Boldly going without an LJ-cut
Dec. 29th, 2006 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rootbeer1Christmas came and went amidst canasta, Charlie Brown music and overeating. My brother got 96% on his holiday checklist (he didn’t clean a cheery holiday toilet), so it was a nice, if a bit low-key, family-type holiday for us. Among the cool DVDs we received this Christmas:
The Amazon.com synopsis for the lesser-known Mondo Mod/The Hippie Revolt: It's Mods vs. Hippies in this Double Feature Teen Time Capsule from the Out-of-Sight Sixties! Greaser mods, bee-hived go-go girls, and the pre-hippie "Mod Generation" run wild in "Mondo Mod" (1967, 72 min.), a lunatic look at the Hollywood Youth Scene of 1966 that's so hilariously dated it's almost breathtaking! "The Hippie Revolt" (1967, 75 min.) - Lurking right around the corner from the Mod Madness of 1966 is The Hippie Revolt of 1967, a psychedelic celebration of the Nitty Gritty non-reality of the Haight-Ashbury Hippie experience! So turn on, tune in, and flashback to Mondo Mod and The Hippie Revolt, two films that took a trip and never came back!
Unfortunately, a few holiday cards – like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zoxobear’s and drewbearsf’s – came back to us, and we didn’t have addresses for several other local friends, including many of you reading these very words. So send me your correct address already! Use my handle here, at aol.com.
* * *
Continuing to work out at my old gym on a regular basis – and when my brother saw me again, after eight months, his first words were, “Wow! Steve! You’re buff!” In the new year, though, I think we’re going to join Weight Watchers. Like I’ve said before, at 244 lbs., this is the heaviest I’ve ever been, even if my waist size hasn’t gone up.
* * *
Quite sad to see the passing of Tower Records last week. When I lived in suburban Connecticut, no trip to Manhattan was complete without a stop at the Greenwich Village Tower to pick up some new releases … and it helped that I usually parked my car at the garage around the corner. The very first CDs I ever bought -- the Pretenders’ first album and Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures -- were bought at that Tower, back in 1987, so it’s no wonder I had warm feelings for that store.
The one in the Castro, however, was picked over beyond all comprehension by the time the going-out-of-business discount was up to 70%. I searched and searched the store, and found only three items I wanted to buy:
A 2-CD compilation of Pop Will Eat itself. Not a huge fan, but it’ll score me points witharthole.
By the late ‘60s, British invasion bands often rushed out quickie soundtracks to randy, bawdy, saucy British films -- see the Kinks’ Percy or the Spencer Davis Group’s Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.. This one, previously unknown to me, rounds out my collection nicely!
Never really into Luna that much, but what the hell. It was $8.
* * *
My year in review, as determined by some random LJ sentences.
January:qbear has his mind in the gutter because he laughed when Food TV cook Rachael Ray just announced, "I've got a beautful red snapper ..."
February: Soqbear and I are heading home from work, listening to the radio, when the announcer reveals the answer to a trivia question he'd asked a few minutes before: the father of former "E.R." actress Julianna Margulies was the advertising man who wrote the famous Alka Seltzer jingle. "So that's why she left the show!" I say. "She didn't need ER! She was the Alka Seltzer jingle heiress!" "Yes!" Jack replies, excited. "Every time she heard plop plop fizz fizz ... it was *ching ching*!"
March: So I come out of the shower this morning andqbear says, "I hear there are shower robots, that spin and spray out anti-mildew liquid, to keep your shower stall clean." "People are so lazy," I respond. "They have robots for everything now." "If only they had ones programmed for all forms of human pleasuring," Jack responds, wistfully. Then, in a low voice, he adds, "Get the Roomba."
April: The trip down to Tucson was rather boring -- the desert just keeps on being the same thing for hundreds of miles, but we enjoyed listening to a wide varety of CDs on the way: Steely Dan, Sarah Vaughan, Astro Sounds From Beyond the Year 2000, Judy Garland's Carnegie Hall concert (how gay!), and especially Paul Revere and the Raiders, who chased every trend possible in the '60s in search of a hit. The Beach Boys are big, so they do surf music; car songs are big, so they do car songs; Aretha Franklin is big, so they cover "Chain of Fools." What whores! We had a big laugh trying to guess what '60s microtrend they'd try to emulate on each new song. By the end of the greatest hits (arranged chronologically), which was around the early '70s, they had a Partridge Family vibe going, and we could swear Shirley Jones was singing back-up.
