nyt X 2

Double stories inspired double thoughts in my double lobes. neither nyt story is extra especial, just an impetus.

Rocky theme story

This was an article about the banning of i pods and other listening devices during races for safety reasons. Some wanted their ear buds, but others felt it stole away a little from the race:

Andersen also said wearing headphones robs runners of the complete marathon experience. He remembered running alone across the Willis Avenue Bridge into the Bronx in his first marathon, about to hit the wall at the 20-mile point, when a teenager leaned out of a building’s window and played the theme song from “Rocky” on a boom box.
“If I was wearing an iPod, I never would have heard that,” Andersen said.

The theme from Rocky- the whole music about it- has always been kool. Loved "Gonna Fly Now", the other incidental music, etc... before the 1979 South West Catholic Conference football championship game St. Rita Grammer school - my team- played in (and won), Coach pulled the team into the schools gym-a ratty little auditorium that we also had that famous danse in) and played the whole LP to pscyh us up. Some of the songs are the inspiring type, but I also remember listening to "Take it back/ do do do do/ take it back", the song where Sly's real life bro is standing around a burning garbage can w/ neighbourhood types in an apacalla(sic) sing a long. Not a bad song.

The best song was the song that they played in the original Rocky during rounds 4-13 or something like that- a time compression song, They reprised the song in Rocky II for his training rounds (Adrian wakes up out of a coma and says "win" , or whatever- the best song is the "buildingly louder as the song goes on until it hits a cresendo of drums and bells and the finale sounds like "DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN" You know the one (rite, unless y like the Rock trilogy). We always loved that song, and equated it with , well, a Rocky like feeling inside us when things were down- or simply, when we wanted to make a stereotypical joke that carried us through our youth. So, my favourite quote about that song was given by LFP before one of out street hockey games; sensing a mismatch after we divided teams, LFP, on the acknowledged inferior team, walked away from the player draw with the words "Don't worry- they can't beat a team that can sing this song: "duh duh duh duh duh duh DUH duh duuu duh-duh-duh. " Yes, I know, funny in Farsi, or rather, if you were 16. And the last story revolving around this song is that I once- well, I first caught it- @ a Baltimore Orioles game 10 years ago. They were losing big to the Sox going into the bottom of the ninth, and Camden Yards sound system played that song. Funny. If yr 16, an Orioles fan, and.......no, I think its funny. Oh, fuck all of you, or I will begin my reminisces of that one game in 83 or 84 when Floyd Banister threw a pitch and..........

My second NYT story is one in which 1/2 of American children these days live in areas that the parents do not think is safe. Read it yrself, I put it on for context only. I just wanted to bring up the differences betwixt my growing up and my neices and nephews. When I was growing up, my parents put me on ther bus when I was 9 to go miles to baseball games. We'd walk the hood @ all hours. A line Mommy said once was (on same subject) that back in the day "..all we had to do was open the doors" and the kids be ok.

However, being the uncle and all i notice, that todays kids can't go anywhere w/out Blackwater type protection. And that's ok. Eventhough my 'hood is one of the strongest in the whole city (maybe the safest, outside of O'hare or something like that??), I'm terrifeied to let them go anyplace. Shit- two of my neices now in college?? Shit.

Well, we have to let them go @ some point.