Hm -- I'm in a bit of a rut, aren't I? Summary: "You've got to forgive your parents, for God's sake." You'd never guess this was year 1 of the empty next nest, would you? Mebbe some backwards glancing will gestate other thoughts.
- "Adulthood is overrated; maturity is underrated" -- Mike D considers post-Beastie Boy life. Sidenote: NYM has a fab annotation format to their interviews. I wish more outfits would use it. Heck, I wish I could use it.
- Another Mike D quote I'm mulling over: "When I grew up in New York, the city was unique in that you could get music from all over the world here. Now you can get any music you want on your phone and New York, or Manhattan anyway, seems a lot less diverse." Related: CDs & vinyl are outselling downloads -- not good news for the industry.
- "This was the era when documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman's Titicut Follies was such a devastating examination of the mental health system in Massachusetts that it was banned for over 20 years. This was the era of great academics like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn putting their careers on the line for the sake of protest. It was a swirling vortex of anger, class struggle, racial divisions, and ecstasy found through LSD, spiritual communes, the occult, and something in the music. Was it folk? Was it garage rock? Was it the proximity to New York City and Newport that spoke to the musicality of Boston?" -- "It" was Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, a legendary and magisterial talent's most legendary and magisterial work.
- "Please call us" -- this collection of classified ads from The San Francisco Oracle (1966-1969) does a terrific job of evoking the thrills, goofiness and heartbreak of that particular scene.
- There's nothing particularly revelatory in this Smithsonian puff-piece about "All in the Family" -- except, in my case, the YouTube clips of Archie tirades. As I watched, it suddenly struck me: "Oh my goodness -- I'm the same age as Archie Bunker!" One quick Google of Carroll O'Connor and nope: he and Jean Stapleton were, in fact, younger.
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| One more I'm not just getting older, I'm getting old moment. |
- Mennonite content: Mennonite woman snags best license plate ever! If you've got eyes for a comely/studly Menno but are not yet a member of the tribe, here is the deep inside track -- you will be expected to sing it at some larger gathering involving way too much food. Your cue, before reaching for the plate: "Alright, people: 606?"
‘Hymn 606’ we sang frequently at my childhood Baptist (‘Independent, Fundamental’) church, where it was just ‘the Doxology.’ Never attended a church where it was sung much after about age 11, but it’s deeply embedded.
ReplyDeleteFun to read this interminable entry of borrowed Anglican history, Thomas Ken’s life & times — I knew nothing about him — on a Mennonite web site. Best bit: ‘He left Winchester for a short time to be chaplain to the Princess Mary at the Hague, but was dismissed for his faithful remonstrance against a case of immorality at the Court, and returned to Winchester. A similar act of faithfulness at Winchester singularly enough won him his bishopric. He stoutly refused Nell Gwynne the use of his house, when Charles II. came to Winchester, and the easy king, either from humour or respect for his honesty, gave him not long afterwards the bishopric of Bath and Wells.’
I’ll have the hymnody please, thanks, and maybe some of that delicious-looking English settlement too — whoa, just a bite! Have to watch my figure you know …
Haha! Here's to easy kings with an abundance of either humour or respect.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, you’ve definitely drunk the Canada Kool-Aid. (Hell, I would too.)
ReplyDeleteLearning "God Save The Queen" at too tender an age warps the mind, there's no question.
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