Happy Bday Star Wars

I saw Star Wars at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood when it came out 30 years ago today, in 1977. To be honest, I don’t think I saw it on its initial release date, but we did see it about a month later. I seem to recall going into Hollywood with some friends to see Sorcerer, a fantastic remake film by William Friedkin, but it was too crowded to get in. We bailed out, but we discovered that Star Wars was playing at Grauman’s in an hour or so, so we went to a bar to wait a bit for the movie time to come around (double shot of Jack Daniels, nine dollars thank you - no problem remembering that kind of data when you’re not exactly flush with cash and 22 years old. Holy crap!) Sorry about my memory lapses here, by the way. I can probably Google my way to memory recovery, but I don’t feel like making the effort at this time.

What is etched in memory is this: seeing the first visuals in Star Wars, where the gigantic Imperial ship is blasting away at the rebel ship carrying Princess Leia, all flying in a starscape above a wonderful realistic planetary tableau of grandeur and beauty, and all I could do was happily stare with my mouth open, thinking about all the science fiction books I’d read, and all the fantastic worlds of wonder they envisioned, and here it was, in real life, right there before my eyes. Right there on the big screen.

So my thanks go out to George Lucas and his team for their cinematic gift to dreamers everywhere. And happy birthday to the first Star Wars flick.

Crawdaddy! Rock Criticism

Music has always been a big part of my life. My first concert was back in 1970, at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernadino: Jimi Hendrix headlining, with Ballin’ Jack, and Grin (featuring a young Nils Lofgren) leading off. Like many of my musical adventures, I was with my brother Gary, and it was, in the vernacular of the time, a mind blowing experience. Like, outtasight, man. One of the few incidents I can recall quite clearly from my high school days. No hypnotic trance necessary!

Aside from the fact that I didn’t wear shoes to the concert, that the concert promoters sold too many tickets, and so there were many unfortunate fans who were locked out of the concert, and hence proceeded to riot outside the auditorium, and the cops showed up, and started firing tear gas to quell the crowd, and the fans started throwing bottles, and so after the concert ended, we walk out the doors into a nightmarish scene of police, protesters, broken glass, and stinging tear gas, and so my feet got cut up and the gas made me sneeze like crazy - I mean, I’m sneezing uncontrollably, thinking, “This is tear gas for chrissakes, how come I’m not crying? Why am I sneezing?”, well aside from that it was a great concert.

I’m thankful not only for Jimi’s guitar wizardry and songwriting prowess, including cool, moody make out songs from Electric Ladyland, but also (kinda morbid, I know) because he died on September 18th, hence burned into my memory, which happened to coincide with my mom’s birthday, so I was forever after able to remember when to call her up on the right day and say happy b-day. I actually told her that, and she smiled and nodded understandingly. I miss my mom.

Also back in the day existed the first American magazine of rock criticism Crawdaddy, which has now resurfaced on the web HERE, with new webzines coming out each Wednesday. I vaguely remember reading some of the original mags, but can’t recall an emotional or intellectual response. Reading it now however, I would say it plays a nice role in the rock scene. Welcome back, Craw.

mk

Cruising With Friends

We went on our first cruise last weekend. ‘Cruise’ as in slowly chugging along on the ship Monarch of the Seas from San Pedro down to Ensenada, Mexico for a three day jaunt, sleeping in our Altoids box of a cabin at night and eating and drinking and lounging and bullshitting with friends during the day. And night. OK, maybe we didn’t sleep, although I do remember having some strange dreams. K had bizarre dreams as well. “Kind of like yours,” she said, meaning they involved furtive chases, feelings of sheer terror, unspeakably horrific death and dismemberment, and a cute puppy. But I digress.

This trip was the spirited brainchild of some of my high school pals, class of ’72, and about twenty of us showed up; some of us more than others, if you know what I mean. That is, speaking for myself (and why not), I usually don’t even touch my toe into the water of group activities, so my spur of the moment choice to join up gave me a feeling of ‘empowerment’, which means, if you’ve read Cosmo or O magazine (and I haven’t, so I’m making gross uninformed biased illogical connections here) that I can take a completely mundane activity, such as drinking decaffeinated tea, and proclaim that because I didn’t drink good ol’ black coffee, and instead drank some supposedly more nutritious stuff, I’ve ‘risen above’ the stereotypes impinged upon my racial/ethnical/intellectual profile and am floating blissfully above the fray, and am now empowered. Right. OK, more digressing. Sorry. ‘Empowerment’ apparently also means loss of the ability to write coherent sentences. But let’s forge on.

