It’s a story of a Greek kid growing up in Raleigh with the usual kid problems. Except, he seems to be able to get away with just about any manner of strange behavior, and therefore does. He turns his family into comical figures. My family were not comical figures. He is upsettingly aware of how seeming little acts can have consequences. I’m not finished the book yet.Theresa got a kick out of a television show this evening. It was the rock bands, or popular groups, that performed on Ed Sullivan. Or I should say, she got the kick out of the different way I viewed the same program. I told you, I’ve been a band manager since the age of 13, so I would have to can the trumpet player, or that guy in the Young Rascals that just stands there and plays tambourine.
I’d trim Sly and the Family Stone down to three, maybe four members. And the Beach Boys would instantly be a trio. Bongos? Not on my stage. I was born too late to see any of these famous bands live and the last concert I went to was the Doobie Brothers, long after most of the real members had left. Big bands were out in my lifetime, a matter of economics. If I’d been in charge, it would be the Yardbird, the The Door and Diana Ross and the Supreme.
Still, these bands lived the American dream and were far more influential than the countless masses that followed. It is scary how today’s groups lack any real power to change a thing, they are all into it for the money, cranking out replicate youTube videos. I’ve listened to 400 of these without finding a single tune I could whistle an hour later.. Yet I am constantly finding catchy tunes written decades ago that I’ve never heard before. These are ordinary rock and country music so it is not as if I’m purposely favoring music from another era.
I won’t ask for a show of hands, but many people have heard me state that I’ll be totally occupied when I am older because of all the movies, TV and music I never saw when I was young. Maybe I’m already experiencing the payoff, since most everything I see on TV is new to me. My first TV was in 1998, somebody donated it to me.
To answer the next question, I spent every waking day of my life since the age of 14 doing the one worthwhile activity for any man with the gift of gab: chasing women. True, my contemporaries did other things, like work hard and get promotions, but the fact is they missed the bus to the sexual revolution. Like my brothers, those men actually thought picking up women would become easier as they got older and moved to the city. Today, where I look back on fond memories, they all hang out in saloons hitting on off-duty hookers, middle-aged barmaids, and bragging up their favorite titty bars.
That crowd of men are disgusting. Every one of their stories begins and ends the same. To this day, I still know some men that cannot believe I have never been to a stripper bar. Nope, I have no desire to watch 25-something single mothers lap-dance for money. Sorry, youse guys, I had the real thing before I was 21, so I don’t have to pay for it third-hand twenty years down the line. What a joke all you people who were "popular in high school" turned out to be.
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