Sunday Morning Earworms

Mmmm … bacon.

And sadly, I am old enough to remember that ad. Word for word.

For our after church breakfast today, I made up some really excellent slab bacon, scrambled eggs with shrooms and peppers, and grated up some fresh hash browns, which we had with sourdough toast and dark roast coffee, topped off with a nice navel orange. Mmmm.

And then there’s this.

@blogenfreude: Oh God, yes!!

Fortunately, we didn’t even have electricity for most of the 70s, so I missed a lot of this crap.

@redmanlaw:
I don’t think you missed much. There are things can be seen and not unseen.

@SanFranLefty: And I allege that Prince Matchabelli bought his title …

Oh shit – forgot about this one.

I bought this as a kid for my dad one time for Father’s Day.

He had it for more than 20 years before it got tossed out… unused. I don’t blame him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwKooEbpkzM&feature=related

@redmanlaw: the perfect breakfast! I might scramble the eggs with garlic and chopped green chiles sauteed in olive oil, but it would be a hard choice between that and eggs done with mushrooms and peppers.

It’s sad to me that I miss the 1970s for its feeling of normalcy. If I were in charge of winding back the clock, I’d set 1970 as the start of the do-over.

Hey, Charles Barkley isn’t wearing a HeftyBag this morning. Upscale, dude.

You can make a dress out of a feedbag, but can you make a man out of me?

@karen marie has her eyes tight shut: It’s sad to me that I miss the 1970s for its feeling of normalcy.

Watergate, gas lines, Saturday Night Fever, toga parties, Prop 13…

All normal to me, of course, because as a teenager, what did I have to compare it to?

@nojo: bad hair bands …

@blogenfreude: That’s more 80s — it’s an MTV thing.

On the other hand, bad hair announcers… Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Don Kirshner!

What’s the matter with Kansas?

Just in case this early 20-10 VCU lead does not hold up, I wanted to get that line in while I still can.

The thing I find hilarious about Seventies Nostalgia is that the Seventies were about Fifties Nostalgia.

@libertarian tool: Not playing much D, are they?

@blogenfreude: Anyone who’s interested in 80s hair metal (*ahem* Karen . . . ) must read “Fargo Rock City” by Chuck Klosterman. Review excerpt:

Each chapter of Fargo reads like an individual, entertaining short story, with titles such as “September 10, 1990: Warrant releases Cherry Pie. In a CD review for my college newspaper, I call this record ‘stellar.’ It is three years before I am allowed to review another album.”

Klosterman takes occasional breaks from personal tales to investigate why some really untalented ’80s hair-metal bands managed to have impressive record-sales numbers. While doing so, he includes quotes from past interview subjects of his, such as the bands KISS and Korn, on the topic of image and rock music in general. Klosterman also occasionally injects Fargo with his own lists, including “Nonessential Hair Metal Records I Really, Really Like” and what types of girls certain bands seemed to go for (examples: Tesla — farm girls; Bang Tango — Faster Pussycat rejects).

With Fargo, Klosterman turns what could have been an ordinary story, about an ordinary small-town adolescent growing up, into pure comedic entertainment.

http://www.amazon.com/Fargo-Rock-City-Odyssey-Dakota/dp/0743406567

Total metal heads and the people who love them and seek to understand why they are risking their souls, sanity and reputations (their hearing is already gone, however) should read “Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal” by Ian Christe. He’s also a dj on the Sirius XM Liquid Metal channel, where he hosts a weekly heavy metal history show. I’m listening to it right now, but I have to get my ass out of job mode and get over to the Home Depot and get some shit done on the house today. I wanted to go shoot shotguns today (turkey season is coming up; lead = heavy metal), but NFW today.

http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Beast-Complete-Headbanging-History/dp/0380811278

@Dodgerblue: One of the announcer’s said that Kansas spent all their time preparing for Richmond’s half court game and are completely unprepared for VCU’s run and gun. As good an explanation as any I guess.

Or else VCU is just shooting light’s out.

Oh hey! Just noticed that I made the twitter quote today. I think this is a first. I’d like to thank all the Brutal Quadaffi henchman and the general scum who surround him that helped make this honor possible.

As far as seventies nostalgia – My seventies began when my birthday was selected number 309 in the draft lottery, keeping me clear of the Vietnam meat grinder. After that, I had to consider the rest of the decade as a gift.

Pretty remarkable when you think about how a scheduled, structured, yet completely random event like the draft lottery could determine the arc of your whole life. No telling thing might have turned out with different draft number. Who knows, I might have even been a liberal today.

@nojo: Well, sure, there were all those things but at least it seemed as if the national conversation were moving in a somewhat positive direction, the tide was coming in, lifting most, if not all, boats. Now I feel like we’re caught in a rip current because some of the fucking grownups aren’t paying attention and others are viewing it as an opportunity to “lose” the kids.

@libertarian tool: You actually scored Saturday as well, but I couldn’t easily adapt your bracket comment into a tweet, so I went with Public Enemy instead. But hey, it’s the inspiration that counts!

@karen marie has her eyes tight shut: True, and I’ve long mentioned the horror-horror of watching the 1980 Presidential debate and suddenly realizing that America was going to elect that charlatan.

