So what were crunchberries anyway?

Random....

Anyone else remember these?





The box described them as imitation berries. I've been in the Produce business for a long time and I've never seen an imitation berry tree...or maybe it's a bush..or a vine. Although I'm sure I had a crunch berry or two back in the day, I've got no remembrance of what they tasted like...at all. Anyone still have a box in the back of their cupboard that's been overlooked since the 70's?...probably taste the same as they would have 40 years ago.

How about this?



The vitamin powered sugary cereal. How many Guiding Stars would Hannaford rate this with, negative 2? I'm sure I made my Mom buy this for the free matchbox car that came inside. Now that was a free toy.

One more...and since we're in the Q's...



 Apparently Quisp was a quazy energy cereal.
...and the cosmic clouder that you could send away for looks like a fart gun. Whatever that is. I think I possibly just invented it.

Here's a Quisp and Quake combo commercial from the seventies...

I think I liked them because the reminded me of the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.
And not just those two...Boris Badenov and Natasha, oh, and don't forget Fearless Leader....Dudley Doo Right and Snidely Whiplash...Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman...Fractured Fairy Tales. That's some high quality TV you're talking about there son.

Since we're talking about popcorn...random, remember.
I just popped some for my lovely wife and two things came to mind.

one
The container that we keep our popcorn in is an old jug of some brand of popcorn that I'm sure is no longer in production. The top of the container has an expiration date on it of Dec 26, 1998. That makes that container oh, about 14 years old. We must really like that container.

two
I had to melt some butter, so I have this awesome routine of cutting a few slices of stick butter (you can use any brand, but we prefer Kate's 100% pure butter - sea salted...ok watch the royalties pour in on that one), set the microwave for 1 minute...put it on 50% power, then hit go (can you tell I've done this a few times?). Go to the silverware drawer...no knives. Aha, the dishwasher just got done...pull out the knife you use ...and it was literally like a warm knife through butter, because, well, it was a warm knife cutting through butter. How many times does an analogy really apply in real life?

Here's a picture of my popcorn popper...



Looks like a consolation prize from the Let's Make a Deal

Monty Hall: "Alright Pete, do you want to take this wad of bills in my right hand or take a chance for what's under this cardboard box that Carol Merrill is holding ?"

The Audience: "Take the money...take the money...take the money!!!"

Pete: "I think I'll take my chance on the box".



Nobody can say I didn't rock the costume. I went as my 10th grade German teacher.



Getting late...let's go down one more road.

I've been to lot's of outdoor parties, picnics, cookouts etc, this Summer. While they've all been great, the best gathering is going to be the one when someone digs out that cobweb covered box of jarts from the back of the garage...and we play. To the death. That party will kick it.




Looks dangerous, don't they?

For those of you under, say, oh I don't know, maybe 30, let me explain jarts to you.



Picture heavily weighted metal projectiles with a fine steel point on them being tossed about twenty-five feet towards a plastic ring with a circumference of about 2 1/2 feet. Oh, and picture your opponent standing next to that plastic ring (or your team mate and your opponent if you were playing doubles, and you were always playing doubles, because EVERYONE wanted in on a game of jarts). One of the finer points of jarts was to be as nonchalant as possible as that death device was hurtling towards you. Many a sneaker was punctured or pair of shorts was ripped because of your refusal to give an inch as the jart was zeroing in on you. Jarts never ended well because of two things that were also part of every jarts game, and not neccesarily in this order...alcohol and testosterone. Most games of jarts (and by most I mean every) devolved into throwing your  missile intentionaly at your opponent, or even better, your team mate.

This is how you knew when the game was over




Good times my friends. Good times.

Anywho...I think I hear a box of Freakies cereal calling my name from somewhere behind that popcorn container from 1998. I hope there's still that free magnet inside the box.




Peace out.

I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore...

This , my friends, is how it's done

Unfortunately this is how it's usually done

I don't do mad well. I wish I did. This guy did it well. The next scene in the movie is people all over the country opening up the their windows and shouting "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore" because they were mad as hell and they weren't going to take this anymore.

