Rant #2,848: Puppet Man

Hey, it’s March 9!
 
Another day of excitement for this (semi-) retired guy!
 
What do I do today?
 
I have a virtual cornucopia of choices.
 
I will certainly do some writing and editing, both here and for my little side job that I have.
 
I will watch some TV, maybe digitize some records.
 
I will drive my son back and forth to work, which quite honestly, breaks up my day.
 
I will see how my mom is doing … nearly 91 years old and going strong!
 
Yes, it is the same old same old in my situation, and since there is nothing I can do about it, I have to roll with it, baby.
 
I heard that they have found that one football player—on his time off for mental health problems—has been using pro sports betting apps to bide his time.
 
He was found to not only to be betting on pro football, but on his own team.
 
The NFL, which like the other pro sports leagues is in bed with these sports betting apps, has not only fined this player a sizeable amount, but they have suspended him from playing for a yet-to-be-determined time.
 
He countered back that he does not have a gambling problem.
 
And you think that this will be the only instance that the sports leagues will find of their own players betting on games in their respective leagues?
 
I think not, and just the fact that these betting apps are literally in bed with these leagues makes the likelihood of this happening even greater.
 
And with “March Madness” coming right up, you don’t think the NCAA is looking into college players using these apps to bet on games that impact their own teams?
 
Look, as I have said countless times, making these apps legal has opened up a Pandora’s Box of problems, and the box can never be closed once it is open.
 
Shame on the leagues for engaging with these legal swindlers in the first place, but now, they are going to have to deal with the aftermath.
 
And in the corner is Pete Rose, who I don’t know if he is laughing or crying about this current state of affairs.
 
But even with my own endless time to do nothing—me, being (semi-) retired, you know—these are apps that I will stay away from like the plague.
 
I have no interest in them at all, and I will say it again, those that feel the need to use them are not sports fans, as these apps have absolutely nothing to do with sports.
 
I will find the time to do more constructive things with my time and with my limited funds.
 
Yesterday, after a kind of busy day doing my work—I edited two stories, one long one where I had to really bear down and make things a bit more readable and newsworthy, and another which was a piece of cake—I had a little time after I picked up my son from work and my mother from the dentist, so I digitized two records, both from relatively the same time period.
 
The first was a President John F. Kennedy tribute record made by Golden Records.

 
You might remember Golden Records, as they put out scads of kids records way back when.
 
Here, they jumped on the record bandwagon after the president was assassinated in November 1963, and released an extended play record of a few speeches that he made, gearing it to little kids like I was back then.
 
It is a nice record and a nice find for me, and althoiugh the speeches are whittled down to their barest components, you can hear how JFK was able to use the language and his oratory skills to engage a nation and a world.
 
Then I digitized an album which featured music that was popular during JFK’s time in office.

 
It is called “Groovy Goodies,” and focuses on the Colpix Records label, the Columbia Pictures record label of yore that eventually morphed into Colgems Records, the Monkees’ label.
 
On this record, we have early-1960s hits by the likes of James Darren, Paul Petersen, Shelly Fabares and the like, so it really is a time capsule of a different time, when JFK was president and we were going through our own “Camelot.”
 
Digitizing both records was a fun thing to do, and put a capper on my day and made me happy that I will eventually be able to listen to these recordings in my car … probably while driving my son back and forth to work.
 
You see, everything is really circuitous when you are (semi-) retired, everything leads into another thing, and yes, you are on something of a hamster treadmill roll all day, every day.
 
My word of wisdom is this: do not retire, unless you absolutely have to, before you are at least 67 years of age, and try to push it to 70 if you possibly can.
 
If you are forced to do it early, like I was, then you are going to get screwed by all sides, and “Camelot” and JFK and “Johnny Angel” will seem an even more distant memory than they should be.
 
Let me get off of my soapbox for just a little bit … like I said, I expect more work to do today, and what shall I digitize next when I get a chance?
 
Spanky and Our Gang? Nancy Sinatra? How about Liz Damon’s Orient Express?
 
Yes, my choices as a (semi-) retired person are endless, aren’t they?
 
You can bet on that!