[1526] in Humor
HUMOR: Dave on the 60's
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Thu Jul 18 10:36:07 1996
From: <abennett@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 1996 10:19:28 EDT
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 22:37:21 -0800
From: connie@interserve.com (Connie Kleinjans)
Another nod to the '60s, pretty please?
By Dave Barry
RECENTLY I found myself in a deep nostalgia wallow as a result of two
occurrences:
(1) Timothy Leary went up to that Big Volkswagen Microbus in the Sky.
(2) I turned 49. This means I'm almost 50, which is halfway to the stage in
life where a person can wind up on the Willard Scott Birthday Segment of the
"Today Show," the one where they show a picture of an extremely senior citizen
who looks like "Juanita," the semi-preserved 500-year-old frozen Inca woman
unearthed last year, and Willard says: "Happy birthday to Mrs. Claudia A.
Smoogent! This pretty lady once played horseshoes with Thomas Jefferson!"
Anyway, these two events got me to thinking back to a time when I was young
and people actually took Timothy Leary seriously. I refer, of course, to . . .
(cue "Sergeant Pepper") . . . the Sixties! What a time! I bet you younger
people would love to hear all about it!
I am of course kidding. You younger people are sick sick SICK of the Sixties.
Ever since birth, you've been listening to my generation drone on about the
Sixties, an era so culturally self-important that -- even though my generation
is now old and flabby and stodgy and non-rhythmic and sound asleep by 10:30
p.m. -- WE STILL THINK WE'RE COOL. We think this because of the many unique
consciousness-raising experiences we had in the Sixties, such as the
experience of trying desperately to like Indian music. We HAD to like it! The
BEATLES liked it! So we listened for hours to guys playing sitars,
concentrating earnestly, waiting for some kind of recognizable melody to show
up, like people waiting for a bus on the wrong street.
SPEAKING of music: We also had our consciousness raised several feet by the
experience of attending the classic rock concert. The way this worked was,
word would get around that a major band, such as the Who, was going to perform
in some city; you and your friends would drop whatever you were doing
(college, for example) and bum a ride there and join a humongous
free-associating throng in some cavernous auditorium, where everybody would
sit around marinating in an atmosphere that was one part oxygen, four parts
nitrogen and 17 parts doobie vapor.
For the first six hours or so there would be no activity onstage except for
two guys messing around with speakers the size of the Lincoln Memorial. From
time to time the speakers would emit a horrendous, tooth-vibrating, feedback
shriek -- WREEEEEEEEEEP -- which would cause the crowd members to sit up and
look for reassurance that this was an external noise, not something happening
only inside their heads.
AS THE Who-less hours drifted by, the crowd would spontaneously generate
rumors concerning which major musical superstars were going to make Surprise
Guest Appearances ("Hendrix is here!" "The Stones are here!" "Somebody saw
John Lennon in the men's room! He was operating the blow dryer!") Then, after
everybody had lost all track of time and place, one of the concert promoters
would get up on stage and, in between bursts of feedback, make some
announcement like: "OK! We just got a call from WREEEEEEEEEEP the road manager
for the Who! (Cheers from the crowd.) He says their plane has just landed in
WREEEEEEEEEEP Los Angeles! (More cheers.) They'll be on their way here just as
soon as they refuel!"
This could go on for days. I'm pretty sure that somewhere in America today,
there's an auditorium filled with people still waiting to hear the Electric
Flag. But they're happy! That was the thing about the Sixties: People were
really happy, except when they became convinced that tiny crabs were eating
their brains.
Which brings us back to Timothy Leary. What can you say about this guy? He
spoke to our generation! He was a brilliant genius! He told us to ingest
chemicals! So we did! And we had philosophical insights! For example: When a
candle burns, WAX DRIPS DOWN THE SIDE! Wow!
And that is only one tiny example of the many insights we had, thanks to Dr.
Leary, and it is why we children of the Sixties are still so cool after all
these years. Soon there will be denture commercials aimed at us, using classic
Beatles tunes to appeal to our eternal coolness. We'll hum through our gums.
