His voice evoked something deep and tender within me since childhood. My first recollections of his voice were at a very young age. My father would listen to his records (yes records) on the weekends in the garage while tinkering with with his car. His live recordings were always so powerful. At the conclusion of any song the audience, always moved, would erupt with cheers and applause for what would seem like forever. As a boy I wondered what it would be like to witness such an event. As a man I truly grew to appreciate his talent and what effect his voice had on me. I often hoped that one day I, along with my parents, would hear him live. To my dismay this never happened. Today the world is amiss. Goodbye old friend.
I love my dad...Hitchhiking - A Lost Art
Current mood: Proud
Category: Proud Writing and Poetry
(this is something my dad wrote a while ago and recently sent to my siblings, me and old friends. take from it what you may...but my dad's just cool. by the way my dad is 74, still swims everyday and has been married to my wonderful mom for over 50 years)
Hitchhiking - A Lost Art
I'm reminded lately for some reason (probably advancing senility) of a common mode of transportation of a bygone era. I think many of us in my high school days, and before, got from point A to point B via the thumb. But how long has it been since you've seen someone at the side of the road with his (or rarely, her) thumb out?
No, it's a lost art - mostly for good reason, I guess. But in those days there were not as many cars, or willing drivers, to cart us from here to there, and back again. My dad had his 1930 Model-A roadster, and that was it in our family. And there was a war on until late 1945. An "A" sticker was good for four gallons a week - enough for him to get to work and back, and not a whole lot more.
Later on, at Fullerton Hi, I had a few friends with cars - Jerry Jordan in his '37 "woody", or more often in the '28 Pontiac (?) "GangMobile"; Barney Blashill with his succession of cars ("Barney-gimme-a-dime-for-gas" as Dick Hartman called him); Dave (E) Elliot, when we were going to South Laguna to spearfish (if we could coast into a gas station when we ran out of gas; otherwise we pushed a bit); and there were other friends who came and went.
But for the most part, if it was out of the range of my bike, and there was not a willing chauffeur, it was the outstretched thumb at the side of the road. Oh sure, I did take the bus if I wanted to go into L.A., or sometimes the "Big Red Car" to go to Bellflower or Santa Ana in my earlier days; but for me, mostly, it was the thumb.
Until my sophomore year at Fullerton, we lived four miles west of Anaheim. Yes, there was a school bus that went out there, and sometimes I took it; but jujst as often, it was the thumb, especially when I went out for the swim team, and needed to stay later. [Not that I was really "out" for swimming, per se; this was the spring of 1946, just after the war, Anaheim had no swimming tradition, and the "coach" was a football coach with no spring assignment, and absolutely no interest in swimming.]
But even after we moved to Fullerton, next to the high school "North Field", it was mostly walk or thumb ... or sometimes the bus into L.A. to go to Griffith Observatory or a movie (or even a burlesque show - they weren't too particular about age then - but the burleycue was not all that risque either).
The summer after my junior year, Les Bean talked us into going to Catalina Island to work. I think there were five of us: Les and me, Merv Corner, Dan Swift, and ... who? Les had said that his uncle managed the El Encanto restaurant, and would have jobs for us. But when we got off the Catalina Steamer, the first thing Les said was, "well, now we've got to find jobs". That was my calibration of Les, which I should have known already. But we did find jobs right away; mine was washing dishes for the Casino Ballroom.
So what has this to do with hitchhiking? Well, I got one day off a week (or maybe it was two); my shift ended at midnight, so every other week, or so, I would take the one a.m. water taxi back to the mainland, arriving at Pierpoint landing at three in the morning. After a half-hour hike up to the highway in Long Beach, I would stick my thumb out.
Hitchhiking at that time of the morning was ... interesting! On one occasion, I got a ride with a couple who were totally sloshed, and just riding around, with the lady driving and the gent pretty well dead to the world. The good news was that they gave me a ride nearly all the way home; but the flip side was that their daughter was someone I knew - a very pretty girl who shall remain nameless - and they wanted to know if I knew her and what did I think of her ... I didn't know her well ... and never to this day have I mentioned this encounter to her.
