Favorite Songs of 1966

The Beatles continued to dominate the popular music world in 1966, both in terms of output, quality, concerts, and controversy. John Lennon’s “Christ” comment, a grotesque album cover, a scary episode in the Philippines, their last public concert (except for the 1969 impromptu Abbey Road roof concert), and the bizarre Strawberry Fields video put them continually in the news, not all of it favorable. In the midst of all this, they came out with their greatest album ever (to me): Revolver. In America, Revolver was chopped up, with some tracks stuck on their Yesterday and Today album. Tunes like Eleanor Rigby, For No One, Tomorrow Never Knows, Got To Get You Into My Life, and Taxman were among my favorites of the year, as well as the singles release Paperback Writer. The Monkees, America’s (successful) attempt to cash in on the Beatles’ success, kicked off their TV comedy series and with it, some pretty good songs, including Saturday’s Child and Last Train to Clarksville. Meanwhile, Donovan, Britain’s (not-so-successful) attempt to cash in on Bob Dylan’s success, decided to radically change his image after being booed onstage during American concerts. The result was a unique style and songs like Mellow Yellow. I used to watch an weekday afternoon rock music show on ABC called Where the Action Is. The “house band” Paul Revere and the Raiders came up with a string of hits for a few years, in 1966 including the likable Just Like Me and the anti-drug Kicks. Bobby Darin’s beautiful rendition of If I Were a Carpenter didn’t receive enough airplay, in my opinion. Neither did the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows, easily my all-time favorite of theirs. Herman’s Hermits, a band that rode the British Invasion wave to stateside success, finally came out with a song that really grabbed me: No Milk Today. In the “demented” category, Napoleon XIV had his funny They’re Coming to Take Me Away Ha-Ha while Count Five had their psychedelic Psychotic Reaction. Bobby Fuller showed great promise with his country/rock song I Fought the Law, but tragically and mysteriously died in a parked car. Cyrkle had their one hit with the Paul Simon-penned Red Rubber Ball. Syndicate of Sound and the Rolling Stones share the dubious award for the most male chauvinist song of the year with Little Girl and Under My Thumb, respectively. The Lovin’ Spoonful got my attention with their very descriptive Summer in the City, complete with honking cars. Shapes of Things to Come, by the Yardbirds, was one of those songs that I loved back then, but which slipped from my recollection until just recently. Eight Miles High, by the Byrds, was my #3 song of 1966. I liked how the song at times would just seem to disintegrate into a confused jumble of sound! #2 for me that year was the Vogues’s rousing love song (and hate to work song) Five O’Clock World (the male counterpart of Sheena Easton’s 1981 hit Morning Train 9 to 5). And my top favorite of 1966 (back then) was the suspenseful-sounding Time Won’t Let Me, surprisingly the only hit by the Outsiders.

Even The Best Fall Short

I was watching some of the old Twilight Zone episodes the other day (the Sci-Fi Channel was having a Fourth of July Twilight Zone marathon), and once again a certain familiar feeling began to creep up on me. The Twilight Zone is without a doubt one of my favorite series, and I know just about every episode. And yet, when push comes to shove, I really don’t like most of them! Sure, there are the great classic episodes, like And When the Sky Was Opened, The After-Hours, The Hitchhiker, and Mirror Image, along with a few that I moderately liked. But I could easily do without the vast majority of them!

Looking at many of my favorite series, musical artists, and writers, I’ve come to the same conclusion: with very few exceptions, I can quite easily dispense with a large part of the body of work of many of them! I like reading Stephen King and count his Pet Sematary, The Mist, It, Insomnia, Hearts in Atlantis, and Thinner among my all-time favorites. But much of what this great writer has produced simply doesn’t resonate with me (including Rose Madder, the book I’m currently plodding through). Some of the material put out by the late great sci-fi writers Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke is downright embarrassing to read. The original Star Trek series had some unforgettable episodes like The City On the Edge of Forever, The Corbomite Maneuver, The Immunity Syndrome, and The Doomsday Machine. But sometimes I’d tune in and they would be pathetic! The late New York-based humorist Jean Shepherd (author and narrator of A Christmas Story) used to have a nightly radio show on which he would do an hour-long monologue. Back in 1975, I was an avid listener. But looking back, most of his shows seemed a little lame, although from time to time he would come out with a “winner”. The musical artists that I extol the most, with the notable exception of the Beatles, have come out with a lot of mediocre (putting it mildly) material over the years. Of course, if you include the stuff put out by the individual members of the Fab Four after they broke up, even they fit this pattern (with a vengeance)!

I am currently struggling with confidence issues about writing fiction. And yet, when I look around me at the “cream of the crop” in the arts, I see some glaring unevenness in the quality of their output. And it gives me a sense of relief! I think I just need to get off my butt and produce my product, for better or for worse!

Who Am I?

Do you remember the old Tom T. Hall country and western song I Love? The idea of the song is that you’re supposed to get to know better who the singer is by discerning the details of his likes. Likewise, if you click on the My Profile link on this blog, it will take you to a page that tells about me by listing areas that I am interested in. The sum total effect will reveal a little about who I am. We can go a little further than this, of course, in our quest to find out “who” someone is, by physically describing that person, in as great of detail as practical. We can also take the sum effects of our interactions with that person to make an assessment about his/her personality or character. The idea is to create a multidimensional mosaic, the result of which will be the subject’s essence. But what really is the true essence of a person?

