Carry me back to California...been on the road too long!

Carole King's "Back to California" has been hammering in my head for the past couple of days. In spite of all its problems, the "land of fruit and nuts" seems to suit me and I miss it when I'm away.

Linda and I have spent most of this month dealing with my mother. My brother and I have now found a really great place for her and she seems to be settling in nicely with other seniors who are lost in the fog of dementia. The nuns who run the facility are angels of dedication and mercy who almost inspire me to maybe drop in for church one of these days. (It has been a few years. Okay, forty.)

Since the stay in Illinois was extended, I opted for a satellite receiver in the rental car we picked up at O'Hare. Local radio is, for most of the country, no longer local or very good. It is amazing to hear what passes for talent in some of the largest media markets these days. Though many solid pros remain, there are now people on the air in top ten metropolitan areas who would have had little or no chance of being hired in Palatka, Florida twenty years ago. The same goes for lots of television and newspaper help as well. Granted, there are many more media outlets today, but that alone doesn't explain the thin bench and lack of polish.

We live in a time of ever shortened attention spans and are consumers with the ability to be our own program directors and editors. "I get my news on the net", is a common refrain--though most of the time it isn't clear if "the net" means The Wall Street Journal site or TMZ. For audio diversion, the cell phone has become the alpha and omega of a growing crowd. How many inane conversations have you been forced to overhear at the airport? Departure gates have begun to resemble insane asylums as people ramble on to unseen friends and business acquaintances.

Newspapers in most cities are beginning to resemble the Weekly Reader of my grade school days. Little serious reporting and lots of People Magazine celebrity gossip dominates the pages of once proud publications. Frankly, I can't remember the last time I plunked down money for a local paper where I didn't feel like I'd been had.

Perhaps I should just calm down and accept the fact that radio, television and newspapers are, like burlesque shows of thirty years ago, just doing their final sweaty, out of shape, grungy bump and grind into the ash can of history.

Paying Attention: Woodschlock and other stuff

"You should get bitter as you get old. It shows you're paying attention." TV's Craig Ferguson

I have been paying a lot of attention lately.
It's not a problem because I have been spending quite a bit of time in airports wondering how a mode of travel that used to be fun became a form of torture. My god, it is a miserable experience to get on an airplane these days! The stepped-up security I can handle. I merely remember the smoking wreckage of September 11, 2001 and the fundamentalist idiots who did it and I am fine. However, what does get me going is this "nibbled to death by ducks" pricing that the airlines seem intent on imposing: "That'll be $30 if you want to check a bag, sir." "Something to drink? How about a snack? Got a credit card?"

Stop it!

H0w about telling me what the REAL price is when I buy a ticket? You clowns are fooling nobody. JUST GIVE US ONE ALL ENCOMPASSING PRICE PLEASE! ((It also wouldn't hurt if you were occasionally on time.)

Also, I am completely sick of this endless debate of health care in America. Wasn't Medicare and Medicaid supposed to fix everything when LBJ drunkenly foisted it upon us back in the 60's? If those two socialist programs haven't taken care of everybody by now how is implementing an even larger plan going to do anything more than bankrupt us? And, more importantly, if the freeloaders in Congress think their health care reform is so damn good for their constituents why have they exempted themselves from the plan? It would seem that until they come up with something that they are willing to submit to along with the rest of us they should just SHUT UP AND LEAVE US THE HELL ALONE.

Now...on to something that really chaps my ass: Woodstock

It is necessary to keep a pail near my easy chair as I watch the endless television news tributes to the fortieth anniversary of "three days of peace and music". "The 1960's and Woodstock was a time of great hope and dramatic social change for everyone" gushed one report.

PULLEEEZ! What a crock! Chris Reed, in the San Diego Union-Tribune, said it best: "The festival's alleged history-altering greatness is best seen as just another talking point of a helplessly, hopelessly self-infatuated generation." Amen!
While most of my friends were either working, in school or in the service, these nitwits were smoking dope, screwing , rolling in the mud listening to crappy music by mediocre musicians not unlike themselves.

I don't think that it's a coincidence that the folks who were at Woodstock mostly wound up in education and government where "feeling good about yourself" trumps accomplishment. I wonder how that "single payer" (see government) health plan would have played at Woodstock?

Kumbayah anyone?

It's time

Mother dozes in her chair
awakes awhile and reads her book
then dozes off again
Wind makes a rush at the house
and, like a tide, recedes. The trees are sere.

Afternoons are the most difficult.
They seem to have no end.
no end and no one there.
Outside the trees do their witchy dance.
Mother grows smaller in her chair.

("Portrait of my mother in January" By: August Kleinzahler)

Often I have told my daughters that when I no longer know what day it is or can't remember to occasionally bathe and change my clothes they should tell daddy that it's time for a "fishing trip". On the boat I should be encouraged to stand near the stern of the vessel in order to haul in a really big fish; then as one of their husbands guns the throttle, I disappear over the side and slip beneath the waves with the help of my old Army boots and lead lined underwear.

They think I'm kidding.
I am not.

My brother and I are dealing with the severe decline of our 88 year-old mom these days. We love her but she can no longer function on her own. She tries to fake it, but there is now no doubt that she has slipped into the downward spiral of dementia. It is completely unfair.
She spent several years and sacrificed her own health to care for our father as he battled Alzheimer's Disease until it put him in the ground nearly fifteen years ago. Now, she's headed to the same sad rodeo.

In the next couple of weeks we will try to trick her into the room we have reserved for her at a fine facility in her hometown of Springfield, Illinois. There she will be provided the supervision she needs to take care of herself---something she neglects today. Like a three year-old, she will be reminded to eat, change her clothes, and take her medicine.
Damnit! There ought to be a better way.
There isn't.

When it dawns on her that she is leaving home to spend the rest of her life in a place for the mentally infirm, she will be furious with us.
For awhile.

Bring me the head of Buffalo Bob!

All Boomers should remember the Howdy Doody Show.
That was the TV show that featured a termite infested puppet and his human sidekick, Buffalo Bob Smith and a few other flesh and blood stooges. (I will exempt the smoking hot Princess Tinka Tonka from the stooge classification, but ONLY her.)

Now, as I teeter on the brink of geezerville, I can't help but wonder if there is a connection between Buffalo Bob's hype of Hostess Cupcakes and the outbreak of major "muffin top" among men and women of the baby boom generation.


I believe these pictures speak for themselves.......

I know that Buffalo Bob has gone to that big broadcast in the sky, but Howdy must still be hanging around the wood shop.

Does anybody have a brother-in-law who is a low life lawyer? I smell a class action suit coming for the ultimate woody.