Got a book review on the 60’s musical “HAIR”. Yes it’s a musical that defined a generation. This book, titled, appropriately, “Hair” by Eric Groce is chock full of history, pictures, lyrics and memories of this former ersatz hippie.
For movies we’ve got a peek into that cuter than cute “Gnomeo and Juliet”. Yes it’s an adorable animated story for the young ones but what about this movie so offended me?
In TV we’ve got a lookover of the 2011 American Idol contenders, a prediction on the top five, and some critiques of the judges even.
Couldn’t resist a final visit to “The Bachelor” because it looks like Brad Womack struck out again.
Got some miscellany including a rant about Verizon and Comcast that caused me such grief through no fault of my own, some laughs and a congrats to Kaitlyn’s winning school!
Guest writer Michelle describes Stress Test ordeals that only add to the stress.
Finally, a political over-view of the many kinds of liberals, the good, the bad, the really, really ugly. Yes, there’s some good liberals, but they’re few and far between.
Pic of the Day
American Idol 2011-Solidly Underway-Winner Predicted Here!
I did, once, have an entire Blog devoted solely to American Idol, HERE.
I stopped right before I went in for my open heart surgery the year David Archuletta did not win, as I had wrongly predicted.
In fact, in the interest of fair and balanced, I’ve never successfully predicted an American Idol winner. Thus I shall now introduce the top 11 as of this writing-3/21/11, in the order as I prefer.
#11-Jacob Lusk-has a deep impressive voice. No stage presence, no particular genre
#10-Naima Adedapo-I’m reluctant to put her in the top ten and she might not make it. Horrible fashion sense, dresses in bolts of fabric, screams, does not sing
#9-Paul McDonald-Rod Stewart wannabe. Does a good job of it though. Still, not likely to do well with any other songs but Rod Stewart types.
#8-Stefano Langone-just not top five material
#7-Haley Reinhart-Haley’s should count her lucky stars she’s made it this far. She’d been eliminated twice before the final. If she makes the top ten then good on her.
#6-This Megia-good voice, pretty, just not enough oomph to beat out her competition.
#5-Casey Abrams-big guy, big voice. Health issues might fell him. He’s a rocker type, top five material
#4-Pia Toscano-has it all, looks, presence, great voice. Can’t beat the winners as I predict but top five all around material
#3-James Durbin-good rocker, would win if American Idol was the sort to nominate rocker types
#2-Lauren Alaina-toss up between her and Scotty to win this thing. Lauren’s a youngster, only 16, but she’s got it all, magnificent voice, stage presence…entertainer to her core.
#1-Scotty McCreery-Scotty has the best natural voice by far of all the contenders this year. But he’s strictly country-western and nothing else. American Idol tolerates CW singers but they’ve got hurdles.
Now a word about those judges. I really can’t stand Jennifer Lopez. For the most part she’s nice enough but she, well she just doesn’t seem up to the task. Further, by me Lopez isn’t all that talented to be judging the talents of others. That last video of hers, hyped mercilessly on AI, is simply awful, her voice is electronically enhanced. Frankly the worst of this year’s contenders for American Idol sings better than Lopez.
Stephen Tyler? Dear Lord, this man needs to be somewhere where’s he kept safe. He’s downright disgusting in his interaction with the female contenders. And not a word of his critiques makes any sense.
I’m glad Randy Jackson’s still around. He’s the best of the judges, most personable, and encouraging where deserved.
The Bachelor 2011-Brad Womack Strikes Out Again
My Bachelor Blog
ABC Web Site for this show
I just don’t know how many times this guy is going to get a chance to be the handsome hunk offered up to a bevy of beautiful women to be their one and only. The first time Womack was “star” of the series he shocked everyone by choosing NOBODY to be his bride.
This time the viewing audience is assured that Brad’s a changed man, that he has a therapist, that he’s really, REALLY, looking for the love his life.
Well yeah I know it’s highly unlikely to find the love of your life on a show such as this ABC offering. Nobody sane thinks it’s even remotely real, at least in terms of the scripted scenes to add viewing drama. The Bachelor or Bachelorette often does meet someone that they “like” and there’ve been a couple of marriages from this series. The vast majority of the match-ups on this show go nowhere. There’s logistical distance to deal with in addition to a return to a mundane life when the show ends.
I just don’t know what the producer’s of this series were thinking when they brought Womack back. Although I suppose there was a new angle as Womack so shocked the viewing audience the last time he starred.
I only go over this series again as I’d just covered it in my Blog post in early February, here HERE
It’s just that now that the series is over, BRAD FAILS AGAIN!
For Womack picked Emily, a beautiful young woman who once loved a race car driver who died tragically in an airplane crash.