I know for a solid fact that I didn’t feel any different about who I was when I was two years old than how I feel now at fifty-one. But in the time between, the matter comprising my body has been completely changed, along with the form of my body, including my brain. Things that I do now, physically and mentally, I do very differently than how I did them (if I did them) at two. I have amassed an incredible memory of the world and myself between two and fifty-one. And yet, I can abstract a sense of who I am, deep down inside, by disregarding all of the differences that could, in a paradoxical sort of way, also seem to define who I am. So how do you determine who you are? By seeing yourself in terms of all your traits and experiences? Or by filtering out all of those traits and experiences and discerning the remaining kernel of selfness? It may truly seem to be a paradox, but I hold that both point the way toward self-realization. This is another example of duality, where in order to achieve a goal, one must simultaneously adhere in a discerning way to two seemingly contradictory doctrines.

Monday Newsbreak: 7/7

--Barack Obama is apparently trying to appear more centrist by expressing more caution about removing U.S. combat troops from Iraq, as well as trying to sound more sympathetic to the pro-life/anti-abortion movement. But what he seems to be accomplishing right now, at least the way I see it, is simply to confuse his supporters. I believe that the greatest danger of a serious, campaign-derailing gaffe can be when any candidate steps outside his/her ideological comfort zone and makes statements that either go against that candidate’s political creed or expose ignorance on his/her part. Obama needs to be extremely careful treading on this ground. For if he goes too far, he may just lose some of his most ardent supporters when they either stay home on Election Day, go over to vote for Ralph Nader, or even pick John McCain as the lesser of two evils.

--Former North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, an extreme right-wing conservative, died this past Friday at 86 of natural causes. I respect those elected office-holders whose strong political leanings (left or right) do not impede them from acting with dignity and respect for others who differ with them. For example, Alabama senator Jeff Sessions is currently one of the most conservative senators today. He speaks for his causes articulately and passionately. But I have never seen him display anything like the meanness of spirit that Senator Helms showed at times in his career. Helms was strongly against federal funding for AIDS research simply because the victims (in the U.S.) tended to be gay or illegal drug users. Although being a staunch opponent of abortion, he also opposed federally-sponsored low-income aid programs for poor families with children. Just from spite, he used his position in a senate committee to kill Bill Clinton’s nomination of former Massachusetts governor William Weld to be ambassador to Mexico. And he ran a racist campaign for re-election against his African-American Democratic opponent in 1990. I know that I’m not supposed to knock the recently deceased. So someone please tell me how great this guy really was (with reasons)!

--Atlantic tropical storm Bertha is expected to become a category-one hurricane within the next day or two. Its projected path has it passing just north of the Leeward Islands. Eventually, a developing high pressure area in the southeast U.S. should deflect it in a more northerly direction. By Thursday Bertha, although probably far out at sea, will also probably be close enough to north Florida beaches to cause bad surf and rip tides. And I’ve been planning to take my family to Jacksonville Beach the following day! Phooey!

--In the “out of the blue” department, Kent Couch successfully floated high in the eastern Oregon sky and safely landed, all while sitting in a lawn chair, supported by 105 big helium party balloons. On a whim, I had written an article about this exact type of endeavor back on June 15! It turns out that the original “chair-trekker” was Larry Walters, who lifted up three miles into the sky over Los Angeles in 1982 using the balloons/lawn chair/bb gun combo. So my question has been answered: this was no urban legend! But I heard that Couch invested about six thousand dollars on his “simple” device, most of it for the helium in his balloons! Well, back to the drawing board!

Starbucks Closings Ahead

If you’re sitting in a Starbucks right now, I wouldn’t get too comfortable if I were you. The corporation that has recently often been cited as a model of how to run a successful business just announced that it is planning to close down 600 Starbucks outlets within a year. My hometown of Gainesville has seen the number of Starbucks steadily rise since the first one came to town about nine years ago. Now I think we already have nine or ten in this only middle-sized (albeit university) city. So now the speculation is on: which Starbucks in Gainesville, if any, will get the axe? As far as I can tell, they all are doing quite a brisk business. Starbucks has stated that the most likely closures will come to the stores that opened 2006 and afterwards. If any in Gainesville close, my leading candidates are the ones in Santa Fe Community College and in Hunters Crossing (NW 43 Street) next to Publix grocery. But Gainesville, like Seattle, is such a hot coffee market that I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the Starbucks stores here stayed open.

And now I will submit an open suggestion to Starbucks. I like flavored coffee: not syrup added from a bottle, but coffee that is flavor-roasted. I can go to Books-a-Million or Borders and buy flavored coffee. But if I want it at Starbucks, I get the syrup and pay extra. If Starbucks is as customer-friendly as it likes to project itself, why won’t it offer flavored coffee? I can’t speak for everyone else, but I know that I would be a more loyal customer if it did. Is there some kind of snobbery among coffee aficionados that regards flavor-roasted coffee as inferior? Then maybe my money isn’t good enough for them either!

Adaptability of Humanity

The other day, I saw one of my old Twilight Zone favorite episodes: To Serve Man, written by Richard Matheson (it also came out as a short story). The gist of this story is that aliens landed on Earth and had all of the answers to the pressing human problems of the time, particularly in the areas of war and food. And they presented their high-tech solutions to humanity as gifts! Within weeks, while the Earth became covered with a web of alien-”manned” stations, the entire human race became complacent and dependent upon the newcomers. Even to the point of embarking on vacations and research trips to other worlds on their spaceships. The episode’s protagonist, toward the end of the story, reflected to his partner how quickly humanity adapted to new things and incorporated them into what they called “normal”. And that hit me as one of the more profound things I’ve heard from this series.

