No, I wasn’t around in 1965, but I absolutely remember this song from when I was a tot in the late 1970’s. My parents played it quite a bit; they had a few Frank Sinatra albums among their stacks of 8-track tapes in the living room entertainment center. I wasn’t supposed to touch them, but I did. (Hey, they were right at the bottom level, where I could fiddle with them. And, as a kid, would read anything — even album titles.)
Anyway, this Internet thingamajig tells me that the song was written in 1961 by Ervine Drake for the Kingston Trio. Sinatra won a Grammy in 1966 for his rendition of it, as did Gordon Jenkins for his accompanying instrumental work.
Rodney Dangerfield actually was pretty damn funny, even if I was too young to appreciate his humor when I was a kid. Not everything he touched turned to gold … I seem to remember a cheesy movie or two. But this 1983 single was great. It’s catchy, and its humor still holds up today.
There are a couple of 80’s-tastic cameos in the video, too. One is Pat Benatar as the leather-clad prison executioner. (Totally not my thing.) The other Saturday Night Live’s chain smoking priest, “Father Guido Sarducci” (Don Novello).
There’s gotta be a way to troll Donald Trump if he succeeds in getting his military parade — while at the same time respecting the servicemen and servicewomen who are obligated to march in it.
What about spectators wearing old sneakers with the heels painted yellow? Yellow is the color associated with cowardice; one of Trump’s five draft deferments during Vietnam was for bone spurs in his heels.
It isn’t in Texas and it isn’t a tavern. It’s a family-owned, all-night burger joint that’s been around since 1930. And it’s awesome.
That shot of Church Street is awful. But I’m including it anyway, because New Yorkers simply cannot fathom how empty these streets can be — and quiet! So often Roanoke seems like a scene in “The Quiet Earth” (1985).
So this was Thursday’s bizarre, abrupt twilight snowstorm. Look how beautiful and blue the sky was before snow and night fell together. Look at the size of the flakes!
How can I be expected to BUY the right glasses when the ones I have are broken and I can’t SEE?!? And when I was in a rush!!! WHY THE @#$% WERE THESE IN THE MEN’S SECTION?!?
The boys are going to laugh their @$$es off.
It sucks being old. And blind. And dumb.
Update: MY BUDDY’S GIRLFRIEND JUST TOLD ME SHE HAS THE SAME PAIR!!!
When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras’d
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
March 2018. One of the things that I love about Roanoke is how its mountains are obscured on overcast days by low-lying clouds. It’s the kind of thing that would have been unheard of where I grew up — on the uniformly flat Long Island. I doubt the novelty of it will ever fully erode.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 