Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Going to see the Four Tops and Temptations at the Britt this year. Buying the tickets triggered a need to hear some Motown today. What better song for this era of burgeoning WH scandals and a plethora fake news than ‘Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World Is Today)’, from nineteen seventy? Shows just how long we’ve been a ball of confusion.
Returning to my roots of being, I’m streaming stuff from the nineteen sixties today.
I was a big motor-racing, science-fiction and baseball fan then. Mario Andretti, Jackie Stewart, Mark Donahue, Dan Gurney, Peter Revson were among the racers I idolized. The Can-Am, Formula One, Indy (called USAC racing back then), sports car racing, with the Ford versus Ferrari battles at LeMans…I watched them all.
My baseball team was the Pittsburgh Pirates, and I followed them faithfully. But my emerging loves were reading and music. Although my reading tastes were — and are — eclectic, I tore through the works of Asimov, Bradbury, Zelazny, Clarke, and Heinlein. Besides my racing magazines, I bought science fiction magazines every month, and devoured the short stories.
The rock explosion was in full strength and the Brit Invasion was underway. Protests, demonstrations, riots, the Altamont Free Concert and Woodstock were part of our news cycles, along with Vietnam, political assassinations, civil rights and the cold war. The threat of nukes was a constant. Bombers and fighters remained on alert.
Consumerism, television and advertising were gaining strength. What a time, what a time, for a teenage boy in America. Into this maelstrom of my existence came Jimi Hendrix. Wow, his playing amazed me. He died young, just twenty-eight years old, but, man, what a legacy he left. What an impact he had.
Donald Trump came up with a new expression the other day: “prime the pump.” He was discussing the U.S. economy with a magazine at the time. It’s another example of his tremendous ability to see and grasp complex situations and reduce them to something that can be tweeted and remembered.
Here’s a few other expressions he’s originated since becoming president.
In each of those four instances above, the Tangelos mascot said, “Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just…I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do.”
He also claimed that he came up with the famous statement, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” while discussing the Berlin Wall with President Kennedy. Although only seventeen at the time, Trump said, “Walls always fascinated me, always. I had a gut feeling, you know, just a hunch, just a hunch, but I trust my hunches, I trust my instinct, that walls, like the one in Berlin that we built to protect us from communisms, were going to be important in my life, someday, and I was right. I was right.”
#fakenews
Well, almost fake news.
You read the news today? Sure, what news, which news, right? Sorry.
History was made when a woman breastfed in Parliament. This happened in Australia. The woman who made this news is Senator Larissa Waters. She didn’t breastfeed another senator, but a baby, her daughter, Alia.
I’m amazed that this is news. I think breastfeeding has been around for over fifty years. I know breasts on women have been around at least that long. I’m sixty years old, and I distinctly remember seeing them on women when I was a teenager.
I guess this is news because breast-feeding is finally coming out of the closet in Australia. Actually, reading the article, it seems like it’s news because children were not previously authorized to be in Parliament. That makes sense; if Aussie politicians are like American politicians, that was probably because they’re afraid that children will outshine them in just about every aspect from speaking and making sense to manners, courtesy and intelligence.
Whatever the reason for the celebration, it’s good to see we’re finally making progress. It’s been finally acknowledged with books that ‘Everyone Poops’. That had also apparently been a secret. Soon, we’ll find out that people masturbate and fart, too.
About damn time. Let me know when someone breaks wind in Parliament in Australia.
If it’s the year of twenty-seventeen, then you know an airline is in trouble. I don’t accept the year unchallenged. Like Billy Pilgrim, sometimes I feel like I’ve become unstuck in time. It comes mostly from hearing male Republicans say things like, “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to healthcare.”
Well, not if you’re rich! Ha, ha. Oh, that Raul Labrador. He was kidding, of course. Ha, ha, what a joker. Thank the gods someone in the nation’s capitol has a sense of humor that matches Trump’s White House. You know those guys have a sense of humor when they decide they’re firing scientists from the EPA’s advisory board and replacing them with members of industry. That’s got to be a joke, right?
This year, depending on what Trump does — and his potential for disaster is infinite — might go down as a pivotal year of change for the U.S. airline industry. Each week finds another one in trouble or the news in recent months. First, there was United Airlines, politely trying to re-accommodate a passenger by taking him out of his seat and off the flight, to put him on another. Then American Airlines became the focus of social media ire when an employee bonked a woman on a flight with a stroller. American Airlines tried to fix it all by announcing that they were going to reduce leg room! That’s terrific news! Next they’ll be telling us that they’re going to start charging us to recline our seats or to use the restroom. After all, they’re making money and experiencing record profits, but, you know how it is with money and corporations: there’s never enough.
Delta Airlines, jealous over the the other airlines gaining so much attention, decided to boot a family off a flight from Hawaii. They made up with them, afterwards, of course, because it was just another spat between an airline and those ungrateful people buying tickets.
Today, in the spirit of U.S. airline news, Spirit Airlines canceled nine flights. People were upset. The airline blamed the pilots. The pilots blamed the airline. We all know that Spirit Airlines really just wanted their time in the news. All the other U.S. airlines were in the news. Even Southwest Airlines made the news after reports that their CEO is resisting changes to the baggage policy and still letting people have two free bags. What a madman! Doesn’t he know he’s leaving money on the table? Gads, the scoundrel.
Of course, the wealthy have had enough of the commoners and their problems with those pesky airlines. They’re either buying their own aircraft or using the terminals constructed for their exclusive use.
