I heart the 80's

So, didya see Holden? That is my kitty. He's a good cat, likes to talk, loves to be brushed/pet/touched, loves to sleep next to me. Likes to play and do his boxing manuever and then bite me on the hand.

His too cute thing is when he sleeps next to me he likes to grab my finger with his paw. He curls his paw around my finger without any nails and falls asleep that way. He likes to hold my hand when he sleeps. Awww too cute.

Anyway, MTV decided to upload every video ever made onto their website http://www.mtvmusic.com/. The videos are free and very few ads. Not every video is loaded yet -I looked for "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and it wasn't there. So, I thought I would list my top 5 80's videos. I wanted ones that I remember watching and the degree of difficulty: no Duran Duran or Wham! My sister watched those videos over and over so they don't count.

So here they are, in no particular order:

Love is a Battlefield - Pat Benatar - great video, bad dance sequence but good shoulder shimmy.
Safety Dance - Men Without Hats - very Ren Fair. One of Homer Simpson's favorite videos,although he says "Safety Dance, Safety Dance, everybody look at my pants"
China Girl - David Bowie - I just remember this one shot where the Chinese girl has this crazy look on her face and I watched that video to see that one expression.
Separate Ways - Journey - not sure why this video stands out in my mind. Maybe the invisible instruments
Mexican Radio - Wall of Voodoo - classic video


In exercise news, I hit 2 miles yesterday so that milestone is reached. Now 2 weeks for 2.5 miles. And finally, I am a pretty even tempered fellow - not too high or low - but my moods run pretty consistent. When I got my sister's news about her expecting a baby, I will admit I cried- here - at work - in my office - like a baby - like watching "Old Yeller" and "Bambi" at the same time. I am so happy for her and Beto (and my Mom) and they will make such great parents and grandparents. The saying "bundle of joy" was always a cliche to me but I get it now. I couldn't be any happier for them. Congrats Jen and Beto!

Holden

Macabre Macrame

Halloween is fast approaching and I was thinking back to when I was a kid and Trick or Treat was the ultimate holiday. You had to wait until it got dark then turned loose on the streets for the sugary treasure. When we got home, Mom would confiscate all the candy and "inspect it for razorblades". Apples -out, bags of popcorn - out, unwrapped candy-out, Baby Ruth mini-bars - might have a razorblade and she had to taste to make sure. We got back a little less but much safer bag of candy back.

I can also recall the annual trip to Walgreen's to pick out the costume. No hand made refrigerator box costumes for us, we wanted the ones that came in a convenient box. It had two parts, a plastic poncho thing with a printed costume and a plastic mask. Let me see if I can find a picture of one in a box..back in a sec...

There! One stop costume shopping. I am trying to recall one that I wore andI can't remember any specific one. I think I had a Fred Flinstone one but not sure.

Another random 70's memory. I was walking down a street the other day that had a jasmine bush out front and it was very fragrant. My mind raced back to a particular summer where the smell of jasmine was in the air - no that Seals and Croft song - Summer Breeze- but close. So the jasmine was in bloom, the smell of a dying bbq, the front door open and a speaker was pointing outside and three albums were played over and over and over again:

These albums would play over and over while we played hide and seek or whatever. I read somewhere that the sense of smell invokes the strongest memories - probably left over from our cave men days. I think it's true because the smell of that jasmine bush took me directly back to that memory. Let's try to guess the year by the albums.

Hotel California - released 1977

Aja-Steel Dan - released 1977

Blue Bayou - released 1977

Wow! What a great year in music considering that was the height of disco. What were the top albums of 1977 you ask? Good question, let's take a look

1. Rumors - Fleetwood Mac (31 weeks at #1)

2. Songs in the Key of Life - Stevie Wonder

3. Star is Born - Streisand

4. Hotel California - Eagles

5. Boston - Boston

What else was popular in 1977 in our household/world?

Beer Can Hats - You couldn't go anywhere without putting on a beer hat. (goofy expression was optional)

LeMans Speedway - Southland Mall with birdcages, fountains, sculptures, giant dripping oil lamp in front of Sears, totem poles, Shibui Gift Emporium, a paradise on Earth.

Ponchos were the height of fashion and when combined with a pair of gauchos - fashion nirvana. And lastly:

No home was complete with a twisted rope sculpture of an owl. Macrame. Yeah! We started with Halloween and ended with macrame. The 70's were a great time in American history and even if you looked liked a hippy back then you could still be something later in life. Just ask these two:

Week 5

Entering Week 5 of my quest to reach Week 6. I am concentrating on mini-goals - goal setting so small that it is hard to fail. Mini goal like "go to the gym at least every other day". I like small goals that will hopefully roll up into bigger outcomes.

This weekend went by fast. Spent some time with friends drinking and hanging out. Lots of election talk. I am so over this election and can't wait for it to end. Unless of course Obama loses. If he does, then I think we can expect riots and political unrest. I did hear a funny but unrepeatable joke about Sarah Palin.

I was talking to a friend about karma and he was really into it. All of these levels and progressions of humanity. We talked for at least an hour on his beliefs on karma and the divine spark and all of this stuff. Not sure if I buy it but to hear people who can share their belief system without proselytizing is cool. I remember an old boss who was a devout Seventh Day Adventist and he asked me if we could talk about religion one day. I agreed on the proviso that we keep it at a historical/literary level. So he would give me the history of pagan rituals - Halloween, Christmas, Easter, even the days of the week which a good Christian would never use as they are named after pagan gods (Twi, Woden, Frigga). In fact the Quakers just said "fourth day" for Thursday , for example, because of the pagan origin.

Wow! Another post about pagan rituals. It all comes back to pagans. I must meditate further on this subject. I think there is something here. Some Grand Unification Theory and it involves pagans.

Update

According to my master plan, I should be at 1.5 miles by now with a short term goal of hitting 3 miles by December 31st - then the real work starts. Here is the progress chart-

I am still on track (no pun intended) to make the December goal. The 1.5 mile goal was pretty good actually - stretching was really the trick and the alternating speeds - 3 minutes jog, 2 minutes walk repeat 4 times and I was there.

Once I hit the 2 mile goal, I plan to leave the cozy confines of the gym and start on the hard ground. Running on the ground is a much different experience - it's less cushy, and with wind and elevation changes it cuts about half the treadmill pace. It is important as the pounding of the pavement actually builds up the muscles faster and bone density increases. Men get osteoporosis too and I do not want a hump back.

Now for the trivial knowledge moment of the day:

I was listening to KFRC and they replay Casey Kasum's Top 40 from the 70's with his commentary and long distance dedications,etc. Anyway there was a disco song in that was based on "Also Sprauch Zarathustra", the 2001 Space Odyssey theme but this one was set to disco and I vaguely recalled it. What interested me was the title - never knew what it meant. It is German for "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" which is German for Zoroaster. Strauss wrote the melodic poem based on Nietzche's book "A Book for All and None" which used a fictional Zoroaster as the main character.

Nietzche was apparently struck by the teachings of Zoroaster (600 BCE) that taught about the duality of man but not good and evil but more like chaos and order.

A cental theme of the book is the concept of "ubermensch" literally translated as superman or overman. He talks about the transition of man from ape to this concept of ubermensch. Think back to the opening scene of 2001 Space Odyssey - it is a transition of man from ape to space (over man) that is the basis of the movie.

So 600 BC Zoroaster teaches about a religion of duality which in the 19th Century Nietzsche reads and adopts to his philosphy. Strauss was impressed by Nietzsche so he writes this symphony based on the book which Kubrick/Artur C Clark uses in a movie about the themes of good and evil and the evolution of mankind from ape to superman. Wow, my head just asploded.

Take on Me! Literally

These guys remade A-Ha with literal lyrics instead. I though it was funny.

Enjoy the weekend!

Growing Up- Hayward Style

I grew up in Hayward, CA. A blue collar city in the San Francisco Bay Area between Oakland and San Jose. My family and I lived a lot of those years on Tehama Ave. It was in unincorporated Hayward which means that there were no sidewalks and if something caught on fire you had to call the County Fire Department.





Here is a Google view of the 'hood:


That square at the top of the picture is an apartment building that used to be a field when I was a kid. It caught on fire every year. I guess the County Fire Department would respond. We lived across the street- about where the "a" is in "Tehama" from the pic. There is a large parking lot directly behind the house that served as a short cut to the nearest store, the school and the church parking lot itself which proved to be a playground. It was a blacktop parking lot and in the summer the heat would build up and make being barefoot nearly impossible and I was barefoot a lot during the summer. I remember trying to cross the parking lot one day in the summer and it was so hot I couldn't take more than a few steps. I had to take my shirt off and throw it ahead a few steps then jump on the shirt and repeated that to cross the molten tar of that lot.

Anyway, what got me thinking about the old neighborhood was an article I was reading about a vice bust at a massage parlor. When I was a kid, there was a massage parlor near a liquor store on the corner of South Garden and A Street. I was called "Suzi's School of Sexual Awareness". My buddy and I were eager to learn what went on in Suzi's school. When I was at his house, we used to look up the number in the phone book and call over there "How much for a massage?" "Can I enroll in a class there?" "Is your refrigerator running?"

Invariably, they would ask us how old we were and then hang up on us. They never gave us the salacious details we craved. So we would go to the store and then as we passed SSOSA we would rap on the window and run to the nearby laundrymat awaiting our sexual awareness. We expected to see someone (Suzi herself?) come out in scantily clad lingerie and look to see who knocked on the window. She should have then invited the bold window rappers inside and show them around the school. Sadly, this never happened and one day Suzi closed up shop and moved.

What became of Suzi is anyone's guess.