Though I know The Bachelor interactions are scripted, it was obvious, to me at least, that Brad was very much smitten with Emily.
In the finale to this year’s show, “After the Final Rose”, Emily and Brad appeared together for the first time after Brad proposed to Emily.
“Brad has a bit of a temper” is how Emily phrased it.
This romance looks like it’s going nowhere quick.
Dental student Ashley is scheduled to be the next Bachelorette.
Let’s hope that’s the end of Brad Womack. He’s vapid, boring, vain and he’s had his fifteen minutes, TWICE.
Brad, go back to therapy and go find yourself a wife. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be Emily.
Gnomeo and Juliet-Clever, Adorable, Entertaining
IMDB site for this movie.
Let’s get this small brickbat out of the way. For I know that the tragedy of “Romeo and Juliet” as written by Shakespeare would not be the stuff for an animated film meant to appeal to children. I’m not at all comfortable with the producers willy-nilly, poof, just changing the ending of the Shakespeare play to suit their needs.
This is, ahem, William Shakespeare, after all. And “Romeo and Juliet” is, ahem, a classic of the ages.
A character in the play does explain the change in endings rather cavalierly, that the original ending would not be the fodder for young children, that the ending in this 3-D animated movie will have the viewers leaving the theater with smiles instead of tears.
Well yeah.
BUT THEY CHANGED THE ENDING OF A FREAKING SHAKESPEARE PLAY!
On some level that seems a bit audacious but I’ll get off of my high horse. It was a better ending for children. Let’s hope that these children’s unionized teachers don’t choose to just show this movie in the classroom and call it close enough.
But we must move on, sarcasm off.
This, eh, version of Romeo and Juliet features a garden gnome named, of course, Gnomeo, hailing from a garden locked into a feud with the garden where another female gnome lived, named Juliet.
The pair meet, fall in love…the story unfolds.
Cast:
James McAvoy ... Gnomeo (voice)
Emily Blunt ... Juliet (voice)
Ashley Jensen ... Nanette (voice)
Michael Caine ... Lord Redbrick (voice)
Matt Lucas ... Benny (voice)
Jim Cummings ... Featherstone (voice)
Maggie Smith ... Lady Bluebury (voice)
Jason Statham ... Tybalt (voice)
Ozzy Osbourne ... Fawn (voice)
Stephen Merchant ... Paris (voice)
Patrick Stewart ... Bill Shakespeare (voice)
Julie Walters ... Miss Montague (voice)
This movie has the best music of any animated movie (and with a 7 year old granddaughter I see a lot of them) of any animated movie I’ve seen. The dialogue was appropriate for children, but quite clever and appealing to adult viewers.
The movie flew by, an explosion of 3-D color, splendid music, appealing dialogue, action, love and pathos. I walked out of this movie with a big smile on my face, delighted from the experience and very forgiving of the mucking around with Shakespeare.
Just don’t do it again.
Epson Printer Does It All
First, I have a printer, cost over $2,000 and is as big as a small washing machine. It’s a Konica laser printer, in fact, purchased over five years ago when I worked at home and needed the ability to churn our colorful brochures for some of my clients. It worked quite well and served my needs at the time.
I keep right on using that behemoth for what is now mostly casual “home” printing but with the advent of Windows 7 I have an awful time getting it to work. The driver does not work with this version of Windows but I’d learned to jury-rig around it. Had to re-boot every time I wanted to print a grocery list.
Husband, of recent, gets a printer that not only prints, it scans, copies and faxes. All of this for under a hundred bucks! For Christmas I get my daughter a similar printer, also quite inexpensive and comes the time when washing-machine printers need to go.
I got a stylus nx510 color inkjet all-in-one printer through no predetermined plan. Husband simply did some research, found this printer, reconditioned, for $49.95, with no shipping cost.
Fifty bucks for a scanner, printer, copier, photo-printer, for that price? At this time in my life, I find I am as much in need of a scanner/copier as a casual printer.
I can’t, I simply cannot believe, how wonderfully this thing works. In fact, I set it up in my kitchen and boom, I can scan, print and do all my business right at my little kitchen “command-center” and some how, some way, I’ll get that washing-machine printer out of the bedroom and into the trash.
Further, this printer connects up to my home network, bada boom, bada bing, via blue tooth technology. I plugged the thing in, installed the software, and within moments it found my network, asked for the code, and now anybody, anywhere, hooked up to my network, can print with the thing. NO BOTHER OF CORDS TO THE PRINTER AND ALL THAT FROU FROU.
I’ve been very busy scanning all my pictures for uploading to Photobucket. Got me some keychain type of backup drives. As I scan I rename the scanned picture appropriate. I will then store the pics on the external Walmart drive thingies, remove all those Megabytes from my little computer, upload to Photobucket and there you have it.
