Might As Well Be Next Week

It started just the other day. 

The shadows are longer; there is a diffuse and sort of film noir quality to the late afternoons that hints at what passes for the change from Summer to Fall in Southern California.  Kids head back to school next week which always means cooler and quieter evenings in the neighborhood.  Mounds of Halloween candy fill an entire section at  Costco now and the Christmas doodads can't be far behind. 

Except for the realization that another year is nearly shot to hell, Fall is the absolute best time of year nearly everywhere.  Labor Day, not January 1, feels more like the beginning of a new year just as Memorial Day always seems more like the end.  Whatever the case, it all is moving faster and faster.  I swear I can feel the breeze of passing time hit my face like a gale force wind.

My brother tells me on the phone from Illinois, "I think mom has forgotten how a light switch works.  She unplugs the lamp in her room at the nursing home instead of turning it off--same goes for the TV."  I find myself wondering how the coming change of season looks to her.  Does it register,  or is it just more shadows to contend with as she fades into dementia?

I start to make a mental note of all the plug in appliances we have around the house.  Let's see...bread maker, ice cream freezer, electric carving knife, can opener, (no...haven't seen that one for years).  I can't remember the last time any of these were plugged in except the carving knife.  It gets a workout every Thanksgiving.  Maybe mom is on to something.  I should just unplug everything.  The clocks might be a problem, but there is always a wristwatch handy.  Who needs to know what time it is anyway?  It's slipping through our fingers too rapidly as it is.

What time is sundown today?  I should be reserving a West facing corner of the backyard as my observation outpost.  After all, I am the vice president of sunsets for the Pacific time zone and the sun is not allowed to set until I give it the okay. 

If you're reading this in the Midwest and find that it is already pitch black outside, mom may have pulled the plug a little early.

Ancient Rome Anyone?

Initially they were there because during times of fragmented audiences and runaway production budgets they were cheap and easy.  I don't think anybody at the networks had an inkling of how, like pigs to slop, Americans would belly up to dreck like Survivor, American Idol, Big Brother, and countless other witless and dippy examples of human discomfit.

REALITY BITES!  Face it, these shows are squirm inducing monuments to narcissism and man's unique ability to ignore what the rest of the world recognizes as a complete void of talent and personality.  It's train wreck television and in the age of idiocracy it is a ratings winner.  Damn, it is awful!

I checked out the first episode of Survivor.  I thought it might be an interesting change.  By the first commercial break I found myself hating ALL of the participants and wondered where the network was able to find such a massive collection of complete (sorry) dicks to be on the show.  An hour into the program I was ready to take a flame thrower to the entire cast and, if I could have found it, my shotgun was prepared to "Elvis" the TV set.  I was enraged.  Was America really stupid enough to watch this crap?!  The answer was, of course, in the affirmative.  Troubling.

Apparently there are enough nimrods willing to watch other nimrods embarrass themselves on television and, bingo, ladies and gentlemen...we have a hit on our hands.  Now it's everywhere.  Even shows like the Tonight Show incorporate elements of reality TV into their traditional format.  "Jay Walking" is a very disturbing feature of Jay Leno's nightly gabfest.  In case you've missed it, this benchmark has Jay asking people on the street questions that any D minus third-grader should be able to get right.  Naturally, they don't.  Am I the only one who finds this infuriating?  It's NOT funny.  It's sad.  It makes me wonder  how our schools can consistently be so horrible that we unfailingly  graduate a nation of functional illiterates who, though well into adulthood, have no clue about...ANYTHING.  I fear for a country full of women who can't complete a simple sentence without the word "like" and men who dress as if they're still in grade school and sport spider neck tattoos and pants that appear to be toting a load.

Bringing back the draft might be a step in the right direction.  Maybe a couple of years in the Army might pound some intelligence into these dopes.  It worked in the sixties.

Maybe I should just give up on TV.  Now that I reflect on it, the only shows worth watching lately are on premium channels like Showtime, HBO, AMC and FX.  The Sopranos, Rescue Me, Rubicon, Damages, Louie, Mad Men, and others require that you at least have your GED.  Perhaps the lame stream programing of ABC, CBS, and NBC deserves to be the home of the slag heap that is reality TV.  Watch if you must but know that for every hour you spend viewing shows like Survivor your losing at least five IQ points.  There goes the Mensa picnic.

Fast food and HDTV...bread and circuses anyone?

"Stupid is as stupid does." - Forrest Gump

Burning Memories

 tExcept for the occasional dialog that doesn't sound like something we would have said in the 1960's, Mad Men has it down cold. It is the AMC series of three martini lunches, avarice, adultery,  and ass kissing in the advertising business during the age of the "New Frontier" and hula hoops.  The producers have done their homework.  The clothing, furniture, cars, and kids all look letter perfect to those of us who were around for the early years of an America that knew no bounds.