He motivated people when he got mad.

When I get mad I get incoherent and speak like a ten year old...that curses. I curse a lot when I get mad. I lose my trademark calm demeanor.

An old friend once told me that the phrase that best described me was  "still waters run deep".

I always liked that. I liked that it was my description. I liked it better than, oh, I don't know,...something like "a wet blanket" or "fixed in your ways" or some other phrase to not be proud of. But "still waters run deep" obviously doesn't work for anger now does it? Perhaps something like "rough waters" or "danger Will Robinson" or "shark!, shark!"

Someone told me that when I do get angry it's "really effective" (obviously said by someone that didn't want to piss me off) because I hardly ever get mad. I don't buy it. If I was "really effective" when I got mad, I would feel better after I did it. Right? Wouldn't I?

I should feel good, shouldn't I ?

Maybe that's the problem. Not only do I not do mad well, I don't even like to get mad. Why would I? The definition of mad is "disordered in mind". That doesn't sound to good. Another definition is "completely unrestrained by reason and judgement". That's sounds pretty sucky too. If it doesn't make you feel good, then why do it? I usually feel worse after getting mad. Which then leads to an apology. Which kind of ruins the whole mad thing in the first place.

I think some people do mad well. There was that psycho homeroom teacher I had my first year of middle school. He got mad. A lot. I think he was a bit of a sadist. Actually I think he was criminally insane

Maybe his shoes were two sizes too small. Nope, that was the grinch...and even he came around at the end. I don't think this guy ever came around.

So maybe I shouldn't feel bad about not doing a good job at being mad.

It's a lose lose situation, don't you think?

I can't help but be a decent human being.

Let others be mad. If they're mad they probably deserve the feelings that follow.

What goes around comes around.

Do to others as you would have them do to you.

That's the golden rule, right?

...or is it polly wally doodle all the day. I forget.

...and where is the harmony?

Sweet harmony



Put your big toe in the milk of human kindess

Four and a half hour ride to New York today. Seven hours total car time.


This is what I listened to (with captions where warranted, or a select lyric, or a remembrance or whatever mood strikes me)

• 7:00 AM - Say my good byes..a little to early for the "good stuff" so I listen to local radio while I nurse my coffee...sports talk radio, oldies, mostly channel surfing...skipping all commercials and any horrifically scripted "banter" from any of those morning shows. The names are always a sure sign of future lameness to be heard...Dr. Johnny Fever, Venus Fly Trap, Bailey Quarters, oh, wait..nevermind

• 7:45..coffee's done, entering New Hampshire. You thought the Maine dj's were bad...now we're picking on all the "crazy" Boston morning shows. Time to hook up the ipod

This is what ensued....
(most of you will know some of these...some of you will know most of these..a few of you won't have a clue, but that's clearly your probem, not mine). If you don't know a song, please, please, search it out. Consider this my gift of music to you

Oh, and this is verified by my going through the playlists on my ipod that I selected while I'm typing this from room 5** in the Hampton Inn on Wolf Road in Albany NY

Here we go....I'll keep this up until I tire out

• Home At Last - Steely Dan (smart song by a smart band)
• Stitched Up - John Mayer (the only John Mayer song I have on my ipod...unless my youngest somehow slipped in the Curious George theme song)
• Take Five - Dave Brubeck (my kind of cool jazz..almost hypnotic)
• That's The Way I've Always Heard it Should Be - Carly Simon (dysfunctional family song at it's best.. "The children hate them for the things they're not...they hate themselves for what they are"...) strong stuff
• More Than This - Roxy Music (not my favorite Roxy music song on not my favorite Roxy music album, hey)
• The Way - Fastball (great "Alternative Pop" song from the late 90's - love the chorus...a great chorus makes for a great song...chorus kicks in at 1:11 if you don't want to wait for it)

Give it a listen...

