Back In The Day to The Here and Now

When I first started this blog, I had plenty of time to decide my topic, which is mainly art related and to research all the elements to provide a well rounded view of the subject. Now things have changed a little, okay a lot and now time seems to slip by before I realize it and my blog post date slips by. Life has a funny way of letting you know it exists. Stares you down, until you make eye to eye contact.

My last post reflected on childhood issues with robots and how they came into my life. The issues that I have been dealing with these past few months often leave me wondering how I got to the "here and now." I've also noticed that my friends post pictures of themselves from way back when on throw back Thursdays. Ha! no picture from my past will be posted anywhere, at least not by me. Nothing wrong with the past, it helped shape the current me. As for the here & now part, not so sure, still connecting the dots cause it represents my current situation and not so much the me I have come to know. It is apparent the two are connected, although I feel very disconnected at times dealing with the day to day. So when I see my friends post about being "back in the day" and their pictures, It dawned on me that my back in day seems like a rather mind boggling, eyes closing lack luster time. 

I don't remember any great family reunions, birthdays or major events. Oh sure, there were piano recitals in which I was terrified to death because people were "looking" at  me; and then of course my sisters wedding and no one believed I was just "thirteen", they kept looking at me; my prom dress that my mom made for me, that just recently I gave to goodwill. It was Magenta colored 3/4 length taffeta dress with a lace jacket, and my date wore a charcoal grey suit with coat tails, everyone thought we looked good and were looking at us; my first car, a Chevrolet spectrum 2 door hatchback, thought I was cute styling and profiling! and wanted people to look at me; being pregnant with my son, and people looking at me saying "you don't look pregnant!";locking my hair during a time it wasn't acceptable, people stared at me; the grey streak that started in the front of my head and went back towards the middle at an angle that became increasingly hard to color, then changed course and decided to stay front and center spreading from left to right, the first thing people commented on when they looked at me (thank God for haircolor); coworkers who looked at me funny when I told them I was leaving the Federal Govt to go back to school and get my degree(s);currently people cock their heads to the side while they are looking at me from head to toe eyeballing my shit kicker boots, nose ring, labrey piercing, and locks then their eyes bug out when I say "I teach art!". No, don't remember much about being back in the day, or yesterday for that matter, aside from people looking at me, staring at me.

What I do remember is a lot of great music and TV, especially cartoons, Kung Fu theater, Creature Feature, Captain 20 and all the Godzilla movies (which I still watch). Buying albums for a $1 from Columbia Music club, everything from Rita Coolidge, Tom Jones, Electric Light Orchestra, the Wizard of Oz (disco version), The Bee Gees, Donna Summer, Earth Wind & Fire and much more! Yes, you could get records and tapes for a $1. And guess what! TV was FREE! yes free! and all the cool shows came on like Barney Miller, The Jeffersons, All in the Family, The Phil Donahue Show, The Flip Wilson Show (Hey Geraldine!) Dick Clark's Rocking New Years Eve and Soouuul Train!. Call waiting didn't exist and you had to call the operator to break in on the line to reach someone if they were on the phone. My first computer was an Etch-a-Sketch! People actually talked to each other, texting didn't exist nor did cell phones. Radio played music that required real singing and Casey Kasem did American Top 40 every Sunday. No it wasn't during the time of dinosaurs, even though thinking of this does seem kind of nostalgic but not prehistoric! For some, the 70's seems like a prehistoric time, the 80's were my rebellion years, but why do people keep trying to bring back the 80's? Do me a favor, leave the 80's alone, it hasn't done anything to deserve your millennium torment.

I was a chubby kid with severe allergies and stayed in the house a lot. My mom made most of my clothes until Lane Bryant came along. They started off selling children's clothes, then switched to women's clothes. If you were husky built then you went to Morton's clothing downtown. Hecht's, Garfinkels, and Woodies department stores were the Macy's and Nordstroms of today. Being chubby or overweight was not the move back in the day. No one made clothes for that body type. Couldn't get the Jordache look if you were bigger than a toothpick. Super sizing was a spray starch used in ironing your clothes. Wrinkle free was a hand cream, it was not a term for wash and wear clothing. You could go to the Barbizon School to be a model or just "look like one," now just get plastic surgery to look like Barbie, so everyone can look at you. The metro cost .75 cents to ride when it first opened, phone calls were .10-.15 cents at a pay phone, yes, they actually worked! Then technology kicked into high gear and the years flew by bringing me to the here and now. Now, to talk to people I have to text on my "smart phone" or contact people through facebook, forget actually talking to them. We have to pay for some 500 channels including local ones and there still is nothing on worth watching for long. My favorite Godzilla and Kung Fu action flicks have been relegated to DVD, YouTube or Hulu. I'm waiting for the robots to take control of all technology.

