Take two thick slices of Noonie's day old bread, smear Honey Cup honey mustard
liberally over both. Cover both slices with green leaf lettuce. Then on one slice only lay smoked turkey on the lettuce,
a tomato slice on the turkey and sprinkle it with shredded carrot. Then on the lay a slice of provolone cheese over the
carrot then a green pepper ring on top of the cheese. Sprikle with sprouts. Cover with the other slice, lettuce side down.
The letuce should be stuck to the bread with honey mustard so it doesn't fall off when you turn it upside down to cover the
sandwich. Slice sandwich in half with a knife. Wrap in tightly in plastic wrap. Use too much wrap. Tape on label. Tadaaa!
Weighs one pound. Costs Four Bucks.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your
teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed,
to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and
no warrants shall issue,
but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and
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"During the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton
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implying that Hillary would play an important role in his
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The Seventies
Thursday, November 29, 2007
I was just down in my cave watching the 1974 Ali-Foreman Heavyweight Title "Rumble in the Jungle" and it got me thinking about the seventies. I was born in 1973 so I remember the seventies. My memories are from childhood and enhanced by the review of recordings, but they're memories nonetheless.
Ali and Foreman make it easy to understand how Rocky got made three years later. That was a real fight. Really gritty. I don't think boxing is like that any more. I don't think anything is.
Let me tell you what I think the seventies were like and you can tell me if you agree...
High school kids drag-raced their fathers' big-ass Chevy Impalas down both lanes of North Avenue at three in the morning. They got high with their teachers at school and they drank beer in the cafeteria. There were huge drunken gang riots in Battery Park.
Everybody smoked everywhere. Men would smoke cigarettes in the delivery room while their wives were giving birth for Christ's sake. No wait a minute- the fathers wouldn't have been in the delivery room- but the doctors would be smoking, and the fathers smoked in the recovery room. The moms too. And the newborn babies.
People were openly racist and sexist. A woman with a job couldn't get credit without her husband, even if he was unemployed. Nobody had ever heard of being politically incorrect. Humor was raw. People cursed. Got physical.
People were slutty. The pill had just come out and AIDS wasn't invented yet. Everybody had scores of drunken one night stands. People made love in their Chevy Vans. There were VD and abortion clinics on every corner. There were all kinds of stains and fluids in those disgusting shaggy long rugs people had, but nobdy cared. Everybody was disgusting. Cheech and Chong were a hit.
Everybody was a radical Symbianese Liberator or Black Panther or Feminist or Anarchist or all of the above. And you could get a copy of "Steal this Book" or "The Anarchist's Cookbook" right out of the local library without any worry about Bush's Secret Police.
People drank Schaefer, Schlitz and Papst Blue Ribbon. There were no trendy micro-brew mead cooperatives or anything like that.
People listened to records that popped and crackled and gave raw analog rock and roll. The rock and roll was real. The rock stars were talented, insane drug addicts like Keith Moon and they made no bones about it.
The sky was a little brighter then. A lighter shade of blue. Less pollution. There wasn't a video camera every five feet. There was real privacy. Things were metal and strong and heavy and made in America. People thought the economy sucked, but they didn't know how good they had it. Unions still had clout. The middle class was a real thing then, not the lie we keep telling ourselves today.
People were smarter, better educated and more articulate. Watch Good Times. Florida and JJ are supposed to be representing the ghetto, but they speak the queen's English better than Raymond or the King of Queens or any of those idiots today. The actors had stagecraft. They could enunciate.
So to sum up- things were grittier, stronger, brighter and generally more visceral in the seventies than they are today. Things were more honest and more free. We have definitely lost a lot since then, not least the Writ of Habeas Corpus.
Let's face it. America is asleep at the wheel right now. Do you even realize there's a war? That the dollar is falling straight to Hell? That most of our food is poison?
People lived in the seventies. Today we exist. Big difference.
Anyway. I watched rounds four and five of the fight before coming upstairs to write. Ali may have won the Rumble in the Jungle, but who would you rather be today? They guy with Parkinson's or the guy who's sold a billion barbecue grills?
You never know how things will end up in this crazy world.
I'm not sure if I got the email because I've been involved in education, or have a blog, or why, but Bernie's office sent me an email invitation to discuss the "No Child Left Behind" with the Senator tonight at 6:30pm at Burlington High School.
