Smith and Rand

Last week I read a short science fiction book called The Unending Night  by a guy called George Smith. It was a used book store find and was apparently written in 1964. However, there is no copyright date in the book itself. The story concerns two scientist brothers who develop a technique for building massive nuclear fusion generators able to provide all the energy that Earth and the newly settled Mars could ever need. The one brother, Lee, is concerned about the strength of the magnetic fields required to keep the super hot plasma away from the containers of radioactive material. The other brother, Lance is completely believes Lee to be a needless worry-wart and insists that the schedule to fire up the generators be maintained. Lance is a believer in the necessity of the great thinkers and producers to lead the rest of humanity to greater things at the expense of those lesser folk (like his brother) who stand in the way of progress. He is supported and encouraged by a tall, beautiful, blonde writer whose opinion of the "regular folk" is even more degenerate.

In the course of reading this narrative I couldn't help thinking of some of the characters in Ayn Rand's novels, especially The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Smith portrays Kristy Konrad as his version of Rand's Dagny Taggert and Lance seems to be modeled after Howard Roark. However, they are far from protagonists. In fact it is due to Lance's hubris (with full support from Kristy) that the fusion plant on Mars explodes and sends the planet hurtling towards Earth. This made me wonder if Smith specifically wrote these characters as a rejection of the quasi-Nietzschean supermen that populate Rand's novels. 

I say this as one who went through a Libertarian phase and for a time enjoyed reading Ayn Rand's novels and essays. I still believe in the ideal  that government should interfere as little as possible in our lives, especially regarding civil liberties. However, my support for the Libertarian economic philosophy ultimately collapsed. Corporate oppression is just as problematic as oppression by the government, especially given the identity of personhood granted to corporate entities and the recent SCOTUS "Citizens United" decision that rejected limits to corporate spending on political campaigns. This will foster the continuing increase of corporate control over our lives. A control that has been manifest by the oppressive use of advertising and its encouragement of mindless consumerism and will now likely assert total control over the one antidote the people had available in the past: the political system.

Anyhow, The Unending Night is an enjoyable and fast read. Smith is certainly no Ray Bradbury but on the other hand he is (was?) no Ayn Rand either, exhibiting a pointed brevity and fast pace instead of a turgid narrative beholden to a questionable philosophy.

Baseball

As I watch the Dodgers play the Astros tonight I am thinking back on my history with the game, primarily as a spectator. I didn’t pay much attention to baseball as a young kid. My dad would watch the occasional Dodger game as well as the playoffs and World Series but I have no recollection of them until 1977 when the Dodgers played the Yanks for the championship. The earliest mention of baseball that I remember was during a Cub Scout meeting in 1973 when my dad and Chris R were discussing the World Series between Oakland and the Mets. Both of them said they were rooting for the Mets. Ultimately to no avail. Probably earlier that year Chris told us about an Angel game his folks took him to where he saw President Nixon.

Oddly enough, a math teacher was responsible for instilling my rabid interest beginning in the 1978 season. Mr. Mauger told us how they figured our batting averages and that .300 was considered good. I had never really thought about it before and began checking out the Dodger box scores in the L.A. Times. That led me to start watching and listening to games. This was, of course, during the days of the longtime Dodger infield of Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey. I followed them as well as Reggie Smith, Dusty Baker and the pitchers Don Sutton, Bert Hooten, Bill Welch et al.

By high school I was totally on board as a fan, although oddly enough I went to more Angel games than Dodger games. I may to this day have seen the Angels live more often than the Dodgers. This is because Rob and his family were and are major Angel fans and they took me to a bunch of games. I recall the 1979 season in particular when Don Baylor drove in something like 130 runs and the Angels made it to the division playoffs. It was a fun year. Rob’s grandpa took us often. I think he had been following them from the beginning. He was always concerned that someone was going to spill their beer on him…either a fan or a vendor. I even got to go with him when I was back for a visit while we were living in Hawaii. As mentioned in an earlier post, he helped get me on a flight to Hawaii after graduation. This time I remember him asking if I thought we were going to put down roots on the island. I sensed that he was missing Rob quite a bit.

