Lloyd and I watched the Indianapolis 500 race today on television. It went down to the wire and a Swedish driver won a two-lap sprint to the finish line after an accident and a re-start. It was interesting but mostly boring, like an episode of 60 Minutes.
I’m all in favor of safety and technology but, to be honest, the Indy 500 was more fun in the old days. There were more multi-car crashes, jostling between cars, guys ran out of gas, leading cars were slowed to a halt by a failed 50-cent part, competitors got into fistfights on Gasoline Alley, there was reckless driving and accidents in pit row, and loose tires flew into the bleachers. One year featured a horrible, fiery crash early in the race. It was an adventure happening right before your eyes; you never knew what was going to happen next. Today’s race was antiseptic and non-dramatic: there were fast cars and faster cars that could have been driven by robots. I missed Jim Nabors, too: he was one strange dude, but he sure could sing.
Lots of things aren’t what they used to be.
I remember watching the Oscars broadcast back when actual “movie stars” filled the seats in the auditorium; now, 90 percent of the attendees are celebrity wannabes and seat-holders. I also liked it better when there weren’t fisticuffs up on stage and the emcees didn’t bring up politics. Sure, call me Old Fashioned but the only Honest-to-God stars that attended this past Oscars telecast were Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep. Where were DiCaprio, Clooney, Julia Roberts, etc.? In the “old” days, famous stars showed up to honor their fellow actors even if they personally weren’t nominated. (If Hollywood royalty doesn’t care, maybe we shouldn’t?)
This year’s event was co-emceed by three trying-to-be-funny lady comedians, none of whom could carry Johnny Carson’s jockstrap. Bob Hope would do a better job, even though he been dead for decades. Billy Crystal: Please reconsider. Somebody breathe some life into this corpse or do away with it. Just sayin’.
The World Series broadcast used to be an annual rite that 90 percent of all households enjoyed… even if they weren’t baseball fans. Baseball was the so-called National Pastime back then. I would be surprised if the ratings for Game 7 of last year’s World Series beat the ratings of Fox News on the same date. Can you even name the team that won in 2021? Do you care? I used to but don’t anymore. (Just realized that the Dodgers, my old favorite team, won the Series last year! See what I’m sayin’?)
Everyone used to “go to the movies” fairly frequently. Taking a date to a blockbuster movie at a nice theater was a big thing back when I full of testosterone. Pretending to watch a movie while at a drive-in theater with your squeeze was even better. Nowadays, nobody goes to the movies and there aren’t any drive-ins anymore. People watch motion pictures on streaming TV or on their cell phones. And the cinema offerings are basically movie-length childrens’ cartoons, Marvel hero action flicks, and depressing dramas pushing politically correct themes starring LGBQT folks, blind people, hearing-impaired individuals, and minorities. To be blunt, I’d rather eat green flies that watch that crap.
Everyone who is my age (or my parents’ age, for that matter) played around the backyard pool with reckless abandon. Goofing off on the diving board was fun, as was running across the yard and jumping (or pushing your brother) into the deep end. Nowadays, there are no diving boards and there are fences surrounding pools to keep infants from falling in. The fun is gone. Backyard pools have turned into expensive soaker tubs.
When I was young, obviously “life” began when someone was born. This was cool because, in most cases, love had resulted in a pairing that was meaningful, and the new child was a welcome addition to the family. If there was a pairing that was a total mistake, or the result of some incest or rape, the pregnancy could be terminated after due consideration. In today’s society, the clergy and politicians have developed a devilish brew of bad policy which concludes that life begins at conception and that stopping the development of the fetus is immoral, no matter how wrong the pregnancy is. However, babies should be wanted, shouldn’t they? Would-be parents should make those decisions, right? Why should politicians and clergy make such important decisions for us? Most Americans don’t attend church and an even greater percentage of us feel that politicians are idiots. Why do we pay attention to them?
Roe v. Wade made more sense to my generation. Who knows what people are thinking now, if one can call it thinking.
It used to be simple to shop at the grocery store. Not anymore: one has to make sure that they are not buying regular lettuce, for example, because it may have been grown the old-fashioned way. No, we should opt for the organic stuff, which costs 50 percent more. Same with chicken: make sure that the fowl was free-ranged (also, more expensive). Keep an eye out for GMOs (genetically-modified-organisms): wouldn’t want to benefit from scientific advancements, would you. Are you looking for some items in the pharmacy? Sure, see what the medicine purports to do, but also check out the 150 potential side-effects that are printed on the container. It’s the Lawyers’ Full Employment Act in action.
