Late Boomer's Den

  • We Didn’t Start the Fire – but it was still a really fun way to sell history

    Beau of the Fifth Column gives his take on Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” as a gift to public school teachers.

    I was a big Billy Joel fan who kinda felt like he lost his way with An Innocent Man, even though it had a lot of hits. Another classic rock guy who crashed into New Wave.

    First time I heard Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” I thought, “Hey, return to form.” I will still defend Billy Joel to any music hipster who comes at me, but I wasn’t empressed with the other songs on Storm Front (Hmm. Unfortunate album title nowadays…)

    But I still love that single. It deserved to be a smash hit. It made an important subject fun to a lot of people, which is the first step toward making them curious.

    I just discovered a fun video of Beau of the Fifth Column doing a version of that song that mentions other world events. Excellent idea. Way more history took place during the Cold War than could ever go into one song. You could make a million just like it.

    I got C’s in most of my History classes even though it was a minor, but I couldn’t resist a great story, though I had a hell of a time remembering when they happened for the test. I’m still glad I took those classes. Knowing history is a great way to guess the future.

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  • Coming to terms with the unknowable

    Ever think how lost you’d be if you really went inside one of these things? I can barely find my way out of a parking garage.

    Just watched a cool documentary on Netflix, A Trip to Infinity, for a second time. I love it because it’s about my favorite subject: how little I know.

    The more I learn, the more mysterious the world becomes. That thought gives me the same tingle I get when a song moves me or I really gazed into the sky?

    Infinity is difficult for me to grasp – some infinities are bigger than others… Say what? I am attracted to the concept nevertheless. Rudy Rucker’s science fiction novel, White Light was a great exploration of the topic.

    Rucker is mostly known for his Ware tetrology (which I loved), but if you’ve never read White Light, you’re missing out. It’s so fun.

    White Light follows a man on a trip through infinity. Rucker is actually a mathematician, so he knows what he’s talking about. And I didn’t have to solve for X once.

    They move me, those mysteries. And I get the suspicion that certain people touch it, just a little – poets, artists, astrophysicists, quantum physicists, mathematicians. When I think about these topics, feels like there’s a world beyond the world. It may be no more than a feeling, but it’s enough to give me that tingle.

    As a young man I was extremely optimistic about what science could discover. I read a lot of sci fi and many of those crazy tales seemed truly possible – someday. Absolute Truth was out there and we’d find it eventually. I didn’t really think it through, I just kind of left it on the table.

    Now I understand there are some things beyond the reach of science, where math fails, logic fails, and we’re left to guess, no way to verify. Some things are just unknowable and that’s that.

    Conway’s Game of Life helped me to be OK with that. It’s a game with simple rules, that produce extremely complicated effects. If you want to experiment it, you can do it here: https://playgameoflife.com. (It works best on a PC or a laptop.)

    You can do some pretty impressive stuff with it. There’s a whole community of hobbiests out there, exploring the possibilities. I’ve managed to create a few gliders by accident. I’ll never do anything on this level:

    Hard as that was to grasp at first, the fact that some patterns that leave the screen could last infinitely while others may just last a very long time – but you cannot know.

    I was in awe when it finally clicked. If some things are beyond scientists and mathematicians to solve – consciousness for example – there’s always room for a little spooky stuff.

    I love pondering those spooky questions. Where is math located? Are there other dimensions of reality and if so can we touch them? Makes me wish I’d had better math teachers in 3rd grade.

    That doesn’t mean I believe every tall tale I hear, or make up in my head. One of my most meaningful discoveries has been just how powerful and irrational the human mind can be. I suspect some pretty wild things, but I will never say I know.

    However New Agey I might come across sometimes, I should mention that I don’t believe EVERYTHING is possible.

    The ground exists, for us puny humans at least. I have to eat food and drink water. That’s why I’m very comfortable stating “I don’t know.”

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  • Long live rock be it dead or alive

    Skating Polly – They’re Cheap (I’m Free)

    I’m behind the curve as always, but as you get on in years you have to be a little more choosy. Just discovered Skating Polly – young people doing rock just like the good old days.