The most striking visual, at least to me, is the smoking.  We smoked EVERYWHERE and nearly all the time back then.  Planes, restaurants, offices, cars, home, no place was "smoke free".  It seemed as if everybody smoked because, in fact, they pretty much DID.  My dad smoked; mom didn't.  I can't recall a single friend whose dad was a non smoker, though I'm sure that one or two probably were.  Maybe half of the moms were inclined to fire up a Chesterfield, though they never seemed to smoke as much as the guys.

From the time most of us boomers were able to walk and talk we, okay mostly the guys, couldn't wait until we were old enough to buy a pack of butts and join the big boys' club.  We bought candy cigarettes and played with our pencils in school as if they were smokes and, when we had the chance, stole a stick or two from the old man's pack and lit up in the woods.  Camels were purloined by me and the Chamberlain boys next door because, well...that was the brand our dads bought.  I still remember Bob Chamberlain being sent home from Boy Scout camp because he got caught hiding a pack of Camels in his canteen.  (The idea was pure genius until the scoutmaster borrowed the canteen and filled it with water.  I don't know if he was mad at Bob for swiping something from his dad or if he was pissed because the cigs were so soaked he couldn't light them.)

Being teens in the 1960's most boomers began to smoke.  Hell, we had practiced for years and that stuff about smoking causing cancer and other bad junk was all new from the AMA and was probably wrong anyway.  Right?   I smoked.  My friends smoked.  In college they even had ash trays in the classroom!  (The best place to buy smokes at odd hours during college was in the basement of the University medical school where there was always a machine.  Nobody smoked more than doctors.)  Cigarettes were something fun to do that made you look more mature and besides, we were all going to live forever.  

I quit smoking years ago, as did most of my friends.  These days I hardly know anyone who smokes.  No smoking rules have made it nearly impossible to be a smoker.  You can't smoke on planes or at work; you most likely can't light up at home and woe be unto you if you reach for a cigarette in a restaurant.  It's hard work to be a smoker in 2010.  But here's the funny thing:  I would go back to it in a minute if it were safe and inoffensive.  Smoking was something to do with your hands in social situations.  It was a relaxing ritual and, let's face it, most people look kind of cool doing it.  It doesn't come to me in dreams to lure me to an early grave like booze does, but I think about it just the same.

The last time I bought cigarettes on a regular basis they cost about eighty cents a pack.  In the early 60's of Mad Men they went for around thirty or forty cents.  

Two weeks ago in New York, out of pure curiosity, I checked on the price of a pack of Marlboro's at a bodega on the Lower East Side.

$10.58  for ONE PACK!

No wonder 2010 doesn't look like 1964.

Party on Don Draper.

E

I Know We're Pals, But...

He's kind of like an old Army buddy who comes to visit for a couple of days; then two weeks later is reminding you that you're out of vermouth.  I hadn't seen too much of my old chum Al the alligator lizard who spends Summers on the sunny side of our patio.  It's generally part of my routine to check on him as he catches rays from late May through the generally breezy and dry days of late October.

We've been having a particularly cool July and August in Southern California, the coolest since the 1930's according to the experts, and that is why I assumed Al had been making himself scarce.
Nope, that would have been too easy.  It would appear that he has decided that his cold blood is more suited to a different clime.

It wasn't so much a scream,  it was an expletive that told me Linda had encountered a not so welcome surprise in our garage yesterday as we returned from the gym.  (She is not as fond of Al as I am.)  He somehow managed to break into the garage and position himself right next to the door leading to the kitchen.  Not a good move for the old boy since this is where we often chuck various pairs of shoes we are not fond of wearing in the house.  In fact, I'm willing to bet that some of these shoes Linda will not be wearing anywhere ever again.  Naturally, this has created a SITUATION.  Even though alligator lizards eat bugs, spiders and snails it is now my major mission in life to evict Al from the garage.  I really hate to do it.  He is a Padre fan, (and they are in first place), a quiet neighbor and a family guy. (I've counted at least three new "little Als" in the backyard this year.)  
Maybe if I offered him the TV a couple of nights a week to watch the Friars beat up on the Dodgers or the Diamondbacks?  Nah, Linda will never go for that.


If you need me, I'll be in the garage wearing my old combat boots and sporting a large shoe box.  I have a dead spider that might interest my old friend but, frankly, I don't think he'll fall for it.  
I'll come up with something...or be sleeping with Al and the cars tonight.


A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.