February 9, 2024

Hi, folks. Sorry it takes so long to write these days. We had an earthquake a little while ago, which is always scary because you recognize them the moment they start, and you hope they will not get worse. That's always my immediate thought: "please don't let it get worse." And this one didn't, so no big deal. But it was a little above average on the "oh no" scale.

I've been working (as usual) on my book. Not the two that are all ready to go (except for lyric licencing), but the one that's to come, the one about 1989. It's an extremely involved effort, not only because I am learning that it's not just about 1989, but about other years, as well. Take 1991, for instance. Who knew stuff happened in that year? I'm talking about at 9032, of course. Researching 1991 has been a whopper for me. But now, I'm working on 1992, and so far, things seem to have settled down. I was in Shecky's band by this point, and I was also taking the bus down to UCLA every three weeks to have my teeth fixed, in what would take 22 appointments over an 18 month period, from apprx. January 1992 to July of '93. 

Shecky asked me to join what he planned to be his new band in late 1991. I'm not sure of the month, but let's say November. It was gonna be his music, and he was going to be the front man. He wasn't going to play drums (his main instrument) but rhythm guitar. He was also going to be the lead singer. He'd written a batch of pop songs, some of which were pretty good, in a retro-1950s way. They weren't complex. He wanted me for lead guitar (and to double the rhythm), and also on backing vocals. I thought, "what the heck" because I'd been playing in my room. It was a chance to be in a band again, and to learn to sing and play at the same time, something I'd never done before. As an aside, singing high harmony lines would come in handy 20 years later when I became a choir singer, one of the best experiences of my life that I hope to do again one day.

For the first four or five months, it was just me and Sheck. He taught me all his songs (around 20) until I had them down cold. Then he wanted to build the band. I don't know how David Friedman was suggested (and I will leave out his well-justified "Evil" moniker for now), but maybe Shecky knew that Friedman played keyboards, well enough to be in the group, and soon he had joined us. Now we were a trio, and we stayed that way for most of 1992.

Shecky was a slow mover when it came to bands (I was too) and in his case it was because he was mainly what he called "a gardener". You can guess what that is, if you don't already know. Yes, Sheck was a gardener; that was really his main gig, though he was a fantastic drummer. But at any rate, I kind of shrugged when he told me what he intended to call the band. "We're gonna be 'The Insect', Ad". When he said that, I thought, "The Insect"? To me, it sounded kinda.....(well, you can fill in the blank). And I said, "The Insect, huh?" Like "are you sure about that, Sheck?" And he said, "no, not the Insect. It's the In-Sect. Two words, or like a hyphenated word. We're like the In Crowd, only we aren't a crowd, we're a Sect. Like a cult, you know what I mean? And we're "In", like it's hip to be in our sect. We're The In-Sect, get it"?

I sort of got it then, but I really get it now. Especially the part about being in a cult. Only I was never in one. But I see that Shecky was definitely in a cult, and it wasn't related to his gardening.

Well anyhow, that's a little bit about 1992, which seems more "toned down", in hindsight, than 1991. 1991 was a tough one for me. I really shouldn't give away any details from the book, but there's a couple hints for you. I always wondered why Shecky showed up at that phony "intervention" they tried to pull on me in May 1994, and now I know the reason. What a freaking joke that was. Talk about a sideshow, designed to distract. That's what that "intervention" was, a sideshow. Sheck moved back to Chicago toward the end of the '90s. My goodness, Sheck, we hardly knew ye. Until now.

On to other subjects:

The thing is, you've gotta stick to your guns. You've gotta keep your vows. If you claimed to be Air Force in 1989, then you've gotta be Air Force now, in 2024. You can't say, "well, too much time has passed" or "I changed my mind" or "I'm older now" or "my life is too comfortable now" or "I'm too set in my ways" or "I said it in the heat of the moment". No, none of those are any good, those "reasons" or "excuses" or whatever you want to call them. If you wanted to join the Air Force, you joined the Air Force and there's no backing out. Once you're in, you're in. 

It's like being Marine Corps. You either are Marine Corps or you aren't Marine Corps, but the difference is that, in the Marine Corps, you aren't the one who decides. The Marine Corps decides for you. The Marine Corps will tell you if you are Marine Corps or if you are not Marine Corps, and the number one criteria is:

How Semper Fi are you? If you are not 100% Semper Fi, you are not Marine Corps. The Marine Corps doesn't leave a Marine behind, or anybody else worth saving for that matter, so if you are the type to cut and run, don't even consider being Marine Corps because you aren't Marine Corps. And even then, you might not be, even if you don't cut and run.

