Byzantine Resurrection Icon

He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, 

saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, 

and the third day rise again. 

Buckingham Nicks: That's Alright (1972)

Buckingham Nicks: Long Distance Winner (1973)

Buckingham Nicks: Stephanie (1973)

Fleetwood Mac: Silver Springs (1997)

"You'll never get away from the sound of the woman who loves you..."
Wow---Stevie's very real curse on Lindsey! 

(As of this 1997 vid---for a song that Nicks tried but failed to get on the "Rumours" album---he'd literally had to listen to her "sound" for the next 20 years after their 1977 breakup! And still today.)

Fleetwood Mac: Dreams (1977)

The Twilight Zone: The After Hours (June 10, 1960)

About 15 years ago, during one of my darkest times, I saw this episode of "The Twilight Zone" that has resonated with me ever since. We are only here for a brief moment. Make the most of it when you can, and don't complain when it's done. Feel lucky that you were granted even that brief moment. (By the great "Department Store Manager in the Sky.")

 

On a side note: I've recently started reading the Bible from the beginning. Still in Genesis. But one thing that I've noticed so far: The desert people of 2000 years ago were very concerned about reproducing. (As is the greatest concern of every species.) No abortions, no homosexuality, because, of course, that would prevent the reproduction of the human species. Today, the number of humans on the planet is no longer an issue. But 2000 years ago, it was a very big issue. (Though today I still cannot reconcile the idea of abortion with any natural law. What species murders its young? If you put politics aside, the very idea of abortion is horrific. Where did this concept even come from to begin with? Why is this even a discussion? Communist girls who protest the idea of murdering a kitten would kill their own human baby with much less anguish.)

A further side note: Natives to any environment don't have "rules." They just "are." I am not (yet) a proponent of any "alien" theory (as the History Channel, for example, promotes). But it's an interesting theory: Certain residents on Earth as refugees from another planet. With a set of guidelines from the home-front (like from the Bible) to tell us the basic guidelines of how to behave... Wouldn't it be "funny" if we later find out that we drained Mars of its resources and came here to start over?

Lindsey Buckingham: Trouble (Official Music Video, 1981)

Post-Fleetwood, none of the three stars were actually great. 

Nicks became an icon, but her solo albums are not that good. (Aside from her duets, 

there are arguably only about 2 really good songs per album.)

Buckingham had the most raw talent, but he never capitalized on it. 

(He's good-looking and can write a song, but has little charisma and little sense of the 

Big Picture---I'm still amazed at how utterly bad "Tusk" was under his control, 

and at how he didn't come on strong with this debut album.)

McVie and her easy-going, well-written hits about good and bad relationships 

disappeared after Fleetwood.

 

In bands, great art needs the irritation/agitation/competition.
Witness John Lennon after splitting with McCartney: 

Lennon was interesting in 1970 and 1971 with "Plastic Ono" and "Imagine"

and then he basically disappeared. 1974's "Walls and Bridges" was a nice, raw confessional 

interim album. And then he REALLY disappeared for the next 5 years.
(If Yoko was so stimulating, then why didn't he create more during his 12 years with her?)

Sorry, I digress. Here's Buckingham with his first cute solo single and video, made just for MTV.

Stevie Nicks: Beauty and the Beast (1983 version)

Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac: Beauty and the Beast (Outtake from Tusk, 1978)

Eventually appeared on Nicks' 1983 "The Wild Heart" solo album.

By that time, the song was dumbed down with strings.

This is her stark version, a la 1970's "Lennon/Plastic Ono Band."


 

You're not a stranger to me
And you are something to see
You don't even know how to please
You say a lot but you're unaware how to leave

My darling lives in a world that is not mine
An old child misunderstood out of time
Timeless is the creature who is wise
And timeless is the prisoner in disguise

Oh who is the beauty who the beast
Would you die of grieving when I leave
Two children too blind to see
I was born in your shadow I believe

My love is a man who's not been tamed
Oh my love lives in a world of false pleasure and pain
We come from different worlds but we are the same
I never doubted your beauty I've changed
I never doubted your beauty I've changed

Who is the beauty
Where is my beast (my love)
There is no beauty
Without my beast (my love)

Who is the beauty
Who my love
Ah
Oh la bete la bete
Where is my beast

My beauty my beauty
My beautiful beautiful beautiful
Beautiful beast

Something on PBS Worth Watching (for once)

Years ago (probably around 2015 or 2016), PBS stopped being a publicly funded station interested in US and world history and literature, and became a left-wing propaganda tool, featuring primarily "racial theory" and anti-US propaganda. In the "olden days," I used to regularly seek out PBS non-fiction shows (though not British comedies/dramas---just not that interested), but since 2016, they've been unwatchable because of their overt and intellectually sloppy Communist slant.

