Reporter, editor, photographer. Eighth grade teacher of English and computers. Actor. Quality assurance professional for pharmaceutical manufacturing. And always a writer.
From YouTube track for The Spiders. Note the composers’ names. Vince Furnier anyone?
Not long ago I waxed on about the songs of 1966 when I left 6th grade and pre-pubescence at the same time. In high school and college I listened to Alice Cooper, never knowing I could’ve been listening to proto-A.C. when I was MUCH younger! (Link to YouTube pictured above.) Extra special weirdness: every band member on this recording (except maybe the drummer) didn’t just come from the same high school, they were all on the cross country team as seniors! I know from peripheral experience that long distance runners are a wacky, different breed, but…really?
After moving to Los Angeles, renaming themselves Nazz and then because Todd Rundgren already had taken that name, to Alice Cooper, they were still capable of emptying a paying establishment in ten minutes. That’s when a middleman more or less said to himself, “boy, Frank Zappa would love these guys,” and routed them to Zappa. He turned them into the Alice Cooper we know and love. Of course, they had to move to Pontiac, Michigan, to gain acceptance. “L.A. just didn’t get it,” Cooper said at the time. “They were on the wrong drug for us. They were on acid and we were basically drinking beer.” [info and quotes courtesy of Wikipedia]
I attempted to explain that turning 90 degrees would align his body with the patch of sunlight, but Benny was having none of it. Either he’s indifferent or simply doesn’t understand geometry. I’m going with indifferent. July 2024.
6th grade was better…
About a month ago I posted about how 1966 proved seminal in my life for appreciating music, a year when I ‘woke up’ musically. Virtually every song in the Top Ten made me smile and say, “yeah…” and almost every one of them wound up on a 1966 playlist. Today I thought, “let’s see what 1972 held for me as I approached graduation from high school.” Holy. Crap. No wonder I felt adrift for much of the year–and I had thought it could be chalked up to teenaged ennui. In the Top Ten for the first week of January I encountered artists I still don’t like more than 50 years later: the really young Michael Jackson; David Cassidy; Donny Osmond. One song I had never heard before today: “Scorpio” by Dennis Coffey and the Detroit Guitar Band. I did get to add the top four songs to my new list: “Brand New Key” by Melanie; “American Pie (Parts 1 and 2) by Don McLean; “Family Affair” by Sly and the Family Stone; and “An Old Fashioned Love Song” by Three Dog Night.
By the second week of January the Top 40 contained two versions of “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing (In Perfect Harmony)” now known forevermore as The Coke Song. A last gasp Sonny and Cher song, “All I Ever Need Is You” didn’t make the cut. Likewise anything by The Stylistics, Al Green, and who the heck is Betty Wright? Thankfully other artists were riding high or coming into their own: Van Morrison, Rod Stewart, Rare Earth, Three Dog Night, Bread, Grand Funk, The Who, T. Rex, and Elton John. Oh, yeah, and this group called Led Zeppelin put out its fourth album. “Black Dog” hit the January 8th chart.
It will be interesting to continue through the year. I distinctly remember Alice Cooper put out “I’m Eighteen” when I turned 18 myself. Just after graduation I picked up a free copy of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars wondering who the heck this David Bowie guy was. At least there’s that to look forward too. Oh, and Neil Young…and Humble Pie…hmmm…maybe this won’t be so sad after all.
The annual lily surprise
Every year this lily pops out in the middle of a row of azaleas, bringing a surprised smile. July 2024.
We attended a wedding over the weekend in our old haunts around Philly. Our first ‘historic’ inn left a lot to be desired, but this one really delivered. Added plus: stupendous restaurant just to the right of this photo.
Your Tax Dollars At Work (and a 15-minute delay on the highway)
“And this was the artist’s Black Period, noted more for its playful use of browns and other earth tones than for the use of black which of course prevailed throughout his career.”
Lava still looks hot–don’t touch!
I think I saw Spock do a mind-meld with that thing.
Huh! Next time I won’t pre-heat the cast iron on the BBQ before I put in the cornbread batter.