And this is where the post gets lame. I know it's gonna sound like a bunch of excuses, but I can't go to that thing. Poopsie and I were up most of the night with two screaming kids. I've got one of those searing stomach aches I get all the time, and we have to go to TJMaxx to get a Christmas Tree Stand. Yesterday I bought my first Christmas Tree ever. Koko wanted one and it was worth the $14 (small tree) just to see his smile when I showed it to him.
Plus, what do I know about NCLB? I took a short seminar on it a few years ago as part of my training at Colchester Middle School, but I don't remember much about it. I vaguely remember learning NCLB essentially criminalizes public education in a round-about way.
Oh... I just got a check for $77.04 in the mail. My share of a class action lawsuit against H&R block's "rapid refund" service. I only ever did that once, sometime between 1994 and 1996 apparently. I remember joking that it should be called "Rapid Ripoff" because of all the fees they charged. I guess other people felt the same way. I was invited to join that suit months ago and had forgotten all about it. Hey it's 77 Bucks. I'll take it. I'll use it to buy a Christmas Tree Stand.
What else? Oh I may as well mention the Church Street smoking ban proposed by Councilor Adrian went down last night on a vote of 8-5.
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Hey did you know there's a new radio station in town? WOMM-LP 105.9 Burlington, Vermont. The Radiator. It's at 215 College street in the old, old Mary Fletcher Free Library building. I went there once but nobody was home. There was a lot of Doug Knapp art outside their door, though.
Anyway- there's a request for radio show proposals on their website, so I wrote in and asked for a talk radio show. I think I'd call it the Haik Bedrosian Radio Program. Would you like to hear me do talk radio?
Thank you Bill Hicks, you run of the mill dead guy. I love you. You and Mitch Headberg. Did he die too? I could Google it to make it sound like I knew all along, but I don't feel like writing that way right now. Give it a rest already. Everybody knows everything in cyberspace. If somebody asks a question of fact in a comment string on Carpetbagger, invariably some smart alec will tell that person that she should learn to Google and that it only took them two seconds to find it themselves. Blah blah blah.
I'm not going to Google Headberg, but I will get back to stand-up comics. I like George Carlin quite a bit. I like Chris Rock.
Maybe I'll mention George Burns, since I have a deep affinity for the elderly. I'm basically a very old man trapped in a young man's body. I was obsessed with the Titanic as a child. I liked Phillip Marlow and jazz. The cogs of my gears don't fit into the holes they're supposed to be timed to. Everything is new-fangled and I'm just a sick and tired curmudgeon.
Someone asked George Burns how his doctor felt about the fact he still drank and smoked cigars every day.
"My doctor's dead." replied the elderly Mr. Burns.
Shit I've got a lot of mileage out of that joke. The three word punch line works well with my bad impression of George Burns. In a couple of years, nobody will know who the hell George Burns was. Then I'll be forced to get a new joke.
A comedian has a power that is far greater than a politician's in some ways. It's far more direct. Far more honest. When comedians and pols blend, though, that can be a good thing. I'm thinking of Bill Mahr and Jason Lorber as examples.
I tried stand up comedy once at an open mike in Austin. I did so-so. I tried poetry slam here in Burlington a couple of times too. I did ok. The woman that ran it then, Kim Jordan, is an incredible talent. I heard the way she would announce those shows and control the room. Perfect enunciation, projection, pitch modulation. Whatever. She never missed a beat and she never screwed up either as the host or as a poet. Talent like Kim Jordan's drives me into emotional paralysis, turning me inward to face the dark reality that I can never be as good, and there's basically no way I can ever compete in this world. Thanks Kim. Burlington is lucky to claim you.
So are our kids special? My kids better be. They're the ones who will have to retroactively justify my pitiful existence. But then I'm sure a lot of people think the same way. Well we all die and we're all held down by gravity, so really nobody is that special. An aneurysm could drop any of us off the stage right now. So there's that.
Still. Though the differences may be minor in the grand scheme of things, they are differences nonetheless. Some people do things and others don't. This is some really basic stuff.
You are invited to return to this blog as often as you'd like.
Don't be an idiot. You have a lot to be grateful for and you know it. Every breath is a gift.
Funny that this year Thanksgiving falls on the 44th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination. I went to Dealey Plaza and the 6th Floor Museum nine years ago. Helluva thing when Kennedy died. We can be grateful to the Beatles for showing up a couple months later and taking our minds off it.
