10/10/22
Newsletter123
The Crack of Dawn
It doesn’t surprise me that the state that has produced the most presidents – eight – is Virginia considering that four out of the five of the first presidents hailed from there. What I do find surprising is that coming in second is Ohio with seven presidents. The only president to come from my home state of Michigan was Gerald Ford, who was actually born in Nebraska, but raised in Michigan. Ford was also not elected, but became president when Richard Nixon resigned. Gerald Ford’s life accomplishments are: pardoning Nixon, which he really shouldn’t have done; and being a member of the lame, corrupt, must-be-tripping-on-LSD, Warren Commission that embraced the ridiculous “Magic Bullet” theory regarding Kennedy’s assassination, put out an eight volume set of their findings without interviewing one single eyewitness. Hail to the chief.
In case anyone is interested but me, the world’s population is at 7,980,000,000 and will exceed eight billion in the next couple of days. The world’s population has grown 63,000,000 this year. It took the entire history of human civilization until 1900 to reach one billion. By 1958 when I was born it had tripled to three billion. In my lifetime it has grown two-and-a-half times. Because it is a geometric increase, it will only take less than half of my lifespan, 32 years, to double again. As George Carlin said (and I paraphrase), we don’t need to save the planet; it’s a rock floating in space; we need to keep it habitable for humans. In any case, I find it interesting to watch the running World Population Clock, which includes: births today, deaths today, population growth today (over 50,000, and it’s early), and population growth this year, which is 63,000,000, so far. Here is the link: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
It's amazing to me how the tinniest shit can stick with us forever. I don’t know exactly how long ago this episode of The Simpsons was on, nor will I check (it’s got to be 20 years), but it’s the one where Homer joins their version of Lollapalooza and has a cannonball fired into his gut. Also on the bill was Michigan’s own, Grand Funk Railroad, of whom I’ve always been a fan. The band is introduced, and once again I paraphrase, “Grand Funk Railroad, with the incredible vocals and guitar by Mark Farner, the terrific bass playing of Mel Shacher, and the utterly competent drumming of Don Brewer.” I was a aghast. What’s wrong with Don Brewer’s drumming?
For many years L.A. had this great annual film festival called FilmEx. It was a big deal, lasted for two weeks, and showed an enormous amount of cool movies. At FilmEx in 1977 I saw the world premiere of Annie Hall and Diane Keaton was there. That year they also had a 54-hour musical marathon, which my buddy Rick and I attended. The show was introduced by Mervyn LeRoy, who directed Little Caesar (1931) and produced The Wizard of Oz (1939). For the next two-and-a-half days Rick and I ate popcorn, drank pop, took diet pills, and sneaked out to the parking structure every couple of films and smoked a joint. They were showing two musicals at the same time in two different theaters so you had a choice. After about 40 hours neither one of us could look at Technicolor anymore, thus confining us to older, black and white films. I remember driving home from Century City and my eyes were completely freaking out – everything looked like it was in Technicolor.
Although I had no intention or clue that I was following up on anybody with this newsletter, it does seem a bit like Paul Harvey (real name, Paul Harvey Aurandt), and his radio broadcast, The Rest of the Story, that ran from 1951 to 2008 – that’s 57 years! Paul Harvey liked to tell stories about interesting people, but not reveal their name until the end. “. . . And that little boy grew up to be Abraham Lincoln.” And he ended every broadcast with, “This is Paul Harvey. Good day.”
Good day.