Total Pageviews

Thursday, January 13, 2022

Rant #2,812: Talk To Myself



Happy Friday the 13th …
 
My mistake, it is only Thursday the 13th, certainly not as good as Friday the 13th, but it will have to do.
 
And tomorrow is Friday the 14th, so we two days in a row that just missed the mark in marketability.
 
We will have to wait until May for an actual Friday the 13th, so I guess we have a few months to work up to that date.

And on other topics ...
 
R.I.P. to Ronnie Spector, who was the real, true voice of the girl group sound as the leader of the Ronettes.
 
She was also the one-time wife of producer Phil Spector, and I guess for that alone, she would deserve a medal.
 
But her crystalline voice on so many hits during the girl group era put her stamp on the world of music—“Be My Baby,” Baby I Love You” among those many songs that hit it big way back when.
 
And she had a somewhat successful career as a solo artist, never again reaching the upper echelon of the charts on her own but recording lots of interesting music, including “Try Some, Buy Some,” written by George Harrison.
 
And then she had her biggest hit through another artist, which was Eddie Money, with his song “Take Me Home Tonight,” which featured Spector repeating the line, “be my little baby” at various points in the song.
 
It was really his hit, but she added so much to that tune that it became her hit too, in a funny way.
 
It seems that we are losing so many of our Baby Boomer icons, not because there is a virus specifically impacting the lives of such people, but because age is catching up with all of us and certainly catching up with them.
 
Just recently, we have lost the likes of Dwayne Hickman and Michael Nesmith and Sidney Poitier and a whole host of others who were icons of my generation, and unlike their celluloid and vinyl ventures, they get old like all of us do.
 
The great thing about their lives is that we can see them when they were at the height of their health and powers simply by putting in a DVD or watching them on YouTube or some other service, or listening to their records, so their youthfulness is preserved forever … the way we really want to remember them.
 
And then we have the problem that I spoke about yesterday, also having to do with health matters, and I will tell you that it has been rectified, somewhat.
 
My son now has a vision plan—not through the federal government, but through a private carrier.
 
I was on the phone for hours yesterday and on Tuesday evening, trying to get him something usable, and I finally found something for him that is palatable.
 
It is far from perfect—he has to use another doctor for most of his vision procedures other than the one he has been using—but unfortunately, that is the way the cookie crumbles.
 
After doing all of this grunt work, I simply found that the best bang for the buck—and about the only alternative I had—was to sign him up for such a plan, so I went for it.
 
No, I am not entirely happy, but so be it. It will have to suffice.
 
And then we have the New York Yankees, stuck in baseball limbo as the lockout of players continues, who made major news yesterday by naming a woman to be the first manager of a professional sports team, their Tampa, Florida, Low-A minor league affilate.
 
Rachel Balkovec is her name, and this woman has really paid her dues to get to this point, working with several other organizations in a number of capacities during the past decade.
 
She seems to be highly qualified, and really, that should be the only reason to name her to this position, but again, as a trailblazer, she is going to be held to a higher standard, no matter how much our society is changing and becoming more accepting of such matters.
 
Admittedly, when I saw her Zoom interview yesterday, the first thing I thought to myself is that she is a nice-looking lady, not the type that I thought would fill such a role.
 
Sure, that is wrong, but then she won me over with her knowledge and background, so the looks thing got pushed into the background.
 
I wish her well at her new position, but it is going to take time for many of us to look at her simply as a baseball manager rather than as a baseball manager who happens to be female.
 
Small steps lead to bigger ones, you know.
 
So there is my Rant for today, sort of a stream of consciousness thing more than anything else.
 
But at least I didn’t talk about the pandemic at all here …
 
Ooh, I just did!
 
Sorry about that.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.