Just this weekend, though, I was pleasantly surprised when I was channel-surfing and came across "Dante: Inferno to Paradise." I hadn't read Dante at all since my college days, and didn't remember much of what I'd read then. I remembered the Purgatory/Hell/Heaven theme, but, frankly, wasn't paying much attention as an 18- or 19-year-old. I also did not remember anything at all about Dante's being banned from his home city and being forced into exile, which is when he started to write "The Divine Comedy." Very interestingly presented program, both historically and literarily. A sign of good TV: It made me go to my library and take out my old "Portable Dante":

Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood
for I had wandered off from the straight path.

How hard it is to tell what it was like,
this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn
(the thought of it brings back all my old fears)...

I'm also thankful that this program did NOT have some insipid (or "racially appropriate" in any way) "host" that the camera focused on as he/she walked along Dante's geographical path, making efforts to keep the wind out of his/her (dread)locks. Which seems to have been the focus of most PBS programs recently. I don't CARE about your train trip or your trekking through city streets or how you got to meet the local librarian. I don't care about YOU. I just want to know about the historical thing that you're supposedly the reporter for!

This Dante program, on the contrary, focused on Dante himself, sans "TV show narrator travels"! And the usually stupid "acting reenactments" were kept to a minimum, and the graphics about the visions of Purgatory/Hell/Heaven were decently (and sometimes spookily) done!

I'd recommend this show: Dante: Inferno to Paradise

Is there hope for PBS in the future?? (Similarly hopeful is another historical show on PBS --- "Ancient Roads: From Christ to Constantine"; I watched one episode, and, believe it or not, not a single token, non-historical DEI black person showed up! I was shocked!)

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff condemns toxic masculinity

"She loves to cook, I love to eat..."
 Dear god... You've got to see this for yourself: The Poster Boy for the Milquetoast Male.
In competition with Riley Roberts, the wimpy BF of AOC.

Does any woman or man in this country really want this phony, generic piece of shit speaking for them?

Fleetwood Mac / Stevie Nicks: Landslide (1975)

"Can I handle the seasons of my life..."
WOW. Nicks wrote this when she was 26 years old.

I didn't understand this spiritual concept, or appreciate this beautiful song, until I was post-50.
I've always been a bit slow.



I took my love, and I took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
'Til the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail through the changin' ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life

Well, I've been afraid of changin'
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
even children get older
and I'm getting older, too...

Take my love, take it down
Climbed a mountain and turned around
And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Well, the landslide will bring it down...

Rulers of the United Kingdom

A Zambian was just elected to the leadership of Wales. Here's the list of who's currently running the UK:

Wales: Vaughan Gething (Zambia)
Scotland: Humza Yousaf (Pakistan)
UK: Rishi Sunak (India)
London Mayor: Sadiq Khan (Pakistan)

What ever happened to the Anglo-Saxon founders of the country? You've sold your very heritage out in favor of Globalism (aka Communism). Just because you once ruled certain places doesn't mean your "white guilt" has to carry on into letting them rule YOU!

Dan Hill: Sometimes When We Touch (1977)

What US radio subscribed to back in the late '70s before punk/New Wave took over (thank god for that takeover!). Sadly, though, this utter Dweeb now seems to be the Poster Boy for the #MeToo movement.

Dawn Powell Kick

Contemporary of Fitzgerald's (born in the same year, 1896). Same editors. Same NY circle: Friends with the Murphys, et al.
But a MUCH better writer than Fitzgerald. More soul, more heart, more brain. No schtick, no schmaltz. (Just nowhere near as good-looking and hype-friendly.)
No overt personal drama (though she had her own private drama: a sometimes violent and mentally ill institutionalized son, and a perpetually drunk bisexual husband---she couldn't milk these topics as Fitzgerald did his own institutionalized wife).

I've now finished Powell's first Library of America volume (1930 - 1942). "Dance Night" and "Come Back to Sorrento" were heartbreaking. Not because she was trying to break your heart, but because her small-town characters were so ordinary and real, with all of their simplistic/complicated dreams. With "Turn, Magic Wheel," "Angels on Toast," and "A Time to Be Born," she switches from small-town Ohio dreams to upper-class New York City dreams---but the characters are still equally as semi-confused/semi-certain and unsettled, and their inner turbulent selves and milieu still as surely drawn.