However, all three of us (me, Rob and Eric) did go to a couple Dodger games. Eric’s dad took us to one and there was this really annoying guy in the stands who had the loudest unamplified voice I have ever heard. He kept yelling at the Dodger hitters “C’mon Cey this isn’t batting practice!” “C’mon Garvey, this isn’t batting practice!” People were yelling at him to “shut up!” but he just said “No! Huhuhuhuh!” I hate drunk assholes. We also got ice cream sandwiches and Rob got a Dodger Dog which has a fair bit of the hot dog sticking out of the bun. Eric and I kept teasing him as he tried to take the first bite. Pretty childish, but at least we weren’t yelling.

My mom let me stay home “sick” from school on opening day of 1981 so I could listen to what was an afternoon game between the Dodgers and Astros. It turned out to be Fernando Valenzuela’s first start and he pitched a complete game shutout and they won 5-0. There was unfortunately a strike that year so there was no play in the middle of the summer. Happily, the Dodgers ended up beating the Yankees in the World Series and Valenzuela took both the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards.

My only experience actually playing was with a literal sandlot game that Rob, Eric and I and later Eric’s brother Kurt developed. It involved souvenir bats and tennis balls and was a strictly one-on-one game. We got fairly elaborate with it keeping stats and instituting playoffs and a championship. It was pretty damn fun and one of those unconscious creative forms of play that I think are better than organized sports. I’d play it again today. We played using a wing of a local elementary school as a backstop, occasionally getting booted by administrators who thought an intermittent tennis ball against the wall would cause the structure to collapse or something. Just another example of the man trying to keep us down! Naw, but it was pretty stupid.                                                            

By the 1988 season I was living in Sacramento and that was of course just an amazing year for the Dodgers. Gibson and Hersheiser…need I saw more? I was watching “the game” (first WS game against Oakland) in my little studio apartment. I was on my knees in front of the tv by the time Gibson came up for his pinch hit. When he hit that home run to win the game I jumped up with my fist in the air and hit my knuckles on the ceiling . . .not even noticing the pain. It was just one of those few amazing sports moments that one gets to see once or twice in a lifetime. Later that year I paid tribute to Gibson’s fist pump while performing in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers.

After that I lost some interest in baseball due to a more intense focus on school, especially as a graduate, and then with the 1994 strike. I sort of followed for the next 17-18 years but not much during the regular season. I did enjoy seeing the Angels win the World Series in 2002, but it wasn’t until 2012 (now) that I began to watch games with any sort of regularity. And thus far the Dodgers are doing great, first place with a seven game lead on May 26^th.

Attached is my paper on Cold War Millennialism and its effect on the 1980 presidential election.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10i9LiVVi2wUDsHmJsyAR3Rz1oqCcDeXWlCZye51fDAY/edit

Winter in Socal.

Post will be coming more regularly now that I am almost done with this semester. As I come within spitting range of 50 (I'm 47) I find it more difficult to maintain full time work, grad school, the occasional Myler and Starr gig and post with any sort of regularity. Anyhow, tonight in the aftermath of a Cold War apocalyptic blowout (my last paper for the semester) I am chilling with the album Johnny Winter And. Probably his least straight-bluesy album. It's good, even though Winter himself pretty much dismisses it now. He is backed up by Rick Derringer and the (former) McCoys of "Hang on Sloopy" (not Snoopy, Sloopy!) fame. Anyway, there are just some good almost psychedelic songs by Johnny, Derringer (the first appearance of Rock 'n Roll Hoochie Koo) and others such as the late, great Mark/Moogy Klingman.


This was the first Johnny Winter album I ever bought. Rob and I went to the Tower Records on Beach Blvd and he bought Edgar Winter's Entrance and White Trash while I bought Johnny's Johnny WInter And and Johnny Winter And/Live. Each of our purchases were double album reissues. Additionally, since we were also in our proggy phase Rob bought a Steve Howe solo album and I bought Renaissance's Novella album. What was cool was there was (nice, using was three times in one sentence...now four) this really hot twenty-something brunette chick (we were 16) that worked in the Tower Records who was totally into prog. So she - along with this dude with a beard - helped us pick the Howe/Renaissance albums. Really I would have bought Journey if she recommended it (ok, probably not Journey, I really don't like Journey) but you get the idea. Anyway, I think Steve Howe turned out to be a bit of a dud. I remember Rob playing the song "Australia" and Howe sang really bad on it. But I liked and still like Renaissance. I am just a sucker for a great female voice so I also love the Carpenters because Karen could sing even a totally banal song  like it represented the collective sadness of all humanity. Annie Halsam of Renaissance isn't quite to that level, but close.


Anyhow, we got back to my house with our albums and put on the live Johnny Winter and were totally blown away. We were also really sunburned because we had been boogie boarding and I still associate that with this album. We became fans of Johnny and Edgar, although Edgar pretty much lost it after They Only Come Out  at Night, oh there are some good songs on Shock Treatment  but thereafter, not much. We ended up seeing Johnny play at the Country Club in Reseda several times with Jim N. and Russ R. and just the two of us. It was always a good show. I haven't seen him since the Sacramento Blues Festival in 1988. As it turns out until 2003 or so Winter had been pretty much kept drugged by his former manager Teddy Slatus who was also embezzling from him. Not long after Winter fired him Slatus got drunk, fell down a flight of stairs and died (karma?). Johnny is now touring in support of a new album. Here's a good clip of him recently on Letterman. At 68 his voice isn't what it was but he still plays a mean slide.http://youtu.be/IDijzVJkK-M?hd=1


Crap, just copy and paste. I don't know how to make it a direct link.

Top 10 (good and bad) Hawaii Moments 1985-1986

10. Remembering ten years later that I did "upside-downer" kamikaze's on my second to last night in HI.

9. Getting jumped by a bunch of fuckers on the way to a club while at the same time a dude hit a chick with his moped. Lots of bad energy that night.

8. The Thing (a guy with one large gross dread, looked like it came out of a play-dough pumper).

7. Bill the cat going into heat and climbing up to the top of our apartment building and yowling. Eric scaled up the wall like freaking Spiderman and retrieved her.

6. Guinness and Fig-Newtons at the Rose and Crown Pub. By the time we got off work at The Photo Stores we were literally craving Guinness. It was our sustenance.


5. Thanksgiving with Jenny, her sister and some Marines friends. Got totally plotzed on rum and those Safeway beers with the puzzles on the inside of the lids.

4. Seeing the band War with Jenny at some little club by the Honolulu airport. They totally kicked ass!

3. Finding a 10" in diameter cane-spider on our couch one night. No exaggeration! 

2. Rob, Kirsten and I drinking and smoking to the point where we had the giggles so bad we almost started crying...like with real emotion. Then Rob called the local department store and in his best stoned surfer voice asked if they had and could deliver a "Twister" game to our apartment.

1. Eric passing out in the bathroom in a pool of vomit, his pants down (butt showing), with a goofy grin and............holding a spatula.

Hawaii: This is just the first part. Much more to follow.

My history with Hawaii began in 1972 when my mom and dad took us kids to the Big Island. We flew into Hilo and drove to Kona and stayed for about a week. I don’t remember a whole lot other than snorkeling in my “Vote” shirt that my mom made for me. The pattern had the word “vote” all across it. I remember buying a “Keep on Surfin’” sticker with the “Keep on Truckin” guys holding surfboards. And what exactly was the “Keep on Truckin” thing supposed to signify? Keep driving trucks? Keep on going as a 1970s self help kind of thing? Keep being cool because you walk with your feet way out in front of the rest of your body? Feckin’ weird. Anyway, that was a fun trip.

                 

The next Hawaii trip was in 1977 at the end of my 7^th grade year. My dad took us kids along with his second wife and her kids, Eric and Tammy. I had an orchestra concert planned for that week and the original plan was for me to do the concert and then dad and I would fly out a couple days after everyone else. However, I chose to go with everyone else and miss the concert. I am surprised that Mr. Granger didn’t dock me a grade for that. Were it my kid I probably would have made him/her do the concert, especially since it included “March to the Scaffold” from Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique . But at the time I was happy with my decision. On the way back on the plane Eric and I mixed our dinner leftovers together on a plate and put a sign that said “Continental Chef’s Surprise.” Our cute stewardess was (I thought) mock upset and made some comment that I forget. Another stewardess said “Don’t worry about her, she’s a witch!” Wow, well, we weren’t sure where to go with that.