Jesus, we used to just buy an ear of corn, eat it, and move on. Now we need to consult the Internet for guidance. What would Fauci do?
I liked it back in the day when Joe Namath played football. The guy was a decent quarterback who became famous when his Jets team got lucky and won Super Bowl III in 1969. He disappeared from public view for about thirty years and has recently been resurrected to hawk “senior” products on cable TV night and day. Joe was a handsome fellow in his prime but is now a decrepit, skinny, unhealthy-looking 78-year-old guy who closely resembles an animated skeleton. Who wants to buy any product that Old Joe is pushing? If that dying guy is using it, you don’t need it.
The same goes for Jimmy (“Dyno-mite!”) Walker’s Medicare Helpline benefits and Ice-T auto maintenance insurance testimonial endorsements. Attention Viewers: scam alert. The Orson Welles pitches for cheap Paul Masson wine back in my day (“We will drink no wine before its time!”), while the actor sat to rest his obeseness, had more credibility . Any one of Donald Trump’s many money-grubbing scams is more believable, and that’s saying something.
Speaking of annoying con men, I personally preferred the pre-Digital Age requirement that an actual human being had to mail you, appear at your doorstep, or cold-call you on the phone to pitch you his product. It was much easier to say “Go to Hell” back then, and the pesky salesmen had to put out an effort before they had the door slammed in their faces. In today’s world, the intrusion by these invisible losers is incessant, as they bombard everyone’s privacy with bot-generated phone calls and texts… there’s no getting away from the pests, who are using their free speech rights to destroy your peace and quiet with B.S. claims, false promises, and outright lies. We’re so inundated by this shit that we’ve just given up… it’s just part of life that we must endure. The politicians aren’t going to save us because they’re getting paid off by the corporations who inflict this night and day punishment on us. Welcome to Hell.
In the good old days, if you needed some tool or hardware to complete a Honey-do project around the house, you went to your local Mom and Pop hardware store. The owner himself or his experienced helper would guide you to what you needed and explain how the stuff worked. There might have been 40 years of wisdom behind the counter informing your decision to purchase. Nowadays, we go down to a big box Home Depot to buy such things, and most of the employees that work there are hard to find and don’t really know shit about the products. I think they are employed just to keep you from getting lost on your way to the young cashier, who does a who-gives-a-shit job while texting her BFF.
Professional and amateur sports has changed a lot since I was a kid. Newspaper and TV sports news used to talk about league standings, achievements, honors, etc. We would hear that UCLA won ten NCAA basketball titles in 12 years, Ted Williams hit two homers in a game, Jim Brown ran for 200 yards against the Packers, Wilt Chamberlain blocked 20 shots against the Celtics, Richard Petty won the Daytona 500, and so forth. Nowadays, the news reports that Clayton Kershaw is making $5 million for every game pitched, Kobe Bryant raped a barmaid, Patriot’s tight end Aaron Hernandez murdered two people, Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky molested 8 young boys, Kyrie Irving is skipping Nets basketball games in protest of Covid-19 vaccine protocols, and Russian athletes are being barred from international competitions because Vladimir Putin is bombing the Hell out of Ukraine. Yellow journalism has replaced Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News. Titillation now overshadows sporting achievement, just like it does in many other aspects of modern life.
Does anyone remember Ronald Reagan? How about Tip O’Neill? Two leaders of different political parties who actually worked together to get things done in Washington D.C. The phenomenon was called “compromise” back then. Nowadays, our elected officials from both parties at all levels of government spend 95 percent of their time shooting spitwads at each other and the remaining 5 percent groveling to corporations for campaign contributions. Serious issues which deserve attention from policymakers take a back seat to Congressional hearings on alleged scandalous behavior. Government has become a Rube Goldberg contraption that does nothing but spend money and piss people off.
Thoughts and prayers are all they offer to their constituents in return for the opportunity to grow rich at the public trough. Ex-legislators and ex-Cabinet officials fill up corporate boards and live like royalty, laughing at the schmucks who bought their earnest/dishonest campaign pitches.
