Old Fashioned

Well in the recent past I’ve entertained myself by watching “Iron Man”, excellent movie, the new “Batman” movie, I don’t remember what it was called exactly, “Transformers” (too much action), and recently “Watchmen”, which is really weird and disturbing…but good.

All the other movies were what I expected except “Watchmen”. I never read the comics back in the eighties so everything was a complete surprise. I guess for sci-fi and/or comic fans you could say it was like a “Batman” movie on meth. It was in Omaha’s first digital movie theatre, I think its called “Rave” and I really like it. It’s like comparing regular TV with high definition TV…nice, and the music is just that much better.

So that’s my pitch for the day, digital –good, film – not as good.

Now that I’ve had my say about technology, here’s a pitch for the exact opposite. Sometimes I feel mellow and I want to relax on my 45 minutes of picking up kids at school and daycare and have a nice simple ride home. Rather than listening to the latest pop-tunes or putting on complex jazz or classical, I’ve stumbled upon a sweet radio station in Omaha’s AM dial.

It’s called “Magic 1490”, and it basically plays old music that was popular when I was a kid. This is nice, because back in the day, I didn’t have a stereo or an I-pod, or digital radio, or satellite radio or a CD player. Just a transistor radio that I had in my coat pocket with a cheap one-ear earphone that I used to listen to music on my half hour walk home from school.

Life was simple, enjoyable and we all had shitty sounding music. Now this new radio station on the AM dial is probably the only AM station brave enough to play music…cause in all honesty, it don’t sound all that great.

The cool thing is, listening to the old music in the same not-so-good quality of AM that I listened to in the 70’s is just perfect for me. I makes me feel totally relaxed, and convinces me that things that I feel “must get done” by the end of the day, can wait.

Another day will come.

Suddenly I am overcome by the relaxing feeling that the simple things of my child-hood that I didn’t like were pretty cool. I started cooking two homemade meals a week. Fried chicken legs are the kid’s favorites, with freshly mashed potatoes and a veggie.

One time I was in a hurry and I skipped the part where I beat the mashed potatoes with a hand mixer and I just mashed with the old metal masher…oddly enough our oldest daughter loves ‘em that way.

One day I was watching “Between the Lions” with my daughter and they went into a bakery and the baker mixed homemade bread in about 2 minutes, let it rise in a pan, and then baked it. I got out my cookbook and tried it just like he did. It came out great! The original recipe in the book had you jumping through hoops to get the final product. But I just mixed the flour, warmed milk, salt, yeast, sugar and oil in one big bowl, mixed it with a spatula (like the guy in the show), rolled it into a loaf and put it in a pan. Two hours later, I got old-fashioned bread…very heavy, but very good.

So in ten minutes I mix up the bread, put it in a pan and two hours later I bake it for half an hour. It’s a thousand times better than what you buy in the store. It all fits into my newer old fashioned, slower life style. I guess if the nation goes into a depression, I’m ready with my depression skills.
And now you know.

COMING NEXT: Stephen can’t read?