1/2 2014

Tomorrow is July 1st. 
Half of 2014 came and went. 
If the first half wasn't so great,
Here's your chance to make the second half even better. 
Live in the moment & be conscious of it. Live it full. 
Best, hR

Be Humble or Get Humbled.

TBT 3

My #TBT cont... My walls were filled with all the latest posters, most likely purchased from Record World or Spencers. I was going to marry Andy Gibb, and date Eddie Van Halen. David Cassidy had some competition with Rick Springfield. Then there was Def Leppard, but we're talkin' before then. Van Halen to Leif Garrett, Peter Frampton to the Bee Gees filled my walls. Scott Baio, little Chachi. Billy Idol to Billy Joel. I had it all. I'm leaving a bunch out.

I had LPs and Cassettes that filled the other half of my room. Music was my life. People that played music, were my life. I probably wouldn't have been able to paint without these people. #meditate You weren't cool if you didn't have a Stones "tongue" symbol somewhere - on your wall, on your t-shirt, bumper sticker on your car. Music got you through a lot of shit. I made so many cassettes from my cassettes. Most of Maxell's earnings were from me.

Compilation cassettes were my thing. If you got one as a gift, I probably thought you were cool. Or, I thought you needed to listen to real music...because your taste was awful. Either way. I would play the 45s, flip them all day, something no one would have time for today, right? I mean imagine how difficult that would be, trying to find a free moment between texting and fb messages to turn a turnstile ...and then it's only one song, there's no spotify or pandora or itunes looping. It required you to actually do something for yourself and get up off your ass. Similar to Television when it had no remote, you had to get up and change the channel. Cassettes were ok, I mean the rewind thing was kinda frustrating if you were impatient or pissed it was busted, but I made sure I had a player that did the automatic flip, so it had continual play. So maybe I cheated a little. But that was hi-tech then. If analog tape would get stuck and I would be pissed. How many times did you put your pinky or a pencil in that spinner to try to fix a tape?

When CDs came out in the mid 80s, I was horrified. They were going to do away with everything I knew and loved and what is this shiny metal thing? This is going to play songs? It will get scratched!! How stupid! I worked at Record World, so I was kinda keen on it all, and wasn't happy. It seemed so 2020 and we all know that that was like a lifetime away, back then! We saw cars flying in the sky in our heads, like the Jetsons. Maybe Aliens from another planet invading. I was hoping, anyway. Space Invaders of the Third Kind. In the '80s, 2020 sounded like so scary and futuristic.

Now we're almost there and as technology has been impressive, yet it kinda disappointed me. I mean, I thought by now, I'd be flippin' someone off for cutting me off at the corner of that last cloud. So here we are in 2014, and we're not really here. Zombies. Robots. Same thing. We have more opportunities to connect, we have every ability to reach someone in so many ways, but we are further apart. I've grown weary and filled with Weltschmerz. Hence this novel.

We spend more time on websites with people we may never meet than people we already know and care about. We trade a hug for a smiley, a poke for a handshake. We interact less, we meet less, we call less. With all the wisdom and advancement we have today, we seem to be going backwards. Is this what they call progress?

Talk amongst yourselves. See you next week. #randomshit #coffeetalk