Adults club

We spent the day up at the folks' place hanging out and having a great time catching up with brothers, sisters, nieces, in-laws, out-laws, nephews, nieces and close family friends alike.

Hot topic du jour: At what age can a man get away with crossing his legs, underside of knee on top of other knee, as opposed to the more masculine-looking cross legs, ankle/foot propped on knee of opposite leg? Over/Under: 40?

Anyway, with this in mind and taking in the strata of ages represented there at the ancestoral family compound it reminded us of blog piece we link to every summer as it is so spot on with respect to growing up as we and our older brothers did in the 60s and 70s and trying to unlock the mysteries of just what it meant to be an adult: The Patio Culture and the
Promise of Joining the Adults' Club:

The tables were topped with mosaic-sized tiles, and beers sat on wet coasters. Ashtrays were to be found in abundance, and were of the geometric, pastel-colored abstract type favored in the fifties. The adults were in shorts and short sleeved sport shirts, smoking, occasionally swearing in gruff voices and laughing at jokes I didn't understand. As often as not they were talking about their war days. Most interesting to me, there were a couple of beer signs used as decoration. The most memorable was the Miller High Life one with bouncing lights. (See links at the end of this article for an image.) There was also a Seagram's 7 display behind the bar that somebody must have intercepted on its way to a liquor store. The significance of the big seven wearing the crown mystified me (Why a seven? Is that how many drinks you have to have?), but I was properly awed by its symbolic power and assumed it was the symbol of an adult's club of some kind.

I was introduced by my parents, patronized by their friends, and offered a glass of Bubble-Up and a seat by the bouncing lights. By the time we left an hour or so later I knew I had been exposed to something wondrous. It was a glamorous, sophisticated, heady collection of sights, sounds and smells, and it caused me to wonder about the world of adults and made me look forward to becoming one myself. Being an only child, I had no fellow observer to help me draw conclusions, but this much I did realize: Becoming an adult and a full member of the patio leisure society was definitely something I wanted to do. What I couldn't have known was that by the time I came of age the rules would be changed, thanks to the Beatles, drugs, Viet Nam and the youth culture in general.

Please do read the whole piece at the link and see if you agree with the author's perspective.

Summer time out on the patio

After experiencing the usual June gloom here in Southern California it's starting to feel like summer is finally upon us and with that we'll go with what is becoming an annual tradition in honor of one of the very first blogs we ever started following.

In retrospect, I believe I was cheated. When I was a kid, adult behavior consisted of men and women dancing close to the sounds of Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole, and practicing sophisticated rites of wooing and seduction. The string arrangements were lush and romantic - Dad played Jackie Gleason and Gordon Jenkins albums that fully defined the style. Then came rock and roll, freedom from parentally-imposed restrictions and the celebration of being young. (In some ways my parents became co-conspirators in the movement: In an effort to make me more representative of my generation, Mom bought me a hot green Nehru jacket that I refused to wear. She also tried talking me into wearing my hair like the Dr. McCoy character in Star Trek, and threatened to take me to a barber with a illustrative photo for guidance. "Don't you want to wear your hair like JFK?" she'd ask. I kept my buzz cut - it was easier to remove playground sand from at the end of the day.)

The pacifism, idealism, altered awareness, Eastern mysticism and the relaxed grooming standards my peers adopted during my teenage years confused me, and by the time disco arrived when I turned eighteen, I was deeply disappointed. Sure, culturally we were becoming dominant, but what we had was empty and nowhere as mysterious and promising as the postwar adult culture I had observed when I was younger. Driving was nice, of course, and signing my own cut slips from class was a liberation of sorts, but what happened to the mystique of being an adult? Where were all the other members? What's more, opposition to the war in Viet Nam puzzled me. Wasn't this part of the admission to the club I had been exposed to as a child? How on earth could one talk about their war days, as my parents' friends had, if there weren't any war days?

Read the rest of "The Adult's Club" from Wes Clark's Avocado Memories, here.

Class, We have a very special guest for you, today.

We look forward to seeing General Petraeus testify in Congress next week if only to see (again) in bold relief what the bearing, manner and presence of a professional and honorable military man looks like while addressing a roomful of children.

Nancy Pelosi has already gone on record as saying she doesn’t want to hear too much happy-talk from the General or Ambassador Crocker… no-spin regarding the recent events in Basra where militant Shiite cleric, Al-Sadr has backed-down (again) because, we imagine, he was tired of getting his ass kicked (again).



And Pelosi wonders how it is that the Iraq military and government were caught off-guard by this uprising in Basra. After all, the Iraqis are just the puppets, right? We’re the ones that are ultimately calling the shots over there, right?

P.S. If the gentleman pictured above balled at Ohio State, he'd need two helmets.