Fifty Two Saturdays Ago

 

Lee Paige and PJ Aguilar 2021

    Just marking the year anniversary my sisters and I were last with the fabulous Lee Paige and my cousin Peter (PJ). Lee and PJ were treating us to the delights of Palm Springs in beautiful, sunny Southern California at the time.

    I snapped this photo as the paired posed before The Outcrop, a misty waterfall and dancing fountain located in the Downtown Park.

   As I wasn’t wearing my reading glasses, please forgive the focus.  Peter was leaning to his left and about to ask me something, when I noticed the mist rising about them. I didn’t have time to fetch my cheaters and so took the chance snapshot.

    

Just a Halloween Treat That Suddenly Occurred to Me.

'Blobby Won't Eat his Vegans'

    October is the month where three of my relations, all generationally related, just so happen to have  birthdays falling within a six days of each other: mother, daughter, and grandson. It was while I was thinking up a card for the grandson, I monstrously dared to ponder how a typical parent/child exchange might play, if the principles were protoplasm!

    Enjoy.

Every Which Way But…

‘The Flintstones’ (1960 season one open) Hanna-Barbera Productions

     Now, the fun er, horror begins!

     On way way home, the first time driving from Cafe Van Kleef, Google Maps tries to misdirect me through Oakland, then succeeds in providing me with the wrong instructions once I get to the freeway entrance that was closest all along.

    Next I am repeatedly urged to remain in the rightmost lanes coming to a fork in the road, when at the very last second, Google s changes it’s mind and says “take the left fork”. By then that is impossible without my crashing headlong into the divider. And as I see Highway 24 veering away from me, I am now heading towards San Francisco, west and not east!

    Ignoring Google’s inexplicable prompts, I instead put myself, with no time to lose, onto the nearest off-ramp, and am now Berkeley bound. I don’t know what the heck Google Maps is calling out, but I am plainly on my own and in unfamiliar driving territory. However, when I spy an exit sign for 13, I take it but miss the sharp right turn leading from the ramp.

    Lost!

    Great, now where on the surface streets of Berkeley do I go?

    Finally, Google Maps gets its bearings and leads me through the industrial district back to the freeway. It fortuitously proves to be northbound Highway 80! Thank Heaven!

    Electing later not take the interconnecting Highway 4 to 680 (besides, I’m boxed-in at the moment and can’t make the turnoff even if I wanted) I just stay the Hell on 80 and come in the side route via Vallejo to Fairfield from the north and west. Having to overshoot home, I nevertheless manage to eventually return to my domicile, safe and sound, albeit bewildered!

    That Google Maps! The one time I really needed to make the crucial move, and it failed me utterly! This sadly, isn’t the first time but that has happened, but in the freeway maze that is downtown Oakland, I was reluctant to trust my judgment. 

    Boy, was that a mistake!

    This time it proved to my detriment.

Julia Rose Vigil

    Today I learned the sad news from a mutual friend, Andrea Barros, of Julia Rose Vigil's sudden passing.

    I met Julia in the early 2000's while working for Peter Van Kleef at his eponymously named establishment: Cafe Van Kleef. The "cafe" was a local watering hole for artists. Hangin' out, with her violin sometimes in tow, was Julia. She had  very dry wit, and I thought, perhaps I'd be too conventional for her. But Julia was a very accepting person and soon we'd be shootin' the breeze. She was one of the few this shy person would seek out, whenever she arrived.

    Julia also had a love for spiders.

    I once sent her a birthday card highlighting her arachnophilia and as you can see from her personal photos that I wasn't very far off.

    That’s what I liked about her: her difference.

     Julia was taken from us too soon.

     May she ever repose in our hearts.

 

From Julia Rose Vigil's personal photographs.

 

 

 

 

One of my spider themed birthday cards sent to Julia

Life imitates art.

 

 

 

 

 

FONT

"That's 'Gutsy', 'GUTSY'!!" yelled the rightly apoplectic news director into my headset; too late to prevent the blooper going over the air!     

Dyslexia had done its dastardly deed!

The date was Monday, March 9, 1981 and it was my turn, as a broadcast studio cameraperson, to operate the character generator for that evening's 6PM newscast.

Though I had asked to not be given the assignment due to a lack of manual dexterity and the aforementioned dyslexia, nevertheless, I stepped into the "font" room (which doubled as a sound booth) and sat my lonely self before the keyboard as the news scripts came flying in. They were starting to pile as I did my frantic best.

This just in...

The newsroom was a flurry!

Stanford had just issued a press release, announcing the first successful heart-lung transplant performed that day by the team of cardiothoracic surgeons, Doctors Bruce A. Reitz and Norman Edward Shumway at the Palo Alto based, medical facility. Right in our own backyard so to speak! (Not far away, KNTV Channel 11 was stationed in San Jose, making us the closer television market to the campus than San Francisco.) The recipient herself was a 45 year old, an advertising executive for The Mesa Tribune out of Arizona.