In 1969, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission, the whole world watched in wonder. By Apollo 14 few were paying attention, walking on the Moon having become passé. In the nineties, when Clinton was President, having the life of even one American soldier in peril was regarded as a national news event. How quickly people got used to hearing about the rising casualty figures during the Bush years!

And look at how quickly people are adapting to new technology that speeds everything up and interconnects us with multimedia! Eager customers camp out overnight to buy an I-Pod and find out a few weeks later that there are better products available. How quickly large segments of our population got used to the Internet in the late nineties, and then how quickly the laptop computer became a required piece of equipment for college students! If you’re riding the wave of technology, this may seem pretty cool. But if you are on the outside looking in, it looks as if the world is passing you by.

It is easy, with the seeming omnipresence of computers and the Internet, to simply assume that everyone has access to them and uses them. But many people do not use computers at home, and many have no intention of ever starting! Even among those who do, there is the constant pressure to upgrade in order to keep up with the latest innovations.

The idea that we can possess machines that speed things up and open up opportunities for us to reach out, either through communications or transportation, should make those who benefit from them happier, wouldn’t you think? But, since humans are such an adaptable species, what happens instead is that people adjust to the new reality and as a result just become more impatient and demanding. I remember when most of the cars on the road had standard transmissions, requiring a clutch pedal and manual changing of gears. At an intersection, when the light turned green, everyone would go through the gradual buildup of speed that standard transmissions required. But with the advent (and eventual dominance) of automatic transmissions, drivers now simply react with impatient annoyance to any manual-shift drivers they find themselves behind.

I wonder, if the global warming phenomenon keeps worsening, whether people will finally band together to heroically solve the problem. Or will they just adapt to the worsening situation as it develops, treating it as “normal”? Sadly, it looks as if the latter may be our destiny! Wouldn’t it be the ultimate paradox if, as was the case in To Serve Man, our adaptability turned out to be our downfall!!

Exorcism Works!---In Baseball

In an article last year, I reported on how I began listening to a Tampa Bay Devil Rays play-by-play radio broadcast on one of my local stations. And how the team, which was playing the Boston Red Sox, played so poorly that I had to switch the station after the first inning! Well, a year has gone by and this year’s edition of the Tampa Bay franchise has changed in more than one way. They have acquired some good new players, and some of last year’s are having good seasons. But during the off-season, they also changed their nickname by dropping the “Devil” from “Devil Rays”. Now they’re just the Rays, and have transformed themselves from being baseball’s perennial doormat to having the best winning percentage in either league so far this season! The Rays just finished beating their rival Boston and have jettisoned into a small lead in their division. Now I ask myself: is it finally O.K. to root for this team? Or should I wait for them to change their name to the “Angel Rays”?!

I have felt for a while that in some circles in this country, just mentioning the word “devil” was politically incorrect with some people. Apparently, in New Jersey it’s O.K. (NHL’s New Jersey Devils) as well as in North Carolina (Duke Blue Devils). I thought “Devil Rays” was a perfectly innocent designation (since it was just the name of an animal), but it was too long. At least they didn’t call themselves some ridiculous “abstraction” name as others did with names such as “Magic“, “Heat”, “Wind”, “Storm”, etc. So I’m happy with “Rays” by itself, but I suspect that the franchise probably dropped the “Devil” because some do-gooders felt that the Numero Uno Bad Dude was getting too much free publicity with this. Now, the name “Tampa Bay Rays” just naturally rolls off the tongue, and has such a virtuous sound to it! Now that they have repented and have become a “good” team, the Rays are ready to assume their rightful seat next to the Red Sox at the top (but I'm still rooting for the Yankees, with the great Derek Jeter)!

Favorite Songs of 1967

1967 marks the last of a run of four years in which I was consumed by listening to popular music on the radio. By the year’s end, I had dropped off considerably with listening to my radio for music, and instead had picked up the hobby of DX-ing (trying to receive distant stations). The Beatles and Rolling Stones were challenged for pop music ascendancy, at least in America, by the fabricated television-comedy group the Monkees, whose music surprisingly has largely withstood the test of time! And I was a big Monkees fan, watching the show, collecting Monkees cards, and listening to Monkees songs. My favorites in ‘67 of theirs were Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow) and Pleasant Valley Sunday. Speaking of the Stones, they continued to become more original with their songs, producing two that I especially liked: the Rubber-Soul-like Ruby Tuesday and the utterly cynical Mother’s Little Helper (with the classic line “What a drag it is getting old”). John Fred and his Playboy Band parodied the Beatles with Judy in Disguise (With Glasses). The artist Keith sang very softly in 98.6, while the Music Machine thundered out with the forceful Talk Talk. Sonny and Cher continued their output of hits with my favorite of theirs, the topical The Beat Goes On. The feminist movement had not yet taken hold, with two popular “women-in-their-assigned-role” hits”: Dreams of the Everyday Housewife by Glen Campbell and It Must Be Him by Vicki Carr. But at least Petula Clark had the upper hand in Don’t Sleep In the Subway. Jose Feliciano came out with my favorite pop Christmas hit ever: Feliz Navidad. Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit’s beautiful building crescendo and Grace Slick’s bellowing voice has made it one of the greatest short tunes ever; I don’t care whether it was pro-drug or anti-drug. Another quality-packed short song was the bubble gum tune The Letter by the Box Tops. The Mojo Men exhorted the listener to Sit Down I Think I Love You, while the Buckinghams drowned the listener with organ playing in Kind of a Drag (and pulled it off). In a pathetic-but-fun-to-listen-to-proto-rap song, the Hombres tried to sound “hip” with Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out). The song Come On Down to My Boat, by Every Mother’s Son, got a lift in sales and listening by being featured on one of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. television episodes. The Five Americans sang Western Union with beautiful harmony. The frantic You Better Run, by the Rascals (later covered by Pat Benatar), was my favorite of theirs. The Association’s romantic Never My Love was my favorite slow tune of the year. The Florida band the Nightcrawlers had a big local hit (around Miami) with Little Black Egg. It was my #3 favorite song of 1967 as I lived through it. And to find my top two favorite songs, I need only to go back to the beginning of this article and bring back out the Beatles, who produced two great albums that year (Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour) and two especially pleasant and enduring songs: Hello Goodbye (my #2) and All You Need Is Love (my #1 for 1967).

