Tag: nostalgia

Enough Already?

When is enough enough?

Like why do the Rolling Stones still tour? They are old. Rock and roll should not be performed by the AARP set. Charlie Watts looks like he has no teeth. Keith Richards looks like he has been embalmed. And no matter how good he looks FOR HIS AGE, we don’t need to see Mick strut around like a tough rooster. I have heard people say that they want to see them before they die.

Like why did Lucas-Spielberg-Ford do another Indiana Jones flick? Yeah, it was great to see the silhouetted Harrison Ford put on that famous hat, but a weak script, mediocre story and caricatures instead of characters couldn’t save this clunker of a movie.

Like what did the final two seasons with the Washington Wizards do for Michael Jordan, the Wizards or basketball? Not a thing. Coming off of his second retirement, His Airness was hurt and his step and shot had lost their zip. He did not take the team to the playoffs or burnish his image.

Like thinking that you should have cheaper gas so you can continue driving your anachronistic SUV–or a Lincoln Mark V? And Detroit, the home of the gas guzzler, wonders why it can’t sell cars. Unnecessarily large inefficient vehicles became a bad idea in the 70’s, why would anyone be surprised that the reprise would be a repeat?

Like listening exclusively to the oldies station and saying that they don’t make decent music anymore. Like complaining that teens on social network sites don’t have real relationships. Like trying to recreate your childhood for your children. Like doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

Me? I still gotta lot to learn. I’m not ready to stand still.

(c) 2005-2016 Doctor of Thinkology. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons License.
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Homecoming

This week is Homecoming Week for the 16-year old. Today he got to dress like a Bama. So he wore the oddest conglomeration of clothing, primarily consisting of layers of mismatched crap. (Although I do admit surprise to see the T-mac* jersey as the top layer, but this is a digression.)

Also this week, I drove past my old high school, a bunch of times. And for the first time since I graduated, I almost stopped to see what it looked like. It didn’t have a football field when I was there. We had to rent from the other school. But we did have fun at those Friday night games! When I was there, kids and teachers would huddle around the exit doors–smoking cigarettes. I bet that there aren’t ANY teachers bumming a Newport off of a student these days.

When I was there, me and M.P. used to skip first hour and hang out at the Bicentennial Family Restaurant. Drinking coffee and avoiding a VERY dull class. When I was there, we didn’t have AP classes. I was invited by my “college prep” English teacher to sit for a test that could get me college credit. But it cost a bunch of money, and there were no guarantees. I did learn, a few months later, that my college classmates had earned tons of college credit from these AP tests. Shoot, the SAT was a big enough deal, even for me.

When I was there, I had a fight with my social studies teacher who threw me out of class for insisting on fairness in his grading of a test. I only agreed to go out on “independent study” if I could bring 3 of my cronies with me. We obsequiously studied the history of film and were only thwarted by our teacher’s inability to pick up the AV on his way in.

As I drove by the school, I thought about stopping in. But then I just kept driving.

*if you do click here, let the song load.

(c) 2005-2016 Doctor of Thinkology. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons License.
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Deep Cuts

NYT threw me back in time to my second job ever. At Music Stop.

We were the discount record store. Not quite as hip and not as big a catalog as Peaches–but we had the top selling LPs at the best prices. And I was introduced to music beyond Foreigner, Kansas, Led Zepplin, and Foghat.

I did the weekly inventory–mostly because I worked on Mondays, was able to work the order book, and really liked flipping through the bins and bins of records and seeing which records were missing from last week. Why didn’t anyone buy those Robert Palmer records? The album art looked promising. Why did the white jazz artists get filed under ROCK and the black jazz artists under R&B? And wow! did that Cars record take off.

What I learned was that sometimes the whole was greater than a sum of it’s parts. The concept album–from Beatles to Pink Floyd to OutKast–told a story, ran a gamut of feelings, said more about the artist, more about me.

I must say that I love ITunes, and I loved Napster in the old days.

I also love a great pop single. But buying the album–or CD using current terms–gives a bigger view of the artist. If you heard the chart topping Lose Control from Missy Elliot’s Cookbook but missed the marching band at the end of We Run This, you really missed. Yes, I’m sorry I bought the weak Dangerously in Love for the best single of that summer, but delighted to have all of Late Registration (Sorry Mr. West is gone).

Now record stores are gone, and artists are being signed for deals on singles–not LPs. I am not smart enough to know what the market will do, but I do miss the bins, and the album art, and getting a paper cut when you slit the record for the first time.

We were at Kemp Mill records a few years back, and I tried to impress the boys with my coolness.

ME: You know I used to work in a record store.
The 15-year-old (at age 9): What’s a record?