How do I know all this, being that I've never been in the military? Just because I'm me. I may not be official Air Force, or Marine Corps (and then again I might be), but one thing is for sure, I believe I am Air Force. More than that, I know it in my heart. I've always been Air Force, and in the Summer of 1989, I even signed a couple of guys up for the Air Force. They were brothers, if I recall correctly. I signed 'em up right there in my kitchen. I think my stump speech convinced 'em to join.

We were having a hamburger cookout that night. I was doing the cooking. It was an indoor bash, not a huge crowd, just me and a handful of others, including these two guys I mentioned. They were both "stuck in a rut" in their lives, "stuck" being the key word. They were involved in stuff they wanted out of, they wanted a life change, and it may have been me who suggested they join the Air Force. Or, it may have been the elder of the two brothers who said he wanted to be "on the good side when the shit hits the fan". Or maybe he called it "the winning team". But he joined up, and then his brother took the vow.

I hope those two brothers have not forgotten that they are still in the Air Force. Because once you're in, you're in and you can't back out. It's a lifetime gig.  

On to election season: this may be the first Presidential election since I reached voting age that I am not going to vote in. Keep in mind I said it may be; I didn't say I won't vote. But I am thinking I won't, and it's not because of Biden versus Trump (which is bad enough), and I don't care if Trump wins because he is only a man playing a role. And if you think he's going to be "convicted" of anything that will keep him out of the Presidency then you better think again, because that is not going to happen.

Me? I really don't care (too much) if Donald Trump - excuse me - when Donald Trump is elected, because if you think Biden is gonna win, well.....hand 'em over, hand over your Dipstick Papers, now.

No, it's a certainty that Trump will be elected, and why don't you do yourself a favor and ask: why do you even care? Why are you still glued to CNN and MSNBC and Fox? If you can't tell a carnival when you see one, then why waste time talking about it? Hey - I'm not trying to give you a hard time. I'm not knocking you. I mean, I was a knucklehead too, when it came to politics. It took me many years to see for myself, that it really is a sideshow. But it's you who are dumbing yourself down by continuing to watch those channels, and continuing to participate. Me? I may not take part this time. And if I do, I may vote for Trump. But why would I vote for Trump when I was officially, at one time, the Number One Anti-Trumper in the universe? (it's true, you can look it up).

I would vote for Trump, first of all, because at least we still (barely) had a country when he was President, and we didn't have 11 dollar frozen pizzas, and gas stayed at 3.79 the whole time he was prez, and milk was two bucks, and when you think about it.....what was so bad about meeting with Kim Jung Il, aka Elvis Presley Jr.? All Trump did was meet with him. What was so bad about that? If AOC did it, you'd pop the champagne and call her a peacemaker. And there were no wars when Trump was President. 

My favorite Presidents, for the record : Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy, George Bush, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan. I like Joe Biden as a person, he's a heck of a nice guy, but it's just not working out. And he probably does have a good memory like he said yesterday, and anyone who makes jokes about Alzheimer's ought to be ashamed of themselves. You might have dementia one day and then let's see how funny you think it is. No, I like Joe. I just think his presidency has been a disaster. And no, I don't want AOC to run, or any of those left-wing commies. And I certainly don't want Marjorie Taylor-Greene. I wish Hillary would run again, or Al Gore. Those are my kind of Democrats. My kind of real politicians. And the right needs more George Bushes, and Bob Doles. I'd take Liz Cheney in a heartbeat and you would too and you know it.

Returning to my book, I've mentioned that I use movies as memory "triggers" to take me back to a certain date, usually the day the movie was released. I've also mentioned that this acts in the same way as a favorite old song does, to remind you of a time gone by. I use my movie memories very specifically, however, not just to remind me of something general, say, my high school years, but what was happening in my life on the day or week they were released.

For my original version of the 1989 book (completed in 2009), I created a master list of every film Lilly and I ever saw. It wasn't as hard as it may sound; IMDB helped, and there are other comprehensive websites listing movies released in the 1980s and beyond. I've been able to determine the release date for any movie on my list that I've needed to look up, and this has helped a lot in maintaining a chronology of our dates, because we went to a lot of movies. And because movie dates, like favorite old songs, trigger history as well as nostalgia, these triggers have been valuable resources.