• Positively 4th Street - Bob Dylan ("You've got a lot of nerve, to say you are my friend...")
• I Like to Sleep Late in the Morning - David Bromberg (Nice hangover song)
• Boom Boom - John Lee Hooker (boom boom boom boom)

         

• Temptation Eyes - The Grass Roots (looking through my my my my eyes)..the repeat is always a nice touch as well
• Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves - Cher (I'm a sucker for 70's pop..as this list will surely proove out)
• For You Blue - Beatles ("...because you're sweet an lovely girl, I love you") Don't you love a good George song?

          

• Little Martha - Allman Brothers (nice southern instrumental that makes me smile)
• Let Your Love Flow - Bellamy Brothers (not really brothers (I don't think), but do you need to be brothers to write a catchy song?)
• Rock The Boat - Hues Corporation ("Well I'd like to know where you got the notion"...) reference my comment four songs back

            

• Wishing You Were Here - Chicago w/ the Beach Boys singing harmony (During a recent walk I realized how much I like songs with horns in it...that's where the idea for this blog originated. I was going to call it "Horny Music"...bet that would have got a lot of hits)
• Tennesee Jed - Levon Helm (Love this. If I was in a band this is the kind of band I'd want to be in. If I wrote music, this is the kind of music I'd like to write. If I wasn't such a schmuck I would have travelled to Woodstock to see Levon Helm preform this at one of his legendary Midnight Rambles before he passed away. This is actually a Grateful Dead song, but Levon's version is the one for me. I couldn't have been in the Grateful Dead...I could have been in Levon's band. Did I mention I love this?

Here it is

I've listened to this three times while writing the blog

• Uneasy Rider - Charlie Daniels Band (clever as hell.."Well you may not know it but this man's a spy. He's an undercover agent for the FBI and he's been sent down here to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan"...)
• (Thursday) Here's Why I Did Not Go to Work Today - Harry Nilsson (This is great.."Thursday's surreptitiously unique" Who the hell uses the word "surreptitiously"...Harry Nillson, that's who. Genius.)

         

• Santeria - Sublime (Love the feel of this song, but God's honest truth, after hearing it a few hundred times, I can still not get the words right when I sing along to it...oh, and I do.)
• Treat Her Like Lady - Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose (you read that right...great pop song from the 70's) 
• Love is Like a Rock - Donnie Iris (You can't beat a nice guitar lick)

          

• Waterloo - Abba (I don't know how that one got in there)
• Badge - Cream (doing a George Harrison song. Classic)
• Take Five - Dave Brubeck ( repeat, but I listened to it again just the same)
• Israelites - Desmond Dekker (maybe the first reggae song that ever got radio airplay...if you like Bob Marley, try this on for size)
• Hocus Pocus - Focus (I'm sure I've referenced this before..as a matter of fact I know I have with a video link...cool freak out whistling song)

• The Wheel - Jerry Garcia ("...if the thunder don't get you then the lightning will"...)
• Midnight at the Oasis - Maria Muldaur (this one might make it on every playlist I create...could possibly be the most played song on my ipod)
• New England - Modern Lovers - ("I've seen old Israel's arid plains...it's magnificent, but so's Maine"...)
• Put Your Big Toe in the Milk Of Human Kindness - Elvis Costello ("but always so capricious, in the face of wonder we're suspicious, and though we came from frogs and fishes"...don't you love Elvis?)

           

• I Got a Line on You - Spirit (One of the great opening riffs in popular music)
• New Coat of Paint - Tom Waits ("Let's put a new coat of paint on this lonesome old town"...doesn't get much better)
• Keep Me in Your Heart - Warren Zevon ("Shadows are falling and I'm running out of breath. Keep me in your heart for awhile". Not the last time I'll say this to anyone that will listen...play this at my funeral...please.)

