Ron's Big Life Update - December 1996

Happy Hanukah? Happy Thanksgiving? Happy Halloween? Whatever...

Rochester is still here. Last Tuesday, we did in fact get about a foot of snow ("one inch" according to forecasts. Ha!) It has since disappeared due to unseasonably warm weather and a lot of rain, so you're not missing much. No catastrophic ice storms or anything good like that.

We spent a chaotic weekend with the 'rents in Nanuet. I had my radio show from 6-8 on Wednesday, so we hit the road for NY starting at 9 PM and got to Nanuet around 2:30 AM. On the plus side, there was absolutely no traffic at all on the highways, despite last Wednesday being the most heavily traveled day of the year. Thursday we Thanksgivinged (Thanksgave?) - just Margaret, my brother, my folks, and me. Food was a-plenty. Friday and Saturday we ran around Rockland and visited family. Saturday night was my high school 10th-year reunion, which was pretty good. Unfortunately, the people I really wanted to see weren't there (sounds just like the college reunion), but it was still fun. It was an unintentional hoot to see some of the people who stayed in Rockland after graduation. I noticed quite a few Jewish girls who were wearing way entirely too much make-up, and it is a very easy stretch of the imagination to connect these girls with the stereotype of the New York Jewish women, who also wear way entirely too much make-up. There was also a disproportionately high number of lawyers among my former classmates, which I don't claim to understand. And most of them are married with a kid or two. One had a set of twins, which seems like a great deal - have one kid, get one free. You're confining yourself to misery for a few years anyway, so what's another set of diapers to change? Sunday we drove back up here. Not a fun drive at all, due to heavy rain for most of the trip. Bleh.

I drove past the site where Rockland County has planned the largest (or 2nd largest?) mall in the country, rivaling the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. (Have I ever mentioned that the Mall of America, despite being large enough to house a mini-amusement park, has a gang problem? That's how big this mall is...) Why oh why is Rockland County building this monstrosity? Traffic is worse there than ever before, and we HAVE A FEW MALLS ALREADY thank you... Stupid suburbs...

So now I'm back in town for a little while. We made Christmas plans in Colorado again this year, so I spend 12 consecutive days with the in-laws. This is the last time I let Margaret pick the travel days...

We saw Ransom, and it was better than I expected.

Has anyone else noticed that aside from the always-excellent Simpsons, the quality of everything else on TV has being fluctuating wildly? The X-Files even stooped low enough to have David Duchovny (Muldar) cry on screen. What is this world coming to? It seems like the only sure-fire things on TV are the Simpsons, and Newman. "Newman...Newman...Newman..."

My brother, by the way, is still wearing the socks that I handed down to him when I was in high school. He hasn't cut his hair since 1994 and his car is held together by duct tape. He has taken the concept of "grunge" to a distant world only imagined by the population of Seattle. Kenny IS grunge.

Not much else going on out here. I found some good records, including another copy of Bryan Adams's "Let Me Take You Dancing", an obscure disco track released only on a Canadian 12" single, and worth lots of $. (I paid $1 because the woman selling it had no idea what it was.) I also found an album by La Flavour, a disco album from 1980 featuring the song "Mondolay" and featuring production and background vocals from Donnie Iris (who had recorded "The Rapper" with Jaggerz in 1970, had recorded "Play That Funky Music" with Wild Cherry in 1976, and who would later sing "Ah Leah" and "Love Is Like A Rock"). Mondo bizarro.

Happy Hanukah to all of you. I'm hoping that this e-mail will appease all of you until I write proper holiday cards; it should be a few more years until that kicks in.

I'm going to work now. There is undiscovered crap out there, and one of them has my name on it...

Stay warm and fuzzy,
Ron "The crap is out there..." G