(c) 2005-2016 Doctor of Thinkology. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons License.
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Forgotten Fruits

It’s like prison. They insist on eating 3-squares every day. If they miss a meal, it’s a civil rights abuse. So to keep child protective services away, I need to go to the grocery store.

B-K (not burger king, but before kids), we could go to the grocery store every three-four weeks. Once the kids came along, I got a frequent flier card to the Giant and Safeway–2-3 times a week is now the norm. (Living in the city makes the Cotsco and Shoppers’ way too inconvenient.)

So I am at the Giant, and they have Breyers’ ice cream on sale. Including my mostest ever favoritest flavor, Peach Ice cream. But I can’t eat 1/2 gallon of it. Damn! That’s too much of a great thing–my lust for which I blame le Dog.

Yup, when I used to work at the overpriced arcade in Ann Arbor, barely down the block, on Liberty Street was le Dog. A shack that sold hot dogs, and incredibly sophisticated soups and a shake of the day.

Some weeks, he would serve the most amazing peach shake ever. I didn’t want to have one. I like chocolate shakes. And I don’t like peaches. But he convinced me to try one and it was the best. I was broke, and couldn’t afford gourmet shakes, but Mr. le Dog liked to play video games so I could trade game tokens for the most incredible peach milk shakes. Ever.

This was the beginnings of the trail that led to the frusen gladje strawberry ice cream. And my love of Gifford‘s banana ice cream.

I usually buy variants of vanilla or chocolate with junk in it. But the fruit ice cream is really where it’s at. Like that peaches and cream pint that I just put away that took me back across the street from the Michigan Theatre on Liberty Street.

(c) 2005-2016 Doctor of Thinkology. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons License.
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That 70’s Feeling

Nostalgia for me meant the old people (parents of my friends, for example) who waxed about poodle skirts and hot rods. Our jr. high school had sock hops. Truman and Eisenhower were about as relevant to us as Garfield and Arthur–and not the cat or aardvark.

I found myself feeling a bit of the yearn for the kinder, gentler time of the 38th President, Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006). We went to the Capitol Rotunda to pay our respects. Me, the 12-year-old, and the 15-year-old.

12-year old: Why are we standing in this line?
Me: To pay our respects.
12-year old: Why?

I was stuck. Was it because he is a Michigan man? I ended up being weepy when we lost Bo, too. Was it because I remember him from my childhood, and he wasn’t Richard Nixon? Was it because he was an object of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players humor? Or the way that his brave wife made rehab into the modern penance for the rich and (in)famous? Or maybe because he shares my fondness for big yellow dogs?

Am I nostalgic for the time when there were such things as pro-choice, non-spinning republicans that oversaw the dismantling of a bad war? For a leader who used compromise as an agreement builder and integrity for his talisman? But was I making that up? I don’t remember the 70’s being as much fun as the show.

So as we snaked through the House side of the Capitol, and as we were rushed through the Rotunda and were denied a pause before the awesome statue of Sacajawea, I told the 12-year-old “All of the above.”

And he looked at me like it was 1976, and there were bell bottoms and Gran Torinos.

(c) 2005-2016 Doctor of Thinkology. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons License.
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Time Bound

Today, for Father’s Day the 11-year-old composed a most delicious breakfast of eggs and toast with a side of ham. And quite a good meal it was. He not only planned and prepared the meal, but also plated and served. Presentation IS everything.

I had a drink with a friend on Friday who shared some photos of her beloveds from an professional photo shoot. She wanted to capture in film the moments that she sees as a mom. No phony canned expressions of a traditional portrait. The pics were great–her babes are 9 and 6.

I got to thinking about the pics we have of the kids at different ages. Now that the 14-year-old is man-sized, seeing pictures of him as a 3rd grader doesn’t connect with his current being. We were listening to a recording of him from two summers ago–from before he started singing at a register so low that only dogs can hear. The voice on the recording didn’t belong to my son.

Then I started thinking of my own mom. In her head I am still in high-school. She talks about things that I “like” that I haven’t actually liked in say, oh, 20 years?

You can’t freeze time. You can remember the past. But what and who we were, isn’t what and who we are. I used to hold both of the 14-year-old’s feet in my one hand. I can’t get my hands around one of his size 13 sneakers. I used to poke the 11-year-old in his squishy, baby belly and receive the most beautiful tinkles and bubbles of his baby giggles. Now, his belly laughs come from deeper in his belly–some day soon to come from a lower octave.

Capturing a moment or an afternoon in film can help to loose up a memory at a later time. Reconciling that moment to the person, though, gets harder and harder.

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