I think those got me across the Mass pike into NY. Those plus a wheel gripping pit stop when the (Holy shit there is the biggest, fastest spider crawling up my hotel room wall...oh, he just disappeared behind a mirror...I'll be safe until I fall asleep and he crawls into my bed) morning sky turned midnight black, the rains opened up so much that cars either pulled over (which didn't seem safe) or slowed down to about 25mph (which also didn't feel safe). I was halfway between rest stops when the downpour came, so I pushed through about ten miles and then pulled into a rest stop and waited it out for a half hour. When I got back on the road there was a surreal feel for the next few miles...signs that all sorts of madness had occurred during the storm. I came across a dead cow in the passing lane of the turnpike...how it got there I haven't a clue...my guess is was peacefully chewing some cud out in a field when it got picked up by a funnel and was deposited a few miles away. Just up the road was a fifty foot pine tree split clean down the middle blazing in a fire to beat the band. Mayhem in Massachusetts.

Well, I got you to New York with me, now that's enough. If this list (christ, he wrote another list, didn't he?) gets you to listen to at least one of these songs that you didn't know or hadn't heard in ages, then I'll consider this a success. If you did, let me know which one...I'd love to know. 

Peace and love.

I hope the good guys win.

I Buried Paul

..actually I didn't.

Paul McCartney is still alive. As a matter of fact Paul turns 70 this week. You heard me, or actually, you read that right. 70.

This is the cover to this week's Time magazine.



70 is impressive. Think of some 70 year olds. How do they match up against Paul McCartney? There are some tortoises that don't live to be 70. Some of my favorite people are over 70...but they don't give two and a half hour concerts like Paul still does. If you lined up 70 Paul McCartneys you'd have a football field...including the end zones. 70 is the benchmark for mental retardation on an IQ test...keep that in mind if you ever take one. Thirty five states have speed limits of 70mph. My state is not one of them.

...but I digress.

Back to Sir Paul.

That reference of "I buried Paul" should be crystal clear to my friends over 40...understood by my friends over 30...and vaguely familiar to my friends over 20, if you had parents that are as cool as me. For the 20 year olds with uncool parents (and those of you that are older but have been buried under a rock for your entire existence), here's a very brief explanation of that reference.



In October 1969, a rumor spread through the world that Paul was dead. The story was based on "clues" that the Beatles put on their records and album sleeves, that Paul had been killed in a car accident in November 1966. He was replaced by a look a like who was handsomely rewarded if he would shed his former life and "become" Paul. Rumor has it, he did.

(By the way, there's no way you would know this, but I just walked into the kitchen and opted for another beer...this could start to get really good, or go horribly downhill...we'll see).

The "most famous clue" comes at the end of Strawberry Fields Forever. The Paul is dead freaks claim John is saying "I buried Paul"...What John is saying is actually "Cranberry Sauce", which , of course makes perfect sense.

Except that it makes no sense at all.

Oh wait, it was the Sixties. I guess it makes all the sense in the world.

All I can say is that those recreational drugs must have been wonderful things.

Enjoy this whole thing, then pay attention at 3:57 and you tell me what you think John says....and the first one of you that comes up with John is saying, "Pompatus of Pete" gets snubbed by me the next time I see you. And probably the time after that too.

There's about 112 million other clues that support the Paul is Dead hoax. Look them up on the internet...or ask Joe Duley, I'm pretty sure he knows them all. (Dining with the Duley's - WMPG 90.9 - Tuesdays at 7:30 PM...give them a listen...you'll thank me).

Paul was in my favorite band (no, not Wings). But he wasn't my favorite member of that band. Despite that, I've seen Paul twice, the last time at Fenway Park , and no one but Paul ever had 33 hits in Fenway Park in one night (cue the rimshot)



I've seen Ringo once. It was in the first iteration of his All Star band. I think it was some field in New Hampshire...I remember making a trail to park my car through grass so tall I couldn't see beyond the front of said car. It was reminiscent of a scene from Children of the Corn. Anyway.... It truly was an all star line up..Joe Walsh..Nils Lofgren...Dr. John...Billy Preston...Rick Danko...Levon Helm...Clarence Clemons.