    Skating Polly – Hickey King

    Rock was life from the ’70s through at least half the ’90s. And by rock I mean rock. Rock as I defined it – meaning it had to ROCK. Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and Judas Priest were gods to me, if that gives you an idea. Glad to see the spirit is still alive.

    A lot great rock songs had lines about how rock was never gonna die. I used to believe it too. But at some point it felt like it really did kind of die. What I heard wasn’t exciting me anymore, and it seemed like the world stopped caring.

    I branched out into every kind of music imaginable, starting with the blues – not a big stretch there, since that’s where Zeppelin got their whole schtick.

    I have a lot of listening options, but I still get excited to see this stuff still being made. There are a lot of kids keeping it alive. The kids who cover Tool songs are pretty amazing. Glad to see the art is still being taught. Maybe these kids will grow up and create music of their own.

    Kids Cover – 46 and 2 by Tool

    Now I think of it, maybe these kids will go on to form their own bands, avoid all that tech that takes the punch out of everything, and ROCK.

    Now I have to indulge my nostalgia:

    The Who – Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll

    AC/DC – Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution

    Triumph – Rock ‘n’ Roll

    Led Zeppelin – Rock and Roll

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  • Mispronouncing Dvorak

    Dvorak – Slavonic Dance Number 2. My favorite of the Slavonic Dances, some of my favorite pieces of classical music.

    Mispronouncing Dvorak is not a hit with the ladies. I have several senses of humors, one of them being to play dumb on purpose to annoy people.

    If people think I’m dumb, but since I know I’m joking, it’s funny to me…

    I used to torture my mom by pronouncing classical composers’ names wrong on purpose: Prokofiev like “Proko-feev,” Dvorak like “Dizz-vorzhak,” Tchaikovsky like “Chis-kowsky.”

    It pissed her off because I listened to the stuff all the time with Dad and she knew I knew better. She still corrected me, just like, pissed off.

    It was funny to me… Tried that routine on a date once. It was not a hit.

    My wife is still annoyed at me because I got her to mispronounce Dvorak when she first met my mom. “Gets a reaction every time,” I said.

    Mom said nothing. She was being polite to my new girlfriend.

    “Just think,” I said this morning, “Mom went to her grave thinking you pronounced it Dizz-vorzhak.”

    It was not a hit.

    Anyway the joke’s on me, because I apparently don’t and never will say Dvorak right since I’m not Czech and already have my hands full learning Spanish.

    How Czechs say Dvorak

    So Duh-vorzhak it is. (Unless you’re my wife. Then it’s gonna be Dizz-vorzhak on purpose.)

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  • Remembering characters from the old Baptist church…

    I was a very religious Baptist when I was young. These days I’m “spiritual but not religious” and I’m much happier. The type of Christianity I learned was really bad for my mental health. I don’t think it’s been especially great for society either.

    However, I have to give some of my former co-religionists their due. It WAS a culture, and culture is important. It becomes part of your identity. I can say from personal experience that leaving a culture is not easy.

    The little church I went to last was like an extended family and an interesting cast of characters:

    • The bossy and very proper lady who prayed in Old English.
    • The old farmer with the W.C. Fields nose who could outwork any 20-year-old.
    • The educated eccentric who heckled the preacher and got away with it.
    • The demure teenage girl I crushed on but was too shy to ask out.
    • The sweet old lady who would make you a pie if you helped her sing her late husband’s favorite hymn.
    • The lady who listed all her ailments if you accidentally said “How are you?” (Doh!).
    • The former preacher who you prayed wouldn’t do the closing prayer because he would try to pray a sermon… (Dear God please no, there’s a roast in the oven!)
    • The man who got killed by two hitchhikers who took his shotgun away from him during a robbery and he was too tender-hearted to use it on them. And his widow went to see them in jail and forgave them!
    • And of course, the gossipy hardshell types, though they tended to go to their spite church whenever they got mad at the preacher. (They gave the rest of us something to gossip about.)

