Semi-random Stuff

I somehow thought it would be easy to explain why Peter Paolucci's friendship was so important to me... But it's not - easy to explain, that is :-)

We never really talked about the problems we were facing... The whole point of our friendship (at least from my perspective) was to escape all the problems...
We both had rather offbeat senses of humor... Not the same - but equally bizarre... Yeah - we had a lot of private jokes... I recall having conversations in public that nobody else got... People would give us the weirdest looks trying to figure out what the heck we were talking about :-)

Peter used to do original jokes too. Unfortunately, the only one I still remember was not one of his best... It involved partially clad women and the punchline was: "Bum titty bum titty bum titty bum titty bum... bum... !" Yeah - the theme from Bonanza... I'd say "you had to be there", but it wasn't that funny at the time either :-)

And we were in a band together...

OK - I'm going to go "stream of consciousness" here - so if you think it's hard to follow that's because it is hard to follow...

I recently had the sense that something major was missing from my CD collection and I realized that I had nothing by "The Animals"... They were one of my favorites back in the day... So the other day I bought a fairly complete anthology CD. It really took me back - I haven't heard a lot of the stuff since the 60s...

BTW: the CD had "Spill Wine" on it... WTH??? That was definitely "post Animals"... What were they thinking???

Another BTW: I met Eric Burdon briefly in 1969... But that story is yet to come...

"Sky Pilot" was one of the songs I played with a number of bands - and I remember practicing it in Winnipeg with Peter and the crew... Yeah - I sing like crap - hence I sound almost exactly like Eric Burdon :-) I loved singing Sky Pilot :-)

You should have seen my mom's reaction when she heard "When I was Young". There's the part where Burdon does that off key wailing - my mom held her ears and yelled mild obscenities...

Which reminds me of the time we went to the opera in Winnipeg... It was an Italian opera my mom had performed many times and she was intensely unhappy with the soprano... At one point point mom started singing along under her breath and I totally expected her to stand up and "let loose". I was surprised that she didn't :-)

Yeah - my mom was born without the 'embarrassment' gene... She used to get into scenes in public all the time - I'd look for someplace to hide... That's why I couldn't stand to watch "I Love Lucy". It was just too realistic :-)

Totally unrelated but funny - this one time - in Winnipeg - my mom poured out an entire jug of lemonade my sister had made. She thought it was water - and it had somehow gotten contaminated :-) We teased her a lot about that one - for a really long time...

Speaking of drinks - did you know that back in the day you could get Hawaiian Punch syrup in gallon jugs? It was available in Winnipeg... You could mix it wicked strong... I loved it. Heck - I would've drunk it straight out of the jug except I was afraid I'd end up in a sugar coma :-)

OK - I haven't talked about the kitty we had at the apartment other than to mention that we couldn't let it on the balcony because it was sure it could hop down to the ground - 11 floors below :-)

But that reminds me - I once beat the elevator down from the 11th floor taking the stairs. There were 2 flights per floor and (thanks to my gymnastics training) I could vault an entire flight at a time using the railing ... It took me about 30 seconds to get to the ground floor... I only did it a few times - it was kind of a controlled fall - and it made my knees hurt :-)

Anyway - every once in a while the kitty would startle, jump in the air and run into the wall... We never figured out what set it off... My mom thought it was probably a ghost :-)

Then - we had a decorative bamboo partition in the living room and the kitty used to sleep on the top rail... Yes - that was the only place the cat slept - balanced on a one inch wide piece of bamboo...
She did fall off once... I heard a 'ruckus' and ran in there - her collar had caught on the decorative work half way down - she was hanging there by her neck looking quite surprised... I got her down and she was fine...

I'd like to say she stopped sleeping on the partition. But nooo...

Yeah - it was good times :-)