               

We went the next year at the same time and I missed a test in physical science for which I did get docked. I thought it was unfair but my mom said to think of it from the teacher’s perspective: A kid gets to go to Hawaii and misses a test while the other students who may not be so fortunate are there finishing the class. Fair enough. Eric (stepbrother) and I did some cool Boogie Boarding at Turtle Bay on the north shore of Oahu. We also rented a big ol’ log surfboard in Waikiki and rode it tandem. Seriously fun. The hotel we stayed at in Kuilima had a totally hot girl working as a lifeguard at the pool. I think I “fantasized” about her every night. The snack bar also made really good turkey sandwiches.  So on the flight back we had the same stewardess we had the year before (the Continental Chef’s Surprise”) and I stupidly reminded her of our hijinks from the year before. Well, she gave me all kinds of grief for the rest of the flight. She didn’t bring me my dinner; she pretended to spill a tray of drinks on me. She finally brought my dinner but said they were short and it was actually her dinner that I ate. It was without the dessert…coconut ice cream. I said to Eric, “You helped make the Chef’s Surprise how come you aren’t getting hassled?” He said, “Because I didn’t remind her of it (implied…’you idiot!’)”. True enough. Anyway, towards the end of the flight she brought me a sundae from the first class meal. It was not one of my shining moments. I still thought she was hot, though. Definite cougar potential. Of course for a 13 year-old an 18 year-old would be definite cougar potential, but she was probably close to 40.

           
   The next trip was after high-school graduation. Dad gave me a ticket and some dough and along with the $$ I got from my mom and grandparents, Rob and I went to Waikiki for 10 days. My mom also got me one of the first Casio keyboards. I still have it, pretty sweet, or “BOSS” as was my initial reaction. So, since I was on a discounted ticket (dad was a pilot) I had trouble getting a flight as they were all overbooked. Rob went ahead and his grandpa stayed with me in the airport until I got on a flight. He kept talking up the gate folk with lines like, “Yep, his friend got on a flight earlier today and is waiting for him at the Honolulu Airport… we’ve been here since then.” “This young man and his friend are celebrating graduation with this trip; his friend caught an earlier flight and is waiting for him at in Honolulu.” It finally worked on a Western Airlines guy who took pity on me and gave me the last first class seat. Grandpa shook my hand and I went on board. Thanks Skip!

               

That was a great trip. We didn’t leave Waikiki, but the drinking age was 18 ( I had just turned, tho’ Rob was still 17) so we had much beer. Then the daughter of a sorority friend of my mom’s came with her boyfriend and took us to a comedy show (Andy Bumatai, very funny) and then to a topless bar (with just the boyfriend) called The Lollipop. Well, after that introduction we spent every following evening there drinking beer and looking at tits. They did table dances (though those weren’t topless) and we put our toe in the water with a blond who danced for us to “I Love Rock n’ Roll”, as it turned out she was a big Joan Jett fan. Thereafter we got table dances from all the girls until we each found a favorite. For Rob it was this chick in a rabbit skin bikini who would look you right in the eye while doing an incredibly sexy dance. Rob was totally knocked out by her and followed her from stage to stage to watch her. Mine was this hot local girl. She initially came up to me and asked if I wanted a table dance, I declined at first. Then Rob said to me, “Dude, she’s really hot and has a totally ‘tease’ face’”. He was right so I hunted her down and asked for a table dance. I had her dance for me every night for the rest of the trip. I even got a free one my final night. Rob was so smitten with his girl (Sorry, I realize this whole narrative couldn’t be much more sexist than it is. I’m just reporting it as I remember it) that he wrote her a note proclaiming his love and slipped it under the door of the club on the morning we left. Apparently he received a nice letter in return. Gawd, we spent a lot of money in that place. 1982 dollars it was $3 for a table dance, but we pretty much gave them $5 each time plus all the beer.

