On hiding, and on why I like stuff from the '70's.

I’d like to thank all of you who told me that you were pissed off at me. You have every right to be pissed, of course—a lot of you are close friends with whom I hold close correspondence; others of you know me only by these words that appear in this sometimes-more-coagulated-than-othertimes ether we know as the Internet. Both camps have been wondering just where the fuck I’ve been, and the fact that you gave a shit at all means a lot. I appreciate the sentiment sincerely.

I dunno—sometimes you just gotta hide, I guess. I’m emerging from the hermitage thing, though, little by little. And in my months-long tenure of pulling the covers over my head, I’ve got a few blogs back-logged. Please find one of them enclosed herewith.

I was born in 1973. Of late, that year is starting to sound like a long time ago. It didn’t always, but between then and now is a span of 32 years and counting, and that ain’t too cool. I don’t like how pictures my folks have of me riding my first two-wheeler, or of my first day at kindergarten, or of the puppy we got when I was four—her name was Patch, and while she was no Lois, she was a sweetheart whom I loved dearly—or of my first piano recital (a seven-year-old in a blue pinstripe three-piece, can you dig it) are starting to yellow and curl at the corners. There was a time when these photographs did not look old, even as the styles worn by the people in them grew increasingly anachronistic. Now they do. Oh well. I guess they say that you can’t stay young forever, but at least you can be immature for the rest of your life. Thank God for that.

At any rate, it has come to the attention of a few of my closer associates that I have an affinity for things of 70’s vintage. This is certainly true. I love 70’s movies, like The French Connection, The Driver, Bullitt, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Star Wars, Saturday Night Fever, History of the World (part I), Blazing Saddles, and so on. I love 70’s music (fuck disco, although some of it’s cool, and the bass players to a one were fabulous), like Kansas, Boston, Uriah Heep, Brownsville Station, old Clapton, Allman Brothers, Zep, Ringo Starr solo stuff, and the list keeps going—to the extent that I have a 10-CD set of popular 70’s music indexed by year, given generously to me by one of my students (thanks, Jordan Kalasky; I listen to them a lot, and 1975 is my favorite, because that’s the disc that’s got Linda Ronstadt’s Blue Bayou on it). I love 70’s decorating styles, like Lava Lamps and black-light posters, and THICK FUCKIN’ SHAG CARPET. I even dig 70’s clothes, though I would not be seen in public in them today—platform shoes (c’mon; I’m six-five already), tab collars, corduroy pants, suede vests with fringe, and paisley. Bring on the paisely!

I like the goofy iridescent daisy-type flowers they stuck all over the dunk-tank in the Brady Bunch; I like girls with ramrod-straight ironed hair and pullover dresses; I like horn-rimmed glasses, I like perm haircuts on guys; I like CHiPs and BJ and the Bear, and most of all, Dukes of Hazzard; I like Jiffy Pop, Friday the 13th and Halloween, Amityville Horror and Jaws, old Sesame Street episodes where all the kids looked like they had head lice, and, in particular, I dug the fuck out of Electric Company. Sing it with me now, childrens—"One-two-three four five, six-seven-eight nine ten....(wait for it)...ELEVEN TWELVE." Gimme an amen-hallelujah if you see that cheesy pinball machine in your head while the music courses through you. I know I do.

I like 70’s bicycles, like the Schwinn Orange Krates and Lemon Peels with the rear slick tire (with raised white letters, no less!), and 70’s weight-benches with the overdone metal-flake upholstery that was usually red or blue, but occasionally white and, very rarely (get ready to hurl) orange, yellow, or (blargh) green. I like the Atari 2600 and the hopeless-yet-still-loveable renditions of Space Invaders, Omega Race, and Pac-Man they foisted upon us clueless-yet-rich consumers. I like Pong, dammit.

This summer, I extensively landscaped my crib with (are you ready for this one?) Lava Rocks.

