Rant #2,572: Thru Spray Colored Glasses

Still no luck in getting my mother a vaccination appointment.
 
Two or three times I actually saw a date and time at various sites, clicked on it, and told the spot was filled.
 
I even called a local church, where a vaccination pod is being set up to serve the supposedly under-served minority community.
 
Although their first batch of vaccines are being used by their own parishioners, they will be getting other vaccines in during the coming weeks.
 
I left the following message on their answering machine, the only thing I could do to get myself “in” with the church:
 
“I would like to sign up my mother for your vaccination program,” I said as I gave them my mother’s specifics. “I realize that she is not a ‘minority,” per se, but I think that her age is more important than that.”
 
I have not heard back from them.
 
There is not much more that I can do, and no, while I might have been up at 3 a.m. again, it was only briefly, so I did not venture out into the ether again to try to get my mother an appointment at that ungodly hour.
 
So yes, that leaves us with nothing, but if you heard President-Elect Joe Biden yesterday, he has a plan he is set to unveil so that no person who wants to get the shot will not be able to.
 
We have learned that talk is cheap, but let’s see what he has to say. He has his shots in his arm already, so I guess he is now considered to be among “the chosen people.”
 
I need my mother to be part of “the chosen people,” so let’s see what his plan is.
 
I do like to hear him say “And May God Bless,” at the end of every speech. It is almost as if I am listening to classic comedian Red Skelton make these speeches, as that is what he always said at the end of his TV show.
 
Biden is certainly old enough to remember Skelton, but I don’t know yet if he is as funny as Skelton was.
 
Actually, not too much has been very funny lately, whether we are talking about what is going on in Washington or elsewhere.
 
I am certainly not laughing about my barren quest to get my mother inoculated, and what is going on in Washington now isn’t funny, it is pretty sad, to be honest with you.
 
We were hopeful that 2021 would not only be a new year filled with hope and promise, but also a year where we eradicate this virus, but during its first 15 days, it has already been one of the most chaotic years on record—and we still have 350 more days to go until we reach 2022.
 
In between doing all this grunt work for my mother and working my remote job and handling some other things in my own home, I have been busy digitizing some of my records.
 
As you know, and I have said many times over, that is a part of my record collecting hobby that I absolutely love; I find it very relaxing, and a lot of fun.
 
Just yesterday, I got down to digitizing a pretty much forgotten movie soundtrack from 1969 called “Follow Me,” a surfing documentary along the lines of “Endless Summer.”

 
I don’t know if the film that this is the soundtrack to is any good or up to the level of “Endless Summer,” because I have not seen the movie and cannot find it anywhere, but the soundtrack is absolutely superb, as relaxing as drinking a pina colada on the beach while surveying the waves going back and forth.
 
The stars of the soundtrack are Stu Phillips, a musical conductor who passed away a few years ago who some considered nothing but a TV hack, who scored numerous TV shows with incidental music including “The Monkees.”; and Dino, Desi and Billy, the “born with the spoon in their mouths” pop group that had some successes in the mid 1960s, including “I’m a Fool.”
 
And I have to say that it was the latter “star” that led me to get the soundtrack.
 
I have a pretty beaten up copy, the cover is written on and there is one major scratch on the platter, but all in all, I was able to digitize the album, which is basically broken up into 15 segments, mostly of Phillips’ incidental music and with four Dino, Desi and Billy songs, actually three because one is repeated in the reprise.
 
Phillips’ music actually sets the tone for the soundtrack, with names like “Portugal-Qual E O Caminho Da Praia (Which Way To the Water)” and “India-Mahambalipuram” setting the tone for the film’s story, which follows three 1960s surfer dudes as they trek the world for the next big curl.
 
Dino, Desi and Billy had had some success as teenybop rockers with a folk beat, but here, they hand in their most mature recording up to that point, with the movie’s theme, “Thru Spray Colored Glasses,” both opening and closing the collection.
 
As has been said in the past, “It shudda been a contenda,” but all that the song was was a mere blip on the musical landscape of that period.
 
So I guess you can say that the soundtrack stands alone from the film—which is what the best soundtracks do—and you don’t need to see the film to get the message of the music, which I certainly did.

 
Now to find the movie … I checked around, and it isn’t on YouTube, it was released a few years back on some gray marked DVD … but one day, I will find it and watch it and see if the soundtrack is better than the film or if they are equally as good, one feeding off the other.
 
So there you have it. As President Trump is being impeached for the second time, I am listening to an obscure surf movie soundtrack from more than 50 years ago, and I still cannot get my mother a vaccine appointment.
 
Such is life in 2022 … I cannot wait for this year to come to its conclusion already, but I have a really long wait for that to happen … so it is time to move on.
 
Speak to you on Monday. Have a great weekend.