Thought Bubbles

Nobody should be thinking these thoughts - Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter

It’s a balmy evening in late June. We were mercifully blessed with a couple of rain showers and high temperatures in the mid 90’s -- a fantastic break from the 100+ dog days we were having. There is still lingering daylight at 8:55PM -- I love Daylight Saving Time. Could probably enjoy the midnight sun of Alaska; it feels like you’re grabbing back a little of life when the sun lazes a bit longer.

For avid readers (ha!) you may have seen my blog from last week, “The End of Everything Big”. It had a lifespan of 12 hours and then I used my editorial prerogative and deleted it. It wasn’t the worst piece I’ve written by far, but it was alternately boring and sarcastic. Sarcasm is a sublimated form of anger and I don’t want my blog to be a place of sarcasm (at least the extreme variety). Also I bit off a huge topic that the combined staffs of Time and Newsweek might find daunting. Sure, I can dispatch it in four paragraphs! (It was about the next possible, major USA tax-funded projects).

Avid readers might also have noticed that my output has slowed -- I post two or three articles a month now. Back in 2007 I was cranking out five a month. Eugene Robinson and Maureen Dowd don’t write that much. I probably covered pet topics and peccadilloes in the first few years and now I’m on a plateau of a mellow sort of monotony. Have thought about doing “a wrap” on this blog but I’m not quite to that point yet. I occasionally have something fun to kick around.

That all being said, I owe you some content dammit. Who really cares about deleted blog articles? I was browsing iTunes the other day and stumbled upon “Classic Music Videos” from the 1960’s. These were all standard-definition clips from the Ed Sullivan show -- a bit fuzzy but still spectacular in content quality. We have the Lovin’ Spoonful, Animals, Beach Boys, Neil Diamond, Petula Clark, Mamas & Poppas, Sonny & Cher and so much more. The clips range from early 60’s black and white to a spectacular, colorful rendition of Aquarius by the Fifth Dimension; this clip even has astronomical special effects. The genius and power of 60’s music astounds me to this day -- 1967’s worst song was better than 2011’s best. I did have to ponder why a young Neil Diamond had a forward comb-over -- what was going on there? I actually bought Gary Puckett and the Union Gap (“Young Girl”). I was as much fascinated by the seaweed green military outfits as the music itself. 1968 was a stand-out year for band attire.

The innocence of the era also impressed me. At my gym (24 Hour Fitness near SMU campus), young men try to look like gansta thugs. They have dreadlocks, tattoos and ankle-length gym shorts. Can only guess that they have pit bulls for pets at home. In the 1960’s, the aim was to be clever and whimsical -- not mean and menacing. You might’ve been a drug dealer but you weren’t trying to look like one. I suppose my middle age is showing… “Those young whipper-snappers”…. The hippie look of 1968 certainly wasn’t well-received by middle-aged people at the time. I’ll wrap this up before I embarrass myself anymore. Let’s face the fact -- I’m an old codger who delights in reliving the 60’s.

Just stay tuned to Strange Fascination … I’m hoping to do a review of a favorite sc-fi movie very soon. Actually the best sci-fi movie ever but you’ll have to wait and see. For a good non-sci-fi indie movie in the mean time, you can’t go wrong with Cedar Rapids now showing as a new release on iTunes. Ed Helms and John C. Reilly bring pathos, humor and even a great moral to a tale of small town insurance brokers meeting at a convention in Cedar Rapids.

That is all of my thought bubbles for today. Aloha.

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