"In the name of God," you, O Honored Reader, are undoubtedly asking yourself, "why?"

I’ll tell ya why, you impatient fucks.

When I was a kid, my dad would take me shopping with him at Ace Hardware. There were no Home Depots or Menards back then (holy shit I sound old), so Ace was where you went for stuff. I remember walking along the aisles with him, and in those days, you could smoke just about anywhere you wanted. My dad would fire up a Winston Unfiltered and we’d stroll along, looking for whatever it was we were looking for. Usually it was somewhere in the vicinity of the electrical department, and there was always an area where they had all the outdoor lighting arranged in this spiffy little display. Invariably, the lights were high-powered incandescents designed to project bright lights onto the side of your house from ‘neath your hedges. The lights themselves were black, but you could buy filters to change the color of the light to just about anything you chose—blue, green, red, white, and—of course—amber. I thought those were just about the coolest things, and just see if you can guess what they used in those mock-up displays to provide a landscape, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof, to put those lights in.

Lemme give you a hint—it rhymes with "Schmlava Rocks."

You never see that shit these days—now it’s mulch and more mulch, and lighting systems are all the candy-ass solar jobs (Shut up. Shut up right now—I fucking well know that’s what I have, but they’re cheaper to run and don’t require you to connect wires to them. Let’s move on.) that turn on at night and cast weak circular puddles of light for about a foot and a half.

I remember seeing that stuff in the aisles at Ace Hardware and thinking to myself, "That’s the stuff that grownups have; when I get old enough, I’m gonna buy me some stuff like that and then I’ll be a grownup too."

I still feel that way, and there were a bunch more things besides landscape materials and outdoor lighting that I ascribed to adulthood. And, since most of the things that were around when I was a kid that led me to associate them with being a grownup were from the 70’s, that’s where (or perhaps I would be more appropriate in saying when) I take things from.

The Dragon’s a good example. I saw a lot of adults driving shit like that when I was a kid. Now I have one, and that must mean that I am an adult, too.

My Sharona by The Knack is another. I remember listening to that as a kid and thinking to myself, "Well, jeez—only an adult would understand what these guys are talking about. What’s ‘running down the length of my thigh’ mean, anyway?" Well, now I’m older, and now I get it. I love that song. I like old Kiss, Queen and Rolling Stones for the same reason. I don’t think I was really grown up until I got my first copy of "Sticky Fingers."

I remember going to the bowling alley and wishing I was old enough to go into the arcade so I could play "Pac-Man" and "Galaxian" and "Omega Race" and "Donkey Kong" and "Jungle Hunt" and the king of them all, "Defender". Well, now I am, so I go. I like to play pool for the same reason. It’s something only adults were allowed to do when I was a kid. Well, I’m not a kid anymore, so I play pool whenever I can, and I’m usually smoking a cigarette when I do, because that’s what the adults did.

I remember going to my Aunt Joanne’s house when I was seven for Christmas Eve. My cousin and her oldest son, Phillip, had just turned eighteen, and for Christmas, my aunt had gotten him a Gibson Flying V. I remember going into his room so he could show it to me. This would be about 1978, I guess, and he had decorated his entire room in red velvet and tufted black vinyl. All the room lights had red bulbs in them. The guitar itself had a flame finish—it faded from black at the edges to red at the center. The case was black vinyl, and it was lined with red velour—and that’s why to this day, as far as I’m concerned, the colors of the 70’s are always gonna be black and red. Seeing those two colors always makes me feel like a high roller, and I don’t think the fact that the four suits in cards are black and red goes any distance toward relieving me of that sentiment.

Twenty-seven years later, I don’t feel any different. I’ve said to my friends and to my students alike—I don’t feel any different inside at 32 than I did at 12. I just have more life experiences with which to compare things. But I’ll tell ya—putting that Lava Rock in went a long way toward making me feel like a grownup. Now—who’s ready for some Pong?