A simple tale...with apologies for contributing to the millions and billions of cat photos on the Internet.
Once there were two kittens: Bayou…
Bayou. Christmas Day 2015.
…and his brother Chingu…
Chingu. Christmas Day 2015.
Bayou and Chingu were brothers. They were born in June 2015. They did (almost) everything together.
Bayou (left) and Chingu. December 2015.
One day in August, not long after they quit drinking milk from their mother, Bayou and Chingu were put up for adoption. This meant they now lived together in a small cage at a local animal shelter until someone would adopt them. They lived there almost four months. Finally they were adopted by a couple who spoke Korean. They named the pink-nosed one Friend (Chingu). They named the black-nosed one after the ancient kingdom Buyeo where the ancestors of all Koreans lived.
Or maybe the people who adopted them weren’t Korean. Maybe a nice person at the shelter spoke Korean and thought, “These cats need special names because they’re really special.” But if so, they didn’t know how to spell Buyeo. Or maybe the first story is true and the shelter just didn’t hear it right. Whatever the reason, the black-nosed cat became Bayou.
Bayou visited the animal shelter in 2014 when he got sick, but in May 2015 he and his brother were given back to the shelter and put up for adoption again. Their human “mother” had developed allergies to cats. They soon found another home with a man who already had two cats. He tried to like them, and maybe his other cats did too, but when it came to cats, Bayou and Chingu only liked each other.
December 2015.
They beat up the man’s cats. Worse, they ganged up on them. In August 2015, just a couple months later, they were back at the shelter again. They started beating up all the other cats in the common room. “What should we do?” worried the volunteers. Their supervisor said, “We must put them in foster care. It will only be until we can find new parents for them.” But four months went by, and no one wanted the two brothers who liked each other but no one else.
The calendar turned through those months: September. October. November. And halfway through December, I spotted their photograph. “They look spunky. They look like fun. They look like they need a home because who wants three-and-a-half-year-old-cats as a package deal?” My wife agreed. We went to the shelter just before Christmas and asked to see them.
“Oh, they don’t live here,” said the person at the desk. “They weren’t very well behaved so we put them in foster care. We will have to get them for you. Come back tomorrow.” We went home both happy that we still might get them and sad because we hadn’t seen any other cats we would want to be friends with. What if they didn’t like us? Or what if we didn’t like them?
On December 20th we came back with a great big carrier. We met Bayou and Chingu. They were friendly but in different ways. They didn’t indicate if they wanted to go with us, because they were just happy to be out of the large cage where they had been living for four months. We took them home and showed them the room with the dirt, which is very important for cats. They had different reactions. Bayou wanted out of that room immediately. “Okay, fine, I’ve seen the dirt. Now let me explore,” he said.
Bayou meets the neighborhood. December 2015.
Chingu said, “I see dirt but right now I need a very dark place.” He chose the linen closet. A little later he discovered a bed.
Chingu eyes his situation. December 2015.
Today I only know two Korean words: Buyeo and Chingu. Eight years ago I didn’t know any. I said, “We have to change their names.” My wife nodded. “I know!” I said, “this black-nosed one is so open and friendly, he’s got to be a Benny!” “Yes!” she agreed and asked, “but what about the pink-nosed one who likes me?” I thought about how he raced around the house, especially when he seemed scared. “Well…we could call him The Jet.” My wife frowned. “You know, Benny and The Jet?” I grinned. To my surprise she agreed to try it. We didn’t like it, and neither did Chingu. “His name should start with a C-H anyway,” I admitted. “Let’s call him Charlie. He seems a bit neurotic, kind of like Charlie Brown.”
We got them a big condo to play on, but Charlie indicated he mostly would be sleeping there…a lot.
Charlie at rest. March 2016.
They had spent their previous year in cages for much of the time. They seemed to delight in finding new places to sleep:
Benny the audiophile, appreciating a fine stereo amp. March 2016.Charlie demonstrates his lifelong passion for freshly-dried laundry. January 2016.