Because I tend to seek out the quiet alcove, rather than the group dynamic, my notes constitute only a tiny slice of the actual happenings over the weekend, but here are a few observations:

A very cool thing: Pete O. had acquired the grandest stateroom on the ship, the Royal Suite, which he generously shared as a hang-out spot with the gang, and we all fit in there easily. Giant living room and bar, master bedroom, huge bathroom and Jacuzzi-like tub, and private balcony jutting out over the sea. Along with comp’d appetizers. Thanks Pete.

The cruise experience: In general, not my cup of green tea. I’m not drawn toward the casino, the group activities, the excursions, or the shows. (So WTF am I doing there?) My happiest moments were probably when I sat in the café drinking coffee at 6:15am reading Echo Park by Michael Connelly, or lazing on a lounge chair drinking a cold cerveza on Sunday with the gang. And, of course, just being with Kim ;-). I mean, aside from hanging with the pals, I’d just as soon be goofing off in Belmont Shore – home sweet home. The cruise ship considered as a “floating hotel” is not an inaccurate analogy.

Ashore: I’ve been to Ensenada a couple of times, several years ago. Well, now that I think about it, I ended up there after the Rosarito-Ensenada bike ride about two years ago, but we hung out by the bus after the ride, and I had no sense of what the city was like, so that doesn’t really count I suppose, but this time, when we took the shuttle into town from the ship, we divided into two groups: 1) the guys, who were heading to Hussongs to down beers, and 2) the gals, intent on going to La Bufadora for some shopping and maybe a taco.

More ashore: So me, Ed H., Bruce R, and Pete O. are at Hussongs drinking beers and we’re having a great time. A great dive bar. Nancy C and Lisa show up and they start getting loosened up via the margarita route, and it amuses me when they start smoking cigs (what happens in Mexico, stays in Mexico, unless it gets broadcast on the internet I suppose). I have an interesting conversation with Lisa: work, lifestyle, religion, you name it. She asks me if I’m religious – I say, “Actually, I’m an atheist.” She says, “Wow. I’m a Christian,” as she holds up her margarita and cigarette with a big sheepish smile on her face. Priceless.

In general: I’m flabbergasted that these folks remember so much about high school stuff, and have such tight neuron knowledge about so many of our old high school friends and activities. In most conversations, I could only listen with slack-jawed awe, thinking, “Have I completely lost my memory? Who are they talking about? Or am I just an idiot? And do I care?”

Well, it turns out I do care. While I’ve come to a point where I’m content to enjoy friendships with a more, shall we say, contemporary set of interesting people, I definitely felt big twinges of envy while hearing such enthusiastic talk from the old locals, and the adventures and camaraderie they share.

One thing I know for certain: these folks turned out to be a bunch of creative, hard working, driven, successful bunch of people. The mind reels. Bloody great, I say.

I’ll write a little bit more later. Like I said, this is just a biased record of a minute slice of the trip.

Comments are encouraged from the gang.
mk

Nature Still Rules as Entertainment

I saw another amazing thing the other day. I was on a fishing trip with some friends, and we were maneuvering around the Avalon harbor when we spotted some ‘fish sign’, i.e. there were seagulls circling around the water at a particular site, which means there is bait near the surface, and hence larger fish hanging around wishing to feed on the bait. We could see some churning on the surface fifty yards ahead of us so we moved in, ready to cast our lines.

“There’s a bait ball!” yelled the skipper.

A bait ball? What I saw was this: a pulsing, writhing mass of sardines; a globular cluster about four feet in diameter, bobbing up and down just below the ocean surface. They cram themselves into a globe as a protective measure, I later learned; the strays on the outside get eaten – inside the globe you survive.

So the plan we enact is to back up into the ball, scoop up bait with our net with abandon and throw ‘em into the bait tank, and then drive on.

The plan proceeds flawlessly. Humans still reign over the fish kingdom.

And we caught a bunch of fish and ate them. And so it goes…