Another early morning encounter was with some creep who wanted to know if he could "do me". Well I demurred, of course, and that was the end of that. But he did give me a pretty good ride toward Fullerton (not all the way, but a good piece of it). I think most of us who hitched in those days received "offers" like that, but the offerors were pretty harmless, as far as I know. The best response I heard to such an offer was from one of our Arizona swimmers at FJC: "please, I don't do that on a first date".
But for the most part, hitchhiking was pretty uneventful. Many of the drivers who picked me up were either altruists, or just wanted some company. I was grateful for the ride, but I was usually just too bashful to provide any great exchanges. Or as Garrison Keillor would say, I was a "shy person".
Now as to the "her" I mentioned, yes, there were some girls who hitchhiked, also. But I only remember one such occasion, personally, and a rather strange scene it was. My freshman year at Anaheim, I joined the California HS Cadet Corps - sort of a National Guard or ROTC for high schools. Like the National Guard, we were to have a two week encampment, at Ft. Ord in this case. But after a couple of days, I was in the hospital with pneumonia. [The ride up from L.A. in open Army trucks certainly didn't help.]
Penicillin was not all that great in 1946 - a shot in the butt every three hours plays hell with one's sleep schedule - and then there were the bed pans ... but after a month I was finally ready to go home. [And a month in the Ft. Ord Hospital was an educational experience in itself - not bad, but a real view of people, in all their diversity.] ...
Anyhow, after I was released, some Cadet Corps "major" drove me home from Ord in a staff car. There were no freeways then, so we went down the coast the whole way. Somewhere along there we picked up three hitchhikers - three girls - late teens or early 20s (I was too young and/or bashful to find out). They seemed very nice, but it was hard to tell with my thumb firmly embedded in my mouth (figuratively, anyway).
So what did we do with these nubile young hitchhikers, now that we had them sequestered in our car, on Highway 1? The major played cards with them! For a coupla hundred miles, with the rocks of the coast highway about two hundred feet below the edge of the road, he was holding his cards in one hand, and the wheel in the other; and not paying a whole lot of attention to the road, it seemed. This was not the most relaxing ride I've ever had, but somehow we survived, and dropped the girls off in Santa Monica, as I recall. And that was the last encounter I ever had with female hitchhikers.
So soon I will be instructing and a few people have asked about the job. Here are some of the fun aspects of the job.
One of my must fly helicopters. This is the Eurocopter EC 120 departing from a helipad in Sydney, Australia. The EC 120 in my opinion is like the BMW 5series of the sky...a 3+ million dollar 5 series. A beautiful five passenger beast and soon to be my office. Sexy!!
Above is an EC 120 doing what is called auto rotation with power recovery followed by a full down auto rotation...or what most people would call a crash landing...without the crash. An auto rotation in plain speak is landing without power. This is an emergency procedure pilots practice over and over. Although for this practice excercize you hear the turbine engine running it is not powering the blades until the recovery or in the case of the full down auto no power is used. As long as the pilot keeps the ships' airspeed above aprox 60 knots a pilot can glide safely to almost any landing area.
This is excelent footage of a full down auto from the interior of an Robinson R44. The R44 is a larger version of the R22, the helicopter I currently train in. A side note the smaller a helicopter is the harder it is to fly.
This is just a gay ass video of some guy with his R44...however I'm man enough to say, "Yeah this shit does go through my mind though." (with much better music though)
Currently
listening
:
Hotel Costes, Vol. 9
By
Stphane Pompougnac
Release date: 28 September, 2006
The pet store was selling them for five cents a piece. I thought that odd since they were normally a couple thousand each. I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. I bought 200. I like monkeys.
I took my 200 monkeys home. I have a big car. I let one drive. His name was Sigmund. He was retarded. In fact, none of them were really bright. They kept punching themselves in their genitals. I laughed. Then they punched my genitals. I stopped laughing.
I herded them into my room. They didn't adapt very well to their new environment. They would screech, hurl themselves off of the couch at high speeds and slam into the wall. Although humorous at first, the spectacle lost its novelty halfway into its third hour.
