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Saturday Night Retro

Exactly 17 years ago yesterday morning on the 21ST of May of 1993 in the heart of Melbourne Florida ‘Captain Airwaves’ was officially born. He was my original pseudonym in cyberspace. Of course back in 1993 nobody knew what the World Wide Web was all about. After all Al Gore had just invented it, and he hadn’t yet explained it. Back then the most popular form of modern communications between personal computers across the free nation was via the telephone dial-up bulletin board system (BBS). Mine debuted real early on that morning 17 years ago, and it was named after my lovable childhood cat (still alive at the time) – Fluffy. She was a Manx, and the name of my first creation in cyberspace – ‘MANx CAT BBS’. That first bulletin board system lasted a little over four years, and it eventually spawned a spinoff site on the emerging web at the time – ‘MANx On The Net’. That web site eventually morphed into the ‘MASSIVESMASH.COM‘ hit music web site that survived and thrived for the better part of a decade during the late-1990s into the new millenium. It faded several years ago, but it inspired this personal blog that continues today.

‘Captain Airwaves’ was actually the pseudonym of the late great John Carmody – the famed daily television columnist of “The Washington Post” newspaper from 1977 to 1998. During my high school years in the early-1980s he inspired me to get in to the entertainment business somehow someway. The bulletin board, the web site, and the blog was as close as I got to that dream. I adopted the ‘Captain Airwaves’ pseudonym for the BBS, and then after a couple of years my followers at the time (known affectionately as ‘MANxsters’) promoted me to ‘Major’, so I became ‘Major Airwaves’. When the web site hit it big I took on the ‘Major Hitwaves’ name and persona to more accurately reflect my role at the time as a deejay on the web. Nowadays I’m still ‘Major Hitwaves’, but I’m more commonly known as simply ‘The Major’.

17 years ago this past week I was unemployed, living off of my savings, and having way too good of a time with all of my friends and neighbours in the Melbourne area. The 1400 block of South Oak Street rocked back then, and ‘Captain Airwaves’ was crankin’ out the hits from his second floor studio efficiency – and all up and down the U.S. 1 and the A1A.

Here’s one of those hits of the time – an obscure track that was a local smash on the radio and in the nightclubs of Melbourne. It’s His Boy Elroy – and a track about them “Chains”. As are most of the songs that I feature here on the ‘Saturday Night Retro’ it’s one of the greatest songs ever made according to me.

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Thursday Night Mini Thoughts

– It’s time for another collection of ‘Mini Thoughts’ on this night before Friday.
– Whenever I compile these I know that the weekend is not too far away.
– I’ve got one more work day to go, and then 63 hours of weekend fun begins.
– Next week will be a short 3½-day work week for me.
– That’s because I’m going on vacation again next Thursday afternoon.
– It’s all part of my new master plan for 2010 and beyond.
– I don’t want to be more than a month away from my next vacation.
– So far it’s working out swell like that.
– This has been a rough and tough past several days for me.
– The nonsense started on Sunday morning when I woke up in a sweat.
– My A.C. was blowing out warm and tropical outside air.
– A power surge allegedly blew out the wiring of my A.C. up in the ceiling.
– Upon further investigation it also blew out my compressor outside.
– A new compressor had to be shipped in from the Fort Myers area.
– After more than 72 hours my A.C. crew finally got everything working.
– This morning I awoke in my own bed with temperatures in the mid-70s.
– During the ordeal I slept here at home in the heat for one night.
– I slept another night at an undisclosed cheap motel in Homestead.
– I slept a final night at the luxurious new Hampton Inn in Homestead.
– Lesson Learned:  Don’t think twice about it – check in to the Hampton Inn.
– That place – like most Hampton Inns I’ve stayed at – was truly amazing !
– You will spend more money to stay there, but I think it’s definitely worth it.
– Speaking of money I’ve lost a lot of it over the past couple of weeks.
– The stock market is currently on a psychotic bender.
–  As of this morning I had lost 3.3% of my retirement savings since its peak.
– Today alone I’ve lost at least another 3.3% on top of that.
– This will probably go down as the worst two weeks combined in over a year.
– I’m in it for the long haul, and I must keep reminding myself of that.
– Nashville Tennessee has been devastated by unprecedented flooding.
– It was caused by nearly two feet of rain in just two days.
– It’s considered to be a 1,000-year catastrophe.
– People have died, and buildings have been damaged and destroyed.
– The Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center is closed indefinitely.
– It sustained millions of dollars of damage and destruction.
– Check out this video: 

– Please pray for the residents of this wonderful part of our free nation.
– Help them in any possible way that you can.
– I’ve been to Nashville just once in my life – about 20 years ago.
– I picked up my little brother from Space Camp in Huntsville Alabama.
– We went on a nice road trip from there through much of Tennessee.
– We climbed the Great Smoky Mountains along U.S. 441.
– We visited Atlanta Georgia for the first time ever.
– It’s one of our most memorable and enjoyable vacations ever.
– I will return to visit Nashville again – and hopefully visit friends too.

