Category: walking

Saturday’s Theme Music

Chicago was a friend’s favorite group when I was a teenager. Sometimes when we hung around at his place, he’d put on one of their tapes. He bought all of their early albums, so I became familiar with their songs. One such song, “Saturday In the Park” came to mind today.

  1. It’s Saturday.
  2. I was in the park, Lithia Park, in fact.
  3. People were talking and smiling, and a man played guitar, singing for us all.

You can see how it all came together, right?

Saturday in the park
I think it was the Fourth of July
Saturday in the park
I think it was the Fourth of July
People dancing, people laughing
A man selling ice cream
Singing Italian songs

[Chorus]
Eh Cumpari, ci vo sunari
Can you dig it (yes, I can)
And I’ve been waiting such a long time
For Saturday

[Verse 2]
Another day in the park
I think it was the Fourth of July
Another day in the park
I think it was the Fourth of July
People talking, really smiling
A man playing guitar
Singing for us all

h/t to Genius.com

If you’re looking for me, I’ll be in the park.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Another blogger posted about taking his son to see Lynyrd Skynyrd and Status Quo in concert. I thought that’d be a rockin’ thing for a father and son to do together, and he wrote about it in his usual charming and humorous, slightly weary way. Skynyrd was part of my formulative southern rock education. I came across Status Quo much later, hearing quite a bit of them when I lived in Germany for a few years and criss-crossed Europe on different assignments. I don’t recall hearing much of them in America. It helped, I guess, that I had Brit friends who were big Status Quo fans for a while.

Thinking of Status Quo, I began streaming “Beginning of the End” (2007). It’s a regular walking tune for me. Lyrics like, “Is this the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning. The way you got me goin’ tells me I don’t know. I don’t understand any song that you are singin’. The jury’s out, we’re gonna let you know.” They play crisply against a hard rock, fast moving beat. Good video to my eye. The London Eye fascinates me, and the band looks like they’re enjoying themselves, like proper rockers should.

Hope you enjoy the tune.

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So, Walking Today

A stream popped into my mind. It began with Reese Witherspoon. I’d read some article on her. I remembered her as Tracy Flick in Election. Then I struggled with, who was the male lead in that movie?

First to pop into my thinking was that guy from Fidelity, you know, the one who starred in Grosse Pointe Blank? He has that sister, Joan.

Yes, John Cusack, that’s right. No, that wasn’t him in Election. Whoever was in Election had been in WarGames, Biloxi Blues, and The Freshman. A Matthew. Clean-cut, kind of a boyish look. Matthew… Ward? What? No. Matthew. Matt…LeBlanc. No. Matthew Perry. Shut up. Matthew McConaughey. No, fool. Matthew…Matthew…

Damn.

Go back. Ally Sheedy was in WarGames. That doesn’t help. Matthew was in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, remember? Yes, what’s his last name? What’s his last name? Married to Sarah Jessica Parker. Remember her in L.A. Story as Steve Martin’s character’s young girlfriend?

At last: Broderick. Matthew Broderick.

Thank you.

Now who played the scientist in WarGames? Was in 9 to 5, Tootsie, Cloak and Dagger… Starts with a D. Daryl?

What?

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Sometimes I feel like I’m Goldilocks, judging and assessing things for which one is just right. Yesterday was the first day of summer in Ashlandia. We had beautiful weather, if it’d been the first day of autumn. As summer weather goes, it was windy with a chilly breeze. Walking through it, I thought, seventy-one degrees is too cold for summer. It’s also a drop-off from our legit eighty-three degree average for this time of year. That would have been just right.

But, thinking about, talking to meself about summer, I thought, this is too cold. “She’s So Cold” by the Rolling Stones (1980) rushed into the stream. Good bopping walkin’ song. I did shuffle lyrics a little to, “She’s too cold.”

I like this video. They seem to be having fun.

 

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Space Walk

Bored and restless, he left the table in the cafe and walked to stretch his legs. He walked without thought under the trees, sometimes watching the traffic as he went or other pedestrians, but mostly looking inward, until he found himself at one of observation decks. It was empty. He stepped up to look out the windows.

Space seemed as empty as the observation deck. Readouts clicked, whirled, and blinked on panels of information presented in red, blue, green, and amber characters below the window. It all seemed too abstract for consideration. Three things remained concrete to him for now. One, he and his family had made it onto the Ark. Two, they’d left Earth behind. Three, he probably wouldn’t live to see the new world, but his son would.

Right now, those three things were all that mattered.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

1991.

I usually think that INXS was performing this song. The beat and vocal delivery reminds me of INXS although, listening, it’s clearly not Michael Hutchence singing. The driving, fast rhythms always moved people in the clubs. It remains a good walking song. I have also sung it to a number of cats through the years. They always just sit down and wait it out.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Today is all ’bout looking ahead. We were discussing different things while drinking beers the other night. The conversations invited nostalgia into my streams. I’d been in the military for twenty years. Being in the military with a mission and purpose was much different than this semi-kind of life of writing. After that came some startups and then more than a decade at IBM.

There was a gap in mil service though. I got out after four years, bought a restaurant, was running it while going to college, and then got mighty sick. Broke and weary, I went back into the military. My break in service was almost one year. It was a tumultuous twelve months.

1979 was when I went back in. This song, “Don’t Look Back” by Boston, was out. Back in a barracks at Brooks AFB in Texas, waiting for my wife to join me, this song struck me hard. Don’t look back.

I look back often. It’s mostly in context to remember where I’ve been and helped me adjust my course and remind myself where I’m going. It’s uncharted lands. Walking the next day after I had my conversations and bursts of nostalgia, I reckoned there are different ways of looking back. Looking back is fine as long as you don’t shove yourself into reverse and try to get back there by driving via your mirrors. The mirrors of nostalgia only show a few items.

Of course, the filters of the futures let’s us see even less. That’s why the future is more fun; there’s far less known and much greater potential to be shaped.

 

 

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