I probably liked "Angels on Toast" the least of the five, though it was still psychologically and sociologically interesting.

After the first volume, I took a break to read the diaries ('31 to '65). Some tidbits I noted upon first pass:

January 1941: The avoidance of contemporary manners in modern writing. In the last century, Thackeray, Dickens, Edith Wharton, James, all wrote of their times and we have reliable records. Now we have only the escapists...false to history, false to human nature. Among contemporary writers... We have Hemingway, who writes of a fictional movie hero in Spain with the language neither Spanish nor English. When someone wishes to write of this age---as I do and have done---critics shy off---the public shies off. "Where's our Story Book?" they cry. "Where are our Story Book People?" This is obviously an age that Can't Take it.

March 1956:  The Secret of my Failure. Just thought why I don't sell stories to popular magazines. All have subtitles---"Last time Gary saw Cindy she was a gawky child; now she was a beautiful woman..." I can't help writing "Last time Fatso saw Myrt she was a desirable woman; now she was an old bag..."

June 1957:  Post-dated check for $75 out. Very ominous. Don't know whether to lay low or to get high. Would be at end of rope if could afford rope. Let's say am at end of thread.

August 1957:  Some people have several lives (Auntie May); others die the first time and continue dying to their death. If they get through the death of youth---that is, the period when they admit the death of youth (anywhere from 30 to 50) and become the next person, middle-aged, they usually can go on till they are willing to relinquish middle age (60 to70) when they begin to really enjoy life, the fruits of their experience, and are eager afresh for things about them.

June 1959:  I don't know why we should object to being sales-pressured and mass-persuaded when we are such self-persuaders and can con ourselves into any feeling that assures us convenient excuses for our plan of life. If it is necessary to excuse our immoralities, we sell ourselves the idea our mates are monsters, or our parents were. If we wish to continue abject love, we con ourselves into seeing these objects of devotion as angels.

Fleetwood Mac: Rhiannon (live; from the 1975 "Fleetwood Mac" album)

I absolutely did not have the ability to appreciate this song when it came out when I was 10 years old. "Hippies" were out, I knew, and these folks were definitely "hippie-ish." I hated my local album-rock radio stations (and in Dallas/Fort Worth, we had nothing in the late '70s or early '80s BUT album-rock stations for anything to listen to aside from Top 40 stations; there were no "alternative" radio stations at that time) for playing nothing but Fleetwood Mac, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Heart, Yes, Kansas, Boston, Chicago, et al.

Nearly 50 years later... My god, I bow before this particular great Stevie Nicks song and performance. One for the ages. 

 

Today, I have much more appreciation for Fleetwood Mac and '70s Heart---though I still immensely dislike and discount 98% of Styx, Yes, Kansas, Boston, Chicago, et al., and resent their being shoved down my throat on the radio, as I similarly resent the "singer-songwriter" vogue of the same time period: Today, I still remember hearing 1000 times or more the embarrassing, gutless "sensitive male" schmaltz that is "Sometimes When We Touch" by Dan Hill in 1977 (as if written by Kamala Harris's husband Doug Emhoff, per his anti-Toxic Masculinity lectures).

Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night
Wouldn't you love to love her?
She rules her life like a bird in flight
Who will be her lover?

All your life you've never seen
A woman taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised to you heaven?
Would you ever win?

She is a cat in the dark
And then she is the darkness
She rules her life like a fine skylark
And when the sky is starless

Once in a million years a lady like her rises
Oh no, Rhiannon, you cry, but then she's gone
And your life knows no answer
Your life knows no answer

Rhiannon
Rhiannon
Rhiannon

She rings like a bell through the night
Wouldn't you love to love her?
She rules her life like a bird in flight
Who will be her lover?

Once in a million years a lady like her rises
Oh no, Rhiannon, you cry, but still she's gone
And your life knows no answer
Your life knows no answer

Rhiannon
Rhiannon
Rhiannon

Dreams unwind
Love's a state of mind
Oh, now you know that your
Dreams unwind
And your love is a state of mind
Well, I told you so
And your dreams unwind
And love is hard to find
I know
Dreams unwind
And love is hard to find
I know

Take me like the wind, child
And with the sky, I roll
Take me like the wind, child
And with the sky, now

Ah, baby, you don't change
And I don't change
And you don't change, Rhiannon
Oh darling
I don't change
And baby, you don't change
All the same, Rhiannon
All the same
All the same
All the same, Rhiannon
But baby, you don't change
I don't change, Rhiannon

I don't change
You don't change
And it's all the same, Rhiannon

Fleetwood Mac: Over My Head (1975 on "Midnight Special")

Fleetwood Mac: Monday Morning (first song from their 1975 album; here, live in 1977 on their "Rumours" tour)

While I was just now looking for a good version of "Monday Morning" on YouTube, saw many comments about "this is the soundtrack of my youth" and "this is real music," etc.