Oh, and Ringo.

If you don't know those names, shame on you...but there's still hope. We live in the computer age. Google those names, check out the bands they were once in, then go to youtube and experience them old school (in a not so old school kind of way).


Or better yet, dust off that old record player, ask your big brother...or crazy uncle..or your Dad (only if he was cool, remember?) for some of their albums, drop the needle on the vinyl, sit back, and enjoy.

...don't mean to get to far off course, but trust me, this all ties together....the best..I mean all time best drop the needle on vinyl sit back and enjoy moment..is without a doubt track one side one (and for you kids, I know this all seems very quaint) of the White album. The song is Back in the USSR and the sound of that jet flying overhead before the song kicks in, and I do mean KICKS IN is the best thing ever. No lie. It's the truth.

Ok, let me push my glasses back up the bridge of my nose, adjust my pocket protector, and get back to finishing this thing off.

I guess seeing Paul twice vs. Ringo once is about the correct equation....unfortunately I didn't see John Lennon three times or George Harrison four. That would truly have been the correct ratio.

Enough of this rubbish. Paul McCartney is no more dead than Shirley Temple, Don Rickles, or Abe Vigoda.

   

...and that's a fact Jack.

Peace.

Starry Starry Night

Here's starry night by Van Gogh



Isn't that something? I saw this at the Yale Museum of Art quite a few years ago. It really is something else.

Just to prove I have no clue what I'm going to write about before I start, I was going to call this post "Where's all the white women at?"

That's from some movie that I don't even remember (someone google it for me and let me know), but for some reason it's been stuck in my mind for a couple of days. It makes me smile everytime. Juvenile, I know, but just the same, it makes me smile.

...nevermind, I just did. Blazing Saddles.

That's some good shi*t right there. (Look at me editing my own blogs, who am I worrying about offending? I'm going to post a blog sometime that is rife with curse words and all sorts of vulgar language and inappropriate behavior. I'll title that one "Mom, Don't read this one.")

So back to this blog...

I started thinking about this when I was mowing my lawn this morning. I was thinking how people (you know who you are) always say to me, after sharing an experience with them, "You'll have to blog about this", or "Am I going to read about this in your next blog?"...sorry , it don't work that way. Actually, it just sort of did, didn't it?

No, the way it works is I think about something that sticks with me for awhile...it might be a word, or a phrase, or a song, or a memory, or a smell..you get the picture. Usually that thing is just the jumping off point (Like Starry Night). I never know where it's going to come from. So asking me to write about something is like asking a magician to show you a trick, or asking a comedian to tell you or joke, or asking a caddie to wash your balls...well, maybe not that last one.

So then I started playing with some other ideas....

I was thinking of some sort of fictionalized story about an ancestor of mine, Sarah Wildes.

Sarah was hung for being a witch during the Salem witch trials back in 1692. This is true.

The fictionalization would not have been. Basically it would have been a litany of lies strung together to make a story. Not sure if fiction is really my strength or not, but I've dabbled in it with some success before.

Anyone remember these?

http://pompatusofpete.blogspot.com/2012/03/my-day-with-christopher-walken-part-one.html

and

http://pompatusofpete.blogspot.com/2012/04/my-day-with-christopher-walken-part-two.html

now that's fiction.

I also was thinking about the time I was in a car (and I've alluded to this one before) with two friends and we drove it under and 18 wheeler and got wedged underneath it...but I don't think my Mom is ready for that one yet either.

Then there are the reminiscing blogs that I revert to once in awhile. My youngest daughter turning ten this week got me thinking about that. But who wants to hear about watching the Carol Burnett show on Saturday nights while our parents were down at the Men's Club dance (Men's Club!)

...getting pulled on a skateboard while hanging on to a twenty foot rope tied to the back of your best friends bike...or even better, just by your best friend.