The way home computing oughta be.
Finally, the cost of ink is not prohibitive. For so often these inexpensive little printer jobbies require manufacturer-specific ink cartridges that cost an arm and a leg. A package of four ink cartridges, including all four colors and designated as for “light home use” costs about $40. This should last me at least a year as I don’t print all that much. Epson even gave me a 10% off certificate with my purchase which I intend to use to buy a set of ink cartridges to have at the ready.
Kaitlyn’s Mae School Chosen for “National School of Character” Award.
HERE
So okay, I was very suspicious. Almost anything today involving schools also involves nasty teachers’ unions and liberal schemes. But I’ve checked this organization out and cannot find anything untoward.
This award is given by a group called the Character Education Partnership and it must be applied for. And let’s not mince words, this group does charge to come to the school to give workshops on character building. Participating in such workshops is not mandatory to be given the award but I should think it can’t hurt.
Still, the types of activities that would teach young students character seem very much the sort of stuff our children should be learning.
There’s not a group of vulnerable kids over in a corner singing hosannas to “Barack Hussein Obama” is what I’m saying here.
So kudos to Kaitlyn’s school. It is a great school as I can see and the parents are very involved in their children’s education.
Kaitlyn lives in a very conservative, very Republican part of Merryland, I would add, where they all cling to their guns and bibles, are law-abiding, and, evidently, think teaching their children character to be quite important.
Now there’s a concept.
In Case I Die With Bad Credit
Let me say right now that for the most part I pay my bills timely and, indeed, take great pride in doing so. I’ve no idea what my credit score is but I know that I’m beseeched regularly to please sign for this credit card, that for your signature here you get six months free interest, at times I get actual credit cards in the mail, just phone in and $10,000 credit will be yours.
I’m hardly obsessed with my credit but I’ve never been turned down for loan or mortgage. If I owe it, I pay it. What a concept.
A couple of years ago I did endure, for perhaps a year, some financial struggles that involved dealing with creditors, a realization that I’d charged up credit cards way more than logical, a span of time with no funds incoming, the horror of dunning phone calls, the shocking jolt of expenses without income.
So it’s not like I’m totally unaware of the muck of debt although the year of my financial struggles was due largely to waiting periods for social security and 401K’s all the hell over the place with difficult access.
Husband had a brain infection. I had a heart bypass. All in the same year. The medical bills rolled in. We did have health insurance but did you know there’s deductibles, co-pays and sometimes services not covered all involved with this sort of thing? Husband was put on his company’s short term disability plan. This helped but mostly the greatly reduced salary kept him on the payroll, paid his part of the premium for his health insurance and beyond that, NO money was coming in.
I had to take a loan on my house equity just to survive financially. My house is fully paid off so it was a quick and easy option , do not weep for me Argentina. Still it sure was a sock in the face to be hit hard with how life is like when the money stops. Husband and I’d never been particularly rich or drew handsome paychecks but we did okay. I never had to worry where the next meal was coming from is what I’m saying here.
Both husband and myself, later that awful year, were awarded social security, which came in retroactively, as is often the case, as our disabilities were determined to be permanent. We did then get incoming funds but this process takes a while so for many months the money was not there.
I also discovered, to my shame, that we had, living our lives, happy-go-lucky, him paying “his” bills and me paying mine, charged up entirely too much money on our credit cards than was healthy. As well, we had funds hither and yon, saved from his 401-K with that company, my IRA with this company, his 401-K…whoops, here in Delaware.
It was a mess.
Add to it the credit card folks wanted their money, the doctors et al wanted theirs and life became a living hell.
I became an expert on avoiding the bill collectors. At some point, giving me credit, I took a deep breath and handled it all.
I read the health insurance statements and learned about why I had to pay all this money as, fortunately, I’d had little experience in my and husband’s prior healthy years to ever be bothered with all this. My experience was a gall bladder removal in my late 20’s. I went into the hospital, was operated on, stayed for six days, went home, and never paid a penny for anything. Well I thought that was how it should go.
I called the credit card companies and got them all to greatly reduce, even eliminate, their outrageous interest charges. This all happened to me right after Obama got elected so the economy was beginning to tank as is often the case when Democrats get in office. So I was one of many folks suffering due to over-indulging during the years of credit card fever. Husband and I made payments every month. Somewhere in my mind was an intent to pay them all down but the balances grew as we paid no mind. The balances never went down because they might as well hold a gun to your head and yell STICK ‘EM UP for the interest they charged. Living a happy life, new grandchildren, moving to another state, hey, we were busy. We paid $50 a month for this credit card, maybe $40 for that and in due course we were paying small amounts but for up to eight different credit cards at one time. But the payments were small, right? If the payments got too big, well we just opened up another credit card, with another small payment.
