Live from the Boonies

I was in traffic the other day, being tailgated by “Buffy the Vanpool Slayer”. She was talking on her cell, and all the while, carrying on another conversation with her passenger. Her passenger looked to be the replacement actress for Mimi on the “Drew Carey Show.” I’m not even sure what this has to do with my thought process afterwards, but it seemed like a good lead-in line.

I was thinking that there really are no real heroes anymore. There seems to be this high tide of unflavored Jell-O that has settled into the fabric of our everyday life. We are a society void of new and wonderful things to challenge and fill our minds with wonderment and amazement.

Much as I hate to admit this, but there are no more innovators like Elvis. I need to be clear that I am not a huge fan of ‘Elvis the pelvis’, but I will, with some reservation, admit that he did influence all the music that was to follow. Fine, I’ve said it and now my wife can gloat for the next year.

We lack the John Kennedy’s; Douglas Macarthur’s who lead this country. There is no doubt that history may have in due course, made these folks bigger than life, but at the same time they influenced and defined a generation. They were America.

In our time, we have seen the Beatles, the Stones and learned that social change can come from the songs of a kid from Minnesota named Robert Zimmerman. We were a generation open to change and each day brought the possibility of something we had never seen.

A surgery that actually replaced a human heart was unbelievable, but yet we watched in awe as Barney Clark held on day after day. The world was transfixed with this. Some of this stuff was out of Jules Verne and Flash Gordon.

We saw the first topless bathing suit; and frankly Rudy, it was one bad fashion design; but hey, it was a start.

We saw a man on the moon; John and Yoko in a bed in Montreal. We watched a war unfolding in Vietnam before our very eyes on the Evening news, delayed tape and all.
We had Archie and Edith; and the Docs on “M*A*S*H” were groundbreaking. It was so much more than eye candy. It made you think, or at least wonder what ever happened to the ‘Beav.’

I remember watching the first time “Live It’s Saturday Night…” come on. The Not Ready for Prime Time Players were amazing to me. They seemed to be afraid of nothing.

I liked that.

Somewhere through the haze of some smoke, I can recall being changed and defined by all of this. I think I was not alone.

Yet, when I look at Buffy, in her SUV, I wonder what she is amazed by? I wonder if the Backstreet Boys and Full House define her. Or maybe she is just in a hurry to get to the mall. I hear there is a special on unflavored Jell-o this week.