                

 When we got back dad asked, “So did you take a bus and check out the rest of the island?” Nope. “Did you go to the Polynesian Cultural Center, or the Sea Park?” Nope. “What the heck did you do?” I don’t remember if I actually told the truth at the time. Not that he would have had a major problem with it, but it was pool time and video games during the day (and checking out the Swedish chicks at our hotel) and Lollipop at night. We had fun!

                

 The summer of 1984, Rob and Eric took off to Hawaii, Rob came home after a few months but Eric ended up staying. For the rest of the year I was studying at Long Beach State and trying to form a reggae band with Rob. We wrote some pretty cool songs together but had trouble finding other musicians to play with us. We actually had Chris B. our friend and a really good drummer interested but finding a bass player was turning out to be impossible. We put ads in the Recycler and got a couple responses: One was this guy Glen who we thought was a perfect fit and was a good player, but turned out to be a total flake. The other was this dude from Compton. He was a super nice guy, but the ad said “willing to experiment” when we wanted it to say “must be willing to experiment.” That’s a different thing. So this dude had some ideas about doing like nursery rhymes or something like that, and also some kind of rap on Revelation. He really didn’t know much about reggae and seemed mystified by the bass lines we played for him. So that didn’t work out either. Then Rob had the idea to go to Hawaii and try to form a band there. It sounded plausible; I mean it is an island culture like Jamaica so there must be musicians wanting to play reggae! Well, not really. As it turns out Hawaii was rather reactionary in its musical taste. This is best exemplified by noting the number of requests I got from students while I was teaching there asking me to teach them America songs or Uriah Heep songs…there were a lot! So we never really found anyone to play with. However, we did work together and wrote some songs, and as it was the first time I had to live on my own, pay bills, buy food, etc…it was a valuable experience. And we had some great times, including my one experience with total transcendence, probably Nirvana:

We initially stayed at this semi-seedy hotel: The Honolulu Prince. Eric and Rob lived there before so we invaded Eric who was at the time enjoying solitude in the studio apartment. Yep, we ended up with three of us in one room. I slept on the floor. Fortunately, we all had different hours, at least at first so it wasn’t quite as bad as it might seem to an outsider. Nevertheless, the situation couldn’t last forever, so we eventually moved to a two bedroom apartment.

Rob and Eric took me to the Rose and Crown Pub my first night there and introduced me to Guinness Stout. The first glass was difficult, but thereafter I was hooked. Literally, It got to the point where we would crave it and couldn’t wait to get off work and indulge…and if we had Fig Newtons to go along with it…Valhalla! (I already used Nirvana in a sentence, and when one is discussing beer, Valhalla seems more appropriate)

I sold my 1976 Mustang II before leaving so I had about $1000.00 when I got to Hawaii, enough to last a while…remember it was 1985, but I didn’t want to wait too long before finding a job. Eric had been working two jobs, nights at the Shorebird buffet/bar and early mornings at Perry’s Smorgasbord.  Apparently he had slept in hungover and missed work at Perry’s enough times to where they told him “If it happens one more time don’t even bother coming in.” Well, it happened one more time just before I arrived. Rob had just gotten a job as a busboy at like $3.50 an hour. I applied for Eric’s old position…a “float”...the position involved keeping plates, silverware, soda etc all stocked…and it paid $4.50! I had never made that much before.

              

  It started at 6:00 AM…and what a deep evil black mood I was in every morning.  Getting up that early in freakin’ Hawaii to go schlep crappy food to tourists sucked! My direct supervisor was this effeminate guy name Norm, nothing wrong with effeminism, I enjoy doing a bit of drag myself, but imagine an effeminate twenty-something who apparently loves working at a shitty place like Perry’s! He was totally gung-ho and I at 21 just couldn’t handle that. And the upper management guys were total dicks. One whose name I forget would come in sometimes and find things to complain about like the plates being stacked too high (they weren’t, Norm told me how high to go and I could tell he thought this guy was kind of a jerk…gotta give that to ol’ Norm).