Of course I’m not proud of this, especially since I used to be, at different times in my career, an Accounting Manager for NASA, a Controller at a law firm…well you get the idea.
After dealing with the many credit card companies I dealt with the medical folks. Such as co-pays and deductibles are very negotiable in a world where health care costs are so high because we must pay for the uninsured and millions of illegal immigrants amongst us. I had to make payments to get them done but I did it. The medical people turn over their collection matters to some of the nastiest people on the planet earth. I learned how to avoid them, I learned how sneaky they were, I learned to insult them because what worse job on earth could there be than nagging the poor wife of a brain infection victim for money for a rich damn doctor who already got paid, please remember, by my health insurer? Well that’s how I saw it in my year of desperation. It’s all a bit more complicated than that. Point is, dear Lord, I vowed that once I climb out of this hole it’ll never happen to me again.
I got all the credit card bills paid, husband and I cut them up with a vengeance, I corralled all the IRA’s and 401-K’s, cashed them in….we got it all straight is what I’m saying here. I wasn’t an Accounting Manager at NASA for nothing.
So the thing with Verizon and Comcast has me frustrated.
It happened about three, maybe four years ago. It was BEFORE all the health stuff, in fact.
I got a flyer in my mailbox. ONE YEAR PHONE SERVICE, INTERNET SERVICE, CABLE TV JUST $99 a MONTH!
Well hey, that’s pretty damn cheap. At the time we already had Comcast for Internet and cable TV but the concept of the telephone over the Internet was coming to fruition. Some company named VONAGE was offering telephone service to the world for $19.99 a month. At the time we had phone service with Verizon. I think we paid around $100 a month just for phone service as we needed extra time for long distance and all that, back when this sort of thing was how it went. Today we have cell phones that call anywhere and telephones using the Internet need not bother with such as long distance.
So I signed up.
The lady came to my house, told me I would love having a phone on the Internet and in due course I did have high speed Internet, telephone service, unlimited, anywhere in the country, and cable TV for a very cheap monthly price. This with no need to change our phone number, how could we resist?
Don’t worry, the Comcast sales lady told me, Comcast will install the modem needed for the phone and they will cancel your account with Verizon. We wouldn’t have to lift a finger. Comcast would have to deal with Verizon anyway in order to get your phone number transferred to Comcast.
That same year husband and I got cell phones as we’ve all done in our lives and now no one is really without a cell phone anymore, are they?
Eventually we began to use our cell phone more and more and, in due course, we rarely used that very cheap telephone through Comcast at all.
We got a notice from Comcast, after that first year, that our monthly bill would be going up to something or other. This was because that year of cheap service was a lure or sort, a way to get people to sign onto telephone service via Comcast and after the year, of course, the price would naturally rise.
It didn’t rise up all that much, do not misunderstand. God Bless America, there’s nothing at all wrong with Comcast using this sales technique, it’s certainly not illegal or anything. But here husband and I were using our cell phones mostly and now with an increasing price for that Comcast home phone…we decided to get rid of it.
We’d had the Comcast home phone for a year. After that phone was removed and long forgotten, maybe almost another year beyond, I get this letter from someplace called Verizon Pennsylvania.
It’s a bill for $300 and some dollars. It’s for service for about three months about the time we switched over to that Comcast phone. We’d been paying a monthly fee to Verizon at the time for the monthly standard fee plus some no-charge long-distance time. The monthly amount was around a hundred bucks. This bill I keep getting from Verizon Pennsylvania, here in the year 2011 for this even from 2006 or so is about three months worth of that standard monthly charge we’d been paying. I must suppose that after three months of not paying that Verizon eventually “cut off” our phone service but by then we still owe them the three months bill we didn’t pay. At least as Verizon saw it.
Either one of two things did NOT happen that fateful year of my torment. Either Comcast never bothered to call Verizon and cancel our service as they promised. OR…Comcast DID call and cancel, sent them a letter to that effect, however….and Verizon did NOT stop the service appropriately. By my memory, I paid Verizon up to the month Comcast installed our new phone. I really don’t remember if Verizon kept sending me bills. If they did I’d probably figured that they’d soon write it off once the hoo-hah of the Comcast thing went through.
So here it is five years later and every month I STILL get this bill from Verizon Pennsylvania. I don’t know if this is a bill collector named coyly to fool people because bill collectors must be, by their very nature, liars and deceivers. The latest thing is their generous offer to accept only HALF of the balance due to pay off the bill.
