Puerto Vallarta! Actually, Nuevo Vallarta, where my cousin, Peter J Aguilar and his partner Lee Paige, invited my sisters and I to spend a week at their getaway residence. Whee!
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| Villa La Estancia's beach front. |
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| L-R: Lee Paige, Georgene Randall, Peter J. Aguilar, Yvette Klemm, and me. |
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| Lee Paige and Peter J. Aguilar. |
While visiting with Lee Paige and my cousin PJ Aguilar last year, Lee shared a video from his disco days in a Chicago dance troupe. Here is the one and only, Dr. Lee Paige of The Windy City Disco Movement dancing 1978's 'Shake Your Groove Thing' by Peaches & Herb! (See video below)
I relaid the music track to eliminate some audio breakups in the original recording.
A dark cloud has descended our Sanchez clan as word of the sudden passing of our first cousin Herbert Cano reaches us from his loving wife.
Via Facebook
...must come to an end, they say. Sadly, it was so for Steve's 1987 Ford Bronco XLT 4x4, seen here in its halcyon days thirty seven years ago;…
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| Photo credit: Steve Staley |
…lovingly cared for, over the years by Steve Staley, his wife Angie, and myself;…
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| Photo credit: antaresrichard |
...and lastly by Steve's grandson, Braden Spence, who put in even more passion, time, and effort restoring it.
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| Photo credit: Braden Spence |
Alas, t-boned, totaled, and taken out this year by a careless driver, running the red. Fortunately, Braden was unscathed.
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| Photo credit: Braden Spence |
All the same, Steve’s Bronco, despite its occasional fits and starts, served us faithfully. Goodbye ol’ friend.
ADDENDUM:
On the 16th of July, 2024 Braden Spence spotted the following post on Facebook by one Freddie Nawabi situated in Tracy, California.
I was seriously thinking of backdating this photograph to the time I took the snapshot, nearly ten years ago on Thursday, March 27, 2014. That however, would rob it of its significance, and render my next statement meaningless: It has been among my favorite photos of a dear friend and myself all these many years!
In general, I'm a nobody. That is to say, I am completely unknown to the world at large. So imagine my surprise when someone famous took note of an internet comment I made.
There is a popular Facebook page that deals in nostalgia. Colouring the Past is its name.
A few days ago, it presented a 1969 television recording of The Who performing "Pinball Wizard" live on the 'This is Tom Jones' set. Sometime during the act, drummer Keith Moon's cymbal stand fell, off-camera, from the riser. (I've highlighted the overturned cymbal stand here in the still frames for easier viewing.)
No one, in the 350 plus Facebook comments however, made mention of the mishap -- so I did. And that was that I thought. Well, one commenter did applaud me for my sharp eye. Confession: I use to be a broadcast floorperson in my earlier career, and we were always on the lookout for potential prop failures, troubles, and such.
Then tonight, I went to my Facebook notifications, because a second person had hit the "like" button on my "One cymbal takes a fall for the performance" comment.
It was Roger Daltrey!
From my Facebook page:
My gentle cousin, Nohemi Marquez, has today joined her late brother Tali Sanchez, for whom she cared, these many years.
Nohemi, whose married name incidentally, is identical to my long departed mom’s maiden name, was a loving soul. May she rest in peace.
Addendum: Here below is the Facebook graphic which Nohemi’s church posted.
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| 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.
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| '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.
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| ‘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.
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.
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| One of my spider themed birthday cards sent to Julia |
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| Life imitates art. |
"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.
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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!.
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| Ready? |
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| Here goes...! |
The first photo below was taken decades ago one Saturday afternoon, July 23rd, 1994, at about 2:49P.M..
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| Saturday, July 23, 1994, 2:49pm PST Canon NF1 |
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| 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.
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| Genie & Ricky |
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)!
😉
C
It is with great heaviness of heart that I announce on behalf of the Sanchez siblings the sudden passing of our dearly beloved sister, Angelica Alma Ingrid Staley. A treasure to all that knew her. May she rest forever in her husband's embrace and in the hearts of those whose lives her kindness and love touched.
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Again, here is my snapshot above of the Pleiades, and what Raul Villaverde Fraile's professional astrophotography below reveals.
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| Photo credit: Raul Villaverde Fraile |
There are times I am simply amazed at how caught off guard I can be, and how instantaneously I can recognize someone completely out of the blue!
I was on Facebook when on a whim, I thought to search out a name. Many, many years ago this individual and I were friends. We met in 1968, and the last time we saw each other was in 1979. He was also in the circle of friends that included one particular person, but at the time I had found his account on Facebook, this had completely slipped my mind.
Curious to see what he nowadays looked liked, I clicked on a video. As he was addressing the camera being pointed at him, I would also have a chance to hear the sound of his voice once again. The occasion was the holidays, his interviewer was dressed as Santa Claus. Playfully, my old friend disavowed any responsibility for the video when the person holding the camera decided to pan the room.
Inexperienced at video, the pan was simply too fast, smearing the faces of the gathered guests asked as a group to say "Hi".
The hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood on end! That motion blur, the camera went past, was none other than "She"! Despite the speed of the camera motion, the recognition was almost feral in its instinctive spontaneity! The alarms went off like fireworks within me - all at once! How could I have been so clueless?!
She was seated next to her husband with her son (I'm guessing) sitting beside her, on the floor.
Reality, with its iron boot, had just kicked me in the teeth! It only took less than half a second for my confidence to go splat!
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| The motion blur was increased for this freeze frame. |
A glutton for punishment, I had to replay the pan and freeze frame as best I could on the moment she swished past the lens, thus removing all doubt, as to my significance to her. I mattered nothing to this person's happiness. I was looking at a woman, resolutely content in her life, with absolutely no thought to or of me.
The pain was cold. It was hard. What little protection my feelings had mustered over the years, came crashing down. There was nowhere to hide and nothing to soften the blow. Like that, I had no ego - evaporating in an instant with all my sense of self!
I was in a panic and got out of the video soon after confirming my fear. Part a knee jerk response; part disbelief, and just as quickly as I could. Well, that's one Facebook Friendship I cannot entertain, I remarked to myself, much as I like this gentleman.
What a dolt I was, not to have seen that scenario coming! I thought I was more likely to stumble across this woman on Facebook, when I befriended her best friend or when I also friended her husband's first cousin. As I did not, something in my head thoughtlessly let down my guard.
An yet, despite the clear dangerousness of the situation I had just faced, I was also drawn to capture the video, yes, to return to the danger and record her image. Why? It is because of my other overriding instinct in wanting to hold on to whatever imagery there is of her, however happenstantial; however fraught with pain.
In that way, I'm hopeless, I guess, and helpless.
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However laudable I think my motive, however commendable I consider my rationale, the truth has just kicked me squarely in the teeth again. Fact is she's completely free of me no matter what I proffer to do or not to do for her. I'm just full of my own self importance because she could care the fuck less. I cease to exist long, long, long ago. I'm not saying that she's heartless, far from it, I'm just saying that I could never ever get it through my thick skull, that I simply didn't register at all to her. There just wasn't any feeling there. I was a total washout from the first - a no go.