NBC Olympic Coverage

According to the Associated Press, NBC, which has broadcasting rights to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, is planning full-blown media coverage of the games. Six of its broadcast/cable/satellite television channels (how many does my cable service provide?) will be broadcasting different events. But it is on the Internet where NBC has revealed its biggest ambitions, pretty much making everything available to users who only need to “click in” on the part of the Olympics they want to see. Although events that NBC is broadcasting on TV will be delayed for Internet use (in order to encourage people to watch TV along with the commercials), this is a new step forward that I would like to take advantage of. For there are not only certain sports and events that I am interested in following (like distance running and bicycle racing), but there are also others that I would like to get to know better (such as field hockey). Criticism has befallen NBC, however, for its insistence of exclusive network coverage on the Internet, keeping other news groups from even broadcasting small clips there (NBC does allow this to a limited degree on television). But it will be fun to try out their Olympics website and see for myself whether or not the reality of promised coverage lives up to the billing. One problem that I’ve had in past Olympics with the television coverage has been overemphasis on the American athletes (even when they’re clearly out of the running for medals) and underemphasis of sports in which the U.S. is deemed unlikely to win a medal. Hopefully, with the new setup, this will all change. The NBC website for the Olympics is: NBCOlympics.com.

On a side note, University of Florida basketball star Nick Calathes is traveling to Greece to try out for the Greek national team to compete in the Olympics. He has dual citizenship, both as an American and as a Greek. I’m looking forward to seeing whether or not he makes the team (he should). Nick is a very talented player who will only be a sophomore this coming season for the Gators. It will be interesting to see whether, with NBC’s hyped Internet-access innovations, I’ll be able to watch the Greek team play its games during the Olympics.

People, People, People

In the classic Oscar-winning movie My Fair Lady, linguistics professor Henry Higgins asks his colleague (in a song), “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” As chauvinistic as this clearly sounds, we find through the course of the movie that it isn’t just women that the good professor has a problem with. Actually, he is an equal-opportunity humbug: he expects everyone to be exactly like him! Similarly, in the Twilight Zone episode The Mind and the Matter, comedian Shelley Berman plays a middle-aged big-city office worker who is fed up with “people, people, people”, as he puts it. By following the precepts revealed in a self-help book, Berman succeeds in willing the whole world to be full of exact duplicates of himself! And then finds out what a monumental drag he must be to others!

I wonder what the world would be like were it full of “me’s”. Aside from lasting only a generation (cloning not having yet been perfected), the human race would be so totally devoid of diversity that the specialization needed to sustain us as a species would be nonexistent. Also, we all need others who fundamentally differ from ourselves in a multitude of ways, if for nothing else than to hold our beliefs and behavior to standards worth living up to. For in a vacuum of diversity, how can we really know what’s best?

I am not known as a social mingler, preferring either solitude or small groups. It has been my experience throughout my life that when I have been in the midst of noisy crowds, I have had difficulty processing the audio input and often suffered panic/anxiety attacks from the sensory overload. But over the years, I have learned to separate this problem from passing judgment on people themselves. After all, each of us was thrown into this life, without (as far as we know) ever asking for it. And each of us must also figure out ways to get ourselves through life the best way possible. Everyone has their own path to follow, each one being unique, but also sharing commonalities with others. So I feel great empathy with my other fellow humans on this planet, but at the same time still harbor relatively hermit-like tendencies. And that’s all right, as long as I consciously fight the occasional impulse to shut out the world with its “people, people, people”!

Monday Newsbreak: 6/30

--Florida is scheduling its first execution in eighteen months, after a previous execution (using lethal injection) was “botched”. This time they’ve supposedly taken steps to ensure that the victim (whoops, I mean convict) is unconscious before the fatal doses are administered. This idea that the state has to prove that the “procedure” used in killing somebody isn’t cruel and unusual punishment, while the actual killing is acceptable, makes me question the entire moral underpinning of our legal system. Here is what I think about capital punishment.

--Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe has declared himself the winner of that country’s corrupt runoff presidential election, after his chief opponent dropped out and sought sanctuary during widespread pre-election violence and threats. I remember back in 1981, when the first (then legitimate) election was held. Mugabe easily beat out his main rival Joshua Nkomo, an election split not by ideology, but rather by ethnic identification, with most of the country’s majority Shona population supporting Mugabe. Now nobody ever reports on this obviously important factor in Zimbabwe politics. I know it hasn’t gone away. It’s just being ignored. I remember how, in an earlier election in Ukraine, one candidate was chiefly supported by the Ukrainian population while the other was supported by the Russians in eastern Ukraine. This doesn’t justify holding rigged elections, but it is still something that the press needs to inform us about. After all, you don’t need to look past the calamities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia to see how strongly ethnic identification means to many people in the world. And the passions, violence, and tragedies that can result from suspicions and disinformation about others.