Bear in mind please, that these people do NOT have my phone number. We’d given up that number because we switched to strictly cell service. The number Verizon Pennsylvania had was turned over to Comcast as we did not, as promised, have to change our phone number.
The WORST thing you can do as regards bill collectors, is to let these people get your phone number. They do NOT have my cell phone number and I’m not about to call them and let them have access to it. The monthly letter is bad enough but I sure don’t want some loser-burger bill collector who can’t get any other job save despicable dunning phone calls, hey I don’t like bill collectors, isn’t that obvious?
Much as I’d like to phone up these people and tell my story about Comcast, flipping over…damn Verizon was the one that had to give permission to use our phone number so right there you gotta figure I’m telling the truth. But I dare not.
If I do they will then have my CELL phone number and the phone calls from hell will commence again.
There’s not much sense in calling Comcast now and going on a rant about how they were supposed to take care of all this with Verizon and here it’s over five years later and still I am getting nagged by Verizon Pennsylvania.
Does anybody really think Comcast will drop everything, investigate those yea many years ago and discover that, well just damn, somebody forgot to tell Verizon to cancel Mrs. Fish’s Verizon bill, hey Joe, call up those people and tell them to stop nagging those people, it’s all Comcast’s fault.
Assuming it was Comcast’s “fault” because who the hell knows.
What I do know is that at the time period that Verizon Pennsylvania wants me to pay that $300, we were NOT using their service. We were using Comcast’s phone service so Verizon Pennsylvania was not paying employees to service me, or giving overtime to phone technicians to keep wires humming that Pat Fish might call her daughter in Merryland.
This $300 is naught but a clerical matter and nothing more.
I don’t know if this thing has any kind of impact on my credit record. I know I could find out but I doubt it. I do know I’m helpless. Comcast isn’t going to fix it, hell I don’t even use their phone service anymore. Oh if I called them they might cluck-cluck and say they’ll get back to me but come on, I once worked for a living. If somebody phoned me up to assign a busy employee to go rooting through records from over five years past I’d give it short shrift.
I can’t call up Verizon Pennsylvania because I can’t risk them getting my phone number.
I lament. It’s like I paid all my bills even through brain infections and heart bypasses, with fear in the deep dark night of how to survive. But I paid everybody I owed.
But I got to sit and accept this bit of stupidity with this dunning letter every month from Verizon Pennsylvania and hey, somebody didn’t do their job and honest people like me must suffer.
I’ll get over it but it’s nice to get it off my chest.
============
For Giggles and Smirks
-A friend of mine just started his own business in Canada.
He manufactures land mines that look like prayer mats.
It's doing very well.
He says prophets are going through the roof!
========================
GENERAL PUBLIC NOTICE:
Please be advised I am sick to death of receiving questions about my dog who mauled:
3 Muslims sitting on a rug next to my back wall,
6 illegal's wearing Obama t-shirts,
4 Democrats wearing Pelosi t-shirts,
2 rappers,
5 phone operators who asked me to press #1 for English,
9 teenagers with their pants hanging down past their cracks,
8 customer service desk people speaking in broken English,
10 flag burners, and
a Pakistani taxi driver.
FOR THE LAST TIME.......
THE DOG IS NOT FOR SALE !!!"
==============
Stress Mojo
The stress section:
I'm supposed to take a stress test. When my regular doctor did a physical exam for me earlier this year, he gave me a referral to a heart specialist to get a stress test done. He didn't act like it was a big deal, and I feel fine, but I called the heart doctor to set it up.
"Oh, we can't do that without a consultation," the receptionist told me. Great, I thought, *two* copayments. She continued, "You need to talk to the doctor first and then you'll walk on the treadmill a different day."
Walk, huh? Not much stress in a *walk.* I set up the appointment for the consultation. Before I hung up, the receptionist cautioned me: "Wear comfortable clothes in case the doctor does an emergency stress test."
Hmmm. I can't walk on the treadmill until I've had a consultation, but I might have to do so on an emergency basis? Odd.
The day of my consult came and I left early from work to go. When I got there and after I'd signed in and sat down for a bit, the woman at the window called me up. Expecting paperwork to fill out, I was dismayed to find out the doctor had had an emergency and my consultation would have to be rescheduled.
Someone else must have had to have an emergency treadmill walk.
We rescheduled. The next time, I had my consult. The doctor typed my responses to his questions, one finger at a time. Did I have chest pain? N......O...... Did I have numbness in hands, arms, legs, or feet? N.....O......
I was in there for a really long time, because the doctor doesn't know how to type. With each solitary "click" of a key I got more impatient. (No pun intended.) Finally, that was over and we scheduled my test.
The Friday before my test arrived. I got a phone call from the heart doctor's office, reminding me about my appointment. Well, yeah, I have it in my planner. I won't forget.
