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public television Sunday morning at work was spent talking with a coworker about Europe and its history. We discussed some of the wars and conflicts that have shaped the people that live there and even touched upon the Kosovo situation. I didn't come to any better understanding of what is happening there, but now I have to find a copy of The Guns of August to read. Bette Davis and Henry Fonda were the last thing that I saw on television before I fell asleep. The film Jezebel was on and I had never seen it before and I was amazed at how young Davis looked. My mental image of her is usually that of the wrinkled body sitting next to Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show with a cigarette in her mouth. In Jezebel, she looked good. As for her eyes, I never quite saw the appeal to them. Susan Sarandon has the same kind of eyes and I find them to be odd rather than attractive. When I woke up, I watched a program on television about teenagers riding the rails during the Depression looking for work. My understanding of the Depression is a mixture of what my grandparents have told me and various books that I have read. I could never imagine a life on the road or at least the one that they talked about in the program. There was very little romance in what they endured. Obviously being poor and homeless is not fun and there is a big difference between traveling for pleasure and traveling for the sake of finding a job. I walked away from the television and spoke on the phone with my friend Dan in California. The album is still coming along and it is becoming more of a chore than anything else. He justs wants it to be finished so that he can move on to something else. He is hoping that it should be done sometime in July. Even though the album isn't finished he cut a deal with MTV. They had heard a disc that his producer had burned of his stuff and they liked it. They are going to use a song in the Real World in Hawaii later this year. Then Dan went on to explain that he sees next to no money from this deal, but he gets to slap a as heard on MTV Real World Hawaii sticker on his cd. The way I see it is that any publicity is good publicity for Dan. Dan still thinks that I need to leave Wisconsin, but I don't think that that is the life for me. In comparison to his life, my life is positively conservative. There is very little risk for me and I always seem to be one step away from being middle aged, but California is not the answer for me. As for him, he is thinking that he might jump to Hawaii in his next big move, because another friend of his might be moving there soon. Dan did say that he would mail me a demo of his stuff, which would be cool. After I hung up the phone, I returned to the couch and watched the Ken Burns documentary about Lewis and Clark one more time. I should either tape it some time or break down and buy a copy on videotape since I like it so much. I can't imagine the world that existed when they were alive and I agree with Burns when he says that what they did is comparable to going to the moon. Maybe I still believe in heroes even though they don't exist anymore. Ernest Shackleton, Neil Armstrong, Lewis and Clark. Explorers. I eat all of that stuff up. |