Posted on 01/13/2007 6:56:29 PM PST by tobyhill
I always loved Ted Nugent's description of Hippies.
"When they were getting stoned and talking about peace, I was shooting my guns and stealing their women."
I have always hated hippies even when I was a child.
I see they're still stupid. No suprise!
"Don't eat the pink Maalox!"
For the record,
I heard about hippies and chicks and miniskirts and dope and etc. ... while I was in Korea ... in the Army ... I was 18.
When I got out, in late '67 ... being from Boston ... I naturally landed in one of the "places to be."
At almost 20 ... just like all those crazy college days I missed (but you anti hippie folks know whom you are) .. I was turned loose in a candy store.
Sex, drugs, booze, party and best of all ... rejecting authority.
Now I'm 59 ... I can speak about Calypso Louie with some credibility because I was around for the Black Panthers.
I can speak with some knowledge about the futility of the peace movement because I watched the Beatles come ashore and go through their transformation(s) ... and yes ... shed a tear when John was murdered.
I can sleep at night because I was able to develope a thought process that is based on the reality of my ill spent youth and not on books, movies and (if this post is any indication) .. the negative comments of people that have no clue.
I heard Sinatra croon in the 4th grade, the Beatles and the Stones battle in the 60's and 70's, some $h!t called disco got wiped with boot scootin' Skynard and the like ... I turned off in '81 and discovered jazz in '90 or '91.
Did I ever smell? ... yep ... puked a few times and pissed my pants once .... I've opened doors in my brain that perhaps were never meant to be opened ... and I can caution folks today of many, many perils in this thing called life.
But I rankle when people slam what they know nothing of.
I don't reminisce, but I use what I've been, where I've been, What I've done and whom I've known to become the man that I am.
Any and every man and woman 60 and older have a set of memories and experiences that apparently younger people cannot begin to understand.
How sad ... their ability to imagine has been excised.
I wonder what the i-podders will be like when THEY'RE 60?
You chose.
Me too ... and isn't it ironic ... the absurd showmanship has become a common tactic.
I have said many times ... there was a mass, Satanic halucination back then ... pick your country, your city ... and you would see the same garb, the same anti-American involvement in Viet nam, EVERYONE smoking dope ... I didn't realize until many years later ... Satan came close ... very close to mankind.
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
Bwahahahahaha!
That's not US, though. ;o)
Today we are full into the 70's fashion - heavy eye-liner and that heroin OD look.
The Big Chill, IMHO, was terrible. It was about an idealistic but bankrupt generation leading to some of the worse excesses: materialism, corruption, drug abuse, etc. But what made me despise the movie was that in spite of the personal flaws these people were still considered "cool." They had their Utopian vision intact from the 60s and though that had quickly passed away in society, they never really left behind the unreal dream that united them, that made them and their counterculture movement a unique moment in American History. The same can be said of Martin Heidegger and his flirtation with Nazism which he never repudiated. He saw something grand and noble within the movement, the spirit of Being rising up within the German people. And he too longed for and revered that moment of German nationalism in the 1930s, in spite of the Holocaust and other atrocities committed by the German people. The point is that Romanticism is still very much alive. Coolness is still "in," especially in weak minded people. The hippie thing is still considered "cool" for the liberal mind set, regardless of age: whether you are 16 or 60. It's about rebellion & liberation and though the Big Chill shows us the tragic failure of a generation to implement their ideals, they still are beautiful losers to a lot of people.
LOLOLOL!
YOU can HAVE the high speed chase scenes!
I drive for FUN. ;o)
It's very good to see you.
"... You chose..."
Well, duh. You're the master of the obvious. You also seem to think that an 11-year-old has the strength of character and judgment of a grown man. That's one of the reasons why we try to provide our children with a foundation to protect them from bad influences in our culture. If you had actually read the post, you'd read that I admit to choosing the lifestyle presented at that San Fransisco gathering, in large part because of the constant message from media, peers, and even some members of my family that it was fun, fascinating, and good for you. I was not alone in this, either. I was a kid. By good fortune other people had gotten to me earlier and planted the seeds of good behavior and moral actions, too.
Yeah, I chose. Maybe when you get to church this morning you can deepen on concepts like transcendence, forgiveness, and spiritual growth.
Just so. I liked the movie precisely because it revealed the dirty little secret of the Movement. Maybe that wasn't what the director intended, but it sure as hell was what the movie did.
In particular, I thought it was interesting to see the movie in the light of an earlier film, "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit." All that righteous cr*p from the hippie generation about the sins of capitalism and the conformity of men in gray flannel suits. Yet in the end, those were the DECENT businessmen, who cared for family and society. The transformed hippies who went into business cared nothing for family or society. Since business was corrupt, in their view, they would be corrupt with the best of them.
That's why we now have CEOs making a thousand times as much as the peons working for them. Because when a hippie goes sour, he really goes sour. The idea that business can be ethical simply never enters his drug-burned mind.
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