The day of, I dressed comfortably and again left work early to go to the appointment. When I got to the doctor's office, the sign-in window was closed. Two other people were passing the sign-in clipboard around, so I signed in. The window remained closed.
More people arrived and the clipboard went to them. Still the window remained closed.
After half an hour, the window finally opened. We'd gone from three people when I showed up to a roomful. The woman at the window called up the first person, and then called me.
"I'm sorry," she said, without sounding sorry at all, "but we haven't received authorization from your insurance company yet."
Could they not have told me that when they called on Friday? I could have called in to check and still be at work!
And they wonder why my blood pressure is high when I'm there. So far, I'm not rescheduled, but I think the "stress test" is dealing with this office, and hasn't got anything at all to do with a treadmill.
The mojo section:
Harry has bad mojo lately. I think he's got a sign on the vehicle he's driving that says, "Kick me!"
A couple of weeks ago, he got hit by a deer.
Yes, I said that right. He was driving the Tundra and a deer flew out of the brush beside the road and collided with the truck. Kamikaze deer are pretty common in the California foothills. If you're lucky, they catapult into the road far enough ahead of you that you can avoid them, but sometimes they land on top of your car.
Harry stopped and got out, and the deer got up and ran away. I hope it's okay... and I'm glad it wasn't dead. Harry's macho instincts might have kicked in and he might have brought the body home. "Look, honey, venison for dinner! Oh, and there might be a bit of blood on the backseat."
:shudder:
We're working on getting the bumper replaced. The Tundra doesn't appear to be hurt anywhere else.
Then last week, he's bringing the big rig home and the neighbor ran into our trailer. How can you not see sixty-five feet of truck?
Luckily it was the trailer and not the tractor that took the hit. We're working on getting that fixed, too. The neighbor's insurance might cover it; we're not sure yet.
Regardless, I know I'm not letting him drive me to my stress test.
Michelle
The Desk Drawer writer's exercise
list
HAIR by Eric Groce, with a foreword by co-creator of HAIR, James Rado
It was a totally "you hadda be there" era.
For the "Hair" generation, life was tough, changing, confusing.
One major aspect of that time that today's youth will likely never experience is the military draft. Being subject to forced conscription, and make no mistake, this is what it was, changes everything about how you live your life.
I was a young woman, newly married to my childhood sweetheart. We were both born on the exact same day (same year!) and this fact might seem more like serendipity than of major import but not so, read on.
We were the very first generation, born in 1950, subject to the infamous military lottery.
I wonder if today's youth could ever imagine such a thing, if this same youth could ever wrap their minds around a notion that by a mere spin of some wheel somewhere, you're life, or death, might be changed or determined by the spin.
June 26 came in like the top ten. My 19 year old husband was very likely to be drafted, to be sent to that hell called Vietnam, our lives would be uprooted and changed by a force in line with an earthquake of life.
He wanted to move to Canada. I was very conflicted. I loved my country; I for sure didn't want to leave it, probably forever.
It cost us our marriage, yes it did. We fought over what to do, we began to fight over everything. I refused to desert to Canada. He was ready to go right after reporting to the draft board.
I saw the play "Hair" the first time it came to DC. I was hooked.
Like I said, you hadda be there in the late 60's, when men were coming home in body bags after fighting a war America seemed determined not to win. Nobody even seemed to understand the purpose of that hellish war. Vietnam tore more than my marriage apart. It was tearing this country apart.
Hair is the story of a young man too conflicted about what to do about the draft. He belongs to a "tribe", a loose group of "hippies" of the era, all smoking dope, making love and not war, viewing a world that would send them off to a distant rice paddy to die for God only knew why, as a nasty place, polluted, not worthy of any allegiance.
-
Of course the irony here is that even though through the years I'd seen the play Hair on every occasion that I could, even though I wore the long granny dresses of the era, hell yeah, I smoked dope and made lots of youthful love...today I would be considered by most a Conservative of the highest order.
Well hell, today I now know that the Vietnam war was being overseen by Democrats who never knew how to fight a war in any fashion save raising the white flag of surrender. In fact, at that time most of congress and the presidency was controlled by Democrats and any time you have bad times it's usually because a Democrat's in charge and hey, I know that now.
I also have had a child since that era of peace, now a grandchild. Pretty much nothing makes you grow up more than being responsible for another life. The hippie era was also the time of the birth control pill, the hayday of its introduction in fact. There were few young children around when the pot flowed and love was made.
It wasn't about children or futures or plans. It was about the now, feeling good today, taking some moments from such as jobs and ongoing education, chilling out. Most of us born during the baby boom spent a year, maybe two or three, being a hippie or some facsimile thereof. Then life went on.