....being allowed to go to the A&W and ordering your meal by picking up the phone that was in your booth, connecting to their switchboard operator, then having the little orange light on the top of the phone come on until your order was done (man, that root beer that was served in those frosty mugs was the best)

....or how everyone had a speedometer (and an odometer) on their ten speeds and you would make up crazy things like seeing who could work up the best speed - usually starting at the top of some hill - then racing down said hill - and you'd have to stop pedaling when you got to THAT telephone pole - and you'd see who could go the farthest just by coasting - and when you'd almost come to a stop you'd start moving your handlebars back and forth trying to coax those extra inches out of your ride because winning meant everything back then.

Who wants to hear about those things? Me, that's who

...but that's for another time as well.

This blog was about Starry Night...or was it?

one more thing...

Starry, starry night.

Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer's day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.

Peace out.

Fifty Shades of Pete

This is genius....

Lickety splitly? I don't really know, but it might even be lickety splickly...which would make it even better. The album cover captures the whole feel of this song. Please.
The Eagles covered this...made it into white bread..and had a hit. You don't beat this.

By the way, if you didn't know, that's Tom Waits

Oh, and here's the album cover...

Feeling it now?

Don't you just love it when you come across something written that just strikes a chord (so to speak) with you? A song, a book, a poem, a sentence, one word. Maybe even in some Bizarro World alternate Universe sort of way, a blog.

Here's some things that struck me...through the years....and probably not in any type of historical order

The Phantom Tollbooth

I friggin' loved this book when I was a kid. Must have been eight or nine or ten when I read it. I can still picture lounging in the living room...with the orange carpeting (that is still there nearly forty years later), mostly on the couch, my dog Duke hanging nearby, completely immersing myself in this. The living room was the room that didn't have a tv..the tv was in the den. The den. Does anyone have den's anymore?

It was loaded with puns...and metaphors...and idioms and the like. Heady stuff for a kid from Sunset Park. Great illustrations. There was even a map! A map that I frequently referred back to as I followed Milo on his adventures. Unfortunately I've failed passing the fondness for this down generationally. I bought it for my oldest when she was that age...I don't think she ever read it. As a matter of fact, it may have been "donated" now that she is an adult to her little sister....and if I'm imagining that, then frig it, I'm going to the library and taking it out, For MYSELF!, They don't know what they are missing.

Rebecca

I stole the famous first line of this novel as the title of the second post I ever created. That line is an iambic hexameter. Look it up if you don't believe me. I'll wait for you.

Here it is...

http://pompatusofpete.blogspot.com/2011/09/last-night-i-dreamt-i-went-to-manderlay.html

This is the infamous "titstick" blog. Lot's of people have told me they liked this one. I do too.

Anyway, Rebecca. I actually read this in a high school English class. Murder, mystery, atmosphere, great characters and plot. I know what you're thinking by that cover...Harlequin Romance..all it's missing is Fabio on the cover. Well, you're wrong. Do yourself a favor, read this book.

Oh, and Alfred Hithcock made it into a movie. It won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1940. For real. You can take that Fabio now and shove it.

Slaughterhouse Five

My favorite book by my favorite author. All time. Forever. Always.

This is the book that introduced me to Vonnegut, led to reading many many more. Others are good, even a few I'd call great ..but this is the one.

This also has an alternate title, which is,

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death, by Kurt Vonnegut, a Fourth-Generation German-American Now Living in Easy Circumstances on Cape Cod [and Smoking Too Much], Who, as an American Infantry Scout Hors de Combat, as a Prisoner of War, Witnessed the Fire Bombing of Dresden, Germany, ‘The Florence of the Elbe,’ a Long Time Ago, and Survived to Tell the Tale. This Is a Novel Somewhat in the Telegraphic Schizophrenic Manner of Tales of the Planet Tralfamadore, Where the Flying Saucers Come From. Peace.

That second title gives you a flavor for the type of writer Vonnegut was.

Oh, and I've liberally stolen his writing style and have now made it my own. I unabashedly admit to it.

So it goes.

(There,  I just did it).

