NB: Russian spam diary delayed due to extended LULZ. Sorry for the inconvenience.
In the tried and true tradition of American holiday culture, I spent my day-after-Thanksgiving lying on the couch watching TV. Normally I would have had to get up for things like "the kids are hungry" and "will you take us to get Icee's?", or "when are you going to do xxx like you said you would?" but life conspired to deliver me from responsibility today and for that I am truly thankful.
First, the water heater gave out yesterday (of course) and leaked all over the garage. Except for some old books no on would ever read again anyway and a box of old college exam papers (which no one would ever read again anyway) The Stuff in the garage was spared. Plumber dudes came out and replaced that unit, making som code upgrades in the process and that meant I had to be here.
Second, we had plans to visit good friends and get the kids together. I am sorry to have missed that, honestly, and my wife understood the sacrifice I was making for our family in remaining behind to "supervise" the new boiler installation. As a result, I had the house all to myself all day long.
Normally, I would be out on a day like today. In fact, we intended to drive into the hill country and hike along some creek beds because the weather here in Austin today was très agréable. Instead, with all the hard work going on here I sucked it up, opened all the windows and proceeded to not move for a bunch of hours. Well, except for the trips to the kitcen and the "necessary" room, as they say.
Please watch your step over the crumpled El Milagro tortilla chip bag. I'll pick that up on my way to the kitchen to look like I've started cleaning up when I hear my wife at the door.
"Hello, may I help you sir?"
When I was a kid I loved television. For all the time I spent outdoors as a child I still was one of those who couldn't get enough of the idiot box. From The Brady Bunch to Mork and Mindy to Lawrence Welk and the Creature Double Feature horror movies Saturday morning on Channel 39, TV for me was exactly the escapist tool it was designed to be.
So, today I settled in for the long haul and you want to know something? There wasn't a goddamned thing on worth watching. I had to go into On Demand to find anything that piqued my interest, and you want to know what else? The only things that piqued my interest were things I had already seen before.
"Why don't we find out?"
5000 channels and nothing on. So, I did what any of us would do: I watched television on the internet. Welcome Back Kotter, All in the Family, Taxi, Mary Tyler Moore. Those were great shows that attempted to break through the social hangover of the 50's and 60's by dealing with issues of racism, sexism, bigotry and ignorance in a way unique to each show.
"Chinese mother bling baby Jello."
At some point I started coming across vintage TV commercials, right after the
"Space Creature" episode of Lost In Space, which I happened upon by accident. I figured I would share a few that caught my attention here tonight.
"Then you admit it! Your coffee really is murder!"
These old ads are such a cultural time capsule. Even the ones before my time speak with such familiarity to a past not long ago in time but light years away in sensibility and culture. At least in terms of the culture that I relate to and was raised in at home.
This is the nostalgia we hear people pining for, those earlier, simpler times before everyone decided to "step out of their place" and mess up society by complicating things, right? When everything was hunky dory and nice and "pure"? A time of "uncomplicated" social norms and strict adherence to "tradition".
"Yessem, Miss Maime, this first week after my honeymoon life sure was grand."
And as I lay there on the couch, hours after I first reclined, my mind turned to how we live our lives in our family versus what I was seeing in these old commercials. A house where the man is responsible for cooking and taking care of the kids, and where the woman makes far more money in a job with far more pressure. Racially mixed from wildly different socio-economic backgrounds. A family where openly gay is normal.
"...and some people don't."
As I look around I see a lot of people like us. This country has changed and we are moving forward. We have come a long way, in a cultural sense, from the ideals represented in these old commercials, despite the apparent backward movement of the last-gasping racists and declining Boomer generation. And while we still have plenty of ground to cover, I look at my kids and the kids I teach, and at their parents and I see a lot of hope for our collective futures.
This is me being optimistic in the face of heinous bullshit, y'all.
Really, I am.
Because the alternative right about now is not who I want to be.