    I might have changed drastically from the boy I was, but you can’t run away from memories like that.

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  • Gimme back my bike! (living on someone else’s ranch kinda sucks)

    Part 4 of 4

    After my landlord died, things changed at the ranch. His widow was nice enough. But she had a business in town and wasn’t around much. The grown daughter began handling the ranch’s affairs.

    And it seemed that she didn’t like me much. More attitude than before. I suspected it was because she was friends with the people who ran the competing paper. Anyway, she started to come across like a bit of a bully.

    Little indignities reminded me where I stood. Like when the pool man who was on drugs loaded up everything of value he could find and pawned it. Power tools, lawn equipment, electronics – and my bicycle. And I wasn’t allowed to have friends over…

    The sheriff’s department found everything, including my bike, at a pawn shop. The owners and the “important renters” in another outbuilding got their valuables back. Guess who didn’t get his bike back? The Sheriff’s Office was “going to get back to me,” then quit returning my calls.

    Or when the “important” renters decided my place was quaint and they wanted it. Didn’t matter what I wanted, because they had more money and got their last name from the founder of a Texas county.

    The daughter moved into the ranch house and I had to pack up all my stuff and move into the outbuilding where she’d been living.

    First night I got eaten up by fleas. Took two bug bombs. She’d left the place dirty and hadn’t moved anything out. That pissed me off. I decided not to clean the place I’d been renting until she cleaned hers, but she never did.

    Instead she gossiped about how messy I was till I got wind of it. I called her and said my name was on the lease. If she had a problem she could call me. By then I didn’t care. I was already looking for another place.

    I managed to score a garage apartment from former co-worker and it was sayonara rich bitch!

    The new pad had its own flaws, but the landlords left me alone. All they asked for was the rent. I liked renting from the upper middle class much better.

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  • Sike! No handshake from me plebe! (living on someone else’s ranch kinda sucks)

    Part 3 of 4

    The landlord was rich, and not really a rancher – he wanted a ranch you could mow with a riding lawnmower – but he had a few goats. He was a cool guy in his way. He also had terminal prostate cancer.

    He was kind of arrogant as you might expect, but he was cool in his way. He and I used to talk a lot. He was a retired engineer who had designed some kind of a bomb that helped us win WWII.

    We worked out a deal where I could pay less rent if I cleaned the bugs off his Cessna and lopped off cedar trees. Turned out to be a mistake. It was subtle, but I noticed that he and his family became a little more condescending.

    I told them I was getting too busy at the paper to do those chores, so I would pay the full amount again. That seemed to fix the problem. I knew they still thought they were better than me, but they pretended harder.

    Once, the landlord took me up in his Cessna. That was pretty cool. We went to a little private airport where he met for coffee with his rich friends. I did not like his friends.

    A few of them shook my hand until my landlord said I was his tenant – and the next guy gave me the old yank the hand back “I’m not shaking your dirty hand!” move. I noticed. How I remained a Republican for so long after that is beyond me. What interests did we have in common?

    But I still believed in Ronald Reagan and I didn’t know what else to be yet.

    I still went to the landlord’s office to pay the rent sometimes. I enjoyed his WWII stories. I didn’t enjoy all his opinions, but he helped win the war, plus he was dying of cancer, so I said nothing.

    Anyway, I missed the old man and missed our chats after he was gone. Especially since I’d gotten busy at work and his passing caught me off guard. Cancer doesn’t wait till you have a moment.

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  • You tell ’em Henry Rollins

    Henry Rollins – Punk Rock Hyenas

    I’ve always gotten a kick out of Henry Rollins’ storytelling. He’s smart and he’s on top of things. I saw him once at Fun Fun Fun Fest (aka “Dust Fest”) 2011. He’s how I figured out Occupy Wall Street wasn’t “the revolution.”

    He can also be really damn funny. What an introduction to acid… Thank goodness his “guide” was looking forward to another Black Flag album.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BySPtXAaupI

    Henry Rollins speaking in Belgium on the misinformed, traumatized American tough guy.