So I picked up this colorful and very large book detailing how the rock musical Hair came to be. The book has the lyrics to all the Hair tunes, and I do know them all.
It was two hippie type of fellows, one Gerald Rado and James Ragni, who came up with the concept of Hair. The book chronicles the story of how backing was obtained for the show, how a theater was found for its first venue, how the musical travelled around the world and through the ages, its most recent revival in the twenty first century, 2010 in fact.
I learned some things about the show I did not know. Two fairly famous entertainers started out appearing in Hair, one the very uptight Diane Keaton, the other the black singer, Melba Moore.
Hair has been one of the longest running ongoing musicals ever. Today it's more of a historical story while I saw it, felt it, lived it, loved it, breathed it, cried it and screamed it right during the time the musical was satirizing/exposing/mocking.
The young member of the tribe, Claude Bukowski, decided to go to Vietnam. He didn't come back alive. The emotion poured through me, my young married self to a husband who too might not come back alive, who would not, as Claude did, honor his country's draft notice, who would desert to Canada. Without me.
Ah yes, Hair is in my blood, even today, even as a grandmother now living a quiet mousy semi-rural life.
In reading the book, I learned that
--the infamouse nude scene:
"found a law on the books that said nudity was legal if it was in a tableau, with no movement."
Yes, Hair had a nude scene and the actors did, in fact, come up behind a curtain and stand before the audience completely naked. Hey, I don't know why the nude scene but it sure got the musical a lot of attention.
Finally, I found this in the book--
"The opinion of the NY Times had an even more profound impact on a Broadway show's success in 1968 than it does today."
You got to smile. But the above is true. The NY Times has grown into a pretty predictable bore nowadays, and for sure has lost the power it once had.
Another example of how the times have changed since Hair came along and moved a generation.
===============
”Chicken Soup for the Soul-Grandmothers”
So I got a story in this book, released just the day of this writing-3/22/11.
It’s a Chicken Soup for the Soul thing, the stuff to read at the beauty parlor, the doctor’s office. The writing is generally well done, the stories are true and more precious for their truth than the quality of the prose.
My story is about a grandson I’ve never known.
Beginning With a Smile
What the PBS Sting Reveals About Liberals
So the vaunted Public Broadcasting System is filled with liberals who think the Tea Party types are nasty, in-your-face low-lifes who intrude on a citizen’s private life and in general make the planet smelly? Not that this Schiller fellow wasn’t saying this to who he thought was a member of an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that wants to impose Sharia law on America and who will blow folks up if they are not fine Muslims like themselves.
In this video tape, obtained by a young fellow who does what real Journalists used to do once upon a time until the networks and newspapers across the fruited plains were taken over by commercial enterprises that have a dog in every news story going on,…a representative of the PBS was heard trashing Tea Party types (read ordinary Americans), mocking Republicans, praising liberals, condemning Jews and, basically, revealing the liberals for what they are.
Which compels me to launch into an invective against liberals who have a right to exist, yes, but who want to control YOUR life and destroy YOUR country, let’s not forget this.
There are several kinds of liberals and believe it or not, some of them mean no harm. I was once a liberal in my life, not that I’m proud of this, but we all too pass through the portals of liberalism into the realm of sanity at some point in our lives. It’s the one who remain liberals who will destroy this country they so hate.
The well intentioned liberals are not really liberals in that they are not, as I would describe certain liberals, nasty, unhappy, self-esteem-deficient, nosey, jealous, often bad people. These well-intentioned liberals are of the “temporary” type, often older folk (defined as not necessarily elderly, but definitely not adolescents) who have settled down into a comfortable daily life, happy with what they have and willing to overlook a phrase or two in the constitution if it seems like a good idea, who is not all that affected by the crazy laws and rules the liberals want to impose on their progeny, who is not really mean and nasty like the more permanent liberals but a bit deceived by what seems like a good thing so why not? They are part of that great group of “Independents” across the fruited plains, the very same group that turns elections. They become liberals in their peace but change quickly when threat of harm or danger is upon.
Then there’s the “Ivory Tower” liberals, often part of the collegiate scene, well-educated into PHD’s and beyond. These are often people who, for whatever insane reason, consider themselves smarter than those in the surround, who work at the beginning of their lives to get an advanced degree and entrench themselves into an Ivory Tower type of environment that they may hold their nose in the air, consider their navels and write handsome treatises on life and how we should live it.
These Ivory Tower liberals wouldn’t know a shovel if it hit them in the head, they do their pontificating with the help of taxpayer grants, and, unfortunately, they teach our young. They seldom struggle from payday to payday, they hang around with each other, they talk using many-syllabic words and they feel quite important.