Isolated in that booth however, all I was handed was Mary Gohlke's name and the brief, enigmatic copy accompanying it. Nothing more. That's why they call it a tease! Utterly unaware of the momentous event or Gohlke, the only fact I immediately knew for certain was that the directors, all three of them, were going to change the lineup, and lead the next news segment with her.

Clumsily banging away on the keys, I had better get Mary's last name right!

Up flashed the "font" onto the preview screens. 

Into the "bump" (the tease preceding the commercial break) launched the anchors!

"Cue mix!" barked the broadcast director to the "TD" (the technical director who pushes the actual buttons on the switcher making it so.)

Ashen went the face of the news director; then red!

No one had caught the error, until that moment!

With the news director in a state, the broadcast director in charge laughed, lightly cursing under their breath, even as they quickly called an immediate cut to the break.

Later musing to me in private, "Who would have thought the mere transposition of two, side-by-side letters would result in a second word just as legitimately spelt as the first, but more to the point, perversely apropos?

Oh, the news management, by the way, concurs with you..." added  the broadcast director.

I was excused from further font duties.

"Super!" I sighed.

---

Pictured in my graphic above is the same 1979 Mitsubishi MGA television set, Model: CR-1302 that I use to own during my broadcast days.

Also pictured on screen behind the font, as well as below, is a photograph of the landmark surgery.

 

Lastly, the brave, Mary Gohlke whose last name, at least, I got right!.

Say "Cheese" or "cheesy" I don't know which!

 

 

Ready?

 

Here goes...!

 

    Trish Keefer's photos from yesterday of me, about to enjoy my birthday Tiramisu Cheesecake, at The Cheesecake Factory - where else?!

 

    I was so set for blowing out the candle, that I plumb forgot to make a wish!

 

    As always, I had a great time with Trish!

A Comparison Shot, One Day Shy of 28 Years!

The first photo below was taken decades ago one Saturday afternoon, July 23rd, 1994, at about 2:49P.M..

Saturday, July 23, 1994, 2:49pm PST Canon NF1

The following image was shot just yesterday, Friday afternoon, July 22nd, 2022, at 2:49P.M. precisely, as I could not be present to photograph it today (celebrating my twin sister Georgene’s birthday was I and, of course, my own). It was the occasion of our earlier birthday that marked the 1994 photo.

Friday, July 22, 2022, 2:49pm PST Canon EOS Rebel 6i

Together, if anything, they document the changes to the above residence over twenty eight years, since the property was newly purchased by my twin, and today. What is humorous is that the backyard itself doesn’t seem all that greatly changed. That’s only because it’s about to undergo a second renovation and has reverted almost back to its original state! Gone is the lawn! Gone are the fruit trees and lush foliage that grew in the in between time! A makeover to a larger patio is planned.

What changes have occurred in me or my twin over that same period of time, or what makeovers are due… well, you’ll just have to guess.

Birthday Girl and Boy.

Genie & Ricky

     My twin Georgene and I earlier today at Strizzi's.

 

     The photo was snapped by our sister Yvette as the three of us celebrated the noontime occasion.

 

    Funny thing, I suddenly must be feeling my age, because upon my arrival home and rushing to post the picture, I promptly fell asleep at the computer instead! Two hours later, with a start I awoke, my face pillowed on the printer!

 

   Zzzzzz...

A walk-on, then literal push-off from 'The Living Daylights' (1987)

      Some years ago (July 21st, 2015) I made this clip for a dear friend of mine who once had a tiny, non-speaking role in the 1987 Bond film named above (actor Timothy Dalton's first outing as 007). I, of course, don't possess the rights to the feature or the soundtrack, so we'll see if it will be allowed to play. If it does play then, by all means, enjoy the snippet! 

     By the way, we're coming up on the 35th anniversary of film's release (July 31st 1987)!

 

😉

Kitchen Art or What Some, Back Then, would have Derided as "Kitschen" Art.

 

 

 

    Back in 1965, my sister Angie's first pet was a toy poodle. As a result mom always had this Margaret D. H. Keane print hanging in the kitchen to remind her of both.

 

     Keane's recent passing had me curious to see if I could find an online posting of the particular image I thought I remembered. When I did, I was surprised to discover I had long forgotten the poodle so prominent in the painting* after, that is of course, the trademark eyes.

 

     How selective our memories can be

 

 

*'Gauguin and Child' (1963)

 

Paige, Pelosi, and Peter

 C
   

Just a nod to my cousin, PJ Aguilar. Here he is at a local fundraiser with his beau, Lee Paige, and the current Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.