One gave us The Beatles.
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Mutt and Jeff |
The other gave us Schroedinger's Files.
-bill kenny
Ramblings of a badly aged Baby Boomer who went from Rebel Without a Cause to Bozo Without a Clue in, seemingly, the same afternoon.
Do you know where Butler, Pennsylvania, is? This time a year ago, we were all finding out. And truth to tell, what I DON'T know about what went on a year ago in Butler could fill a book.
Speculation persists on whether the assassination attempt was staged. I can't decide if people engaged in such pursuits are heartless, paranoid or cynical. I have noticed there's no hole or scar on Trump's right ear. It appears that the ear has grown back, which is some sort of medical miracle (and I imagine Evander Holyfield would have appreciated that).
"I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of SoHo in the rain.
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook's
Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein."
"Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the queen
Doing the werewolves of London.
I saw Lon Chaney, Jr. walking with the queen, uh
Doing the werewolves of London.
I saw a werewolf drinking a piƱa colada at Trader Vic's
And his hair was perfect.
Na!"
I am an unabashed child of the novelty. I have memories of sitting on a coffee table in my parents' living room in the apartment in Elechester that we lived in when I was still an only child, watching the Dinah Shore Show on a teeny-tiny black and white television. "See the USA in your Chevrolet." Dad had a two-tone Plymouth two-door coupe, but I still sang the song.
Seventy years later, and I'm surprised by the wizened visage I encounter in the mirror every morning. Strange days indeed. So little of what I grew up with has survived, except the memories.
Now, we're a culture, nearly worldwide, who, because we have all these television and cable channels and means of communication, feel compelled to fill them with something. There was a time, when our kids were very young, when the idea of a 24/7 news operation was novel.
Many of us wondered what would go on a channel like that at all hours of the day and night. At some point, as convergence began to close the distances between one form and another, news devolved into noise, not that we really noticed.
Now, there's not a lot of nutrition in any of what we watch-just empty calories. When the President of the United States speaks and it takes longer than one commercial break (three and a half minutes), we start to twitch. We surf until we find something somewhere, even if we've seen it already, rather than attempt to stretch our attention span and focus. We have so much freedom of choice for information, we yearn for freedom from choice.
Later this month, we'll mark the 56th anniversary of the First Man to Walk on the Moon. However, by the time we reach that milestone, it will be competing for our attention with the upcoming (in August) anniversary of Woodstock.
Which one was history? Which one wasn't? How do you decide what is history? And what can a poor boy do, except to sing for a rock'n'roll band 'cos in this sleepy London Town there's just no place for a street fighting man.
Sorry-I was channeling Mick Jagger, but I digress. I wondered eons ago if the news coverage of OJ and AC's speeding Ford Bronco was the end of an error. Now I know it was the lead car in the circus caravan, and I'm forced to acknowledge "This ain't no technological breakdown, Oh no, this is the road to hell." Makes me wonder what happened to that long-ago coffee table.
-bill kenny
Richie was eighty-five this past Monday. That is to say, Richard Starkey, Ringo Starr, was eighty-five earlier this week. On the face of it, that's completely nuts, because it would mean that I Want to Hold Your Hand, the song that was their first #1 in the USA, would be sixty-plus years old....WTFO? Nearly everyone I encounter daily wasn't even alive yet when that happened. How is this possible?
I find myself alone with what passes for thoughts at odd hours, almost always in my car, which is funny because life and times for my generation go full circle.
When I was coming of age, the driver's license and the open road (and all they promised, if not always delivered) was a rite of passage. And here I am, very much as I started, a long way from home on a dark highway, lost but making great time.
It was an era of Springsteen's chromed invaders-GTOs, Malibu SSs, Olds 442s, Buick Wildcats, Mustangs, 'Cudas, and Chargers at the top of the list. Gas lines the size of garden hoses and all of us, the dweebs included (present!) knew the cubic displacement and the brake horsepower. MPG at a time when gasoline was thirty-five cents a gallon was a nonsense concept and was never explored.I wrote this a really long time ago, before our son got married (He and Jena's anniversary was last Friday). I've not done very much very well in this life (at least so far), but marrying my wife and being the father to our two children were excellent moves on my part. At the time, I called it:
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Rocking Suspenders |
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Patrick & Jena Kenny |
One gave us The Beatles . Mutt and Jeff The other gave us Schroedinger's Files . -bill kenny