies, we just had to mention a character or a line from his movies to trigger laughter.

Thanks, Gene Wilder. It was a memorable stint with you through the many, many typhoons.

 

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