--Florida is purchasing back 187,000 acres of land, on the south side of Lake Okeechobee, owned by the sugar industry and used for sugarcane growth and sugar refining. The intent is to redirect water overflowing from the lake during the wet season back down through the Everglades in the “River of Grass”. The process of renewal may take many years, especially since Lake Okeechobee is itself very polluted with runoff from refining. Also, with such a large-scale change as this, many in the area who were involved with sugar will lose their jobs. But hopefully, south Florida will once again get their share of fresh water that they need (although I think this area is severely overpopulated).

--Ever since I wrote an earlier article about the “Great Florida Desert”, we in Gainesville have been drenched almost daily in heavy rains and storms. Although it isn’t fun getting caught outside in the rain, this is truly a most welcome development in our area!

Who Needs South Park, Anyway?

A couple of days ago, I witnessed a true media event. It seems that Hillary and Barack made up and are now going forward together in “unity”. Why, even one of Hillary’s supporters says that she now likes Obama because Hillary says it’s O.K. to! To emphasize the rapproachment between the two, they rode a plane seated together to New Hampshire, where they addressed a small, circularly-seated crowd in the remote town (if you want to call it a town) of Unity. Unity sounds like the kind of name that Stephen King would use in one of his novels (like Misery, for example). And it wasn’t all that far away from King’s state of Maine, either. Come to think of it, from the air, that assembly reminded me a bit of Pet Sematary! Although the crowd itself was small, one report claimed that in the New Hampshire Primary, Clinton and Obama ran neck and neck in Unity: each received one vote. So, anyway, the cable news channels were giving this meeting top live coverage. With speaker after speaker coming up to address the crowd. While watching the preliminary coverage, I noticed a headline news flash going by on the bottom of the screen: Obama’s tie matches Hillary’s pantsuit! And the announcers then sat around discussing the significance of this, wondering whether it was planned or just a good omen. Well, that just about does it for me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything covered so uncritically by the media as this contrived, staged event was. And I support Obama and would like to see Clinton on the ticket! If I were one of the folks working for the satirical show South Park (of which I recently saw an episode of them mercilessly taking apart the Walmart Corporation), I would simply animate the characters, stick a few regular cast members subtly into the plot, and otherwise show this story straight without any degree of exaggeration, especially about how it was reported. But who needs South Park, anyway? Just turn on the news!

Friendships and Intrigues

When two people form a friendship with each other, it is obvious that there will always be some differences between them. But each friend must be mindful of the dangers in overemphasizing them (as well as repressing them). Sometimes a friendship may seem to be developing, but something comes into the relationship and sabotages it, potentially transforming the relationship into one of enmity. For this article, I will call those dangers “intrigues”. Here are a few of them:

Competition-One of the main things that draws two people together is a common interest. And, in the course of the developing friendship, the two will probably discover that one is better, or more adept in that field than the other. There is nothing wrong with friendly competition among pals, but being overly competitive can breed resentment and jealousy as well, so competition needs to be guarded carefully.

The Organization (Missionary)-Especially prevalent in churches are friendships based on false premises. One party befriends the other, who is at least initially unaware that the whole reason for this is that he/she is being recruited for a religion/church/group by the other (who will grow in stature in that group for this “outreach”). Once the “organization” foundation for this relationship is recognized, the two can often get bogged down in a wrestling of wills, with one trying to get the other to “join up”. This “friendship” will usually only last as long as the “recruiter” keeps after the potential “recruitee”. Once the cause seems lost, the relationship and friendship ends.

Romance-When a man and a woman pursue a platonic friendship, there will sometimes be an undercurrent of romance which needs to be delicately quelled (so as not to damage the feelings of the other). Sometimes one party to the friendship will find out, through other people, that his/her friend has developed a romantic interest in the other. And then it’s pretty hard to go back to that simple friendship.

Gossip-When a friend begins to gossip about the personal lives of others, I get the distinct impression, true or not, that he/she is gossiping about me behind my back. So I immediately begin to distrust my friend and will henceforth be much more reserved and formal about what I share about myself in conversation. When I walk into a room and see people sitting around a table gossiping about another, I mark those people in my mind as being unworthy of friendship with me. And I don’t think that I’m alone in this!

Age-Age is often used to give one party an advantage of the other when discussing just about anything. One side may continually draw upon his/her experiences to dominate the conversation over the other. Of course, there will almost always be age gaps between people. This difference, though, can give flavor to the friendship and sometimes creates a beneficial and enduring mentor/student relationship. But if one side resents the other’s constant invocation of his/her age advantage, then that friendship will not grow.

Prejudice-I know people from all sorts of backgrounds who will pepper their conversations with generalizations about race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, and national origin. And there are a few who regard me is somehow being “bad” because I my skin color is relatively light or because I am a male. It’s great to be different, but most of the differences that people like to emphasize speak nothing about traits like trustworthiness, graciousness, dignity, compassion, generosity, and loyalty. And those are the traits that really matter!

Narcissism-There are certain people who, when they walk into a room, expect everyone to stop what they’re doing and breathe a sigh of relief, because “so-and-so” is here! Such people see everything and everyone as reflections of themselves. In conversation with another, they expect their partner to submerge his/her own self and fully concentrate on them alone. “It’s all about me” is the theme of this “friendship”, and only those are either in a dependency relationship or have very low self-esteem will put up with this for very long.