May: “It was nine years ago that they changed the name to Pepsi Arena, and it was nine years ago that we moved here to San Francisco,” Jack responds. “Coincidence? I think not!”
June: If you’re telling me that I’d have to blatantly disclose my most intimate, secret, wistful longings for a transformative physical, emotional, mental and spiritual communion with a silly phrase like “I’d hit it,” then we’re just not on the same page, are we?
July: My favorite part of the evening was when, after some horrendously stupid plot twist (in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls), Gregg asked Jim if he understood what was going on. “No,” Jim said mildly, “I’m just enjoying the colors and the motion.”
August: "Should I make a cobbler? A buckle? A dowdy? A clafouti?" "How about a betty?" I ask. "Or a crisp? Or a crumb?" "They're all so similar," Jack says. "How about a Swedish pancake?"
September: “If you were a tranny and wanted some peace of mind, you could take TranQuil.”
October: It was just fucking hilarious how big this pumpkin-sized cream puff was. I laughed the hardest I’ve laughed in years – somehow this enormous pastry had smothered my depression and worries of the past year with rich, sweet creamy catharsis.
November: One of the elimination challenges, for example, made the contestants choose among various bathing suits, and the woman who picked a suit that failed to best show off her ta-tas would be eliminated.
December: I have broken my leg (tripping on a sidewalk) and broken my collarbone (falling off a bicycle), but I didn’t injure myself skydiving, bungee-jumping or downhill skiing.
The Amazon.com synopsis for the lesser-known Mondo Mod/The Hippie Revolt: It's Mods vs. Hippies in this Double Feature Teen Time Capsule from the Out-of-Sight Sixties! Greaser mods, bee-hived go-go girls, and the pre-hippie "Mod Generation" run wild in "Mondo Mod" (1967, 72 min.), a lunatic look at the Hollywood Youth Scene of 1966 that's so hilariously dated it's almost breathtaking! "The Hippie Revolt" (1967, 75 min.) - Lurking right around the corner from the Mod Madness of 1966 is The Hippie Revolt of 1967, a psychedelic celebration of the Nitty Gritty non-reality of the Haight-Ashbury Hippie experience! So turn on, tune in, and flashback to Mondo Mod and The Hippie Revolt, two films that took a trip and never came back!
Unfortunately, a few holiday cards – like
zoxobear’s and drewbearsf’s – came back to us, and we didn’t have addresses for several other local friends, including many of you reading these very words. So send me your correct address already! Use my handle here, at aol.com.* * *
Continuing to work out at my old gym on a regular basis – and when my brother saw me again, after eight months, his first words were, “Wow! Steve! You’re buff!” In the new year, though, I think we’re going to join Weight Watchers. Like I’ve said before, at 244 lbs., this is the heaviest I’ve ever been, even if my waist size hasn’t gone up.
* * *
Quite sad to see the passing of Tower Records last week. When I lived in suburban Connecticut, no trip to Manhattan was complete without a stop at the Greenwich Village Tower to pick up some new releases … and it helped that I usually parked my car at the garage around the corner. The very first CDs I ever bought -- the Pretenders’ first album and Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures -- were bought at that Tower, back in 1987, so it’s no wonder I had warm feelings for that store.
The one in the Castro, however, was picked over beyond all comprehension by the time the going-out-of-business discount was up to 70%. I searched and searched the store, and found only three items I wanted to buy:
A 2-CD compilation of Pop Will Eat itself. Not a huge fan, but it’ll score me points with
arthole.By the late ‘60s, British invasion bands often rushed out quickie soundtracks to randy, bawdy, saucy British films -- see the Kinks’ Percy or the Spencer Davis Group’s Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.. This one, previously unknown to me, rounds out my collection nicely!