It’s exhausting to contemplate. As Alvin Lee of Ten Years After said at Woodstock once, “I think next time, I’m going home by helicopter.”
Maybe he didn’t say it. I am getting old. Or maybe I’m just unstuck in time again, and he’s going to say it in the future.
Another anniversary was passed. This one was less remembered and noted than many anniversaries.
Today’s song is ‘Ohio’, by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSN&Y). The Kent State shootings inspired the song when Ohio National Guardsman shot at protesters, killing four, in nineteen seventy. Nine others were wounded. Some of those shot were watching the protest or walking the area, and not taking part in the protests.
I vividly remember hearing the song for the first time. It was a warm morning, but humid after thunderstorms the previous night, and our patch of suburbia was richly green. I was in my friend’s back yard in Penn Hills, PA. Curt lived up the street from me. He, John, Ricky and Bruce, all neighbors and classmates (except Bruce), were the core of my friendships. Curt’s back yard was slick with mud from the heavy rains. Mosquitoes were swarming, along with horse flies.
The Kent State protests were mostly about President Nixon’s Cambodia Campaign, just announced. It seems appropriate for our era, as we’re protesting an American Executive branch’s words, actions, behavior and stated intentions, to listen to this song and think about the words. Appallingly, I saw an FB post encouraging ‘vets’ to run over protesters. It sickened my heart to read such sentiments. Is that why vets went to war, to return and run over others exercising their rights and freedoms?
Some seem to have twisted ideas about how it all works.
Speaking as a vet and knowing many vets, I don’t believe most of them think protesters should be run over. Maybe I’m in a bubble, and I’m wrong. We used to say, I don’t agree with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it. So, on the one hand, yes, the person can encourage vets to run over protesters, as it’s their right, but I find their sentiment sublimely hateful, ignorant, and depressing.
This song captured how appalled some of us were then. I remember being surprised that my friends were unaware of the Kent State shootings or what it was all about. Their parents were aware but guarded. Looking back, I grasp how conservative that housing plan where I lived was at the time.
Listen to the song, though, and the chorus, “Four dead in Ohio,” stays with you.
He was seventy-five, and she, the younger, was just seventy-three. They met on a cruise to Alaska, an adventure to eat food and see things like glaciers. They knew they didn’t agree on politics but there was e l e c t r i c i t y between them, not sparks or embers, but record one hundred mile long billion volt lightning strokes. So they said, what the hell, let’s try this and see.
Adventurous people they were, they went ‘camping’ together, renting a small cabin to share (there were separate beds), fishing and hiking in the day, campfires and singing at night.
Ten days in, they knew it would not work. He was an ardent Trump supporter and she was advocating RESIST. She gave him three choices: “Take me to an airport and I’ll fly home. Drive me home. Drive me to somewhere where I can rent a car and I’ll drive myself home.”
He replied, “Number three sounds good.”
So that’s what they did, swearing never to see one another again, and unfriending one another on Facebook.
It was a thirty-day life experience.
An organized compilation of random subjects plaguing me that I may have posted about, but which I think I should update readers about.
There are other things to write about, of course, particularly on the family fronts, but I shield them and their activities, so I post very little about that. Politics, technology and economics remain passions that deserve posts but I end up diverting too much energy to write much about them. Dreams are experienced every night, so I could write about those, too, like last night, when I didn’t like how the dream was going, and changed it in the middle, astonishing everyone in the dream. We’re also undergoing the annual raccoon invasion, and dealing with yard work. My wife’s health continues to be a concern while I remain stupidly healthy. Trips and adventures are planned, and we’re hopeful we can pull some of them off this year and not get sucked back into the black hole of family issues.
Overall, I’m excited, optimistic and hopeful, a great way to live. The writer is pestering me to get on to it with Brett, Philea, Handley and the rest, so it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
We used to play a game: who would you rather have stuck with you on a deserted island?
We began with ‘Gilligan’s Island’. Who would you rather have with you, Ginger or Mary Ann?
Well, neither, some answered. Give me the Professor. He can get us the hell off the island, or help us survive. Conversely, the conversation turned to, who is the most useless, that you can do without? Well, those rich peckerheads, the Howells.
Which brings me around to today. From the Trump White House, who would you rather have with you on a deserted island: Jeff Sessions, the orange Donald, Betsy DeVos, Steve Bannon or Sean Spicer?
Take your time and give it some thought. I’m not responsible for any gagging, puking or sleepless nights the question causes you.
Today’s song is right out of the American pop-rock scene of the nineteen seventies. It’s by a Canadian group who had a handful of hits and multiple excellent albums.
That’s the Guess Who. Love those rock band names. Today’s song is ‘American Woman’. People have argued about the lyric’s intentions since it came out. I once read one of the song-writers quoting John Lennon to the effect that a song’s meanings emerge after they’re recorded and that someone else needs to interpret them. I was writing a paper comparing the writing styles of Kurt Vonnegut and Mario Puzo at the time. I’d read some comments by them about how readers find meanings that the writers never intended. That doesn’t make those meanings wrong or illegitimate.
I was beginning to see and understand that in literature, art and music. People find their own meanings. It’s always fascinating then to hear people argue about these things as though they’re absolutes, and not shaped by own lives and dreams.
And it reminds me of eating food. People are always insisting to others, “Try this, it’s great, you’ll love it!” But tastes buds are also tastes, aren’t they? Sure. Try convincing others of that. They take your disagreement as a personal insult.
That’s what many Americans did with ‘American Woman’. They disagreed with what they saw as the song’s meaning and rejected it. I’ve had people tell me that they hate this song, because it was about hating America to them.
