Not Born to Run
Posted on January 17, 2018 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

What is it about me and popular culture?

Perhaps versus would have been a better conjunction in that question.

I do not feel the slightest twinge of anything (other than mild annoyance) when I hear Springsteen’s Born to Run.  What place wasn’t I that every other American seemed to be when that song was popular?

Nor have I ever identified with American Pie by Don McLean.  In fact, I grew to actively dislike it, because popular people with other sets of experiences seemed to expect that I should pore over it and spend hours trying to re-interpret our shared youth through it.

The number of rock and/or pop music concerts I have attended over my lifetime can be counted on two hands, with a thumb or two to spare.  I wouldn’t call my taste in music monophonic but The Beatles are the main course and everyone else is garnish.

My cultural disconnect is not limited to music.  I never saw The Titanic or The Lion King or Fast & Furious in any version, stage or screen.  I never watched an episode of America’s seemingly-indispensable television comedies Seinfeld, Friends, Cheers or 30 Rock.  I think I stopped watching fiction on television (not counting press briefings by Donald Trump) shortly after L.A. Law and Star Trek: The Next Generation wrapped up in 1994.  All right, there was The X-Files.  And The Sopranos.  And Fringe.  (But it was my alt-universe self who watched Fringe, so that may not count.)

Anticipation / Born to Run -- Illustration by CHCollinsGarth Brooks, Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Miley Cyrus, Bruno Mars, Drake, 50 Cent, Beyoncé.  The names and faces and brands and personas come and go.  I am not sure what demands more of my attention these days, musical celebrities or Medicare plans.

I guess I am just not that impatient for entertainment.  I like to entertain myself and you.

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Genesis, Exegesis
Posted on January 15, 2018 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ 
1   The Garden of Eden
     was not about feeding
     an apple to a man
     but how shame began.

2   Our attempt to explain
     why childbirth begets pain
     invoked God, sex and sin.
3   Sad way to begin.

4   When Cain struck down Abel
     (according to fable)
     he invented warfare.
5   We took it from there.

6   The Ark built by Noah
      ferried two protozoa,
     and then four and then eight.
7   Disease was First Mate.

8   The Flood begat Rainbow,
     a sign, so claimed Noah,
     of God's misgivings for
     culling the living.

9   The leftover rabble
     assembled at Babel
     to build a tall tower.
10  Nui ka huikau.

11  Covenants fell like rain
     on the grandsons of Cain.
12  God's strangest provision:
     male circumcision.

13  Sodom and Gomorrah
     lacked ten men of morals
     so The Lord burned them down.
14  At least no one drowned.

15  Abraham gripped his knife
     to cut short his son's life
     and flesh out God's design.
16  God said, "Never mind."

17  Abraham's Sarah and
     Jacob's Rachel -- barren.
18  Their mates took more women:
      more sons were given.

19  Was this really how man
      supposedly began?
20  Given what men now do,
      much of it rings true.
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Thoughts @ Large: 52
Posted on January 10, 2018 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

•  Tonight my wife asks me if I want anything besides the salad and barbecue sandwich.   I say no, just your undying love.  And world peace.

•  If wine tasted good enough in the first place (given its price), there would be no need for the proliferation of aeration and delivery devices that are supposed to make it taste better.  I say, just pour it and drink it, and if it’s not satisfying then it’s either the wine’s fault or you opened it too soon.

•  I like to hide puzzles in my writings and in my artwork, for others to ponder and solve.  But it never seems to occur to me that others may have neither the patience or inclination to solve them.  I can’t figure out why that might be — how puzzling.

•  I tire of film and television scenes in which male-female conflicts and/or arguments are resolved by the antagonists having sex.  Whose fantasies are being served here?

•  Your friends: they have seen you at your best and they have seen you at your worst and somehow they remain your friends.  I offer this as both a definition and a formation rule.

•  I was not quite eleven years old when the Beatles’ Please Please Me was a hit in the U.S.   It was a nostalgic re-listen for me the other day.  Here are its opening verses:

Last night I said these words to my girl,
I know you never even try girl.
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon
Please please me, oh yeah,
Like I please you.

You don’t need me to show the way, love.
Why do I always have to say “love,”
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon
Please please me oh yeah,
Like I please you.

I must say I was surprised how sexually suggestive the lyrics now seem.  Please Please Me was released in the U.S. more than two years before the Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, but on closer listen the Beatles were as every bit as plaintive as the Stones of the chronic and apparently painful hypertestosteronism suffered by post-adolescent men of that era.

•  Should I worry if my wife decides to serve me half a sweet potato for dessert?  I ask this hypothetically, mind you.  For a friend.

•  It’s tax season once again, so I went to Walgreens yesterday to ask for printouts of our 2017 prescription expenses.  The pharmacy had told me I could present my wife’s ID and pick up the printouts for both of us, but when I showed up, they had changed their minds.  They would only give me my own printout.  The tech explained that because my wife had not expressly authorized them to share her information with me, they could only give me my own printout.  I pointed out that I pick up her actual medications all the time at the Walgreens drive-in window without showing any ID.  No matter: I left half-empty-handed.

•  Potato-and-cauliflower dishes seem to be the in-thing for self-professed healthy eaters.   I can only agree — nothing like adding cauliflower to make one want to give up potatoes.

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