            

    But the hugest prick was Dave who was, I don’t know…one of the owners or the head-head manager. The first time he walked in the sweet, older Hawaiian coffee server lady said “I’m going to hide in the lobby, that guy is an a-hole” Then I walked in the kitchen (where I once saw a guy breaking up lettuce heads on the floor for the salads) to get some orange juice for the float area and Dave yelled “Hey what the hell are you doing?!” Before I could answer he yelled at Norm, “What’s that table boy (hey, I have a name you nad!) doing with the orange juice!” Norm answered, “He’s not a table-boy, he’s a float!” And Dave said “Well that’s not his job!” It totally was my job but he had to save face. I saw one of these guys outside of work just walking down Kapahulu and in the context of the real world he looked like what he was, just a petty little man.

The Group

Rob, Eric W., John G. and myself. Eric and I were friends with Rob, Eric and I were friends with John.  John and Rob, not so much. Generally we hung out in twos or threes, sometimes supplemented by Jeff (with John) or Chris and Tom (with Rob)

Eric, John and I go back to second or third grade at Lee School where we all had Mrs. Fickus. I got to know Eric through the first bowling league I joined in 5^th grade. I had Sandi and Suzie M. on my team along with a kid from Weaver whose name I forget. John and I started to hang out in sixth grade. We had Mr. Reichardt. I don’t remember what started the bond between us. He and David T were totally into the Three Stooges (to the extent that Reichardt was concerned). I hung out with Charlie C., Chris R., Steve A. at this time too.

Rob came to Lee school in the 4^th grade. He had Mrs. Nash and later Mr. Wilkinson. For years I thought Rob’s name was Cliff because everyone called him by his last name: Clifford. I remember him totally cracking me and Eric M. up (This Eric was my stepbrother for a while, another story) by calling someone a dildo. We had just learned that word. In fact not long after, my mom overheard me calling someone a dildo and said
 “Do you know what that means?” I didn’t really…I knew it was something “bad” but wasn’t sure exactly what or how. So, she told me to go look it up…which I did. I wasn’t completely sure what the definition was telling me, or what it was actually for, but mom seemed satisfied that I wouldn’t use the word so indiscriminately. I thought “Cliff” was gone by the time we were in sixth grade.

So, John, Eric and I all ended up at Oak Jr. High for seventh grade. John and I had the industrial arts electives and English together. I don’t think I had any classes with Eric, but we all ate lunch together. We, along with Charlie and Steve made fun of guys that looked like Joe Poor (he was a guy that lived behind me, we weren't actually making fun of poor people) and were constantly on paper detail for popping our cups and milk cartons. Woodshop was great. Some pretty bitchin’ chicks were in that class: Sue S. and Kelly S. They were always trying to get Starbursts out of our pocket. I really could have turned that more to my advantage.Dang!

After woodshop and metal class (each one for a quarter) we had home ec(onomics) which we called home wreck. The teacher was poor Mrs. Spencer who had a major lisp. She was rather Victorian in disposition. One time John and I were practicing and racing on the sewing machines and got going to fast and my machine stalled. I yelled “shit!” right as she was standing over me…she grabbed my arm and hauled me outside for a dressing down. Well not long after that Mr. Granger said he wanted me in the advanced band so I transferred out of home wreck. Band was cool. We had a kickass band and orchestra. Easily at the level of most high schools. Granger was a great director, later studied with Herbert Blomstedt. He’s now conducting the Santa Cruz Symphony.

In eighth grade I started bowling again. Eric was in the league with this new guy who I didn’t know. Then this new guy was introduced to our Sunday school class at Congregational church on Katella. His name was Rob and he lived near Mike, our teacher. I recognized him from bowling so we started talking about …bowling. We also had similar tastes in music: Queen, Zeppelin etc…It was like a year or so later that I figured out this was “Cliff”. In fact, I think it was Eric M. who made the connection.

There was a Christmas craft fair at the church, must have been 1977. Rob and I must have looked bored because his mom suggested we go to their house where his stepdad was making dinner: filet mignon and lasagna. It was pretty bitchin’.