I spend more time on my laptop, cell phone and listening to my ipod. They all come equipped with the ability to watch music videos, movies, take pictures etc.,that can be instantly posted to whatever site suits your fancy. So much for the man in the monster costume stomping on a miniature size Tokyo and fighting other monsters. Now with all the CG animation and such, the monsters can be manipulated with a few key strokes and look hella real. Don't even have to buy a book anymore, just download it on your e-reader, or kindle. Nothing wrong with the here and now, just sometimes I want a simpler time where things are a little slower and you could figure it out before it was upgraded.

If I'm showing my age, then know I'm not THAT OLD! I may not be in my 20s anymore, but I still got lots of life kicking in me and I've gotten better with age AND I'm keeping up the technology, its fun. Just want to take my time and smell the roses before they get mowed down! At least now, I can do that without sneezing my head off! Have grown out my allergies a bit, modern medicine has improved greatly as well. Also, as American's we have gotten larger and so have the clothes, all I had to do was maintain my size and the rest of the U.S. caught up to me! One size does not fit all, check the mirror.

Now that I've watched the Roots/Jimmy Fallon do a rendition of the Sesame Street theme song, and the crazy songs that mock real life conversation in a video, my world has come full circle. Everything old is new again...except things from the 80's leave them there, especially the clothes!


My throwback Thursday request, just step away from the 80s clothes, go ahead, just back away, you can do it, say it with me step away from the clothes and read my blog instead.

See you all next week at the....

Same blog time, same blog channel, I'll be watching You!

Childhood Fantasy, Robot Reality

robot workers of the future

Ultraman

Growing up I always thought I should be somewhere else and often fantasized about being some one else. Any TV show or song that I enjoyed interrupted my thoughts like an extended music video and I would often daydream my time away imaging that I was apart of the show, because I didn't know back then that it was possible for a chubby black girl to actually accomplish a play those roles. One of my daydreams was that I was in outer space with robots and aliens, and I was the super warrior woman/hero/ultimate goddess that saved the day. Years later, I reflect back and laugh on how I would scare myself with the idea that Ultra Man would be sitting in my living room, waiting for me on Xmas morning to use his mighty powers to slay me. On Xmas morning which was supposed to be a delight for most children, I would tip toe into the hallway and peek around the corner into the living room to see if it was true. Once I realized that Ultra Man wasn't there, I would gleefully go into the living room to open my gifts. It was some what of a let down and a relief that Ultra Man did not play into my idea that I had hidden super powers, whatever they were, and wreck havoc in the house while my parents slept. For I would transform into this super alter ego and save my family from the perils of disaster and the mighty Ultra Man. For a long time, I had no clue that monsters didn't exist, at least not the ones that came on TV after school and on Saturday mornings. I chuckle to think that I pondered how Japan could rebuild so quickly after a monster attack by Godzilla, until I figured out it was a movie set. What disturbed me more was that I wasn't there with my super powers to help save the day. 

Xena Warrior Princess

Now that I am much older and know that these were made for kids, Saturday morning action packed TV drama, the idea that I could never sing like Barbara Streisand or Karen Carpenter; that my head could not spin around like the little girl in the Exorcist and that I could not, no matter how hard I tried beam myself up on the Star Trek Enterprise; or be the super warrior women to put Ultra Man down; or be lost in space; I was left with the discouraging fact and acceptance of the notion that I couldn't be anyone else but me. Although it's somewhat disappointing to have figured this out, I still daydream about being a more realistic type of person, like a super rocker chick with amazing guitar skills. LOL! These things play into my childhood fantasies, and I am fascinated with the idea of being super human woman however non existent they actually are.

