Category: History

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Saturday Night Retro

1997. It’s the year that I turned 30-years-old and celebrated my 10TH anniversary of living and working here in Homestead Florida. I ditched my longtime 1989 Geo Spectrum (bought brand new) after over 96,700 miles, and I joined the Saturn family by buying my first of three fine cars from the company. I lost my original 486-SX desktop computer system due to a catastrophic hard drive failure, and when that happened ‘MANx CAT BBS’ died after four years. That original classic bulletin board system spun-off ‘MANx ON THE NET’ which evolved into ‘MASSIVESMASH.COM‘ which inspired my MySpace blog of 2007 which morphed into this WordPress blog that you know and love right here.

Boots was my feline buddy and roommate, and I was a loyal and devoted Y-100 TOP 40 radio listener at home, at work, and in the car. Last Saturday night on the ‘Retro’ I presented Reunion’s “Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me)” from 34 years ago. Tonight for your ‘Retro’ review I present to you one of the biggest smash hits on the radio from 1997, and it’s kind of like a modern update to Reunion’s classic track from 1974. It’s “I Want You” – the debut smash from the multi-Platinum-selling Australian duo known as Savage Garden.

Check it out:

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History Shopping

Monday Night Countdown

TODAY – the 01ST of December – is my 21ST anniversary of living aqui en el Sur de Florida. I arrived at Homestead Air Force Base during the wee early-morning hours of the 01ST of December in 1987. Aside from the 19 months immediately following the destruction of the Homestead area by Hurricane Andrew I’ve been here ever since. This is my home. This is where I belong. These are my TOP 5 favourite shopping malls of all-time here in South Florida:

5.  Cutler Ridge Mall / Southland Mall
It’s much nicer (and safer) today than it’s ever been. It’s officially the first shopping mall I ever visited here in South Florida back in December 1987. I had been going there a few times a year over the past 14 years or so. I’ll be visiting more often since they have a nice movie theatre there now.

4.  Miami International Mall
Before the Dolphin Mall ever existed this was the shopping mall to visit on my way to the airport, the Flagler Dog Track, Miami, or the Beaches. This is your basic standard neighbourhood Simon mall. Sometimes you just need to go back to basics and shop the simple life.

3.  Dolphin Mall
If I lived in the neighbourhood then I’m afraid that I’d be there every single day shopping, eating, drinking, and watching movies. This is as close as it gets to Downtown Disney West Side. It’s a good thing that I don’t live in the neighbourhood. There could be trouble.

2.  The Falls
A stroll through this luxurious outdoor shopping mall is like a stroll down memory lane for me. This was the cool place to hang out a generation ago. When I was a kid I used to hang out there. Of course for me ‘kid’ means early-20s. 

1.  The Shops At Sunset Place
I watched this jumpin’ joint get built a decade ago, and once it opened for business in 1999 I planned entire Saturdays around it. If you couldn’t find me in Homestead on any given Saturday from 1999 to 2005 then I was probably hiding out at the Virgin Megastore, the Barnes & Noble, or the AMC-24.

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Food Health History Travel

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

If it’s Tuesday night then you just know what I’m up to – no matter where in the world I may be located at:

1.  I don’t have a cold yet. My 9TH cold in 13 months has not yet materialized. Give it a few days. It’ll make its presence known. I guarantee it. North Texas is full of germs. So are airplanes. I fly back in one this Saturday afternoon.

2.  I’ll be flying to South Florida this weekend on the 21ST anniversary of my very first flight to South Florida (from the Washington D.C. area). I landed at MIA on the 30TH of November in 1987, and I arrived so late in the night that it wasn’t until the wee hours of the 01ST of December that I actually arrived at my new home at (then) Homestead Air Force Base. I was 20 at the time. That was more than a half a life ago.

3.  Remember this family vacation of a lifetime that I identified in an early-September edition of these ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’ ?:

America's Magnificent National Parks
Magnificent National Parks - Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, And Nevada

It’s not gonna happen. The trip has been cancelled due to a variety of logistical reasons. Now we’re planning a replacement trip for sometime during the Spring, Summer, or Autumn of 2009. I cast my vote for Bermuda (which I just mentioned this past weekend on the ‘Saturday Night Retro’). Maybe we’ll take a 5, 7, or 9 day cruise from the U.S. to Bermuda and back ?

4.  Yesterday was quite the ‘Tex-Mex’ day for me. For Lunch we ate at Chili’s (not my choice), and then for Dinner less than 5 hours later we ate at a place called Mexi-Go. I delighted in the ‘Guadalajara’. That – mis amigos – is a chicken enchilada, a cheese enchilada, a grilled chicken fajita taco, rice, and beans. Oh yeah we enjoyed the standard appetizer of chips and salsa at both joints. I can’t deal with anymore Mexican food until I return back home to the Mexican restaurant capital of South Florida – Homestead 33030.

5.  TOMORROW me and my brother are going to visit the place where Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed John F. Kennedy exactly 45 years ago this past weekend. I’ve always wanted to visit this essential piece of world history. It’s a single event that lasted a few seconds that forever changed the United States Of America.

Those are my thoughts on this Tuesday night. I’m so glad that I could share them with you. Thank You for being a part of my Life.

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Advertising History Television Travel

Saturday Night Retro

TODAY I flew on an airplane from Fort-Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. It was the umpteenth time that I flew anywhere. (I actually don’t keep track of all of my airline flights via an EXCEL spreadsheet.) I’ve lost track of my flying over the past 23½ years. I’ve flown first class once or twice (wasn’t too impressed), and I’ve flown most of the major airlines that are still in business today. Flying is not as fun as it used to be (prior to September 11TH 2001). This morning I left my home at precisely 6:30 AM to get to the off-site parking area at the airport by 7:30 AM to get to the terminal by 7:45 AM to check-in, get through security, and get to my gate prior to boarding at 9 AM and departure from the gate at 9:30 AM. And then there’s the 3-hour flight. It basically took longer to get from my home in Homestead to the aircraft at the airport than it did to actually fly that aircraft more than halfway across the country !

Check out this classic 60-second television commercial for the legendary Eastern Airlines of the way things used to be. Compare our baggage handlers of today with those depicted from the 1970s.

Before I turned 18-years-old and moved away from home to join the circus USAF I recall flying only twice in my life – twice to and from Bermuda on summertime vacations as a little kid during the mid-1970s. I recall Bermuda to be a fun little place out in the middle of the Atlantic – sort of a hybrid between a Caribbean nation further south and the United Kingdom further east. I wish to go back there one of these years to check it out all over again for the first time in over 30 years.

And now Ladies And Gentlemen – IT’S GO-GO TIME !  Let’s kick it old school !