Rob was the first guy I knew who got ONTV, a precursor to HBO etc…They showed porn late at night. I went over a couple times to check it out. One time it was the movie Easy with Jesse St. James (what a memory!) This would have been 1980 or maybe 1981. In a compelling performance she portrayed a teacher who started doing her students and later turned prostitute. Now, it was really cool of Rob’s mom to let us watch, but it was on early enough that she was still up and crossed the living room into the kitchen a few times during the course of the film. Rob would yell, “Mom, don’t look!” “Hurry up!” She’d be like, “I’m not looking, okay!” It was kinda hard to get into the movie under those circumstances. I mean to be honest, its hard to get into them while watching with another dude anyway, but when mom might walk through at any time it was just too much. I think we learned a lot by watching that movie.

It was with the help of both Rob and John that I built up a  collection of porn. John worked at a truck dispatch place for a while and would run across all these magazines. Since his folks really didn’t approve I had to keep them first in my fort in the garage rafters and then in my room. I had a tacit “don’t ask don’t tell” agreement with my mom. I used to “read” them behind this Reader’s Digest coffee-table book The World Around Us, the perimeter dimensions of which were larger than the magazines. Once mom came in and saw me struggling to keep a mag behind the book and said “You don’t have to hide anything, you know I don’t care what you read.” (I was probably 16 at the time) That was cool of her to say but of course I denied it; there are some things you just don’t want to openly admit.

Beginning probably in 1978 and continuing for the next 4 years or so, Rob’s grandparents (who were the nicest folks you would ever want to meet) took us to Baja each summer where his great aunt and uncle had a beach house. Those were damn fun times. Boogie boarding, curio shopping, buying switchblades (we weren’t in a gang or anything, we just thought they were cool), chess sets, firecrackers. And the food! They fed us well and often. The running joke line between me and Rob since those trips was “Here, have another tort!” We had tacos one night and his aunt kept offering me more, more, more! It was sweet, actually. And she made the comment about her sons who “go ape over bananas” That just killed us at the time.

There was a terrific pizza place, Giuseppe’s, where his grandpa let us have a bit of beer. The first kind I ever actually liked the taste of. It was Corona.

There was a sandwich place next door that advertised “pustrami sandwiches.” Um, we never went there.

There was a really cute girl Jackie, who I think was a friend of Rob’s family. She came out a couple of the years we stayed there, just for the day each time. We talked to her but both of us were too socially inept with the opposite sex to do anything more. 

Rob and I slept in this kind of loft which happened to be where his uncle kept his stash of Playboys and Penthouses. Needless to say we availed ourselves of this library and as we were packing to leave we both concurrently had the idea of absconding with a few issues. So we did and traded them back and forth over the years.

Now, here is an example of how cool Rob’s grandparents were: When we bought the switchblades they warned us that if on the way back home the border guards asked if we had them we would have to tell the truth and they would be confiscated…fair enough. Well, after we got through the border without a hitch Rob's grandma said that they would have reimbursed us if they had taken our knives. His grandparents would have paid us back for our confiscated contraband! That is certainly beyond the call of duty. I hope my fourteen year-old self would have had the strength of will to  refuse the offer had it become a reality.

I accidentally left the big brick of firecrackers I bought in my duffel bag and they went through the wash. There were many piles of dog crap that thus remained intact!

Dr. Demento was huge with all of us at the time. We each had several shows on tape, dang I wish we still had them. That was where I first heard punk rock/new wave. Devo: “Mongolid” and “Shrivel Up”, and Tuff Darts “Your Love is Like a Nuclear Waste. I also became familiar with Tom Lehrer of whom I am still a huge fan. Dr. Demento did a 50^th birthday Tom Lehrer special in 1978 and I taped it all. Not long after some friends from church lent me his albums which Rob and I taped. Jennifer E., the daughter of a professor my mom had in college introduced me to Dr. D. We had met a few times when we were babies and then again when we took a trip back east in 1972. They lived in South Hadley Massachusetts at that time. Well, Jennifer’s parents got divorced and she and her mom moved to Irvine in 1977, I think. So we met again at age twelve. We had a lot of similar interests, Sci-Fi, animals, Monty Python, Pink Floyd, champagne. We got to have a little champagne at her mom’s birthday where my mom served champagne and peaches. Of course model of moderation that I was, I chugged a full glass and got a bit wasted…age 13.  This fact my sister not long after matter-of-factly shared with my Christian Scientist grandparents. All considering they handled it well.