Benny likes bags and baskets:
Benny prefers baskets. Charlie (L) doesn’t totally get it. April 2016.Square or round, makes no difference to Benny. January 2016.
Mostly, Charlie likes sleeping on Benny:
Benny (L) and Charlie. April 2016. [previously published]
In their first eight months with us, Benny and Charlie spent two vacations at the vet (in tiny cages again), and then they endured a move to a new house. Benny, of course, enjoyed it and helped out:
Benny supervised the move and checked boxes for food. September 2016.
Charlie got very stressed. First he hid under the kitchen sink. Then he climbed on top of the cupboards and stared at us and panted.
Charlie hides out. September 2016.
It had three floors. They liked to race around in it and slide on the throw rugs covering the hardwood floors. We didn’t tell them this house was temporary. Eight months later we moved again. Now they have fewer windows to look out of, but they have…..a screened-in deck!
Charlie (L) and Benny thank their human servants for buying them a deck. June 2017.
The boys have settled in over the past seven years. Charlie can’t believe he now gets to eat almost every time he wants to (which is often). He has gained five pounds. Benny still weighs the same. Benny licked off his fur in patches, spent years on medications, and finally decided to stop. It might have been allergies. It might have been a psychological problem. Charlie started licking off his fur in patches last year, so there’s that. They’ve settled down now that they’re 12 years old.
They hope Dad keeps taking their photos and making them famous, so long as it pays for the super-expensive cat food they’ve insisted is the ONLY BEST kind. Their story isn’t over, but this tale is. Benny and Charlie would send you their best, but they only like each other–and now, Mom and Dad.
It’s 86 with a “feels like” of 93, and I’ve been home from a trip of errands for about 30 minutes. After I couldn’t find a third of what I wanted at the Lowe’s gardening center and finding out that the prescription I needed to pick up had been filled at my old pharmacy instead of my new one, I negotiated a ridiculous traffic pattern to cross the street to a grocery store. Parking halfway up one aisle, this is what I observed as I got closer to the store:
You know those handicapped parking spaces with the extra wide ‘stripey section’ to assist those who need more room getting out of a vehicle? A nondescript sedan, an older Chevy or something, swung in front of me quickly and parked haphazardly in that space such that it was half in the parking space and half in the stripey section. Sensitive to these things both because my late mother and father both needed handicapped parking, and because one of our closest friends now seriously needs it, I noted it had no handicapped license plate, nor did I see a placard hanging from the rear-view mirror. I saw only a driver, a 25-35 year-old. She popped out of the car without any obvious ambulatory issues, left the car running, and zipped into the store ahead of me. “Oh, probably an employee picking up a paycheck or something,” I thought. A bit cheeky, but at least just a minute or so. Nope. She pulled out a shopping cart and took off into the store.
Seriously? I felt like going back to her car and seeing if I could move it to a different parking space. (No, I didn’t, but it sounds good. People pack lethal force in this state.)
I’m reading Constance by Lawrence Durrell, set in the years immediately prior to and at the beginnings of World War II. It’s the third book of Durrell’s Avignon Quintet. Last night Constance has returned to Avignon as a Red Cross liaison to the Vichy French. In the passage I read last night, she is shocked when she realizes that the Germans stationed there (who in actuality run everything) aren’t embarrassed by their actions in executing 20 villagers because someone fired on a tank; are not embarrassed by collecting all bicycles in the area and destroying them with two tanks because now no one can take messages to the supposed resistance in the hills; are not embarrassed by seriously discussing the processing of Jews for the camps in Vichy.
This lack of embarrassment, exemplified by the young woman this afternoon, continues to defy my brain’s ability to parse many behaviors of the past ten years, mostly political ones. I eschew politics on this blog. I merely will say how disappointed I am that a large majority of centrist politicians have capitulated to their respective fringe elements, and worse, so have voters. The arena of civil discourse demands recognition of differing opinions. It demands certain social niceties.
Whatever. The Curmudgeon has an appointment with the Old Fogey Police. Apparently I need an OF license now that I’m 70.
all the voices in my head 