the future

Many years ago as a child I rode through Futurama at the 1964 New York World's Fair and saw what I imagined to be the future. It was many images of what I would come to think of as the future.

Last week, with planes bombing Libya, Saudi Arabia invading Bahrain, women leading a revolution of sorts in Egypt, a partial meltdown of a nuclear plant in Japan it occurred to me. BINGO. We have entered the future. The dark, chaotic, unpredictable world of the future. From now on we will be living in the future. The future has begun.

A sister with a summer place

In life, we often wish for things that we don't have. A man comes home from a busy day at work and sees a sink full of dishes and nothing of interest in the refrigerator. The bathroom needs scrubbing and he's in no mood to cook or clean. He imagines a pretty wife, adding spices to the stew, the sink clean and the bathroom looking fresh and inviting. His clothes are all freshly ironed and hanging in the closet. "Oh to have a wife!" he thinks.

The working woman goes through her condo. "I hate those bathroom closets! I hate that shower-head." She imagines in her mind a husband. A cute guy, dusty with shaving from the power saw, getting ready to stain the cabinets he is building.

"Oh to have a husband!" she thinks.

I have simpler thoughts. I dream of having a summer place. No, too much work and responsibility. What I want is to have a sister who has a summer place. A pleasant place, perhaps near the shore or the mountains. I would have a standing invitation. A place to go on Memorial Day, Easter, Labor Day, the Fourth of July. And of course there would be a boat.

"Where are you going for the weekend"? the nosy secretary asks.


"I'm going to my sister's summer place."

"Lucky you."
A change of scenery. Lots of parties with summer people. My own room reserved just for me.
Married people and people with sisters with summer places are going to tell me I am dreaming. Most husbands don't build cabinets for their wives. Most wives don't sweat over a hot stove. Most sisters only invite their brothers to their cottages once a year, to help entertain the other relatives.

Joe McDoakes

I've been trying to think of anything good that came of my recent hospital stay. After some commiseration I would say that I learned to appreciate cable TV, especially TCM. And thanks to TCM I have discovered Joe McDoakes. How wonderful it must have been in the 40's and 50's to encounter this series. Settled in your seats ready for the feature, a special treat before Cary or William came on the screen. Joe McDoakes. Each featured a booming announcer describing a modern day problem and the situation being acted out by Joe McDoakes, who later became the voice for George Jetson. And to think they made 63 of them. Classics.

Hospital gowns

Some of you may have heard from the grapevine that I was in the hospital for a spell. The

hardest thing I had to learn was how to tie a hospital gown. That took me half an hour the first time, only to be told by the nurse I had put it on backwards. I also learned how to use a portable urinal, sleep through noise, and choose from a menu. Navigating the menu is difficult at first, as the knowledge of pain avoidance in bad food is more relevant than choosing appetizing selections.

Sickness has been so overdone in blogs and magazine articles that this blogger will probably avoid the topic in the future. Just like every baby boomer has their sixties coming of age stories, now they are all coming up with their heart-by-pass and cancer stories.

The nursing home had a plethora of events. Bingo, movie night, wheelchair relay night, but one thing that caught my eye was happy hour. Here people drink non alcoholic beer and juice shooters. I was thinking this country needs a place where people would be taught how to drink, smoke, have affairs, play cards, and taught the pleasures of recreational drugs. But, alas, we already have such places. They're called colleges.

Jean Luc Goddard

If there was one word that defined hipness in high school and freshman year in college it was Jean Luc Goddard. I first encountered the name being mentioned on WBAI. Apparently, the callers were objecting to the change of the name of the film "One Plus One.
It was being changed to the name "Sympathy for the Devil."
"It is nothing but a sellout from art to commercialism," the caller ranted.
Being a big Stones fan, naturally this caught my eye. Apparently, there was a Rolling Stones movie out directed by a French arteur.

Two weeks later I was on the bus with some friends and we were headed for the movie, "One Plus One", then playing in New York. To be fair, the Stones footage is interesting. The Stones didn't look like they were having too much fun though, and the stuff outside or in the junk yard was preposterous, I thought.

Later at Rutgers, I took the class, "The French Film" (my mother used to get laughs at parties reciting the classes I was taking) and it showed "Breathless". In 1972, Jean Luc Goddard, spoke at school and I got to see him. Jane Fonda had appeared around that time too. Apparently they were both in New Brunswick, tied to the movie "Letter to Jane". Goddard's film criticized Jane Fonda and perhaps she was on the heels of Goddard to stand up for her dignity, according to one story.

"Breathless" I chiefly remember for Jean Seberg selling Herald Tribunes. Saw it again on TCM and I actually enjoyed it and understood it for the first time. I guess there are advantages in age.

I never saw "Weekend" until recently although I told a white lie about it many years ago. The teacher had said in class that we could see any film in the library collection if we needed to for a paper. The next day, however, I was turned down flat by the staff of the library. There I was informed that they never set up a projector for one student. Luckily the library had a book of the screenplay with pictures. I implied in the paper that I had seen the movie when actually I was stretching the truth.

It's hard to say that Jean Luc Goddard was a great filmaker, but he was definitely of his time. In the year 2020 when the class at high school is assigned "movies of the sixties", his films will be introduced as relics of the madness of that decade.

A night in Tunisia

A blog that is written in Tunisia and is following the excitement in that country.

Where's your tie

I wrote a new post on the Sixties blog. I think it's great our Congressman are going to do Outward Bound together. I wonder if their valets and butlers can come along.