November 2022

S M T W T F S
  123 45
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930   

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
kaasirpent: (Default)
Sunday, April 23rd, 2017 08:30 am
Follow my blog with Bloglovin

<jams flag into soil>

I, Kaa, Sir Pent, hereby claim this blog for Bloglovin', queen, and country!

<poses majestically> <smiles>

<continues to pose. Majestically!>

<mouths "Is that long enough?"> <smile begins to look a bit forced>

Guys?

(No, seriously, follow this blog on Bloglovin! ;) )
Tags:
kaasirpent: (Music)
Thursday, September 18th, 2014 03:19 pm
I'm about to show my age. Not that I don't freely admit I'm <blur>ty-<blur> years old. I mean — What? You couldn't read that? How very odd. You should probably have your eyes checked. First sign of old age, you know.

Anyhow, back when I first got interested in music, it was The Eighties. I know! It actually existed! It wasn't just some improbable, magical realm of freaky hair and clothing conjured up by John Hughes as a world in which it actually made sense for Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club to exist.

Granted, I was well past my larval stage and headed into pupa at this point. Meaning that my musically formative years happened in late high school and college rather than in childhood, which occurred, for the most part, in The Seventies.

Which didn't actually exist, unlike the Eighties. Well, at least not musically, for me. I lived in a tiny town in rural Alabama, and pretty much the only stations we got that I was aware of were all country stations. So while I was aware of (and had probably heard, briefly) hard, acid rock groups like The Osmonds, The Carpenters, The Jackson Five, and The Three Dog Night, most of what I actually heard on a daily basis was Tammy Wynette, Roy Clark, Loretta (pronounced LOW-RETta, thank you) Lynn, George Jones, and Charlie Pride. Why? Because I wasn't in control of the radio. I wasn't driving.1

The summer of the year after tenth grade (I think; it was a long time ago, and I've slept since then), I registered at Livingston University (now known as The University of West Alabama) for an introductory level college chemistry course.2

What? Yes, this all relates. Jesus, you're impatient. Another sign of age. Hmm? Nothing. Really. Now, where was I?

So I registered for this chemistry course, because my high school chemistry class had been a joke. Not because the teacher wasn't any good, but because she simply wasn't there. She had a sick child, and we had substitutes and such a lot, and . . . well, not everyone in the class was college-bound and our pace . . . reflected that. We (my mother and father) felt that although I had good grades in chemistry, I needed to actually learn the topic.

I know! Crazy talk.

Anyway, I got to drive (in my own car!) from Eutaw to Livingston three times per week (or whatever it was) to take the class. And on that twice-daily hour-long drive to and from school, in my two-door, 1976 Chrysler Cordoba, by myself, I discovered that the radio picked up stations that . . . that weren't country.

I mean, like, totally not country. Do you understand what I'm telling you? They had, like, people who pronounced "well" as one syllable and "thing" didn't rhyme with "slang." These were people who had probably never heard of Ricky Scaggs or Jeannie Riley. Who probably thought a steel guitar was just a really heavy, metal guitar. As opposed to a heavy-metal guitar. Because that's totally different.

Was this what music was?

I liked it! I really liked it!

I remember the song that "turned the corner" for me. Every single morning on the way to Livingston, whatever station it was that I tuned into played the song "Time" by The Alan Parsons Project. I would also have heard songs by Blondie, Hall & Oates, Kool & the Gang3, Sprick Ringfield . . . you should picture angelic chords playing here. They would probably sound something like "Time" by The Alan Parsons Project.

Fast forward a couple of years. 1983. Graduation. Going off to college. Buying cassette tapes for the first time. I seldom bought whole albums because I was one of those people who only liked one or two songs, and didn't want to take the chance with all those other ones. Because on a cassette tape (back in the old days before newfangled things like fire and dirt), there's no skipping around. You pretty much had to listen to music in the order it was on the cassette.

So I bought two compilation albums called Hit Explosion4 and Dancing Madness5 from K-tel. They both had some awesome hits from the previous couple of years. Coincidentally, during the time in which I had my own car and could listen to what I wanted to listen to. Go. Figure. :)

I must have listened to those cassettes hundreds of times. Straight through, in order.

