– Let’s get spontaneous.
– Let’s not hold nothin’ back.
– Can we talk here ?
– Be reasonable – do it my way.
– A couple of nights ago I posted my weekly ‘Grab Bag O’ Thoughts‘.
– It was all about my recent vacation on the high seas and on exotic lands.
– It served as the ceremonial grande finale of my vacation of a lifetime.
– It was a lot of fun and a great change of pace all last week.
– I threw out my normal daily routine and lived on ‘Vacation Standard Time’.
– But that was then and this is now, as The Monkees once sang.
– This is not reality – it’s actuality !
– It’s back to the old daily grind.
– But this is a great Life that I am now living.
– I always look forward to going on vacations.
– But I also look forward to returning back home again after those vacations.
– I’m slowing easing back in to a normal day-to-day routine.
– My 5-day-a-week blogging schedule is back on-track.
– Tonight I’m rejoining my Life Group after taking last week off.
– I hope to walk around my neighbourhood in the frigid air on Saturday morning.
– That’s right – I’m ready for another cold early-morning ‘Walk-A-Thon’.
– I return to Life Pointe Church bright and early this Sunday morning.
– Incidentally I’m hosting the 9 AM service, so come and see me.
– I can’t believe that the month of March is less than 79 hours away !
– Where did February go ?
– Where did normal South Florida weather go ?
– Our coldest and wettest winter season in about a century continues.
– We’ve had wind chills in the 50s all day long today – RIDICULOUS !
– Tomorrow morning actual air temperatures could be in the upper-30s.
– But wind chills could be as low as the upper-20s !
– Remember that you lived through all of this when you complain in July.
– Oh yeah you know that you’ll be whining about the heat and humidity.
– We all do it, and it’s only natural to do so as we live here in paradise.
– As I stated earlier my blogging is back on its regular schedule.
– This Saturday night on the ‘Retro’ I’m flashing back all the way to 2003.
– And of course there’s the ‘Disco Party’ tomorrow night.
– I don’t blog anymore on Sundays and Mondays, but I still tweet.
– My last 7 tweets are always available here on this blog.
– Check the right-hand side panel just below this month’s calendar.
– Those are my ‘Mini Thoughts’ for this final Thursday night in February.
– Have a safe and peaceful evening my friends, my brothers, and my sisters.
– Come back tomorrow night ready to dance at the discotech.
– You won’t regret it pal.
Category: History
It’s a special Friday night edition of the ‘Saturday Night Retro’ !
Back in November and December of 1985 I spent my first two months overseas in The United Kingdom at my first active duty Air Force permanent duty station. As a newly-assigned Airman I lived in one of the old post World War 2 era dormitories on base – rambler style with centralized community bathrooms. In other words you had to leave your room and walk down the hallway to use the toilet, take a shower, shave, wash your hands, and brush your teeth. There was no plumbing within the actual dorm rooms.
In the military a ‘day room’ is essentially a community living room with assorted furniture and a television. Our ‘day room’ in our particular dorm was damaged / unusable / off-limits, so we ‘dorm rats’ gathered together and took over an adjacent dorm’s day room. We met nightly after work to hang out, eat junk food, smoke cigarettes, drink beer (not me), watch British television, play Uno, and pretty much party like it was 1985 (sometimes all night long). Those are some of the greatest memories of my entire military career – from nearly 25 years ago. One of the biggest mistakes that I made early on was to buy my own television set for my dorm room because once I did that I unintentionally removed myself from that day room camaraderie. A few months later I went back over there, and it was never the same as it once was during those first two months. All of my old buddies had moved on – just as I had done.
One of the great Thursday night traditions that began in that day room and continued on during the entire time that I lived in the U.K. (the next two years) was watching “Top Of The Pops” on BBC-1. It aired weekly for over 40 years, and it was essentially their version of our “American Bandstand”. Here’s how a mid-December 1985 episode started at 7 PM GMT. It was one of those episodes that I watched alongside my day room buddies. On that week’s show Amazulu (an all-female British pop band) were in the Top 20 with their vivacious hit at the time “Don’t You Just Know It”.
Over 40 years ago Massachusetts-born singer-songwriter Norman Greenbaum wrote and performed “Spirit In The Sky” – a multi-platinum single that became an International pop and rock smash. Although he is Jewish the song is all about Jesus and Heaven.
Prepare yourself. You know it’s a must.
Gotta have a friend in Jesus.
So you know that when you die.
He’s gonna recommend you to the Spirit in the sky.
Goin’ on up to the Spirit in the sky.
That’s where you’re gonna go when you die.
When you die and they lay you to rest.
You’re gonna go to the place that’s the best.
It’s in the lyrics, and it’s in the rockin’ 1986 remake by the U.K. psychedelic rock band Doctor & The Medics. This version of the classic track had all of the British Isles and most of the European continent jammin’ during the Summer of 1986. Even a young 19-year-old chap by the name of Chris M. Day (Airman Hitwaves) went crazy whenever he heard this track get cranked up on the medium wave radio on BBC Radio 1 or on the television on “Top Of The Pops”.
In 1997 Bill Clinton began his 2ND 4-year term as President Of The United States, the Green Bay Packers beat the New England Patriots 35-21 in Super Bowl XXXI in New Orleans, the Dow Jones Industrials rose above 7,000 and 8,000 for the first time, Tony Blair became the new Prime Minister of The United Kingdom, Hong Kong transferred over from British to Chinese rule, Diana – Princess Of Wales – died, Mother Theresa died, The Florida Marlins won The World Series, and everyone was discovering the World Wide Web on their fast new Pentium II / 266 MHz desktop computer systems running Windows 95.
I turned 30-years-old in 1997, and I mostly hung out at home with my little buddy Boots of the feline species. My Mom, Dad, and Brother lived up near the Intracoastal Waterway on the far-east side of Jacksonville Florida with our aging childhood cats Fluffy and Barney. On selected weekends throughout the year my 22-year-old brother and I would meet halfway in the state – Orlando – for a few days and nights of fun at the amusement parks, nightclubs, and shopping and restaurant meccas. One of the great techno songs that we used to dance to on the nightly countdown to Midnight celebration at Downtown Disney Pleasure Island was this rockin’ jam of the time:
This concludes another fun week of blogging for me from Tuesday night through Saturday night. 6 blog posts. 5 days. All good. I’ll do it all over again next week from Tuesday night through Friday night before I take a 10-day hiatus from the blog. In fact next week’s ‘Saturday Night Retro’ will occur on Friday night, and it’ll be a song straight out of 1985. Have a great weekend my friends, and I’ll catch ya back here on Tuesday night for my ‘Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’.
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