Back when I was young, most things that we needed were Made in America, and they were made to last. Nowadays, everything seems to be made out of plastic and manufactured in China, India, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, and Mexico. I’m happy for them (that they’ve got jobs), but we now have a lot of healthy and capable American workers who are wondering about their futures. Free enterprise, capitalism, laissez faire and such are cool economic ideas, but when everything important is measured by profit, important things get lost, like community and generational legacy. We’ve become a mass of dolts, wandering about, waiting for the next bad news to hit, bitter that the American Dream is becoming harder and harder to achieve.
Maybe the worst invention that the world has seen in my lifetime is the credit card. People used to be more prudent in their family finances, lived within their means, and bought what they could afford. You saved to buy that extravagance, like a new suit, a vacation, or a boat. In today’s world, you can have whatever you want, when you want it, as long as you can use the plastic. And credit is easy to get: hardly a week goes by that my mailbox doesn’t receive several new credit offerings. All I have to do is make a phone call to activate access to easy money. It’s no wonder that so many households are “under water” financially. Maybe, if financing wasn’t so easy to get, more of our college students wouldn’t have chosen an expensive university to attend and wouldn’t now have that crippling mountain of debt that dogs them years after graduating?
Yeah, I know that we now have cell phones, Viagra, electric cars, free-range chicken, Tylenol, social media, luxury vinyl flooring and, for the time being, the ability to vote by mail. We can buy condoms off the rack, smoke marijuana for pleasure, supply our teenage son with a military assault rifle for “hunting”, watch porn whenever we so desire, and use social media at will to spew our hatred for people who are not like us.
Civility was taken for granted back when I was younger. People got respect when they gave respect, abrasive manners were discouraged, and adults listened more to each other. That’s how communication occurs, problems are identified, and solutions are found. Nowadays, everyone’s shouting, no one is listening, and nothing productive gets accomplished. No one wants to give an inch because they believe what they believe, and their “truth”, even if it isn’t supported by facts, is going to prevail by hook or crook. Feet are held fast by concrete. Cooperation and compromise are ideas that are passe in today’s society, and the Average Joe doesn’t seem to care or want to become engaged in positive societal accomplishments.
Call me a sentimental idiot but there is a lot to commend about the good old days of Ozzie and Harriet, when things were a bit simpler, common sense was more in fashion, people were nicer to each other, and society seemed to be engaged in doing productive things that moved the needle of progress forward.
Scientific discoveries and innovations arising therefrom had a great bearing on American culture when I was young, and scientists were appreciated and honored for making our lives better. New technologies, advances in medicine, more productivity in agriculture, and a better understanding of the world around us came from scientists doing their thing. Nowadays, politics threatens to stifle the wisdom that comes from scientific investigation and experimentation. Scientifically-derived truths are being pushed aside in favor of politically-motivated propaganda. Scientists are targeted for ridicule and scorn when the facts and evidence don’t advance popular political rhetoric. When I was young, no one gave a second thought to declining life-saving vaccines; nowadays, large portions of the population scorn vaccines and the scientists who developed them.
Conspiracy theories seem to excite people more than scientific discoveries. Go figure.
I don’t know who invented marriage, or why, but it seemed to be a more important institution back in the day. People in love got married and those unions tended to last much longer than they do nowadays. My parents and Charlie’s parents both celebrated 50th wedding anniversaries (as we will in 2 years!), as did my best friend’s parents, my sister-in-laws parents, and so forth. As anyone who has been married knows, a marriage is always a work-in-progress and it takes two people engaged in problem-solving to make a marriage succeed. In the modern world, relationships seem to be more transactional, less about team-building, and almost acknowledging that they are doomed to fail. Once again, the spirit of cooperation and compromise that is necessary in life to achieve anything seems to be less important nowadays in personal relationships. Marriages are shorter and many people aren’t getting married at all. Adults, living and sleeping together, but not forming a team, seems to be the wave of the future.
Who’s to say that this is wrong? Personally, I’d be uncomfortable with changing partners and new situations; that is reflective of my long career with one employer. Nowadays, we see more of a “gig” economy, where employment relationships are short-lived, as people with skills move from job to job, hiring out to the highest bidder. The same seems to take place in modern relationships between romantic partners; if a better offer comes along, jumping ship is to be expected, no harm, no foul.
The modern human relationship model sounds very pragmatic but, as the saying goes, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”, and we cannot change our DNA, our hormones, and our instinctive feelings. More changing relationships, more drama, and more customers for scumbag attorneys.
Just what we need in modern society.