Now, let's fast forward through the 80s (Don't we wish that had been possible at the time?) and the 90s. And most of the 2000s. To, in fact, a few months ago.

While declutterizing my home office, I found my old box of cassette tapes (Have I mentioned I pretty much never throw anything media-related away? Books, cassettes, CDs...). I had maybe sixty of them. Most of which I'd already replaced by buying the album on CD and then ripping to MP3 to put in iTunes. But I missed Hit Explosion and Dancing Madness. And I don't even own a cassette deck.

My, how times have changed.

And then it dawned on me that I could make my own damned compilation albums using playlists in iTunes.

Well, duh!

I already owned a good many of the songs. Twenty minutes and maybe $8 later, I had reassembled both albums from 1983 as playlists in iTunes.

Last night, I felt the need to escape writing code for a while and just not be bothered. The call of 1983 was too strong to resist. "If I haaaaad a photograph of YOU-oo-OO-oo-OOOOH, as something to remiiiiind meeeeee..."

Which is what I meant by "The Small Pleasures."


  1. My mother, were she to comment on this, would no doubt interject, here, and mention in passing how there was this one particular trip in the mid-70s up to West Virginia to visit my grandparents for Christmas where "we" (my parents) were "forced" to listen to an 8-Track (look it up) of Dr. Seuss stories, pretty much back to back, all the way from Alabama to West Virginia. My mother still shudders when someone says the word "ooblek." This one, isolated, singular incident (this is my blog) notwithstanding, she and/or my father ("we") controlled the radio and what got played thereupon.
  2. Whereat I saw the single weirdest misspelling of my name, ever. The college admissions people had me down (until I corrected them) as "GARX HEMBERSON." Really? Garx? Really? Oy. In an unrelated note, my handwriting really sucked back then.
  3. I would later come to loathe Kool & the Gang because of my next-door-neighbors in the dorm during my sophomore year at the University of Alabama. These boys would listen to Kool & the Gang at a volume that made my bed frame vibrate in the next room. Until 3 AM. On nights before tests. And we (I) wanted to kill them. But since murder is wrong, I just learned to hate Kool & the Gang along with my next-door neighbors. That, and I moved into a room across the dorm from them the next semester. Jerks. I assume they're both prematurely deaf, now.
  4. Side 1
    Mickey / Toni Basil
    Vacation / The Go-Gos
    Steppin' Out / Joe Jackson
    Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl) / Haircut 100
    Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah) / Joan Jett
    Young Turks / Rod Stewart
    Abracadabra / Steve Miller Band
    Side 2
    Shadows of the Night / Pat Benatar
    Gloria / Laura Branigan
    Hold On / Santana
    Space Age Love Song / A Flock of Seagulls
    New World Man / Rush
    Keep the Fire Burnin' / REO Speedwagon
    Eye of the Tiger / Survivor
  5. Side 1
    Come Dancing / The Kinks
    Fascination / Human League
    Always Something There to Remind Me / Naked Eyes
    Cool Places / Sparks
    Whirly Girl / Oxo
    Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You) / A Flock of Seagulls
    Side 2
    Electric Avenue / Eddy Grant
    Time (Clock of the Heart) / Culture Club
    Pass the Dutchie / Musical Youth
    Juicy Fruit / Mtume
    Don't You Get So Mad / Jeffrey Osborne
kaasirpent: (Bizarre)
Sunday, June 2nd, 2013 02:47 am

Friday night, I drove over to Wetumpka, Alabama, to visit my mother. Early today (Saturday; it's not tomorrow until I sleep), we got up and I drove us three hours north to Huntsville, Alabama, to visit my aunt Peggy (my father's sister) in the nursing home. She has Alzheimer's (or something like it), and really enjoys visitors.

