"I"m Looking for the Treason That I knew In 'Sixty-five"
Some groggy people this morning are wishing they could turn back the clock. I'd like to turn back the clock to about oh - - forty-odd years ago wouldn't be bad! How many out there remember the albums "Space Oddity" and "The Man Who Sold the World" when they were on the Mercury label? You remember how David Bowie introduced the song "The Width of a Circle" in a live concert in Santa Monica in March of 1972 don't you. (They used to have that whole Live album on a now defunct web site) He said, "This next song is one of Ziggy's compositions". Speaking of 1965 I remember when "Heroin" by the Velvet Underground was played on AM radio in the mid 'sixties. But then the song dropped off the radar screen for what seemed like decades. It's almost like one of those songs you only Imagined ever existed because the so called 'underground FM stations" wouldn't touch it. How many remember Quadraphonic - - - or eight tracks? I think the theory was that they came up with eight tracks because that would provide four discrete tracks for quadraphonic sound. How many of you out there remember when it was called the "Newport Freeway" because it was slated originally to go to Newport Beach when completed. This whole "Costa Mesa Freeway" bit seems awkward to me. How many remember when the Long Beach Freeway was supposed to go to Passadina? When my Mom was just starting out at Cal State Los Angeles in September of 1964 and still not that fermiliar with the area, she saw the sign that said "Passadina' and got on the Long Beach Freeway and had a rude awakening to find the freeway hadn't been completed and she was dumped in the middle of nowhere. I think that Freeway is STILL complete! I know they've talked about it a lot. You know back in the sixties people were saying 'I remember when you used to be able to drive to Huntington Beach in twenty minutes, and now it takes 45 minutes or longer". Well - - that sounds more like Pipe dream than reality to me but the solution was to build the Huntington Beach Freeway. Seems logical to all of us and they did studies on it for years, but it never happened. How many out there remember Bussing. I mean everybody has to be Bussed. Whites were bussed to black ghetto neighborhoods, and Blacks from Watts were bussed to Van Nuys or whatever. Now THAT sounds like an efficient means of transportation! Remember when the OCTD started out. They had busses that ran every hour and there was generally a bus rout ever two or three miles or so. And even though delays of 15 or 20 minutes were common, that isn't going to be a problem for anybody is it? How many remember Buddy and Sonya, brother and sister that looked nothing alike from "Mama's Family". How many remember when they had a different "Mr Jefferson" on "All in the Family". How many remember "Chuck" from "Happy Days". How many Elvis fans remember the drummer Elvis had before D J Fontana? It was a sixteen year old high school kid named Jimmy Lot. Yeah, he did that song that I think Credence Clearwater sued over for copyright infringement in 1955. How many people remember when Culver Street in Irvina was a two lane drag strip through the countryside? How many cam remember when Irvina was mostly countryside? How many Lion Country Safari or Japanese Village theme parks? How many remember Nixon's wage and price controls? Where was the tea party then, huh. Then there is the question in my family tree of the three grandmothers my mother had. Of course she's part Cherokee and we now learn that the Charokee people slit their own throat by trying to be "Too white" and kissying up to the British during the French and Indian wars. She had a Grandmother Hiss, and a Grandmother Shrag. And a Grandmother Stanley. The trouble is NONE of those forebearers were the last name of my grand parents, so what happened to them? How many remember when adoption agencies would guard the true identity of Adopted Kids with their Life- - and nobody but nobody got to learn the truth? How many remember "cold hydrogen fusion" and the wonders it was supposed to bring? How many remember when various Oil Companies were saying "Rock shale is the future of the oil industry". One company had a lot of rock shale sites in Colorado that would provide energy for a hundred years or whatever. Just turn the entire rocky mountains into a moon scape. Nothing wrong with that is there. Oh, and how many people remember when manned space flights left as regularly as the next bus? (except, of course, in Orange County) Some people can only be pegged as "people who never grew up". Remember what's what Jimmy Stewart said of bar mate Clarence- - in that one dream scene where Nick gets mad at both of them and says "Allright you pixies, get out of here!" Personally I don't think Bill Gunderson never grew up. He writes good science fiction (of a highly moralistic didactic nature) and it's brilliant and carefully written. But I would never buy it. You think my writing is bad, you should try reading his. Ah yes, and then we have Mr. Big Mac who was "born with a third bun". Yeah, like having three grandmothers. I'd like to see that on a genetic chart. Some to think of it - - that lady last night thought she was Wonder Woman. Personally I thought the lady was totally sane and I would have respected her wishes not to bring in the shrink patrol. Better to die with your boots on than be discovered by enemy captors kissing somebody's ass. Jesus of course seemed to have this "Peter Pan" mind set because he wants to go back to a time when Adam and Eve wern't sexually attracted to each other - and the word Love not once appears to describe their relation. Of course you know Jesus "misses it" where Children are concerned because the one trait that seems utter LOST on Jesus is that children grow, and change and discover and mature. Something that seems utterly beyond Jesus' capacity. Well, for you Peter Pan freaks, I think I'd have my DNA checked out to make sure I didn't have some genetics equivelent to 'being born with a third bun" in my family tree. Oh yeah, maybe in 1968 you were Hot Stuff as the new kid on the block. But this isn't 1968 any more. I can remember a period when there was actually talk of churches and church services being "relevant" to society. "Revelence". That's a word you never hear any more except perhaps in Court proceedings. Good word. Mazdas were supposed to wave of the future. My brother is still a Mazda freak, so they're still around. Remember when pull top cans had things that came off? Of course to come full circle, you know that when David Bowie write "1984" he wanted to make it duly futuristic, and so he wanted a futuristic beat for it. So naturally he came up with disco. Back then of course labor unions were respected American Institutions and people who thought of eliminating them were some kind of John Bircher whacko candidate for the funny farm. Remember when George Murphy talked about the coming thing to solve Southern California's water problem was De Salinization plants everywhere? Whatever happened to that? Of course DDT is considered one of the safest insecticides compared to any other, as far as the health of human beings is concerned. But other things are more important than humans. Of course now they are arguing for the personhood of Gorillas, so what's next? I haven't a clue.
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