These liberals are not all that dangerous in that they are few of them and hey, the world can use some thinkers and that sort. As for teaching the young, again, hey, the young need exposure to all sorts of ideologies as they grow intellectually so the Ivory Tower liberals serve a purpose.
Which brings us to another type of liberal, the young. Young people, God bless. They are often hopeless romantics. They want to wrest the poor from their lot, they plan to single-handedly wipe disease from the planet, they see the wealthy in their surround and ponder that one should have so much when so many have so little. They are taught in their college years by the Ivory Tower liberals and for a while, until reality, life, paychecks and dirty diapers intrude, collegiate type of liberals march to end war, rail against the rich who oppress the poor, and there’s a place for the young liberals in our time. It’s part of growing up and there’s something okay about a healthy, if impractical, idealism.
There’s also the Blue Blood liberals. The Blue Blood liberals are generally politicians and at this point we’re getting to bad liberal category. For the Blue Blood elite Ruling class liberals are only liberals, not because of any kind of noble goals like the collegiate liberals, or because of the impetus to think it over and over like the Ivory Tower liberals, or even the well-intentioned attention-less Independent liberals who won’t balk at trying something new…the Blue Blood elite Ruling class liberals are only liberals because they made it to a pinnacle of power, a corner office, a modicum of respect, by getting elected over and over through their lies and deceit and who rather like this lot in life.
The Blue Blood Ruling Class liberals are dangerous because it behooves them to pass liberal laws, to keep a liberal status quo to keep their own power…be damned if a taxpayer-supported “public” broadcasting system is courting contributions from nasty folks who want to destroy America, the Blue Blood Ruling Class liberals will always vote to KEEP the PBS lest they offend those who vote to keep them in power. Mike Castle’s picture should be under the words “Blue Blood Ruling Class” liberal. Mike Castle would even now, as a Senator had he been elected, be voting to keep funding PBS that makes fun of us who carry this country on our backs because, well Mike Castle, like every Blue Blood Ruling class liberal, would probably be making some kind of deal for his support and as part of keeping his power.
Which brings us to the most heinous kind of liberal of all.
Somebody’s got to say it.
For there are, as part of this great and multi-faceted country, liberals who are only liberals because they are nothing-burgers, zeros with no talent, nasty, unhappy people whose only joy in life is pretending to be noble like the collegiate liberal, who hang around the Ivory Tower liberals even though they don’t have enough brains to blow their nose, who work to serve the Blue Blood Ruling Class liberal that some crumbs drop their way and a little bit of power come to them that their untalented selves could never get on their own, who smile at the Independent liberals as they can become useful idiots to further whatever nefarious cause they endorse.
Stupid, dumb, and nasty people, hey, they got a right to live too, and I suppose they should be able to vote. But these nothing burger people want to tell you what to eat, they will lie and mock you on behalf of the Blue Blood Ruling Class (Mary Spicer comes to mind to those who might know her), they support and worship the likes of Louis Farrakhan and Mao T’se Tung just so they can seem so intelligent that they see the good in murderers, thieves, despots and dictators they the stupid amongst us, the Tea Party types in other words, fail to understand.
These are the liberals, especially combined with the Blue Blood Ruling Class, who will destroy our country. Most of the collegiate liberals will grow out of it though a few are genuine nothing burgers who will remain the zero, nasty liberals. The Ivory Tower liberals will stay high over us boobs but there’s few of them because few of us have that amazing brain power. The Independent liberals will become part of Thomas Jefferson’s “countervailing forces” and will turn to insure their own survival, if nothing else.
If the Republican party, now charged with stopping that awful liberal Democrat congress and White House from fiscally destroying the country, doesn’t cease funding this PBS nonsense, especially now that PBS has shown themselves to be part of the nothing burger liberal class consisting of a bunch of zeroes who likely couldn’t get a job slinging hash if they had to depart from the free ride on the taxpayer-funded gravy train- the PBS part of the nothing burger liberal class that supports the Blue Blood Ruling Class elite liberal class- if the Republican party, armed with a voter mandate given them this past November, doesn’t, at the very least, cease funding those PBS losers, then we will know that the Republican party is filled with Blue Blood Ruling class elite liberals and we might as well throw in the towel.
It’s the test folks. Pay attention.
Ending With a Smile
=============
A Brain Infection? A Medical Journey Surpassed by Few
A Medical Odyssey to a Quadruple Heart Bypass
To My Townhall Blog
My Twitter Page, I post all Blog posts there with the link
My Face Book Page
1 comment:
I absorbed few of the sections in this post, I am surprised that how you write this much?
I like the "Giggle and Smirks" most out of this stuff. Thanks
Post a Comment