Tuesday, August 27, 2013

New Podcast Episode - Ten For Tuesday Episode 39: Back To The Eighties


As I was rummaging around on my external hard drive I came across two Cd's from a collection called Lost 80s and I started saying this song could go with this one and this one and so on and so on. Within a few minutes I had ten songs selected and a few more minutes after that I had the order identified and that quickly a new episode was on it's way. If you love 80s music you should remember most of these and hopefully you're not too sick of them. Luckily (?) for me there is no 80s radio station in Tulsa so I am not forced to hear that music until I'm sick of it. At any rate, here's the music:

The Kinks - Do It Again
Greg Kihn Band - Reunited
Dave Edmunds - Information
The Rolling Stones - She's So Cold
Phil Seymour - Precious To Me
Marshall Crenshaw - Someday, Someway
Peter Wolf - Lights Out
Berlin - No More Words
Ultravox - Dancing With tears In My Eyes
Talk Talk - It's My Life

Email: notmovingpictures@gmail.com Twitter: @notmovingpics
Blog: www.notmovingpictures.blogspot.com

For older episodes go to www.archive.org and search for Ten For Tuesday.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Maybe These ARE The Droids You're Looking For

Every year when it gets close to Halloween I start asking my son the same questions and I always get the same answers. Do you want to be a Jedi? No. What about Darth Vader? No. How about a Stormtrooper? No. Why don't you try Boba Fett? No. The answer has always been no. Until this year that is. This year he announced that he wanted to be Darth Vader. The thing that helped to bring him around was that he spent almost two months in Peru this summer and his uncle Gary got him hooked on playing The Force Unleashed video game. Gary is probably a bigger fan of Star Wars than I am, well, maybe he's equal with me.
 
Now, it wasn't as if I was derelict in my fatherly Star Wars duties before he went. I showed him the movies as well as The Clone Wars animated series (whenever we could catch it) and he enjoyed them all very much. But it wasn't until all of that was tied in to his love of video games that it became more of an obsession for him. He's already accumulated three lightsabers of varying styles and is wanting more. To that end my wife is making his Darth Vader costume (she's pretty good at that kind of thing) and he couldn't be happier. He's already wearing his cape around the house.
 
After I commented about his choice of costume on Facebook my brother from other parents Tommy asked me if I wanted any of the Star Wars books that he had. You see, about a decade ago I had given a box full of Star Wars books to his sons. I had read them all and they were only taking up space so I thought why not pay it forward and give them to someone who might be interested in them? At that time in my life I was positive that I'd never marry again and that I would never have a child to share these kinds of things with. How wrong I was. 
 
 
Fast forward to the present and now these books that were a part of my past will now become part of his future. Sure, he's only six years old and not quite at the reading level to start on these books yet but give him a few years and he'll be ready to start tearing through them. I've always been a voracious reader so hopefully he'll take after me in this area. I may even read them all again just to familiarize myself with the story lines and then maybe I can finally get caught up with all of the more recent ones. I've only read a few that weren't associated with the story lines from these books in the past several years so I know I've got some catching up to do.
 
Another thing that I also gave away were my old concert t-shirts from the 80s. Those went to my nephew because they no longer fit me and were also taking up space in a box. I've got that one covered though. You see I haven't stopped going to concerts (my wife is still waiting for me to grow up but I refuse) and I'm making sure I'll have some for his future use. Mine too, I still wear them all the time. Plus it won't be much longer before I start taking him with me and then he can get his own shirt. Of course at the rate he's growing he may have to wear mine sooner rather than later. He's already standing over four feet four inches tall and doesn't show any signs of stopping anytime soon. I can't wait.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

New Podcast Episode: Ten For Tuesday 38


For this episode I was in the mood for ska, in whatever wave or form it appeared. These are all songs that I like and don't get to hear enough and this mix has a lot of songs from the 90s when ska I first started listening to ska (again). There's not much more to say about it than that.