Life Narrative-Everyone has their own life narrative. And within this narrative, we all, whether intentionally or not, make certain assumptions from our experiences as to how people will behave. This can often lead to an unhealthy cynicism about human nature. If you assume that your new friend will eventually betray you because of your life experiences, then you will not try to wholeheartedly develop that friendship. Sometimes we just have to blot out our past and give others a fresh slate to work with! New friends are not responsible for our past slights!

Slippery Slope to Doom-When someone shares his/her opinion with me, I expect to be able to respectfully disagree, if that’s how I feel. But when most of one’s opinions are so starkly black & white & cut & dry, with the only alternative being the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, I don’t really want to interact with this person and become closer, as a friend. It’s not that I feel “disrespected” about not being able to share my opinions. It’s just that I don’t think that there is only one right answer or viewpoint with any divergence leading to disaster.

Assigned Role-Sometimes in a friendship, one may find that he/she is regarded more as a reminder of someone else than as an completely different, unique individual. Even to the point of being blamed for the past person’s shortcomings and transgressions! As we grow older, we naturally see similarities between the people we know now and those of our pasts. But everyone is different, and not responsible for what others may have done.

Triangulation-A friend who triangulates will tell you one thing and act as if you are both bosom buddies. But behind your back the same “friend” will criticize you. The way to discover people like this is to notice how much they criticize their other friends when they aren’t present.

Pack Rat-Two people will often form friendships in the context of being in a larger group. And if one friend loses standing or leaves that group, the other may feel pressure or simply an inclination to allow that friendship to fade (if not abruptly end).

So, there are plenty of intrigues that can sabotage a friendship. And I recognize that nobody’s perfect, and some degree of what I have listed is present in many, if not most, friendships, to some extent. But I feel that the best, enduring friendships don’t permit these intrigues to get out of hand.

Geographic Dreams

I don’t know how you dream, but in my dreams, I almost always think like a complete dunce (the character of Patrick Starfish in SpongeBob SquarePants comes to mind). When I do wake up from a dream, I will often want to kick myself for acting so stupidly within the dream! I think that this is largely due to my lack of critical ability within the dream state. But this is not always the case. There is a certain kind of dream I have from time to time that somehow seems to make such an impact on me that I unconsciously have incorporated it into my “reality” memory: the geographic dream.

In eastern Gainesville, just on the other side of Main Street around a place called the Thomas Center, is a compact theme park with several rides, especially of the roller coaster variety. North of this park lies a vast area of concentrated, old apartment buildings some of which are abandoned. And there are railroad tracks running around this area. I have gone on several of the rides in the park, and I would have to say that, as far as theme parks are concerned, it ranks right up there at the top (especially since the lines are so short). But the catch is this: none of this is real! The theme park, apartments, and railroad tracks only exist in my dreams, and by “dreams”, I mean that I have dreamed of this place a number of times!

There is a solid wall in the building where I work that, in an earlier dream, connected to a library with a large sitting area. I sat in that place once, reading a book in Finnish (and understanding it). Now, whenever I walk past that wall during work, I think about that curious dream. By the way, I don't know any Finnish.

In the formerly undeveloped Everglades wilderness southwest of Hollywood, there is a back-winding road out in the middle of nowhere on which stands an all-night restaurant that I’ve eaten at (but only in my dreams). There is a special waterway running north-south through Fort Lauderdale that I’ve swum down, and which has a little pastry shop on the side (the best-tasting pastry ever), but once again, this is a figment of my dreams. There are specific real spots where, when I am dreaming, I can actually lift off of the ground and fly (out along the north side of my old Hollywood home and in the middle of the road directly in front of my current home). Recently, I took off with my family in a plane that was camouflaged as the second floor of an old house near the Office Depot on US 441 in Gainesville. I sat in a comfortable recliner, strapped on my seat belt, and the second floor took off! The pilot decided to go through a few loops over Gainesville, to which I whooped and hollered in delight! I could go on and on with dream experiences of this type.

I’m sure that you, too, can probably dig up your own dream experiences as they relate to real places. Those that I mentioned of my own experiences were just among the ones that I most clearly remembered upon awakening. I wonder how much of our feelings about our waking, real world are influenced by unconscious associations from unremembered-but-latent dreams. After all, we are all a mix of the rational and irrational. And sometimes we may get a feeling about a place that we can’t explain the reasons for. Perhaps this says something about my psychological makeup, but dreams about geography and travel have always been the most memorable and meaningful for me.

Favorite Songs of 1968

1968 was a peculiar year for me in music. At the time, I was 11-12 years old and had much different musical tastes back then than I do now. So many of the songs from that year that are now among my favorites were then among my least favorites! But I’m reviewing the years AS I LIVED THROUGH THEM, so my list of favorite tunes may seem a bit patchy.