During my own youth, when I first started to buy albums and listen to album-rock stations, Fleetwood Mac was shoved down my throat by the media! I was 10 when their first album came out (then into Bay City Rollers and KISS), and 12 when "Rumours" took over every radio station. Their music meant nothing to me at all. I wasn't into their "mellow vibes" or "relationship feelings." In fact, I was mostly irritated whenever their music came on. I wanted to hear Punk/New Wave! The Knack, The Go-Gos, U2, Eurythmics, Vapors, Clash... ENERGY!  For a long time, I continued to completely relate to the 1986 film "Sid and Nancy" when Nancy spots herself in a shop window and shrieks in horror: "Oh my god, I look just like Stevie Nicks!"

I didn't start listening more seriously to Fleetwood Mac until about 6 or 7 years ago (after I was in my 50s). The 1975 "Fleetwood Mac" album and the 1977 "Rumours"---pretty much the same album---are actually GREAT! Buckingham, Nicks, and McVie are all quite different songwriters, but in these two albums, their diverse music meshes naturally---McVie probably the best mainstream writer, my younger self liking Buckingham's exuberant pop the most, and Nicks the most lyrically profound and poetic, soaring into spaces that I did not fathom when I was a very young woman...

My apologies, Fleetwood Mac, for doubting you when I was 10 and 12! :)

Oscars 2024

I grew up watching the Oscars as a kid in the '70s and '80s, and looking forward to the program. It was a big deal. In the '80s and '90s and 2000s, I'd usually seen most of the films, had some opinion, looked forward to watching the Oscars, again to see if my opinion of the films I'd seen that year matched up with the awards.

This year, 2024: I can't remember the last year that I was excited about the Oscars. 2008, maybe, the last time there were only 5 nominees for Best Picture instead of "participation trophies" given out.

Seriously: Go to the Wikipedia page for the list of Best Picture nominees... They are ridiculous. How many of these films have you watched and been inspired by? How many will be considered "classics" 50 or 100 years from now?

We're living in a very poor artistic age.

p.s. TCM showed "Gone With the Wind" tonight and, thankfully, did not mention any of the bullshit "racialism" now so current in academia (other than pointing out the historical fact that Hattie McDaniel won the Best Supporting Actress, a first for a black actress). I watched "Bonnie and Clyde" and "GWTW" this afternoon and evening on TCM for 6 hours---both so well-done and emotionally honest and heartbreaking...

Human feeling/thought has nothing to do with Marxist "how you are SUPPOSED to feel." Which is what the US has been living under, according to academics and the media, for the past 10 years or so. ENOUGH with this intellectual horror, this absolute crushing of any independent thought.

Flashback 2016: Bad Temperament

Putin: Blueberry Hill

Rasputin Putin

The state of your cat litter box...

 ...is usually a reflection of your own psyche.

Me, I'm pretty anal and have a semi-pronounced sense of duty. Regardless of how hung over or depressed I am or have been, I scoop the cat poop out of the litter boxes for my 5 cats at least once a day: always first thing in the morning after I get up, sometimes a second time in the evening. 

Both the German and East Texas sides of my family were once working-class farmers who, despite their own goings-on of the night before, still had to get up at dawn to take care of their animals. Today, I'm a much more effete, city-dwelling offspring of the family branches. I have no cows. But I do have five cats. They produce nothing useful, but, still, they must be fed on time and their poop must be disposed of.

Today, upon the second scoop of the day, I was reminded of going to a woman's apartment back in 2006 for the first time. I'd had a mad crush on her, and we'd finally connected at a club, and now she was taking me home with her! The first great sign was that she played a mix-tape in her car of female country singers, including some very inspiring songs like Loretta Lynn's "Fist City" and Tammy Wynette's "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad." My god! Exactly what I was in to!

