The view from here
July 10th, 2009 | 
Author: 
Normal
0
0
1
421
2402
KFWS
20
4
2949
11.1280
0
0
0
Jimmy Buffett wrote a song: “We Are the People Our Parents Warned Us About.”
Aaeeeiiiiaahhh!
I’m getting old-fashioned, outdated and irrelevant. I’m resistant to change.
Dan Seals song: “All That Glitters Is Not Gold.” I find myself humming that song – defiantly! — and wishing I knew all the lyrics.
I think Twitter is stupid. I love reading things on actual paper. I actually read books! In 2009! On television, even though there are hundreds of channels, I rely more and more on PBS. I find almost nothing more unreal than “reality shows.” One of the few real things I watch on TV is “Boston Red Sox Baseball on NESN.”
I fancy myself a country music fan, yet I can’t tell you the name of a single song by Rascal Flatts, and I resent the fact that “Flatts” has two T’s. It’s possible that the group was named after that rascal Lester Flatts – except, of course, his name was “Flatt,” but, then again, if the rascals are all Flatts … – but that strikes me as improbable. My suspicion is that they licensed it before they could spell it.
Lyrics from Flatt & Scruggs’ appearance on “The Beverly Hillbillies”: “Don’t you marry Lester Flatt / Slicks his hair with possum fat …”
Oh, man. Am I not a curmudgeon?
I never planned on being a curmudgeon. I don’t mind being a pundit, or even a wag.
Wags, after all, are usually in press boxes, and … so am I.
Steven Fromholz song: “(I’m Just a Buffalo) Singin’ the Dinosaur Blues.”
Apparently, people get more independent as they get older. The dark side is that Uncle Fitzhugh – everyone calls him “Smiley” – started thinking, sometime in his 60s, that wearing a plaid blazer with a striped shirt and polka-dotted tie was not only acceptable, it was hip. Or whatever the 1949 equivalent of “hip” was. I don’t think “swell” quite captures it, though anyone who has watched Mickey Rooney movies knows “swell” was quite the catch-all cliché in 1949.
I hope I don’t live long enough to consider myself a fashion plate. Tragically.
Uh-oh. Yes. I have watched Mickey Rooney movies.
Most of my heroes – Johnny Unitas, Townes Van Zandt, John Steinbeck – are dead. I have little interest in exotic beers and wines. I don’t get Conan O’Brien. Most songs I hear on the radio sound like they were written to be Ford truck commercials.
I’ve lost some of my faith in humanity. I’m starting to think all of the people can be fooled all of the time.
I think too much attention is paid to things that are bad for us and not enough attention is paid to the fact that all these things aren’t any worse for us than they were, oh, 50 years ago. This is my basic conclusion: Life is fatal. Some things speed up the process, some slow it down, but life is fatal. Everything is bad for you. Aging is a slow process in which people gradually exchange things they want for things they need.
As Fromholz wrote in the song cited above: “Life is mostly attitude and timing.”
Also See
Category: Nextel Cup | 
Tags: All That Glitters, Beverly Hillbillies, Boston Red Sox, Country Music Fan, Curmudgeon, Dan Seals, Dinosaur Blues, Fitzhugh, Hellip, Jimmy Buffett, Kfws, Lester Flatt, Possum, Press Boxes, Rascal Flatts, Rascals, Sox Baseball, Steven Fromholz, Striped Shirt, Wags | 