Two hours later I found out why all the monkeys were so inexpensive: they all died. No apparent reason. They all just sorta' dropped dead. Kinda' like when you buy a goldfish and it dies five hours later. Damn cheap monkeys.
I didn't know what to do. There were 200 dead monkeys lying all over my room, on the bed, in the dresser, hanging from my bookcase. It looked like I had 200 throw rugs.
I tried to flush one down the toilet. It didn't work. It got stuck. Then I had one dead, wet monkey and 199 dead, dry monkeys.
I tried pretending that they were just stuffed animals. That worked for a while, that is until they began to decompose. It started to smell real bad.
I had to pee but there was a dead monkey in the toilet and I didn't want to call the plumber. I was embarrassed.
I tried to slow down the decomposition by freezing them. Unfortunately there was only enough room for two monkeys at a time so I had to change them every 30 seconds. I also had to eat all the food in the freezer so it didn't all go bad.
I tried burning them. Little did I know my bed was flammable. I had to extinguish the fire.
Then I had one dead, wet monkey in my toilet, two dead, frozen monkeys in my freezer, and 197 dead, charred monkeys in a pile on my bed. The odor wasn't improving.
I became agitated at my inability to dispose of my monkeys and to use the bathroom. I severely beat one of my monkeys. I felt better.
I tried throwing them way but the garbage man said that the city wasn't allowed to dispose of charred primates. I told him that I had a wet one. He couldn't take that one either. I didn't bother asking about the frozen ones.
I finally arrived at a solution. I gave them out as Christmas gifts. My friends didn't know quite what to say. They pretended that they like them but I could tell they were lying. Ingrates. So I punched them in the genitals.
I am not one to slam my favorite band...but....
Category: Music
Posted By:JEMIE
Get this video and more at MySpace.com ...this is actual video of the Hollywood Bowl Massive Attack show I was at. If you were around me at the time I saw it you know I thought it was Horrible!!! Who was that mouse voiced paper bag wearing freak? And I hope they fired their sound engineer. I know some people enjoyed the show...and to you people I ask..."what are you fucken deaf?" But they still are my favorite band and I hope they get the kinks worked out and come see us again soon.
bet you've never seen it...
Current mood: thankful
Massive Attack - "Protection
Yes all the original members are featured in this video. Robert Del Naja ("3D"), Grant Marshall ("Daddy G") and Andrew Vowles ("Mushroom") and of course the fellows borrowed Everthing But The Girls leading lady Tracey Thorn.
What an album...I remember where and when I first heard this track. It was Saturday December 24, 1995 around 7am. We were all at Ricky's loft in Venice. He and I had thrown another debacherous fest for Xmas...whew that was a crazy one. Dave Parker had been on the decks for hours...straight through sunrise...but it was time to chill it out. Dave shifted gears...you know the usual chill hits of time...a Banco De Gaya track...This Mortal Coils "Song Of The Siren", and a few other experimental tracks as well as that one track with the high eastern sounding voice that goes..."baapa bing bababa bing...baah do dah ding...ding...ding...ding"(if you were raving then... you know the one). Then it was like Dave had rehurst his exit. At the moment I was laying some affections on some cutie candy raver on the couch...Ricky was M.I.A. (big surprise)...when Dave picks up his records, hits play on the cd player, heads for the door, smiles and says "enjoy". Then there it was with all it's beauty. For hours we blissed...listening to it again and again...amazing that 10years later the song still carries the same impact. Like a true friend "Protection" and Massive Attack carried me through love, heart break, adventure and agony. Mmm good times.
Ten plus things I've taken for granted in the last 24 hours..
Current mood: guilty
Love
Water
Friends
Lost Love
My Life
Beauty
Scent Of A Woman
A Smile
My Family
Los Angeles
Fog
The Sky...not true...I will never be completly unaffected by the beauty of this abyss.
...dunno where this came from, but one thing is for sure if I did really appreciate these things instead of wallowing in this funk; today and everyday would be magic. So now I sleep...ready for tomorrow...for tomorrow anything is possible. So I will ask God to direct my attention at all the wonders I am surrounded with.
voluminous
bouncy
productive
thankful
guilty