My dad retires today. He’s been working since about his early twenties, and has seen this country at its best. I’ve been thinking about him all day. It’s funny—I don’t really see him as a “retiree.” I bet he won’t be hanging out in cargo shorts, catching up on the Weather channel. Nope, not my dad. He’s always been a tinkerer. The world is quite different now, and our country... I wish him the best of times in both.
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Unexpected hardships or disasters often leave ruinous consequences in their wake, and recovering from the aftermath can tax victim’s resources for many years to come. In the past, people would just be left to make due, and perish if they couldn’t return even to basic survival. So many Americans are now grateful we pledged decades ago to be a nation who reaches out to our countryman, instead of turn our backs to them. Simon and Theodore were closest; Alvin always knew that. "I'm taking a walk, gents." The city at night... very inspiring. He so did not need a loud karaoke bar, but he really did need a beer. If asked, he'd answer like always: "The A is for asshole! Ha-ha!" Same old stuff. But when he saw "Tragedy" by The Bee Gees in the songbook he smiled, took a deep breath, turned his cap around, and put his damn name on the list. LSL - 042511 MOD:Re-titled; Attributed - 080712/01:10 I have to believe there's lots of stuff in existence because it's just cool. Like cuttlefish. And purple. And resonance. And... love. Suppose God ever turns His gaze down to where space meets time and goes, "That is so cool”? Ya know? Just steps out onto an event horizon and has a good look around because you know damn well that something's going ON right there! And those cuttlefish are a total trip! Happy Easter. [= >Prince - For your concert performance in Minneapolis, late summer 1988... the Lovesexy tour. For the few weeks I waited for the concert date to arrive, I could hardly think of anything but seeing you in person—something I'd often imagined. You and I were less than 500 feet apart for a little while. Your musicianship was as good as it had ever been, and watching Dr. Fink and Sheila E. shooting baskets while you jammed on your guitar was killer... you are truly a gifted artist and showman. I knew before it had completely been lowered to the stage that the big neon heart had the word "yes" inside it, and I felt like I'd genuinely jacked-in to a little of your vibe in that moment. And when you drove that white convertible around the stage, I clapped my ass off... and I was so doing the Alphabet St. rap right along with Cat.
>Denzel Washington - For your performance in the film Glory. I can't begin to identify with any of the constituent attitudes relevant to racism. Mostly because it’s a stupid idea, anyway. Still, as an American white, it would be unreasonable of me to ignore the treatment of African and other slaves by many of those who founded and promoted this country. The glossed-over treatment this chapter was given me in “history” class was, in retrospect, a laughable farce, offered only as fodder to take tests with. Not until I saw Glory, (and after a lot of subsequent reading about the real history of American slavery), did I get a glimpse of the "everyday" atmosphere of our country at that time, and how slaves were actually treated. Until then, only the TV series Roots exposed me similarly to that part of our history. The scene in which your character stoicly takes his punishment for going to the barn dance was some of the best acting I have yet seen in any film, and I've not since seen such an authentic portrayal of his heroic military unit. >Tori Amos - For your song Silent All These Years. My early- and mid-twenties were full of the personal revelations typical of that stage in life. I'd seen loss, abuse, poverty, want and despair in my youth, just as many of my generational contemporaries had. Faith offered me a place to put the deepest damage, but many of the other residual feelings had little voice. I think some of the best words ever penned are the opening line to your song: "Excuse me, but can I be you for a while?" I can hardly hear them without going right back to those heady and confusing days. Your sweet and rousing piano arrangement lifted my soul's ear, and gave many of my emotional expressions something to be reflected in... a feeling, albeit fleeting, I can only describe as wonderful. >Toni Collette - For the scene in the film The Sixth Sense, where your character and her son are caught in traffic because of an accident involving a bicyclist. It's a strange thing to be a child. I don't mean a juvenile, I mean a person with parents. I'm convinced we're created with some kind of mechanism with which to process the ideas of father and