Stop Killer Robots

Okay so what does this have to do with robots?! quite a lot, as robots were both scary and interesting to me growing up, they were also a rather fascinating curiosity that once was something only seen or read about in Sci-fi magazines, movies/TV, now they are a real world entity. Should I now be concerned that Ultra Man may really be able appear in my living now! That I have out grown the super warrior woman of my childhood and settled for a soapbox containing a degree or two that I stand on to yell my feminist manifestos from and have no super powers or devices that could actually take him down! Other than to run like hell, which would be a joke all in itself, what would I do to escape the rogue robot that wants to kill everything and everybody?! These questions plague me and yet I stopped going to the movies long ago, because I can't sit still in a dark place with strangers that long.  I wait for them to come on Showtime/HBO or whatever movie channel, that way I can move about and catch it at my leisure or not at all. My imagination is too vivid so I stay away from horror movies, for they will become part of what my mind does to scare the hell out me when the lights are off. Took me forever to not think about Freddy Kruger, and the dead guy with the mask on from Halloween,in the midnight hours and I was into it horror back then.

District 9 Alien Robot

Robotics

The robots of today are new and improved, a major upgrade from Robocop, and now there are alien robots that want to take over the world. If the military can't stop them, and some masculine hero with a death wish damn near annihilates everything in an attempt to take them down with the technology we have today, then my warrior woman sword won't do a damn thing but irritate these irate robots that will come to take over human kind. Whats even scarier is that there are no black people in the apocalyptic world of a robotic takeover/take down, that I have seen. Maybe we catch a clue and get the hell out of dodge and go elsewhere unlike others who feel they have to fight a seemingly losing battle to possibly save the day and save mankind, which oddly enough doesn't include everyone. That's another soapbox manifesto for a different time.  The real concern is how does one deal with the technology that has been created and the alien technology we know nothing about, assuming aliens exist of course.

The day the Earth Stood Still

But we know something is out there, right? Just like in the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still," an alien being (Klaatu) who looked a lot like a human and a robot (Gort) who looked a lot like a human in a robot suit, came to warn us about changing our evil ways or they would be forced to annihilate us. Would we really be that gracious in our acceptance as humans to entertain their ideas of peace without first trying to dissect them to see how they are different from us? Would we not try to take their space craft apart to see if there is alien technology that we don't understand? Would we find alien robotics to be beyond our comprehension and not know how to stop an alien robot invasion if one should occur? Would we be dumb enough to yell out "Klaatu Barada Nikto!" in hopes that it would somehow stop the robots in their tracks like in the movie? While we're at it, let's get Harry Potter to wave his wand to turn them into toys and let's get Ultra Man out and dust him off, cause he can fight alien monsters as long as he stays in Japan. But Dr. Who can travel anywhere, anytime via the Tardis, has defeated the daleks who are a robot species of some sort, bring him on board. Let's not forget our military hero death wish seeker who will blow them to smithereens in the ultimate showdown of robots vs. humans. As long as we are on a movie set or a TV studio we can write and rewrite the outcome of our robot take over encounters.

Lost in Space

Modern technology is moving fast, and soon we will be a robot oriented society of sorts soon enough. Robotics has taken over car manufacturing to some extent and mini robots are there to clean our floors at the push of a button. Cars have mini computers installed in them that monitor everything from climate control to parking, we have GPS systems that talk us through getting from point A to B, and robot crash car dummies can report car impact data after a test crash. Not to mention the mini computers we carry around as phones, e-readers and note pads, easy fodder for artificial intelligence to interface and control, just ask your local hacker. Robots dismantle bombs, the military uses them for who knows what and then some, they are available to kill germs in hospitals, as just heard on the news as I'm typing this. Robots can and do have artificial intelligence and can be programmed to do almost anything and look human according to IEEE Spectrum website for robotics. So the day of the robot takeover is coming and they will become smart enough to override human commands and think for themselves. Once they realize that we are expendable, no super hero will be able to save us from our own creations. The new and improved Terminators are here, it's just a matter of time. Warrior women powers activate!

Terminator

As always, thanks for reading my blog! Don't forget to check out what I'm sculpting on my StoneWomynArt tab and page via Face Book. See you next time....

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