1968 was the year of the long song, with hits like Hey Jude (by the Beatles), MacArthur Park (by Richard Harris), Time Has Come Today (by the Chamber Brothers), and Sky Pilot (by Eric Burdon and the Animals) taking up huge swaths of time on radio play (I liked all of them). It was also a year of national tragedy, marked by the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Dion memorialized these two within his touching Abraham, Martin, and John. The Rascals summed up the social climate of the country with their People Got to be Free. Judy Collins’s Both Sides Now, which I called “Clouds” back then, has only grown in stature with me over the years. Mechanical World (by Spirit) and Journey to the Center of the Mind (by Ted Nugent) were two of the better hard rockers. Mighty Quinn, by Manfred Mann, was my #3 song back in ‘68. It was one of those tunes whose lyrics kept gnawing at me and wouldn’t go away. My #2 favorite song of that year was an example in the recording business of “phasing gone wild”: the psychedelic Pictures of Matchstick Men by the Status Quo. And my top favorite song of 1968? A long instrumental piece, dominated by the keyboard, whose title and artist escaped me all the way into the late 1990s, when a coworker told me that he had heard it while driving through Georgia; the radio announcer identified it as America, by Keith Emerson (of later Emerson Lake and Palmer fame) and the Nice. America was an inspired rock adaptation of Leonard Bernstein’s America (from West Side Story) and Dvorak’s New World Symphony. But back in 1968, I knew nothing of this. I just thought that it was the coolest thing I had heard in a very long time! And I still like it a lot.

Frustration With Running

I am feeling a bit frustrated about my running lately. First of all, last month I had my best two-mile time (12:46) and one-mile time (6:14) since 1974. It looked as if I was making progress beyond my wildest dreams. In the following weeks, though, I seemed a get more bogged down and tired when I would go for a run. Now, for the past week, my left foot (around where the toes are attached) has been aching, preventing me from running. I had been intending to run in a local 3-mile road race on July 4, but I’ve scratched that idea, hoping that I’ll be ready to run competitively by October. I miss the routine and exhilaration of intense running. But I also miss the old long-distance, slower running I used to enjoy many, many years ago. Although treadmill training is very convenient in many ways, the long run “out-in-the-country” really defines the essence of this activity for me. But I have to figure out how to run while protecting my feet better! Until I’m ready to resume running, I guess I’ll be going back to training on the cross-trainer machine at my YMCA. And doing hot, sweaty yard work.

Star Trek

When Star Trek Enterprise, the fifth series of the Star Trek saga, was cancelled before its scheduled run ended, there was an outcry from Star Trek enthusiasts against the action. After all, hadn’t Star Trek, in all of its manifestations, become something of an institution unto itself, complete with its own “history of the future”? I haven’t seen any of the Enterprise episodes, but if anyone thinks that they are being deprived of Star Trek, then they are severely deluded!

When the original Star Trek series, starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, was cancelled after only three seasons in 1968, I truly felt deprived, for I was just getting into the series when it was ended. And there was a period when reruns of this great old series had not yet hit the airwaves. There was no such thing as video or DVD rentals yet, so that period was truly a time of deprivation. What is the situation nowadays regarding Star Trek? If you were to add up all of the hour-long episodes for the five series (Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Voyager, and Star Trek Enterprise), you would come up with a figure around 600 episodes! And all series are being shown around on the various cable/satellite channels. If watching Star Trek was your forty-hour-per-week job, then it would take fifteen weeks watching episodes end-on-end without repetition to go through all of them. And that excludes the ten Star Trek movies, all of the Star Trek books, and even the Star Trek cartoon series!

A few days ago, I saw that Star Trek Voyager was on, so I decided to see what it was like. In this episode, Captain Janeway (played by Kate Mulgrew), encountering a hostile computer, decided to initiate a self-destruct sequence to destroy her ship if the computer couldn’t be “fixed” in time. A few days later, I caught the end of another Voyager episode where the Captain was doing the same thing! First, I thought that I was just seeing the same episode, but no, it was different this time. Which brings me to a conclusion: there is a limit to how many different story ideas can be generated for a specific series with its characters and circumstances. I’d be willing to bet that, if you crossed over from one Star Trek series to another, you would find examples of old stories being recycled to fit the new series and its characters.

When Star Trek originally aired, people had not yet reached the moon. Space exploration was still considered to be the “final frontier” by most, while nowadays the emphasis seems to be more on how we can cushion our lives for ourselves here on Earth. And that includes being able to pretend, through more advanced special effects, that we have conquered space already. After all, compared to Star Trek, Stargate, Star Wars, and Battleship Galactica, real space travel is such a drag to follow, isn’t it? But back in the late sixties, that wasn’t the prevailing feeling.

I plan to watch more of all the Star Trek series, although right now I’m only familiar with the first two (and I still haven’t seen most of Star Trek: The Next Generation). But I am so familiar with the original series that I can forecast what the characters say before they say it! Any possible criticisms notwithstanding, from what I’ve seen, the Star Trek media "federation" has put out an interesting, quality product over the years that is a refreshing departure from the sickening “reality” shows and cop shows that have plagued television so much lately.

Correction: My figures were a little off: there are nearly 700 hour-long Star Trek episodes!

Monday Newsbreak: 6/23

--Several Florida Republican politicians, including Governor Crist, are reversing their previously-held opposition to oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The headline article about this issue in Sunday’s Gainesville Sun mentioned not a word about the reputed drilling in the same area, either planned or already underway, by China and Cuba. To me, it’s one thing to regulate our own companies. But if other countries, not subject to our safety and environmental regulations, can fill in the vacuum created by the eastern Gulf ban, then that is not only preventing us from producing our own energy, but it is also endangering our environment more than if we had permitted regulated exploration and drilling in the first place!

--Republican presidential candidate John McCain took his campaign northward to the steps of the Canadian capital, Ottawa, as he discussed there the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and criticized Democratic opponent Barack Obama for his reservations with that treaty. So far, no one has yet had the heart to tell the poor, misinformed Arizona senator that Canada is not part of the United States, although, perhaps if he is elected President, that may be how he treats our neighbor to the north, anyway.