Never really into Luna that much, but what the hell. It was $8.
* * *
My year in review, as determined by some random LJ sentences.
January:
qbear has his mind in the gutter because he laughed when Food TV cook Rachael Ray just announced, "I've got a beautful red snapper ..."February: So
qbear and I are heading home from work, listening to the radio, when the announcer reveals the answer to a trivia question he'd asked a few minutes before: the father of former "E.R." actress Julianna Margulies was the advertising man who wrote the famous Alka Seltzer jingle. "So that's why she left the show!" I say. "She didn't need ER! She was the Alka Seltzer jingle heiress!" "Yes!" Jack replies, excited. "Every time she heard plop plop fizz fizz ... it was *ching ching*!"March: So I come out of the shower this morning and
qbear says, "I hear there are shower robots, that spin and spray out anti-mildew liquid, to keep your shower stall clean." "People are so lazy," I respond. "They have robots for everything now." "If only they had ones programmed for all forms of human pleasuring," Jack responds, wistfully. Then, in a low voice, he adds, "Get the Roomba." April: The trip down to Tucson was rather boring -- the desert just keeps on being the same thing for hundreds of miles, but we enjoyed listening to a wide varety of CDs on the way: Steely Dan, Sarah Vaughan, Astro Sounds From Beyond the Year 2000, Judy Garland's Carnegie Hall concert (how gay!), and especially Paul Revere and the Raiders, who chased every trend possible in the '60s in search of a hit. The Beach Boys are big, so they do surf music; car songs are big, so they do car songs; Aretha Franklin is big, so they cover "Chain of Fools." What whores! We had a big laugh trying to guess what '60s microtrend they'd try to emulate on each new song. By the end of the greatest hits (arranged chronologically), which was around the early '70s, they had a Partridge Family vibe going, and we could swear Shirley Jones was singing back-up.
May: “It was nine years ago that they changed the name to Pepsi Arena, and it was nine years ago that we moved here to San Francisco,” Jack responds. “Coincidence? I think not!”
June: If you’re telling me that I’d have to blatantly disclose my most intimate, secret, wistful longings for a transformative physical, emotional, mental and spiritual communion with a silly phrase like “I’d hit it,” then we’re just not on the same page, are we?
July: My favorite part of the evening was when, after some horrendously stupid plot twist (in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls), Gregg asked Jim if he understood what was going on. “No,” Jim said mildly, “I’m just enjoying the colors and the motion.”
August: "Should I make a cobbler? A buckle? A dowdy? A clafouti?" "How about a betty?" I ask. "Or a crisp? Or a crumb?" "They're all so similar," Jack says. "How about a Swedish pancake?"
September: “If you were a tranny and wanted some peace of mind, you could take TranQuil.”
October: It was just fucking hilarious how big this pumpkin-sized cream puff was. I laughed the hardest I’ve laughed in years – somehow this enormous pastry had smothered my depression and worries of the past year with rich, sweet creamy catharsis.
November: One of the elimination challenges, for example, made the contestants choose among various bathing suits, and the woman who picked a suit that failed to best show off her ta-tas would be eliminated.
December: I have broken my leg (tripping on a sidewalk) and broken my collarbone (falling off a bicycle), but I didn’t injure myself skydiving, bungee-jumping or downhill skiing.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-29 07:51 pm (UTC)Such an amazing group. To see them live was a monumental experience. I didn't realise they had a retrospective. I'll have to check that out.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-29 08:36 pm (UTC)244 lbs
Date: 2006-12-29 10:27 pm (UTC)gimmie big mac fries to go
Date: 2006-12-29 10:54 pm (UTC)yeah, i have a soft spot for tower too. it was the place for us cool alternative suburban kids could hang out, before starbucks and mspace. remeber when nana shoes was there, before they moved in tower video and magazines. le sigh. .le sigh, sigh.
Re: gimmie big mac fries to go
Date: 2006-12-29 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-29 10:59 pm (UTC)Loved your Year In Review. I actually remember some of those quotes from reading them the first time around in your LJ. Good stuff.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-29 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-31 08:31 pm (UTC)