Why only 30 years ago all you had were public phones....

I am really dating myself if I start telling you about chain letters via snail mail and door to door salesmen. I remember both. The chain emails I have received via emails don't even come close to the hassle and terror those chain letters of the past held. You had a certain number of days in which to make 20-25 copies and send $1 to the person on the top of the list. If not: beware, the stories of those who broke the chain were included in the letter and they were not good. So, you wrote out or typed out the new chain letter then took it to get mimeographed..yeah really dating myself. Okay...my mother worked at a school so mimeographing was easier than a photostat copy. I remember my mom getting a few and once I got old enough I'd take care of them.

Thanks to the infomercial we no longer have to turn the lights out and pretend no one is home. And thanks to the internet, there is no need for men to peddle encyclopedias anyway. Although door to door salesmen sold a plethora of items that would chop, dice, slice ...Weren't limited to to lugging around pounds of hardcovered intelligence. Imagine if there were no computers now, how huge would the encyclopedia be today or how small the citations or how tiny the type????

Technology has taken us to good places in our daily lives but think about what I am sure you haven't given a thought to, like, the more esoteric parts of our daily lives. For some reason the chain letter is not as intimidating by way of email, maybe not as real (for lack of $1?) and it is easy to hit delete and forget about it. Day to day I look up dozens and dozens of little facts using my computer and don't feel at all intelligent for doing so. Encyclopedias did give me that, no matter how trivial the topic. It's uber easy to change the channel on tv without a thought to what the guy was trying to sell us and it didn't hurt his feelings or break anyone's back that we did.

One thing is certain, for anyone who thinks we are the same now as we were then (30 years ago)...perhaps in some ways (people are people) but so much is gone. When was the last time you had a key fob on your hotel key? Imagine, stopping at a public phone to warn your husband that you think the salesman might show up this evening because you heard it from a neighbor you saw while hanging clothes on the line (clotheslines not as prevelant)the other morning that he was in the hood. You also tell him you'll be home after you run an errand to buy typing paper (maybe ribbon too) and envelopes to mail out that chain letter you received. "Gotta go", you say, your 3 minutes are up and you think of how it sux that you'll miss your program on television because there is no way you could possibly record it. Impossible. Then you wonder if you have the change to get 25 copies on the photostat machine at the library or if you should just type it out on carbon paper and get it mimeographed on the sly at the office. Hmmm so weird when you stop and think how things could be if technology had not progressed in the past 30 years. There was just more work to do, more of an effort and less on television and no one would ever know or have the chance to read what I'd been thinking in the evening.

Disclaimer: You may not relate (for many reasons) but if you are in your early to mid twenties it would really surprise me if you can. Anyone born after 1981 has a totally differnt point of view. It is amazing what that 10 year difference makes.

I was reminded this week that:

I wanted to be a child star in the 70's. Yeah, I wanted to act alongside Kristy McNichol,Sparky Marcus,Jodie Foster, Tatum O'Neil, The Brady kids(actors), Benji and Muppets. I wanted to be on the Mike Douglas Show. I'd play "talk show" quite often(creepy when you see Rupert Pupkin do it but I was six so...). I started performing in front of the television at two. This is to say I would sing and dance while watching the Dolly Parton Show,Hee Haw,American Bandstand and Lawrence Welk.

I watched a lot of musicals with my mother, was a huge Our Gang and Shirley Temple fan and it all worked to fill my head with the "gumption" to shoot for the stars (hokey musical talk). In my young head Hollywood was like in it's Golden Age...the dream factory in constant search of the new thing. This is because tv ran many old movies in those days. I knew what acting was at a very young age. I did impressions and was pretty entertaining within my family. I begged my mother to put me in show business but she'd always throw Judy Garland at me. She'd say and I can remember verbatim, "There was a really talented girl name Judy Garland who was beautiful and went into show business and it ruined her and killed her. You don't want that, so no." UGH! It would only frustrate me, and I admit, make the whole thing look not so appealing for a few hours.

So I was limited to only dance recitals, Halloween costumes, Christmas pageants and whatever I could do with the sibs and a few neighbor kids. Not much. I didn't pine for the Hollywood dream but every now and then I'd daydream of how awesome I'd be. Seems like I was around a few kids who felt this way about their own oozing-with-talent selves. With Grease, Star Wars and Fame being so huge and having such cool kid stars around at the time, it seemed easy. My school talent shows brought out kids doing scenes from Grease and Cats and really drive home the fact that not everyone was destined. I was part of a dance troupe in the kindergarten talent show that did a number to the song Car Wash.

Once I left home at eighteen I didn't head straight for Broadway (teehee)like I thought I would when i was eight. I went to college to get an art degree. Once I was done with college I played around with the idea of trying acting for a short while. Got roles in student films, auditioned for whatever "big time" stuff came to town and came close once but eh....I figured who needs it all end up like Judy Garland except Hollywood isn't even gothicically fascinating anymore anyway. The moment was gone. I had lost that confidence and naivete, it was a Tom Cruise world. But I had a fun time playing film star as a kid. I am left with funny memories, a cool imagination and what I picked up in ballet lessons, tap lessons, jazz lessons, piano lessons Summer puppet school and high school drama and my soul still intact, Mom!

In Brooklyn

I have written about this song before I know, I know but I love it. It reminds me of this time I lived in a big white two story house alone and needed a roommate. It was late February so it was like Spring already in Austin. I enjoyed sitting outside and watching people go by on their way to work or school, watched birds, squirrels, lots of things. Little Blue birds lived under the window in the kitchen and every morning I'd open it and see the baby birds growing. They'd open their mouths when they heard me shriek about how cute they were, a very Snow White scene to say the least.

But I had to give the place up and so I ran an ad and into my life walked all sorts of people who would stay for a while to hours and just chat about all sorts of things. I can really only remember one person from all this, the very charming, Robert Ovetz.  The song reminds me of that time and place and conversations lasting 6 hours over a kitchen table in the cute white two story. What came out of it was a move to the apartments across the street and a few audition leads. I went ahead and auditioned and by mid-March I was starring in a few student films which lead to more auditions.

This part of my life had an obvious domino effect. Where I am and who I know today can be traced to this one day when I decided to give up the rental. It was by far the best place I have ever lived, spacious, cute and it held everything I owned so perfectly. It did get pricey though and rather than take in a roomie I moved.

Tom Swift and His Electronic Book

Or another rant about how I dislike the idea of online only media and the doing away with print. Can't we have both?!

So they say it's coming, the library will be wires and screens and little cubicles. Gone will be the books and basically all print media.
Read:
Electronic books offer creative possibilities for expanding access as well as changing learning behavior and academic research. Content can always be accessible, regardless of time or place, to be read on PCs or on portable book readers. Books need never go out of print, and new editions can be easily created. One can carry several titles at once on a portable reader and, over time, build a personal library. Features such as full text searching, changeable font size, mark-up, citation creation, and note taking will enhance usability. Print text can be integrated with multi-dimensional objects, sound, and film to create a whole new kind of monographic work.

Yes, it is true I am a Luddite and change is hard. However when I heard the new fangled thing called the computer when I was in junior high and how it would be more than just a huge calculator and would be able to serve us information daily I was nothing but excited. I still am. I do love cyberspace and all it's possibilities. However, I also love the connection with real people, real objects, real places and real books.

There is a romance in books that the future seems to not understand. To pick up a book that is either brand new or used is to pick up more than just the information. For however long it takes you to read the contents within it, the book is real, it's paper, it can be burned, it can be lost, it can be dog eared, written in, torn, stained, carried on busses, carried into restaurants, lugged around with several other books it becomes weight, it's an object. It carries print, remember how that revolution took over the world and changed it forever? The future claims ebooks will do again what the Guttenburg did before. Will it? I am sure it will make a hell of an impact but it will lack something.

It cannot be touched. This is good they say. Never lost, never out of print, never destroyed. But never romantic because it lacks the mortal qualities we do? The irony is....it will be out of print. No books will be printed on paper and sewn or glued between two covers. Books will be out of print. The idea of carrying several books on an electroniic reader and downloaded like music to ipods sounds interesting and I am sure there are many who would love that. I cannot fathom this simply because my eyes do not like the computer screen too much. Long blog entires and articles are read in spurts, I scan, I am impatient in front of the computer and I scan just about everything. In fact I doubt if my longer blog entires get read much. That's fine, they are for the purging of rants more than anything.

I understand books like On the Road cannot be kept long in libraries, constantly stolemn, that in itself tells you something doesn't it? Anyway, for these sorts of titles and academic books I understand it useful to keep them electronically so that their information be made available for study, education, learnin' and the like but for enjoyment? Hmmm I don't know. Who has ever swiped a book? Who has ever spent a good sum of money on a first edition, who has taken a book to get signed by an author? Who has checked ebay daily to make sure they get that out of print find? Who has a nice little shelf or mantle in a room that holds several titles that are not only read and re-read but just pisked up and thumbed through once in a while, just to feel and know it is yours? And when those portable book readers make their way into everyone's lives, how are you going to show the "public" , those around you, friends...how bookish and booky you are? Will you be writing portable book read contains over 500 titles in the "Books" section of Myspace (we know that's here to stay)?

I like my books as books. I still buy books, I want my own library in my house one day, shelves floor to cieling. I was at Half Priced the other day, in their rare books section. Beautiful! I can't help but find it orgasmic to view all those titles on those shelves. Some I want to posses as they are, others I feel I must purchase new and add my own history to them, put on my own shelf until one day they are very old. There are still many, many kinks to be worked out with electronic books and even electronic journals such as archiving (how?) but their attraction seems to blind even the most level headed person...it's that old midway novelty act thing, the concept car thing... you know what I'm talking about, you see those old mini docs done in the Atomic Era about the future home and robots and flying cars. We have Segways but no flying cars as of yet. The future is as much a turn on to some as the past is to others. It goes wrong when you jump into either one blinded to what the disadvantage are. This electonic book and journal thing..I'd say it still has a way to go so why rush the romance out of carrying a magazine into the loo with you today.

Movies from the balcony of the Paramount

We watched Maria Montez play Tollea/Naja in a technicolor orgasm called Cobra Woman and then stayed for the Gang's All Here. Carmen Miranda was awesome and so was the flick despite the odd plot but the floating heads in the big polka dot finale was GOLD! I had forgotten Alice Faye's voice was on the low end and how good she was. It was a cute musical. We tore through Raisenets, popcorn and Jr Mints for two hours straight. Now I'm totally in the mood to start the new Ava Gardner bio I got. On Friday it's THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and It Came From Outer Space in 3D!