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Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

Summer In The City – The consistently hot and humid air has arrived aqui en el sur de Florida, and it’s here to stick around – guaranteed – for at least the next 6 months. After enjoying / enduring the coldest winter season that we here in South Florida have ever experienced in our lifetime this hot and humid weather feels even more uncomfortable than usual. A look at the tropical Atlantic Ocean reveals this rather startling fact – well above normal sea temperatures already into the 80s that are more typical of the middle of June rather than the start of May. It’s the perfect breeding ground for a very active tropical storm and hurricane season. Last summer the effects of the El Niño phenomenon fortunately ripped and shredded most of the developing storms out at sea, but it’s history now. While we won’t have a La Niña phenomenon in-place until perhaps next Summer we will have a fairly typical tropical scenario for this Summer – and that’s a far busier scenario than what we experienced last Summer. Now is the time to prepare for the upcoming season – not when one is bearing down on the U.S. East Coast. Be prepared. Act smart. Don’t panic.

Oil In The Gulf – We are witnessing one of the greatest ecological disasters in a lifetime. When the oil rig explosion and fire in the northern Gulf Of Mexico was first being reported as ‘breaking news’ during the early morning hours of the 21ST of April most of us didn’t think much of it. But now we know the devastating effects of it, and the story is still developing. The blame game is in full effect. Democrats are blaming Republicans for encouraging the drilling of oil in the Gulf. Even former President Bush is getting blamed for the disaster. I get the feeling that he will get blamed for everything that goes wrong in this world for as long as he lives. I also get the feeling that our current President Obama can do whatever he feels like – or do nothing at all – and still be loved and adored by the world because he’s just such a nice and friendly guy. I didn’t vote for him. I didn’t vote for the popular guy. I voted for the guy who was ready with the experience needed to be the President on Day 1.

Hangin’ At The Hampton – Tonight I’m living in luxury at the sparkling new Hampton Inn here on the east side of Homestead. The Hampton Inn is by far my favourite hotel chain in the entire world, and I try to stay at one whenever I’m on the road on vacation. I’m also a Hilton HHonors card-carrying member. I get perks – eventually. This Hampton Inn is exactly what this area has needed for a long time – since well before Hurricane Andrew – a moderately-upscale hotel. By the looks of the rather full parking lot every work day morning when I pass right by it we (natives and tourists alike) are apparently supporting it at an average pop of $150 per night (substantially higher during special events). It’s always great when big companies come to Homestead to build their respective product chains (whether it be stores, restaurants, or hotels), and then they thrive. Build it and we will come. Anyway I’m staying here tonight because I still have no working A.C. in my home. A brand new compressor had to be ordered and delivered from the southwest coast of Florida. It was supposed to arrive late this afternoon, and hopefully it did. Right now I have a 9 AM appointment tomorrow (Wednesday) back at home to get it installed, get my A.C. back up and running again, and bring those unbearably stifling temperatures down from the upper-80s to the mid-70s where they belong. Even though it’s really nice and comfortable here at the Hampton I really can’t wait to return back to my air conditioned home again and reestablish my daily routine that was so rudely interrupted this past Sunday morning when I awoke in an unexpected sweat.

In less than 48 hours I’ll be posting my ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’. They are spontaneous flashes of thoughts that hit you in 15 words or less. Be sure to check them out, and then stick around for history and inspiration this weekend as I blog my ‘Saturday Night Retro’ and ‘My Fantastic Journey’.

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Saturday Night Retro

During the Summer of 1987 United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was reelected for a 3RD term in a landslide majority, U.S. President Ronald Wilson Reagan urged Soviet Union Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to ‘tear down this wall’ (in Berlin West Germany), Earth’s population reached 5 billion people, over 30 million people watched “The Cosby Show” every Thursday night on NBC-TV, Guns N’ Roses released their debut album “Appetite For Destruction”, and 20-year-old A1C Chris M. Day was loving the London England nightlife with friends and seeing lots of pop concerts featuring Duran Duran, Genesis, and Madonna.

On the radio young Australian pop-rockers Pseudo Echo enjoyed the limelight with their biggest International smash ever. It’s their Summer of 1987 remake of the Summer of 1980 Lipps Inc. Disco smash “Funkytown” which was featured last night on the ‘Disco Party’.

This concludes another week of blogging for me. Sundays and Mondays are my days off on here, but the tweets just keep on coming. You can follow me on Twitter at majorhitwaves. I’ll be back LIVE on Tuesday night with another edition of my ‘Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’. Have a great weekend everyone !