If there was ever a scales-falling-from-eyes moment in my life, that was it. The Seventies may have seemed progressive (and you can probably dredge up some stats showing they actually were), but 1980 showed I just wasn’t paying attention. People don’t change on a dime like that. If they were capable of electing Ronnie that year, they were capable of electing him all along.

@libertarian tool: I was in the first draft lottery and my number was 12. That put a bit of an edge on things.

Re Kansas, I agree, plus they got out-hustled on defense by VCU. Very interesting game.

@nojo: He was a dumb, nasty prick when he was Governor of Cali. The perfect Chamber of Commerce stooge. He just got dumber in DC.

@libertarian tool: @Dodgerblue: I wasn’t draft age, but I was nearing draft age — not that close, but inevitability was in the air — so I checked the numbers every year.

And then the draft and the lottery went away, and that’s when the Seventies really began. Until Jimmy decided to be an asshole and introduce Registration. Which didn’t apply to me, because I would be voting in 1980, and Jimmy knew better than to blow me off like that.

So, in the end, I was in the doughnut hole between the Draft and Registration. Missed out on all the drug-test fun, too. I’ve lived a charmed life.

@Dodgerblue: And yet he was Governor of Cali — twice — which is what everyone advocating for some amateur to be The Next Reagan always forgets. We love to mention Bonzo, but electorally, he was a proven quantity.

I hope Peggy Lee got paid a shit-load of money for that song.

@Benedick AEA, AFTRA, SAG, DG.: Me like Peggy Lee. “You give me fever . . . .”

@Dodgerblue: What’s not to like?

I saw her truly horrifying one-woman show on B’way The Corpse Sings! I mean, poor thing. She was not a well woman. But she sang Fever, dressed all in white, looking like a refrigerator, and at one point actually moved. The crowd went wild. There was a gorgeous torch song that closed the first act He’ll Make Me Believe He’s Mine by Miss Lee. My dad was in the band which was sensational as was the sound design. The lady knew what she wanted and she sure could sing.

ESPN: “5.9 million brackets in the ESPN Tournament Challenge… and TWO have the Final Four correct. TWO!”

In related news, Nate Silver screwed me over.

@nojo: Getting excited about new Formica countertops, no leash laws for the dog and only being distracted by about three hours of cartoons a week. Good times.

Oh right, for adults it was leisure suits, sideburns and divorce. And getting excited about new Formica countertops – that was cross generational.

@Nabisco: Someone on campus sent me a poster design the other day that featured mustard and avocado. I fear we’re on the verge of another round of Seventies Retro.

@nojo: Longer odds than a 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami wiping out a nuke plant in one of most technologically-advanced countries in the world.

@nojo: You may want to adopt my strategy next year. Select a school from a state with your favorite senator.

@nojo: When we moved my mom back in December, I found the avocado tea kettle (what American drank tea in the 70s?). Our house was totally redone in burnt orange (including the Formica), which only paid off when I took one of the reading chairs with me to grad school at UT Austin.

@Nabisco: @nojo: “Chocolate” appliances, burnt orange formica counter, brown tile, and dark brown cabinets were the color scheme at the SFL childhood kitchen until about five years ago when my retired dad was bored and needed a project and ripped everything out. The irony is that the new white “modern” made in China fridge died within two years of purchase, whereas the fugly brown made-in-the-USA fridge lived from move-in date of 1977 through the 2007 rehab.

@Nabisco: I’m a proud Longhorn, but the obsession in Austin of making everything in burnt orange and/or in the shape of a longhorn is beyond me. It’s not an attractive color. You probably could have sold that chair for enough to pay for a semester’s worth of tuition (or beer and cover charges at Antone’s).

@Nabisco: Dude: I owned an avocado tea kettle. It took a few years of peeling paint for me to finally give up on it and buy a stainless-steel model that whistled in three tones.

Which, more than two decades on, I still use.

@SanFranLefty: Now that I think about it, our cabinets were “chocolate” as well.

W/r/t the “sunset is burnt orange” thing, I was totally oblivious to the obsession when I showed up with the chair. I actually took that with me when I moved overseas, and left it in Neek-ah-rwwwwa-gwaaaaah.

@SanFranLefty: My current appliances are thirty-year-old GE models.

@Nabisco: We had some old wooden cabinet that was done up in light blue house paint with a curtain hanging from a brass rod in front . We briefly had a ringer washing machine that we filled with buckets and drained outside with a hose but that was a pain in the ass so we just kept going to the laundromat in town. When we got electricity and a TV one of the first things we watched was this new show from England called Monty Python’s Flying Circus on the PBS station from Albuquerque.

I do remember seeing something about the 1973 Arab-Israeli war on TV, but the power may have been from a generator before it was destroyed when Gramps burned down the shed. I remember hearing the Thrilla in Manilla on a battery powered radio by kerosene lamp. We had a phone, electricity and running water by 1976 at the latest.

@mellbell: Good girl. They’ll last you at least another 25 years, if you can find some retired appliance repairman out in Harper’s Ferry who will make a housecall to DC when one of them gets wonky.

@redmanlaw: I remember hearing the Thrilla in Manilla on a battery powered radio by kerosene lamp. Ali’s sparring partner for that fight – and future champeen himself – caught me skipping school that year and told me to get back to class. My destination? The public library…