The title is another one of my catchphrases. It's my go to expression to myself to cope every time I walk past or espy an especially attractive group of people who are socializing and appear to be really enjoying the experience. Of course it is ridiculous, I have never struggled any near to the extent that I ought to have, and that would have been good for me, but like many pampered modern people who are occasionally unable to get everything they want on demand, I like to think of myself as a social victim and the idea has always had a very prominent place in my conscious thought.
I haven't done a post of videos in a while. The imbeds do not generally last, so these posts age especially poorly. However, it is another record of where my mind is at particular points in time, so I like to do them occasionally. This is a sample of what I have been looking at lately. I am probably missing something that was actually really good, but if it isn't coming to me it isn't coming to me.
Jo A Ram--Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
One of those things that is kind of infectious, at first anyway. And what can I say, she is very cute. She has many videos, but this is the best one I have found.
The Dream Academy--Life in a Northern Town
Somehow I missed ever seeing this back in the 80s. Wherever they filmed this is amazing. It doesn't look quite like where I live now, though it has similar weather, but it does remind me a little of some of those hilly towns in the interior of Pennsylvania, Pottsville or Hazleton or Wilkes-Barre and places like that, which are quite dreary in the winter, though poignant.
Texas Real Estate Lady
I don't know how I came upon this, but something about it held my attention. My northeast bias is really going to come out strong here, but I cannot imagine living in a place like this (even though it is apparently in the very desirable Austin area). That kind of landscape and climate is more alienating to me than almost anything else I have seen in the United States. I would feel more at home in the town in the last video. However, maybe if I went there I would feel differently. I used to have a revulsion towards Florida and the south before I went to see it for myself, and I enjoyed my visits, though I still think I would be depressed if I had to live there.
Wolters' World
I've been watching a lot of travel videos lately--I was already in of those states where I was fixated on when I was ever going to be able to fly somewhere glamorous and cosmopolitan again before the current situation in which many commentators are giddily speculating that most regular people won't be doing much traveling in the future even if the pandemic ever does end. I still like Rick Steves's shows, not going too upscale, but still having a nice view and getting to linger over dinner and drinks in an atmospheric setting, and I found this guy, Mark Wolters, a university lecturer from Illinois who has a very affable personality and is very positive, qualities that I admire but sadly have never been able to attain. Most of his videos are just him standing in some picturesque location talking about various aspects of travel, but his presentation of his experiences I often find to be interesting. His videos seem to me to have gotten better over time as he has gotten more practice. He seems to be about seven years younger than I am and in light of my own recent experience he strikes me as a heart attack waiting to happen within a few years, so I hope he will be all right. These things sneak up on you as get towards fifty.
Jo Stafford--You Belong to Me
I come back to Jo Stafford at various intervals. I had one of her records when I was in college that I did not play all the time, but on certain occasions and times of year that seemed extra-significant or prescient of a change or transition of some kind, this always seemed to fit my particular emotions at such hours. Her voice always reminds me of ice cream.
The Sundays--You're Not the Only One I Know
The epitome of ca. 1990 wimp rock, no doubt--the Megadeth fans at my high school would have wanted to beat the brains in of any male who expressed the slightest affinity for this stuff, to what end it is not exactly clear to me but the emotion behind this desire I believe was genuine. I like this song though, I find it resonant and nostalgically wistful in my advancing age, and this video is one of the best in the pop-song-meets-classic-movie genre that I have seen. Everything about it screams out "Where my youth go? Where did our youth go? Where did our art go?" emotions which are very cathartic and congenial to me.
New Edition--If It Isn't Love
I heard this on Rite-Aid radio, which has been a surprising source of forgotten hits for this page over the years. I don't think I had heard this in decades, and couldn't remember the title or who sang it, I had to try to call up some of the lyrics from the darkest depths of my memory. This is pure me-wandering-around-suburban-Philadelphia-in-the-summer-of-'85-waiting-for-something-exciting-to-happen stuff here. Nothing particularly exciting ever did happen, which may be for the best, because if anything had, it would have been so monumentally great that perhaps the rest of my life could not have lived up to that memory. Or perhaps I would have been launched on a lifetime of building on my early positive experiences to generating ever-better ones by habit and expectation. One never knows.
Nothing else is coming to me tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment