Kathleen From The Bronx
12-04-2007, 10:14 PM
Dear Ron and Fez Shooow,
In my time I've known a buncha hippies.... In lofty tones or on bumper stickers, there were always those who would preach the gospel of, "Kill your T.V." and while I'd always say, "Hey, well good for you, eh," and really kinda mean it......I'd have to add, "Not me though, man.... NOT....meee!" There was a time that I might have agreed.... but I got cable when I moved out of my parents house, and I ain't looked back...
See, we never had cable when I was a kid.... but my parents were not hippies. It was George Steinbrenner's fault that we had no cable....I think that's what they led me to believe... That was the notion that seemed was instilled somehow into my young brain; George Steinbrenner was keeping Cable T.V. out of the Bronx.... I wondered why people would sit idle and let him persecute us in this way....Who would let such a thing go on?!... "This guy really is to blame for EVERYTHING," is what I thought...as if he really must be as bad as people often scream... as if he were a madman, a super-villain.....
Lookin out of the subway door windows, downtown on the 4, I'd see the stadium and think, "Why George Steinbrenner? Why?" as if he was plotting there.......in his evil lair. He don't live in Yankee Stadium, dummy... (rolling eyes, I just informed young-me)...
So, it finally started to dawn on me that there might be more to the story, as over time, virtually everyone in our building... besides us... had cable. No matter what nobody says about George Steinbrenner, I refuse to believe that he was singling us out.....
"Ohhh-hoo-hooo-hooo yesssss.....There's a certain red-headed girl in the Bronx tonight who'll NOT be having her MTV," I'm sure he didn't maniacally laugh.......maybe with some kind of map of The Bronx hanging behind him.... some chart, with lights blinking all over the land.... marking all the cabley apartments except for one spot of darkness.....
Naaaah.... My parents just made up shit..... "I'm not payin for that gahbage!" Well who said anything about paying, is what I'd like to know...... There are ways, dammit! I knew that my friends up on the fourth floor had cable for free cause Monica told me one day up in the park..... Way to keep a secret, ya lil blabbermouth. "Those fuckas are eatin Hamburger Helper every night, but they got some channels God bless em, " I thought.... Yeah.. like oooh they didn't have much but at least they had real T.V......
There was a girl in my class in high school who had no T.V. at all....None! Her family had a monitor, but it was only to be used for educational tapes and pre-approved movies........ They were very strict..... Once this girl made the mistake of confessing that she had a crush on Tony Danza...... Whoa, whoa did she catch some shit, some straight mockery for that one! Perhaps at a friend's house, she caught her first glimpse of the wonders of television, and they happened to involve that goof from Who's the Boss........I can't really explain it, but it was in my mind that her odd infatuation must have something to do with her havin no T.V. She became entranced the moment she set eyes on it.... and as chance would have it....there was Tony Danza..... or some dumb shit like that!
Yeah, so I'd like to be a proper hippie and reject the idiot box, but I still feel like I have to make up for lost time....... Eleven years of cable has not been enough.... Maybe I'm still gettin a feel for it.... Besides, if I'm tryin to be a good hippie....maybe I should start workin on my generally cranky attitude and penchant for violent outbursts... first......before I turn my back on T.V.
Or maybe I don't.... After all, I saw some of that History Channel show the other night......about the o.g. hippies of the 60's ....yeah Ron brought it up.... According to them, hippies were not the peaceniks that they appeared to be.... In fact, they showed that it was their kind that brought horrible drugs into the inner cities, and caused race riots, and personalities like Charles Manson.....Hmmmm..... Ron pointed out, "Yeah... Bring up Manson, but don't mention he was basically born in prisons... You're right, it was Jefferson Airplane that turned him into a mad dog."
Jefferson Airplane strikes again......... Yo, I didn't see the whole show..... but the part I did see, they brought up that the hippies, "didn't bathe," like multiple times! I like to make fun of hippies as much as the next guy, but their angle seemed super pissy! I was like "O...fuckin.. K!" Jeeez, way to soar on the wings of cliche, History Channel.... So it's like they were sayin.... "Them hippies were low down....... They created the drug problem... they had murderous hearts........and by the way, did we mention they stink!?!" Ehhhh fuck yoooooou, History Channel! Ya bastards are kinder to Hitler!
You guys brought up the History Channel again today..... the Discovery Channel too..... Man, I know that I've seen tons of interesting topics discussed there, but ya right when you said that they are not afraid to have any ole kook sit in as an expert.......and people might tend to believe what they say as they come off as authorities.....
Ron made this point, "If you're gonna make up stuff about Sasquatch, how are you gonna believe anything they tell you about Napoleon??"
Remember....apparently the Discovery Channel has Dave MacDonald convinced that Jesus was the inventor of the chair-with-a-back..... Then today we learn that it's believed that when Jesus comes back, it will be with be with sword the size of the Empire State Building. Ron yelled out, "Good! Come with a sword....cause while you been gone we have atomic weapons!" So... Ok.... Hold on though..... Remember last week when Dave was talking bout those giant crosses on the sides of the road, traveling down South.... There was the whole, "Whadda they think He was 30 feet tall??" conversation. Now seemingly we come to find out that those crosses ain't NEARLY big enough!
Ahhh there really is a lot of wackadoo stuff on T.V....... You guys were talkin about the curse of the reality T.V. couples......how those couples always seem to break up.... Wow, I had almost forgotten about the show Being Bobby Brown til yez brought it up.... Once I was sick with the flu and watched this marathon of episodes of the show..... Terrible! Just straight bootleg..... Here's the one thing that killed me though..... I always remember this one scene for some reason.....
Bobby Brown was walkin around barefoot with his shoe lace between his toes and his shoe trailing behind him screaming, "Why my shoe followin me?!!?" over and over...... Whitney Houston got just crazy irate at his game and yelled, " OH HELL NAH!!!! We are NOT playin 'Why my shoe followin me?' TODAY!!!!!!"
That one really got me.....I laughed and felt slightly troubled at the same time....... cause it made me wonder... "Today??" How many times has this maniac pulled that routine..??! What the hell...... Was Whitney just on edge and this was the last straw? Did Bobby Brown normally carry on that act for hours on end??? Mystery.....
There's really no reason I should have tales like that to tell...... Yeah, maybe I should cast aside my T.V. watchin ways...... get more involved in shit like Lou Dobbs was sayin....Yeah... I'm gonna, "take back grass roots politics." For some reason saying that makes me want to dress up in seersucker suits like a Southern lawyer, though I know that absolutely makes no fuckin sense.......There are some kinda crossed wires in the imagery department today, I guess.....
Ron and Fez, I liked Dobbs once again as a guest on your show...... I'm definitely with him on the whole, "throwin off the yoke of partisan politics," concept.... been a registered independent for quite sometime.......I like the idea that he calls upon..... "scaring the hell out of the two party machine.....two wings of the same bird," who are the same fuckin people....... He speaks well on the dichotomy between the working man... "the people," and the elite...the rampant corruption in corporate America.......how we are bombarded all day long with messages from our consumer society....Yes, all that riles the ole gal up.... Yeah, I found the whole discussion very interesting....
The interview was drivin me crazy too....but like, in a good way......It got my head goin.....racing.... with thoughts of like...what is that feeling... hope...??? What if people really did become, "reinvigorated," and shook this shit up....... but then....... on the other hand ..... it's like... I know how it is... and how people are...(especially hippies now, ewwww....they stink!).. and how the two parties are marketed..... I loved Ron's Coke and Pepsi comparison too, by the way..."The Democrats and the Republicans are like Coke and Pepsi, and we are like R.C." Dobbs responded that sadly, "We're not even R.C. Cola.....We don't even have change for the machine."
Side note.......As much as that's a depressing thought, I was still was glad, on some level, he didn't say that we were more like Shasta......or Faygo or some crazy brand like that... Man, since we travel a lot.... lotta road trips... I kinda became obsessed with the generic brand sodas of the land..... especially the Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew knock-offs. I never buy them or anything...cause I'm not such a fan o' those flavors anyway..... but I like to look at them to see how they try to use the name....and then I like to snicker sarcastically, "So much imagination!" Heh...Dr. Good Guy....Dr. Gulpster.....Dr. Perky! .... Mountain Maze....Mountain Holler....... one time we we stopped at a supermarket in Nebraska and they had a fake Mountain Dew called, "Hee Haw." What's that gotta do with mountains!?
What if all I got outta the Lou Dobbs interview was that we are not even R.C.....and my grassroots mission was to promote the lesser sodas of the land? Man, that would be quirky huh?
..... but yeah.... So it's like hearing that conversation, I can get carried away thinkin, holy shit what if people really do activate and become energized to really shake the system by not goin along with what's been the status quo.... and that the power really lies in the working men and women, not in the prerogatives and power of the elite..... but......then........ It alllll also feels like a daydream crashing too..... cause......so many people most likely don't think that they are being played... Hmmm..... Anyway, as Ron B. said at the end of the interview, "It would be a terrific experiment." Power to the people, right on..... Yeah, that song did get in my head......... Why did that start playin in my head as I wrote that paragraph..... Ah yes, I remember now..... it's because there is a producer in my mind just making the mental speeches a lil more zesty........ and...... oh I have just become totally distracted.... Hey! remember when Lou Dobbs used the term, "Namby-pamby!?"
Namby-pamby........That's old-timey! When's the last time ya heard somebody say that?? If you were me, it would probably be not so long ago..... cause that's one that my pops liked to yell at any antics he deemed wimpy...or mama's boyish... He also enjoyed yelling that we were, "Mollycoddles!" Well I say that's a lot of malarkey.... What kinda mollycoddles don't even have cable T.V.??
Um..... I think that message I'm writin to yez is gettin too long....too rambley....... More to say.... There will be a Part Two........
Peace out for now.......
Signed,
kathleen from the Bronx :):):)
In my time I've known a buncha hippies.... In lofty tones or on bumper stickers, there were always those who would preach the gospel of, "Kill your T.V." and while I'd always say, "Hey, well good for you, eh," and really kinda mean it......I'd have to add, "Not me though, man.... NOT....meee!" There was a time that I might have agreed.... but I got cable when I moved out of my parents house, and I ain't looked back...
See, we never had cable when I was a kid.... but my parents were not hippies. It was George Steinbrenner's fault that we had no cable....I think that's what they led me to believe... That was the notion that seemed was instilled somehow into my young brain; George Steinbrenner was keeping Cable T.V. out of the Bronx.... I wondered why people would sit idle and let him persecute us in this way....Who would let such a thing go on?!... "This guy really is to blame for EVERYTHING," is what I thought...as if he really must be as bad as people often scream... as if he were a madman, a super-villain.....
Lookin out of the subway door windows, downtown on the 4, I'd see the stadium and think, "Why George Steinbrenner? Why?" as if he was plotting there.......in his evil lair. He don't live in Yankee Stadium, dummy... (rolling eyes, I just informed young-me)...
So, it finally started to dawn on me that there might be more to the story, as over time, virtually everyone in our building... besides us... had cable. No matter what nobody says about George Steinbrenner, I refuse to believe that he was singling us out.....
"Ohhh-hoo-hooo-hooo yesssss.....There's a certain red-headed girl in the Bronx tonight who'll NOT be having her MTV," I'm sure he didn't maniacally laugh.......maybe with some kind of map of The Bronx hanging behind him.... some chart, with lights blinking all over the land.... marking all the cabley apartments except for one spot of darkness.....
Naaaah.... My parents just made up shit..... "I'm not payin for that gahbage!" Well who said anything about paying, is what I'd like to know...... There are ways, dammit! I knew that my friends up on the fourth floor had cable for free cause Monica told me one day up in the park..... Way to keep a secret, ya lil blabbermouth. "Those fuckas are eatin Hamburger Helper every night, but they got some channels God bless em, " I thought.... Yeah.. like oooh they didn't have much but at least they had real T.V......
There was a girl in my class in high school who had no T.V. at all....None! Her family had a monitor, but it was only to be used for educational tapes and pre-approved movies........ They were very strict..... Once this girl made the mistake of confessing that she had a crush on Tony Danza...... Whoa, whoa did she catch some shit, some straight mockery for that one! Perhaps at a friend's house, she caught her first glimpse of the wonders of television, and they happened to involve that goof from Who's the Boss........I can't really explain it, but it was in my mind that her odd infatuation must have something to do with her havin no T.V. She became entranced the moment she set eyes on it.... and as chance would have it....there was Tony Danza..... or some dumb shit like that!
Yeah, so I'd like to be a proper hippie and reject the idiot box, but I still feel like I have to make up for lost time....... Eleven years of cable has not been enough.... Maybe I'm still gettin a feel for it.... Besides, if I'm tryin to be a good hippie....maybe I should start workin on my generally cranky attitude and penchant for violent outbursts... first......before I turn my back on T.V.
Or maybe I don't.... After all, I saw some of that History Channel show the other night......about the o.g. hippies of the 60's ....yeah Ron brought it up.... According to them, hippies were not the peaceniks that they appeared to be.... In fact, they showed that it was their kind that brought horrible drugs into the inner cities, and caused race riots, and personalities like Charles Manson.....Hmmmm..... Ron pointed out, "Yeah... Bring up Manson, but don't mention he was basically born in prisons... You're right, it was Jefferson Airplane that turned him into a mad dog."
Jefferson Airplane strikes again......... Yo, I didn't see the whole show..... but the part I did see, they brought up that the hippies, "didn't bathe," like multiple times! I like to make fun of hippies as much as the next guy, but their angle seemed super pissy! I was like "O...fuckin.. K!" Jeeez, way to soar on the wings of cliche, History Channel.... So it's like they were sayin.... "Them hippies were low down....... They created the drug problem... they had murderous hearts........and by the way, did we mention they stink!?!" Ehhhh fuck yoooooou, History Channel! Ya bastards are kinder to Hitler!
You guys brought up the History Channel again today..... the Discovery Channel too..... Man, I know that I've seen tons of interesting topics discussed there, but ya right when you said that they are not afraid to have any ole kook sit in as an expert.......and people might tend to believe what they say as they come off as authorities.....
Ron made this point, "If you're gonna make up stuff about Sasquatch, how are you gonna believe anything they tell you about Napoleon??"
Remember....apparently the Discovery Channel has Dave MacDonald convinced that Jesus was the inventor of the chair-with-a-back..... Then today we learn that it's believed that when Jesus comes back, it will be with be with sword the size of the Empire State Building. Ron yelled out, "Good! Come with a sword....cause while you been gone we have atomic weapons!" So... Ok.... Hold on though..... Remember last week when Dave was talking bout those giant crosses on the sides of the road, traveling down South.... There was the whole, "Whadda they think He was 30 feet tall??" conversation. Now seemingly we come to find out that those crosses ain't NEARLY big enough!
Ahhh there really is a lot of wackadoo stuff on T.V....... You guys were talkin about the curse of the reality T.V. couples......how those couples always seem to break up.... Wow, I had almost forgotten about the show Being Bobby Brown til yez brought it up.... Once I was sick with the flu and watched this marathon of episodes of the show..... Terrible! Just straight bootleg..... Here's the one thing that killed me though..... I always remember this one scene for some reason.....
Bobby Brown was walkin around barefoot with his shoe lace between his toes and his shoe trailing behind him screaming, "Why my shoe followin me?!!?" over and over...... Whitney Houston got just crazy irate at his game and yelled, " OH HELL NAH!!!! We are NOT playin 'Why my shoe followin me?' TODAY!!!!!!"
That one really got me.....I laughed and felt slightly troubled at the same time....... cause it made me wonder... "Today??" How many times has this maniac pulled that routine..??! What the hell...... Was Whitney just on edge and this was the last straw? Did Bobby Brown normally carry on that act for hours on end??? Mystery.....
There's really no reason I should have tales like that to tell...... Yeah, maybe I should cast aside my T.V. watchin ways...... get more involved in shit like Lou Dobbs was sayin....Yeah... I'm gonna, "take back grass roots politics." For some reason saying that makes me want to dress up in seersucker suits like a Southern lawyer, though I know that absolutely makes no fuckin sense.......There are some kinda crossed wires in the imagery department today, I guess.....
Ron and Fez, I liked Dobbs once again as a guest on your show...... I'm definitely with him on the whole, "throwin off the yoke of partisan politics," concept.... been a registered independent for quite sometime.......I like the idea that he calls upon..... "scaring the hell out of the two party machine.....two wings of the same bird," who are the same fuckin people....... He speaks well on the dichotomy between the working man... "the people," and the elite...the rampant corruption in corporate America.......how we are bombarded all day long with messages from our consumer society....Yes, all that riles the ole gal up.... Yeah, I found the whole discussion very interesting....
The interview was drivin me crazy too....but like, in a good way......It got my head goin.....racing.... with thoughts of like...what is that feeling... hope...??? What if people really did become, "reinvigorated," and shook this shit up....... but then....... on the other hand ..... it's like... I know how it is... and how people are...(especially hippies now, ewwww....they stink!).. and how the two parties are marketed..... I loved Ron's Coke and Pepsi comparison too, by the way..."The Democrats and the Republicans are like Coke and Pepsi, and we are like R.C." Dobbs responded that sadly, "We're not even R.C. Cola.....We don't even have change for the machine."
Side note.......As much as that's a depressing thought, I was still was glad, on some level, he didn't say that we were more like Shasta......or Faygo or some crazy brand like that... Man, since we travel a lot.... lotta road trips... I kinda became obsessed with the generic brand sodas of the land..... especially the Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew knock-offs. I never buy them or anything...cause I'm not such a fan o' those flavors anyway..... but I like to look at them to see how they try to use the name....and then I like to snicker sarcastically, "So much imagination!" Heh...Dr. Good Guy....Dr. Gulpster.....Dr. Perky! .... Mountain Maze....Mountain Holler....... one time we we stopped at a supermarket in Nebraska and they had a fake Mountain Dew called, "Hee Haw." What's that gotta do with mountains!?
What if all I got outta the Lou Dobbs interview was that we are not even R.C.....and my grassroots mission was to promote the lesser sodas of the land? Man, that would be quirky huh?
..... but yeah.... So it's like hearing that conversation, I can get carried away thinkin, holy shit what if people really do activate and become energized to really shake the system by not goin along with what's been the status quo.... and that the power really lies in the working men and women, not in the prerogatives and power of the elite..... but......then........ It alllll also feels like a daydream crashing too..... cause......so many people most likely don't think that they are being played... Hmmm..... Anyway, as Ron B. said at the end of the interview, "It would be a terrific experiment." Power to the people, right on..... Yeah, that song did get in my head......... Why did that start playin in my head as I wrote that paragraph..... Ah yes, I remember now..... it's because there is a producer in my mind just making the mental speeches a lil more zesty........ and...... oh I have just become totally distracted.... Hey! remember when Lou Dobbs used the term, "Namby-pamby!?"
Namby-pamby........That's old-timey! When's the last time ya heard somebody say that?? If you were me, it would probably be not so long ago..... cause that's one that my pops liked to yell at any antics he deemed wimpy...or mama's boyish... He also enjoyed yelling that we were, "Mollycoddles!" Well I say that's a lot of malarkey.... What kinda mollycoddles don't even have cable T.V.??
Um..... I think that message I'm writin to yez is gettin too long....too rambley....... More to say.... There will be a Part Two........
Peace out for now.......
Signed,
kathleen from the Bronx :):):)