Plainsong

The style of this writer made this one of the easiest, most engrossing books I've ever read. Simple plot, nice character development, incredible scene settings...this is a book that you totally visualize as you read it. A can't put it down, can't wait to pick it up book. Easily the best book I've read in the last five years. Didn't hurt that it was read on Peaks Island, mostly early mornings sitting outside on the deck. Just me, the book, a couple of cups of coffee, and the view looking across to Little Diamond Island

Here was my view

Friggin' Heaven.

Oh, and let's not forget this one

The Amityville Horror

This book scared the hell out of me when I was , oh, I'd say, about 13 years old. If memory serves me, it was written at about a third grade level in BIG FONTS.

I'm sure I don't have to tell any of you (well, maybe the kids), but it was the story of a family that moved into a house on Long Island where a family had been killed by the prior owner. All kinds of crazy shit happened in the house...bleeding walls, ceramic figures that bit you, the feeling of people hugging you, and something about flies...lot's of flies. For a 13 year old, this was pretty heady stuff, since it was all "true". I remember my best friend had a paper route and I used to go "collecting" with him. That's how it was done, back in the day. There was a house that resembled the Amityville house, with the devil eye windows, that we refused to go to, somehow the courage was mustered when delivering the paper in the morning, but we never approached it at night. I guess this meant about a years worth of free papers for the folks that lived there.

Don't now why my font changed there...must have something to do with the memory of that house.

Here's a picture of the house that creeped us out back then...

I guess it's not so bad now...but can you see the windows?

I'll stop there. That's five. Not an official countdown.

...but I'm running out of steam.

So for now..another steal from Kurt.

Peace.





This is not me, anymore...

alas, I am no longer a young dude.

...and I don't know when it happened, well, not really.

It just seemed to happen fast.

The clues have been there for awhile, but now there's no doubt. I'm an old dude.

Two years ago I was driving back from Bar Harbor with two co-workers. It was December 8th. For those of you over 40, I probably don't have to tell you the signifigance of that day. For those of you under 40.....read on.

Watching the Wheels by John Lennon comes on. (The lyrics are very appropriate for the theme of this post by the way).
So I announce to the car, "Hey do you know what day it is?"
....crickets

I say, "Something big happened 30 years ago today."
...no clue.

"December 8th, 1980...." I say in a leading sort of way. The way they used to say "cuuup" for the clue on Password when the answer was "cake."
Silence.

Me..."This was the day John Lennon was killed. Thirty years ago today. How do you not know that?" Me, to my co-worker in the back of the car, "Tom, how old were you when Lennon was shot?"
Tom, "I was negative six years old."

So it goes.




I went to a retirement party this week for a friend that had worked for the same company for 31 years. 31 years for the same company and now she was retiring, albeit at early age, as far as retirement ages go. That's impressive. 31 years.
Until I realized I've worked there for 32 .


I'm at the point where I need to start smelling the roses...where my company should be naming things after me in my honor (like the Pompatus of Pete cafeteria)...where I should be taking long weekends and working shorter hours. Unfortunately I don't see that in my immediate future.

I'm closer to retirement age than I am to the age when I graduated from high school. I know this because I have my 30th high school reunion coming up this year. God knows, if I'm still working 30 years from today, then something has gone horribly wrong.
What do you even do at a 30th reunion?....at the 10th you drink beer and act stupid...at the 20th you drink wine and show pictures of your kids...at the 25th it's mixed drinks and bragging about your successes...and the 30th, I'm guessing protein drinks and lot's of talking about surgeries.

Probably not for me.

Now if the venue gets changed to somewhere in the woods off of Stillman Street, and they hand you a solo cup when you get there, and the only beverage served is beer from a keg...
....then I might reconsider.



I might be getting old...but that doesn't keep me from acting juvenile.

As Pete Townshend (who also shares my birthday, but has me beat by about twenty years) wrote in the famous Who song..

I don't want to cause no fuss, but can I buy your magic bus?

(not the one you thought, was it?)

Now go take a nap.