Meeting us at noon were my other aunts from Tennessee and Birmingham, AL, my uncle from Austin, TX, and my cousin (aunt Peggy's son) and his wife, who live in Huntsville. We actually met at a Logan's Roadhouse restaurant near my aunts' and uncle's hotel. Next door to that was a Mexican restaurant, and I wistfully commented that I would rather have gone there. My mother concurred.

["But Kaa!" you are no doubt lamenting at this moment. "What does all this have to do with your subject line?" To which I reply, "Suck it." No! No, I meant, "Patience, Grasshoppah."]

We had a nice visit at the restaurant, adjourned to the nursing home, had a nice visit there, and left around four. I had to stop and get gas, and then when we got back on the interstate, a wreck had occurred in the fifteen minutes we were stopped, and we were backed up another good fifteen minutes waiting on them to clear that.

When we finally got moving again, my mother and I chatted about the family gossip and how my aunt in the nursing home was doing. Around six o'clock, I was getting hungry, so I asked my mother, "Are you hungry?" We had had lunch at noon in Huntsville; we were now just north of Birmingham.

"Well, I could eat." In my mother's native tongue (The Ozarks), this can be loosely interpreted as anything from, "I'm as full as a tick on a hound dog, but if you're going to eat, I'll have a bite with you and visit," to "I'm as empty as a poor man's pockets and may just pass out at any moment from hunger."

I took it as the latter and after a very brief discussion fueled by our earlier exchange ("How does Mexican sound?" "It sounds really good."), we decided to stop in Birmingham and eat.

I remembered that there was a really good Mexican restaurant that a local friend (JP) and his family (Jennifer and Emerson) had taken me to a time or two before, but couldn't remember where it was beyond a loose vicinity, or what it was called. No problem! I have a smart phone. I have the INTERNET. <insert melodramatic chord here>

I pulled off the interstate at an exit near where I thought the restaurant might be and as my mother talked to her friend who was watching her dogs for her, I Googled for Mexican restaurants in the vicinity. I thought seriously about calling my friends and asking, but it was just so late, we figured they had already eaten, and we were tired, etc. And I'm going to see them tomorrow (Sunday) anyway, so . . .

I found it quickly. And it was only about a mile and a half from where we were. Off we set.

We arrived at the restaurant, and as we were driving through the parking lot, I laughed. "Heh! Wouldn't it be funny if JP and Jennifer are actually here?"

[That, by the way, is what we in the writing biz call 'foreshadowing.' Pay attention when you see it, because it means something's about to happen.]

We go in, get seated, and a few seconds later, we hear, "Oh, my GOD!" and Jennifer is standing at our table.

Yep. Jennifer was there with a friend, and she got on the phone and called JP and Emerson, and soon we were having dinner with them anyway. We greatly enjoyed it, and it could not have worked out any better. It turned a quick, rushed dinner into a leisurely meal with good friends and good conversation. And margaritas, which I'm told were also good (I did not partake).

So, all the things that had to come together to get us to that spot at the right time were:
  • Lunch restaurant next to Mexican restaurant (to prime me)
  • Stayed late visiting at the nursing home
  • Got delayed by the wreck
  • We were hungry
  • Both wanted Mexican (Chinese was discussed after I couldn't remember the name of the restaurant)
  • Jennifer and her friend eating at the very same restaurant at the particular time
So, even though it would be an even larger coincidence (hence "Small World") if this had happened somewhere that was not a few minutes from my friends' house and not their favorite restaurant, we deem it a pretty large coincidence nevertheless.

And that's my story. Thanks for sticking with me and having patience, Grasshoppah. :)

Note: According to Jennifer, the conversation at their table when we came in was, "Heh, that kind of looks like Kaa . . . and that's his mother!" at which point she leapt up and ran over to our table.

Also amusingly, the car we parked next to in the parking lot? Jennifer's. :)
kaasirpent: (Family)
Saturday, February 24th, 2007 10:50 pm
I'm at my mother's house this weekend, and my mother's friend Anne is also visiting. On the way here earlier in the week, Anne had a brilliant idea.

I wasn't involved in the earliest stages because they didn't know for sure that I was coming home this weekend. But here's how it came together.

You know you wanna.... )