Category Archives: History of the World, Part One
Dated Movies I Saw with my Parents in First-Run Theaters
Not counting kiddie stuff like Disney, but movies they actually wanted to see and I got swept up because I was too old for a sitter but too young for them to trust me unsupervised. Mostly those “awkward” years, you may remember from your own experience. Funny Girl (1968)–My mother adored Barbra Streisand, so when …
Two Japanese, Please
An interesting activity, sometimes, is to alternate reading between two short story collections by different authors who are similar but not the same. A good activity for a holiday afternoon when the weather outside is too dreary for other pursuits, and most places are closed down anyway. A day like today, in other words. Today …
What? And give up Show Business?!
Yes. Quite easily, in fact. There seems to be a general public consensus that certain occupations just don’t allow for people to gracefully exit. Musicians, for example. Any time I tell people that I have retired from the music business, I get the same wide-eyed response. “Really? But I bet you miss it. They say …
Mortality & The Melingers
If all goes according to plan, I will turn sixty this year. So I’m just now gaining a bit of perspective on this whole life/death thing. The presence of death becomes less theoretical as you begin to notice the people around you dropping like flies. One minute they’re there, and then…poof. No more! I don’t feel …
A Brief Mutual Stretcher History of my Brother and my Father
One of the more wonderful aspects of having lived through the 1960’s and 1970’s, if you were one of those fortunate enough to survive, is the ability to look back with some degree of perspective at a period that combined innocence and debauchery in equal parts. Consequently, our skill at rationalizing bad behavior for (perceived) positive results was unparalleled. Of …
My Life with Steve
I spent a fair chunk of the 1980’s living in Eugene, Oregon. It was a wonderful time of cooperative living, incessant rain, and eight dark years of Ronald Reagan as President. OK, maybe there were some issues, but by and large it was quite magical, as long as you never read a newspaper or watched the TV …
OK, so maybe I’m not always the World’s Best Dad.
I try, OK? And mostly succeed. But every now and then, I remember something that gives me a pang of guilt. A time when I could have been better, but just didn’t wannu. Here’s an example: when our daughters were around eleven years old, we found ourselves going to a lot of Bar & Bat …
The Death of Poker Night
Around 1975 or so, I lived at the Ark. Not the ‘two by two’ kind, but the housing cooperative of a hundred residents that was at 2000 Pearl here in Austin. The building is still there, and it’s still a housing co-op, but it’s no longer called the Ark. I hope to high heaven that none …
Thank You, Robert Fripp
Musical paths are meandering. The point is never the arrival, always the journey. And every musician can point to at least one event, and frequently several events, that spurred that journey onward. My first big push came from Robert Fripp. Or more accurately, his band King Crimson–whose first album I bought just because the cover looked interesting. …
saxsalon 