--I have heard several people, including political commentator Arianna Huffington, express opposition to Barack Obama asking Hillary Clinton to join him on the ticket. I realize that, in the midst of a campaign for a party’s nomination, the different sides and their supporters naturally will tend to get a little hot under the collar about each other. That happened earlier between the McCain and Romney camps on the GOP side. But as people have a little time to chill out, more should see the advantage of having a united ticket like this. I support an Obama-Clinton ticket. If Clinton is not the VP pick, then I wish Obama would select California senator Dianne Feinstein.

--There has been an enormous amount of flooding along the northern Mississippi River, with Iowa losing a large percentage of its grain harvest this year. I wish those involved in this widespread disaster a speedy and full recovery. It appears that local, state, and federal authorities are doing what needs to be done to assist those stricken by flooding.

--I recently saw my first WNBA game, which was between the Connecticut Sun and the Seattle Storm. This was a very close and exciting game. I noticed that women’s professional basketball is just as aggressively played (if not more) as the men’s NBA. There seemed to be fewer open shots, due to tenacious defenses. I’ve come to believe more and more in the importance of passing in basketball offense. The men, to me, still have the advantage in that area (with Phoenix Suns guard Steve Nash being the master of this aspect of the game). Still, one game is just that: one game, and I’m bound to change my view of the WNBA the more I see.

Stephen King's Dark Tower Series

I just finished reading the final (seventh) volume of Stephen King’s much-drawn-out epic series The Dark Tower. And I’m not sure how to write this article: should I just go all out and spill the entire can of beans on it, revealing what happens and ruining it for those who haven’t yet read it? Or should I instead tread on a tight wire, revealing just enough to make some points while concealing the series’ outcome? I’ll try the latter, for better or for worse.

Stephen King is easily my favorite author, and if you have been reading this blog regularly (or are in my family), you would already know that. I have read most of his works, long and short. But until last December, I had steered clear of the seven-part Dark Tower series. Well, almost clear. Because, in some of his stories, King alludes to the Dark Tower. Especially in his early 90s-novel Insomnia and the short story The Little Sisters of Eluria. Finally, my curiosity was stimulated to the point where I could stand it no longer and began reading the series with Volume One, The Gunslinger. Originally written in 1970, King had revised it recently, and it was this version I read. One thing I admire about Stephen King is that he openly reveals his sources of inspiration. And The Dark Tower is directly inspired by a poem he read by Robert Browning, while its main protagonist, a quiet, somber gunslinger named Roland Deschain, derives much of his personality from Clint Eastwood’s “man with no name” character from old spaghetti westerns like A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. King acknowledges that he had been an avid fan of Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, and wanted to write his own epic series. But King’s output over the years of successive installments to the series was extremely erratic, and many fans gave up on him ever completing it. Finally, a near-fatal accident in 1999, when King was hit by a minivan while taking a walk down a Maine country road near his house, prompted him to renew his efforts. And in a torrent of writing, he produced the final three volumes.

As in Lord of the Rings, a long quest and a fellowship of diverse characters are central to the Dark Tower. Instead of trying to dispose of a pesky ring in a fiery volcano, though, Roland’s ka-tet (i.e. fellowship) tries to reach the mysterious Dark Tower and save existence from the nefarious Crimson King (a character eerily reminiscent of Tolkien’s Sauron). Departing from Tolkien, though, King uses time travel and travel-between-worlds to advance the plot, and this tactic gets our contemporary popular culture involved in this very exotic story. He also ties together many of his earlier works and creates a “Stephen King Universe” of interrelated stories. And, of course, he can’t help but stick himself and his beloved state of Maine into the proceedings as well! King also weaves into his story his writing philosophy: he feels as if he is channeling his characters and story from another source, not of himself!

Does Roland save existence and reach the Dark Tower? Far be it for me to tell you. But I will repeat the message that the good author gives at the end. It is the journey of reading through the series that gives it such an appeal. The ending, which King acknowledges that he received a lot of flack for, is something that you can take or leave.

The Dignity of Any Job

One of the ads for freecreditreport.com shows a young man working at a small seafood restaurant singing a song of woe; it seems that he hadn’t been keeping up with his credit report and someone had successfully stolen his identity, thus ruining his credit and putting him in such a bad situation that he was now lowered to having to work in this demeaning job. And the whole commercial makes clear the point that greeting customers in a low-paying service industry job is indeed “demeaning”, if not outright humiliating. The attitude of all working there (apparently, they all had been neglecting their credit reports) was that of being far below their station in life. As a former low-wage earner in a restaurant, I find this commercial to be degrading and insulting.

The great, late Martin Luther King Jr. once exhorted people to treat any job they had seriously and with respect: to do the best they could do, no matter how insignificant others may regard it to be. And he was right. The dignity that one lives by depends on how much respect he/she shows others and by how much pride is derived from doing excellent work, without regard to what kind of work it is or how much pay comes from it.

Throughout my work life, I have encountered co-workers who have put me down for working hard at my job. The idea is apparently that if the powers-that-be aren’t paying you enough (in your own personal estimation, of course), then you need to cut back on your efforts to meet your conception of your work’s worth. That, to me, is a very unethical and self-defeating philosophy to live by. And (to risk a very bad pun), to their “discredit”, freecreditreport.com is guilty of promoting this elitist and (to me) antisocial mentality. Shame on them!