I can look at a movie title and recall, in broad terms, if it was a "happy" date, an "unhappy" date, or otherwise. And then I can study it and make the memory more specific.

But then there is what may seem like an unusual phenomenon: I've found titles from movies that Lillian and I didn't see, but which also act as triggers. These titles also bring back memories from the time they were released, the only difference being that they were movies we didn't see.

I have one trigger classification that I call a "Black" movie title. This is a movie that triggers a Black feeling in my heart, a feeling of hopelessness, or of knowledge that something terrible happened at around that time, or a feeling of dread. I don't have many Black movie triggers, but I know one when I see one.

And the Black ones are bad enough.

But then I have a few I call "Blackout". Not Blackout like you passed out. Just: "this movie is associated with something so Black that it's a Blackout." And these are movies I didn't see. It's just the titles that bring back the Blackout.

"Talk Radio" is one such movie, and in fact, in looking over my Movie Master List, it is the Blackest of the Blackout titles. But for years, I haven't been able to figure out why I feel this way about it. I checked it's release date (Christmas 1988), and what I do is put myself back in that time frame and ask my subconscious "what happened then"? And sometimes it has an answer, but it's not always easy to get to. "Talk Radio" has vexed me for many years. Ditto "Baron von Munchausen" (which would be bad enough being a Terry Gilliam film). I have probably between ten and twenty Black or Blackout movie titles. "Cujo" is another one, and I'm still working on why it Blacks me out. 

I have techniques I use, which have proven to be accurate and very helpful. But "Talk Radio" was the Blackest of the Black, and then a thought came to me, in the form of my voice. I once said: "I don't like Talk Radio I'm not going to see Talk Radio you can't make me see Talk Radio I don't like Talk Radio", and the pattern repeated like that, as if I were mouthing a stream-of-consciousness, made up of those few sentences.

At that time, Christmas season 1988, I'd seen the TV ads for Talk Radio and found them unpleasant. I didn't like the Eric Bogosian character (and did he presage Howard Stern?) and by association I didn't like Eric Bogosian (which may have been unfair). But once I had that "sentence stream" in mind, I knew I was onto something. And I kept working on why Talk Radio bothered me so much, and then I saw myself in the living room at 9032, on Christmas Day 1988......and then I really had a blackout.

Finally, I want to mention that I still have the Snoopy nightlight. This part of the blog is for You and no one else. Yes, I still have it; somehow it has stayed with me for 43 years. I must have had it plugged into my bedroom wall at Rathburn, and somehow it made it out of that house after the earthquake, and (where did it go then?) (I don't know) (into storage?) ....

But I lived at Rathburn until March 1995. So maybe it stayed plugged into my wall, even after the quake. It had been in my wall since 1981. Or maybe I put it on my bookcase, I'm not sure. Because the bulb would probably have burnt out at some point, maybe in the mid-to-late 80s, and the thing is, you gave me that night light, of Snoopy hugging Woodstock on a red background, after you had it for a while yourself. So, you probably had it in your bedroom for a while before you gave it to me, and then I plugged it into my wall.......and the bulb must've gone out after a few more years........and then a decade went by.......and......

But the thing is - and to me this is amazing, astounding, and every other superlative - it somehow tagged along with me through all the moves I've made, from Rathburn to my Dad's apartment to Burton Street to Mom's apartment (and it was probably in a box in storage for a while in the mid-90s).......but it kept hanging in there, like it had a mind of it's own (and persistence), and my goodness Lillian.....as I write, it is sitting on my cabinet less than three feet from my left shoulder. The Snoopy night light.

It's been with me all this time, and I am telling you, woman.....I didn't do that by myself. The nightlight has a mind of its own. Because as you know, my life was somewhat hectic there for a spell. But the nightlight somehow stayed with me. Could Snoopy himself have had anything to do with it? (remember Snoopy helicopter ears? You are the only person besides me who knows why that's funny).

And, I have something else that's still with me after 43 years. The Angel you crocheted for me in 1981. Do you remember her? Her wings are powder blue, her hair henna. She sits on my bookshelf just above my head as I write. Somehow, like the Snoopy nightlight, she made it through 43 years of life changes with me, and is still by my side and is physically close to me right this very minute.

I remember when you gave that Angel to me. You said she represented you.

I just wanted you to know that I still have those two special gifts, the Snoopy nightlight and the blessed Angel.

And that is all I know for today.