    I know some guys disliked this one based on the comments, but he’s being kinder to the tough guy crowd than I think they realize.

    I kinda liked it as it pointed out something I’ve come to understand. Whoever tries to pick a fight with you is usually going through something.

    A lot of us are packed full of traumas never confronted, pushed into the unconscious, where they unfortunately do not stay. If only we could figure out how to stop that trauma from turning into somebody else’s…

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  • Editor’s curse: the hole must be filled

    I can say that without hesitation that Mark Twain is my favorite writer. I’ve always identified with his melancholy and mischievous nature.

    But what really made me fall in love with him was Roughing It, his “autobiographical” book about his time in the West.

    Especially the stories about his time as a newspaper reporter in a Nevada mining town. I wrote for small town weeklies, which was close enough.

    I put autobiographical in quotes, because he constantly veers off into jokes and tall tales (Loved the apocraphal story about the man who makes an enemy of Joseph Smith by giving a whistle to one of his many sons).

    BTW, the entire book is online for free and is searchable.

    “It is unspeakable hardship to write editorials. Subjects are the trouble – the dreary lack of them, I mean. Every day, it is drag, drag, drag – think, and worry and suffer – all the world is a dull blank, and yet the editorial columns must be filled.”

    Mark Twain

    He loved hoaxes and didn’t let truth get in the way of a good story. I wasn’t that kind of journalist, though I loved April Fools Day pranks before they made me stop (some newspaper got sued).

    But so much of it rang true. Boredom over beats you had to cover, Chamber of Commerce style propaganda you had to pretend to believe. (His insights into the silver speculation game are extremely relevant. Search Roughing It for the term “salting.”)

    But most of all, I can identify with the part about being an editor and having to write editorials (or in my case, columns). I only had to do it once a week and even I ran out of ideas. I can’t imagine having to do one every day.

    I didn’t get challenged to any duels (I have a feeling that was an exaggeration), but I pissed off the preachers and my publisher more than once. Other times I came off like an idiot. Those were usually the ones where I was on deadline and had to pull something out of my ass.

    Brain block happens with this blog as well. I’ve realized all I’m really doing is writing the column I used to write, except this time I don’t have the publisher on my ass saying, “Stop writing weird shit!”

    Hopefully with weird shit being on the table, I can pull more material out of my brain and less out of my ass. I still cringe when I remember some of those columns.

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  • Beep Beep I’m a car! (living on someone else’s ranch kinda sucks)

    Part 2 of 4

    There were a few other issues with the place I lived as a young sports reporter aside from the “Monkey Bluto” water pump, but overall I liked the place. I liked where it was. Not too far from town, but far enough.

    At first.

    There was a lot of traffic in the mornings, but not too too much. This was in a rapidly suburbanizing area, but there was some nature left. I liked the color green.

    Then the old family Horizon I was driving blew a head gasket. Totaled. I had to ride my mountain bike to work and back every morning for weeks.

    Cars piled up behind me an honked. They all hated me, especially on hills I could barely get up, and they passed inches away from me. Nearly pissed myself more than once.

    I was like, people have mercy! I’m an out of shape guy! I hate bikes on the highway too but my car broke! I’m working on it please don’t kill me!

    The ride home was more enjoyable, but it also had risks. Speeding down steep hills with the wind in my hair was exhilarating. It almost made up for how much it hurt pedaling uphill.

    But one day a white-tailed deer walked out in the road and wouldn’t budge.

    It just stood in the road staring at me like “what the hell are you?” I thought God if I hit this deer I could break every bone in my body and it would still be hilarious. The worst.

    I tried to think of what to do as I got closer and closer. Then I yelled, “Beep! Beep! I’m a car!” And it jumped. That’s right, I’m a car, bitch!

    Family helped me get a Pontiac LeMans that smelled like cigarettes and had a colony of ants in the back seat I could never get rid of.

    And I liked it just fine. I was lucky to have it. Anything to not be cursed, honked at and maybe run over, or killed by the local wildlife.

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