Once we got to her apartment, I don't remember what we watched or what music we had on. But I do remember a few other things:
One, she said she thought she was the reincarnation of the Black Dahlia (and she was serious).
Two, she said her former boyfriend had once thrown one of her three cats against a wall.
Three, when I went to the bathroom, where her cat-litter boxes were, the cat poop was spilling out of the boxes. The boxes obviously had not been changed in many days, or even in over a week. Despite being a guest, and one who was hoping for sex, I had to step out of that role and actually ask her where the scooper was and scoop out the boxes myself. It was THAT necessary!
Four, when it was finally 5 or so in the morning, and we went upstairs to bed, she didn't have a bed, just a mattress on the floor, with a broken frame at the side. With condom wrappers scattered around it.

We slept next to each other on the mattress that night but did not have sex. (We ultimately never had sex, though we later kissed, at the club where she worked.)

I'd wanted her so, and had for many months. Had she initiated something, I surely would have responded to her. Despite the many warning signs I got in only a couple of personal hours around her:
Feeling you're the reincarnation of the horribly murdered/dissected Elizabeth Short... That's just about the saddest, darkest thing I've ever heard. Where did this come from? (She couldn't explain to me that night, though I asked.)
You allowed a lover to hurt one of your cats and didn't immediately kick him out. (NEVER would I allow such a thing.)
You didn't bother to clean the cat poop for days; you let your 3 cats literally wallow in their shit.
You didn't bother to fix your bed frame, or, more importantly, to pick up the condom wrappers lying around the morning after!

Jesus Christ, what a fucking mess. But I still thought I "felt your soul" after this. (I REALLY felt badly about your "Black Dahlia" thing---dear god, I tried to empathize.)

Why didn't I just walk away after all of this utter decrepitness? Was it my own "bi-sexual thing"---thinking that surely she would see that I was so much "purer" than the awful boyfriends? But what about her own awful feelings and behaviors?

I kept chasing after her for the next few months. That summer of 2006, she went to her high-school reunion and re-met a guy she'd known there, then MARRIED him that fall (breaking my heart) and moved from Austin to Houston----they divorced a few months later, after I'd already moved to NYC.

She was so attractive physically to me, and her surface personality was also very attractive, but... The cat litter boxes revealed all there was to know about her, really.

A Very Unusual "Waking Up" Sensation

Seriously, it's probably been over 7 years since I've woken up with an actual excited feeling about the day. It's not just a question of whether or not I drank the night before, or if I ate right. It might be just a question of age, I suppose. I don't know what it was, but when I woke up a couple of days ago---to a day that wasn't any different from any other---I felt actually GOOD. Not just "regular," but GOOD. It was a regular work day, except that, since I work from home, I also had time to do laundry in my apt complex. I said "hello" to three different people, and wasn't even disturbed when one of the fellow laundry-doers couldn't even summon up a grunt in response. (That sort of blatant rudeness and dismissal used to depress me terribly when I first arrived at college in Austin in 1983 as a simple 18-year-old, when I would nod and say "hi" to everyone I passed, expecting some feeling of community but usually being rebuffed in general.)

A few days later, I also woke up feeling good, for no apparent reason. And that day, my car wouldn't start and my closest beer store wouldn't take my credit card. Needed a new battery (when I'd bought one just slightly over a year ago---the auto-shop had me on record with a warranty and replaced it for free---very little hassle). As for the beer store: Instead of being freaked out at why my credit card wasn't working, I told my favorite clerk (who always has my 6 packs of Marlboro Lights lined up as soon as I walk in) that I was going to wait and watch the next person in line---because I KNEW that I had money in my account! Next two people in line also had "DECLINE." So it wasn't just me! We all scuttled out in search of other sources for our gas, beer, cigs, Cokes...

A mile down Burnet Road, at a different gas station (the one closest to my home but more expensive), there I was again with my 6-pack of beer in hand. And a little tattooed punk girl in front of me, arguing with the attendant about why the machine wasn't accepting her card... Normally, I'd think this young chick just didn't have enough money in her bank account and so was unnecessarily causing a scene... But this time: "There's a breakdown!" I excitedly explained that the same problem was happening a mile down the road... And then another woman who had just been at the other store came in... "See? She was just there at the other store! Nothing's working! We're all migrating down Burnet Road!" Three of us tried different variations of our bank cards. The ultimate solution was apparently: "Tap" instead of "Insert." Which worked finally for both the punk girl and me. She and I had a brief conversation outside the store about satellites, and thus society, going down. (And my brief panic about not being able to buy common everyday beer and cigarettes reminded me of why I was glad to have $500 in cash squirreled away. Didn't need it this time---how embarrassing to have to break into a secret stash just for a six-pack and smokes!---but at least it's there...)