The other thing I saw in Dallas was the Southfork Ranch from the TV show. It's smaller than it seems on TV. Whoever may have shot Kennedy aside, at least we know it was Kristen who shot JR.
Here's a link to Waterfront Watchdogs. They want to tear down the Moran Plant and make it a park. I think it would hurt me to see that happen. That old brick building has been there my whole life and I love it. It's part of me. I think we should reuse it, but that's just my opinion. Maybe you agree with Waterfront Watchdogs. That's ok. If we agreed on everything, one of us wouldn't be thinking.
One of the things about growing up in the new north end was witnessing the evolution of the Ethan Allen shopping center. There used to be a flea market on the north side of the parking lot every Sunday. I used to hit the Carvelle Ice Cream sometimes after the flea market. Of course nobody had ever heard of Hannaford back then. We had a Grand Union supermarket that gave out horse race tickets with your order. You could watch the race on TV and if your horse won, you'd win money. And of course, this was the heyday of the old Hills clothing store and the now recently deceased Ben Franklin variety store. Then there was that bakery where the old World War II veterans used to spend all day, every day. I didn't have celiac disease then, and their doughnuts and cupcakes were to die for.
Do you remember the video game arcade that was there in the early eighties? It was called Mind Games. It has all the lighted blips, loud flashes and smokey smells of its time and place. That was the first place I ever overheard a weed transaction. I must have been nine or ten. My older brother Greg, now a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, was addicted to a game called Warlords. I played Defender and Ms. Pacman and pinball.
To this day I can't get into modern, complicated video games. I'm still just Ms. Pacman, Tetris and simple shit like that. I can't get invested in some fantasy crap. Let's fact it, I'm too lazy for reality. Why would I spend effort on fantasy?
Anyway- that was my post on Mind Games, the old arcade in the shopping center. I hope you enjoyed it.
This is it. My safety room. My bunker. The last safe place I'll find before God finally kills me. Welcome Back to BulingtonPol.com.
I haven't wanted to talk too much about my personal life too much lately. There's too much there. It's a can of worms the size of a novel, and I'm afraid to touch it.
So I'll just tell you that it's Thursday, November 15 at 1:16pm. I've set out 51 bags of leaves for the city to haul off. It's raining.
Speaking of the city, that's why we're here right? Well I did a little research for my blog last night, and by that I mean I watched part of Tuesday's city council meeting on TV.
The part I stumbled upon was a debate about what to do about a parcel owned by Champlain College. They want to turn it into their admissions building, but they can't because that wouldn't be zoned properly. They want to get a waiver that would be good for 30 years. They've had a letter of agreement with the city basically saying this would happen for a while.
At issue is the current zoning re-write. Some councilors felt like that should be finished before considering Champlain's request. Other's felt that Champlain College had waited long enough and deserved this variance.
Speaking in favor of just giving them the damned varience and getting it done- Jane Knodell, Kurt Wright and Mayor Kiss.
Speaking in favor of waiting around for the zoning thing to play out in order to allow this use, which all parties seemed to concede was appropriate and would be approved eventually anyway- Andy Montroll, Ed Adrian and I think Joan Shannon- but don't quote me on her.
The rest of the council just looked like they were trying to follow along and/or stay awake. Councilor Bushor spoke a long time about being on the fence on the issue, but then asserted her intention to vote to kill the variance- pending more information.
There was a motion made to kill the variance, but during discussion on the motion, Knodell moved to postpone, which superseded the previous motion and at that point, I think the council punted and approved the motion to postpone.
This is all from memory. I watched the thing last night. I'm just blogging it because I have to do something. I've got nowhere else to go.
You can probably guess how I would have voted on the thing. I would be in favor of approving Champlain's variance. The zoning re-write is going to take a long time to finish and just because you approve this, doesn't mean you have to do anything else. Plus- you think this zoning re-write will still be carved in granite in 30 years? Nah! Another council will be doing their tweeks and fixes then, and half of us will be dead. I say just give them the damn thing and get it done. This isn't some taco cart. It's Champlain College, and the city made a deal with them a while ago that we should live up to.
City councilor Craig Gutchell (pictured on left) has been the loudest critic of a deal which allowed former treasurer Brendan Keleher (pictured on right) to walk away from city hall with an extra 15K+ per year for life.
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"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your
teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed,
to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
-Emma Lazarus, 1883
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