Good morning 2011

We spent the new year's weekend - a unique occurrence to be sure - in bed watching movies. Scott has hundreds he's either purchased or recorded off the telly.

We love our film noir and I requested he fetch Murder, My Sweet w/Dick Powell, from his shelves, followed by a bowl of popcorn. Powell began his career as a song n dance man and just the way he walks in a couple scenes of the film kinda confirms that.

Murder was followed by the improbable appearance of the Walt Disney cartoon Dumbo. "You know how I love my cartoons."

Made in 1941, the Disney folks hoped to recoup the money they lost making Fantasia. Three weeks after Dumbo was released, the USA went to war. They did make their money back.

What a great movie! I did indeed fantasize watching it w/Baby Grace when she's a little older. Why is it that things shared with others are often more meaningful?

Altho Scott excised most of the commercials when recording movies off the old WPVI - what dat? - I ain't no Philadelphian - a couple of commercials stayed in including a brilliantly animated one for the sugar cereal Trix.

Yes, brilliantly animated, almost rivaling Disney.

I am probly one of the few people you've ever met who does not consider Trix a food. Leastwise for our young uns. Someone invented it. Maybe they wore a white coat and sat in a laboratory but they thought it up and then sold it around a mahogany-paneled boardroom.

Try and raise an American kid when all around you the flashing lights are shouting Trix, Captain Crunch, Frosted Flakes, Honey Nut Cheerios.

These are foods?

One thing about reading Keith Richards' autobio "Life" is you'll wanna pull out every last CD you have from the 60s and 70s - Let it Bleed, for sure, and how bout Cream's best hits starring Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and the great Eric Clapton. Whew! What a line-up.

The velvet-voiced Jack Bruce's liver wasn't doing too well in recent years. A bit of liver cancer detected. So what does he do? Gets a frigging transplant and he's back up onstage. These musicians are cats with more than 9 lives.

Skinny boyish-looking Mrs Cassidy walks by across the street on her morning jaunt. Huge white sneaks. She was one of Dan's teachers at Upper Moreland. She stops and kicks at something in the sidewalk. Any deviation from routine makes a person think.

I begin to think. The difference between us and animals, I say, is we've got dimensional lives. A hyena, for example, he's out there under the African sun looking for his next meal. These boys are tough, the hyenas, very tough, tear you fucking apart. That's all they do. Their life is proscribed for them.

But people - or peeps as us hipsters call ourselves. Peeps are different. Set free from the caves, from the tents, from the hogens, the straw huts, our lives are as big as the places we live. And those brains of ours - lighting up like Xmas lights with all the things we're capable of.

I look up at my little table filled with the Rice Crispie characters. I wrote about em in the last post. Those six little guys make me so happy to look at em. Why on earth? Remnants of my happy playful childhood? Let me ask Beth Lindsey, my therapist. All my secrets are buried with her. Over in England yet.

Then I give myself a test. I look at more objects in my house to see what areas of my brain are lighting up with happiness.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna finish up 61 Hours by Lee Child. Scott gave it to me to read after 3 of his guys finished it at SEPTA.

After the first page I said to him, "It's good right away. No waiting."

Then after a couple pages, I said, "Oh, it's a Jack Reacher novel!"

We love Jack Reacher.

It's a fat little book but it's light and easy to read in bed unlike the heavy Keith Richards book that is the very reason why people prefer e-books.

My son Dan has a new page on FB where he asks his friends to review books. I did a quick review of the Richards' book but I didn't say the most important thing about the book: it's written the way Richards would speak. Very colloquial. Like being in the same room with the guy. Like you really know him, all million of us who are reading his book and are sitting there invisible with him in the room thinking we really know him.

We know him thru the print words and thru albums like Goats Head Soup but we don't know what it's like to snuggle up next to him in bed or watch him eat breakfast if he does.