mother, as they are among the most unique and puzzling features of humanity. When that relationship is unreasonably strained, or taken too far away from its best expression, often sorrow and emptiness follow. I've not seen the struggle to cope with what those roles do to our souls portrayed better than when your character tells her son what she said at her mother's grave. You were there, in those moments, and I was there with you... as much as it's reasonable to be, anyway. >My Friends - For your time, your treasure, and all the cherished places each of you abides in my heart. I'm not altogether sure why some people mean so much in one arena of life, and others less, but it's clear this is a foundational truth of the human experience. More than most other kinds of relationships, friendship is at once both enriching and rewarding; passionate and volatile. I'm often at a loss to express adequately the depth my feelings to them, but plainly said... I love my friends. I've often thought of them as extended family. Most of my friendships have been dynamic, some temporary, and all have been a way of revealing some aspects about life, and myself, I otherwise might have missed. I don't easily share my burdens, but I have on many occasions had my spirit genuinely lifted by the listening ear of a friend. Way, way back, in the mid 1990s, people everywhere started getting very interested in the Internet. The government, and eventually many large corporations, had been using the Internet’s grandfather for years to communicate, and send digitized written and graphics materials. But by this time, if you had a beefy enough home computer, and could afford the monthly fee, you too could go out on the World Wide Web and have a look around. By today’s iStandards, as I’m sure they’ll soon be referenced, the early Internet would have seemed dreadfully slow... and that would be a fair assessment. Frankly, there wasn’t much to “do” on the Web back then. Having an email account was the first big feather for the subscriber’s cap, but finding others with one was sometimes a challenge. Lurking around the the BB’s was awesome for meeting others out in cyberspace, and a few proto-multi-player games managed to get a wider following, and some persistent notoriety. And computers weren’t anything like we have now, in the early 2000’s. Looking back, they were practically more like fancy word processors, a cool way to store recipes or sports statistics, and a great way to keep budgets stright. Thrilling, no? No. Earliest to the rescue were CD-based games that began really flexing the computer’s processing power—some have a following to this very day. But, as tended to happen around every eighteen months, these wonders would be eclipsed by the next revolution in the development of all human kind. This one was known as: Online Video. Now, if your service provider had enough throughput to handle the load, and your modem could manage the stream, and if your video card could crunch through the data, you too could watch video right from your desktop. It was, as I suspect many office managers from then would say, the death of staying on task. In those first few years, offices were some of the only places many people saw online video, as companies could better afford the rather spendy privilege (with LOTS of help from Uncle Sam, btw). Much of the content was rather forgettable. But, like those fondly followed CD games, some of those first “viral” videos still have, for whatever reason, a mass of loyal fans. One early time-waster was a short video featuring a page of looped images of dancing hamsters in ordered rows entitled, ironically enough, The Hamster Dance. How many offices around the world sounded like preschools as this aural and video assault rampantly spread? Who can know. And what the hell were those hamsters saying, anyway? Surfing the net today, you’ll find 20+ remixes of the old classic— most of them campy at best. Few have the lyrics, and fewer still offer anything but nonsensical, childish translations. Well, Behind The Patina doesn’t settle for nonsense and half-tries... the readers deserve better. I offer you the lyrics to The Hamster Dance: Dit ditee dot dee det doe doe, Dee ba didat doe. Dee dadoopy oop deydoon Dayoo duhdoo, Dayoh-dayoh, Dedoodelay doong. Yeha hahaha. Joseph’s jealous brothers thought they’d pulled off a foolproof operation selling him to passing merchants. Bloody-up his coat to convince their father he’d been killed, and done deal. With daddy’s favorite gone, they’d be set. Pillocks. Those kinds of revolutions are usually short-lived... theirs was no different. So much needless agony. Though a Broadway play about one’s coat of many colors isn’t bad posterity pay.
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