So there was all of this, but on a day that I woke up feeling good, it was all goooood. I was a mellow gal in my "Tammy Wynette" T-shirt, not getting upset, talking to my fellow humans.

p.s. The above sensation/vibe had nothing at all to do with anything that I'd done. Eating/Drinking/Feeling/Consciously Thinking. Nothing. The "good feeling" just descended upon me---and I'm grateful for the temporary visitation, which had been gone for so very long.

Supreme Court: 9 - 0 ruling

Trump can stay on state ballots. Why was this even brought up in the first place? Similar to impeachment charges being brought against Trump a mere 20 mins after he took office in 2016. Similar to the "Russian collusion" charges that were found to be false (after months of traction in the left-wing US media). I don't care if you hate Trump---just don't be an anti-intellectual fool based on your simplistic, trendy, Communist  "feelings."

The Beatles - Revolution (1968)

The Beatles - Hey Bulldog (1968)

John had only 3 good musical years left in him (thru '71). Never should've left Paul. 

Got full of himself as some sort of "political prophet" after hanging out with Yoko and her Communist friends in NYC (and used as a political tool by Hoffman, Rubin, et al). Completely lost both himself and his musical talent. 

Post-1971, his output was all dregs. 1974's "Walls and Bridges" was a good "confessional/miserable" album, his last gasp. He was so talented and exciting. Sad to see how he ended up post-71. 

His 1980 murder was extremely traumatic (not just to the world, but to me personally at age 15---the first time I'd ever felt a sense of "evil" and true depression)---but, to be honest, he'd already died years before musically. His death was probably traumatic to most because it stood for a singular happy time period, and their lost youth.

WrestleMania 23 (2007): Battle of the Billionaires

When Trump was running in 2016, my sister-in-law, after watching this video from 2007, asked me: "Do you really want someone like that for your President?"
ME: YES! :) I really do want someone funny and unpretentious like this!

My brother and his two boys have always been wrestling fans. I know they all like Trump but are too scared to admit it. (For instance, only a couple of years ago, my brother used to call himself a Libertarian. Nowadays, he votes for Biden. How does one go from Libertarian to Communist in only a couple of years? Someone hasn't been thinking very much for himself and is listening only to his "educator" wife...)

Trump: Bohemian Rhapsody

I loved this whole thing.
The Putin piano playing. The Trump expressions and gestures.
That momentary kind look from Pelosi at 1:09...

If He Only Had a Brain...

The Four Lads: Istanbul (1953)

Covered in 1990 by "They Might Be Giants."

Caterina Valente - Casanova

Caterina Valente - Tipitipitipso

My parents didn't have much money and didn't have many albums around the house when I was growing up: Caterina Valente (my mother was German and Valente was a big German star when she was a teen), Jim Nabors (singing military songs), one Bill Cosby comedy album. Oh, and a Mozart album.
(We also acquired some albums that I think were being given away free with purchases at gas stations: "Jungle Book" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." Which is the same way we also got some of our drinking glasses.)

Here's one song that I remember especially from the Caterina Valente album (though not with this video at the time):

"Can I call you?"

Was just thinking tonight about a guy on the high-school paper staff in my Senior year (1983, Azle, Texas), when I was Editor. I think his name was "Jerry." I think he was a photographer, but I can't remember exactly. He was tall and smart, and had a sincere face, and dullish waxy unwashed dark wavy hair with flakes in it.

In school, we would talk, and after one conversation, he asked me with a sincere look on his face, "Can I call you?" I was obnoxious and just said, "No, sorry." Honestly, I was repulsed by his dull, flaky hair. I wasn't at all attracted to him, either mentally or physically . I didn't see where any personal phone call would lead. But I could have been a lot nicer. I could have told him the truth about my home-phone situation. I could have said it like this: "We only have one phone in our house, and it's in the kitchen. I have no privacy at all and can't really talk." That was the truth. Why didn't I say it like that to Jerry instead of just saying "No, sorry" and making him feel bad?

Similarly, I feel bad about saying "No" to Stanley Eisen, who asked me to the Senior Prom. I was a purist then, and still am, and didn't want to go with Stanley because I thought that a prom date should be someone you were in love with. And so I didn't get to participate in my Senior Prom.

In 6th grade, I wanted a part in a school play that the class crippled girl got just because she was crippled. The teacher offered me ANY OTHER part, and I said "no," because I was mad because I didn't get the original part. So I didn't get to participate in the play.

Looking back, seems like I didn't get to participate in any number of things because I wanted them to be "just so" instead of just letting them be, and allowing myself to be a part of them.