The Skoidats - Rootsawalkin
Stubborn All-Stars - Back With A New Batch
Cold Spot 8 - My Little Life
Pressure Cooker - Holly O
Satelite Kingston - Sound Pablo
Hepcat - Together Someday
The Void Union - Higher Guns
Buck-O-Nine - My Town
Reel Big Fish - Sell Out
Big Lick - Way-O

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Didn't I Used To Know You?

As I arrived late to church last week I sat down at the back and just in front of me I noticed a man that from my vantage point looked like someone I had known a long time ago. Well, just briefly that is and only if I allowed myself to believe it. In truth he barely had a passing resemblance to an old fraternity friend that I haven't seen in about twenty six years. If I narrowed my eyes just so the illusion held for a few seconds until common sense prevailed and I realized that it wasn't him.

Still, the idea persisted in my head of what if it had been him? After all that time I knew that it was very likely that he wouldn't recognize me as I had changed greatly over all those years. Would he even remember my name? This is relevant because this person had been an alcoholic and the last time my best friend Tommy had seen him was just a few years after graduating college and this man had barely known who he was then. Even after prompting him with details he seemed disinterested at speaking with this person he had know day in and day out for several years.

The more I thought about the idea of friendship the more I thought about how it changes over time. Back in those college days I had more friends at one time than I ever had before but by the definition of the word a lot of them were in reality acquaintances. We spent a great deal of time around each other but we never really got to know each other. There was a certain core group of individuals to whom I was closer to and within that group another smaller one comprised of those that I would do just about anything for. With all of these groups I felt as if they were family to me. What can I say? I was young and unencumbered by the problems of life at that point.

As we all got older and graduated or (in my case) left school our lives changed. People moved away to other cities, other state and sometimes other countries. They got married, had children and started careers, not necessarily in that order. The more their schedules filled up with day to day minutiae of grownup life the less time there was for old friends and even less for old acquaintances. Without even realizing it we all left those who used to matter so much behind.

In this modern, brave new world it is much easier to keep in contact than it was back then but that comes at a price. Back then answering machines were not commonplace nor was caller I.D. so you had a better chance of reaching someone. Of course you had to call from a place that had an actual telephone, unlike today where people have the freedom to call from anywhere they want. Be it from their car, the store or even from their toilet. Strangely though even the practice of calling is changing depending on your generation.

Nowadays it's even more extremely convenient to simply send a text or an email to be read at the recipients leisure. Actual verbal contact isn't required at all. With that we pass from one era to another. There are things my son will never experience and some of that is good, some not so good. The thing is, we really can't do much about that. It's the way things are, the only thing constant is change and you either adapt to the world around you or stay where you are and grow stagnant.

So how can I sum up how I feel about my old friends? Some of them I am in constant contact with to this day. Some I see or call occasionally. Some I am friends with on Facebook. Some never respond when I leave them a message. Some are never seen or heard from again. And some have already departed. As we get older the last group will only get larger. Hopefully at some point we'll wake up and try and find the time to see each other even if it's only once or twice a year. Even more hopefully every once in a while we'll also make new friends that we will hold as dearly to us as we do the old.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

New Podcat Episode: Ten For Tuesday Episode 37


Another week, another episode. Before I say anything about this episode I have to make a correction from Episode 36. After I actually looked up the information I found that Dave Edmunds is in actuality Welsh, not American. With that out of the way this episode has something for everyone. There's ska, 80s, 90s and new wave. Quite the musical smorgasbord if you will. Often times I like presenting a mix of different styles and genres (like this week) and others I feel like gathering songs from a certain style or period. There will be some of that coming in the near future. It just depends on my mood really and that's a difficult thing to predict. So for now let's just enjoy what we have, this episode, in all it's glory.

Rancid - Timebomb
Inspecter 7 - Hub City Stompers
Rocket From The Crypt - Lipstick
Oingo Boingo - Who Do You Want To Be
The dBs - Black And White
New Town Kings - La La World
Checkered Cabs - Darling Boy
Wool - Medication
Queen - One Vision
Steve Stevens - Atomic Playboys

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.