Second-hand thoughts and stale beer

Didn't realize until this evening- while I've been trying to drink up my old Yuengling stash from the winter- that I've let this blog go fallow for the past six weeks or so- on both platforms- Have been a lot busier than I thought I'd be this summer- in terms of work and other facets of my life- Really expected another summer where I'd be sitting around using my vacation time and lamenting my lack of work- but have instead gotten up early more mornings this summer since my bout with two sessions of summer school 25 years ago- was to the point I was surprised the sun hasn't been coming up as early the last few days as it was a month or so ago- have to put a light on when I bust my ass out of bed at 5 AM now

Anyhow- no proclamations about blogging more frequently or whatever this time- It's like when I get my hair cut- Always say I'll be back at the barber shop in less than 4 months or so- and the proprietor wishes me a happy-whatever-holiday is in 6 months on the way out

-A couple days ago being the 32nd anniversary of Elvis Presley's death (16 August 1977) seems a good time to discuss the still-lingering coverage of Michael Jackson's departure a couple months ago- saw the stuff today (18 August) about possible wrongful-death lawsuits and other stuff

The most ridiculous angle of the post-death Jackson coverage was the release of the ill-fated Pepsi commercial shoot from January 1984 where MJ was burned on top of his dome- the seeming demarcation line between Jackson merely being the wildly successful recording star and the dawning of his public odd period and diminishing returns as a recording artist- yes, I'm including "Bad" in the diminished period ouevre for him

Anyhow- was treated as "Breaking News" on a lot of outlets- particularly Boston's NBC station-which features any "Caught on Camera" video from Florida and hot weather in August as such- and CNN Headline News- which has become a weird amalgam of Robin Meade, Nancy Grace and Clark Howard on the weekends- makes me miss the days of the repeated-every-half-hour newscasts and Chuck Roberts' square news delivery

Made me think of what would have constituted "Breaking News" for me at time of MJ's hair fire as 39-year-old guy watching crap "King of Pop"coverage- for me would have been that I was upset about Tom Seaver being claimed from the Mets by the White Sox and was on way to failing two classes during my freshman year of high school and a summer spent going to school every morning

-Have no idea how Jeremy Piven's latest film "The Goods" ended up doing at the box office this past weekend- but I do know the first thought I had in my mind when I saw the ads- another late-70's/ early-80's ripoff starring Piven- "PCU" (a film which is truly enjoyable on a different level) being somehat derivative of "Animal House" and "The Goods" being a strikingly/ seemingly similar tribute to Kurt Russell's 1980 film "Used Cars"

-Working in downtown Boston a stretch this summer- forgot how absolute the tourist experience is around the Common, Cheers, Old South Church, et al- since the last summer I lived near the other side of it on Beacon Street in 1993- there must be hundreds of vacation photos of me behind groups of tourists in the summers of 1992 and '93 where I was a long-haired lunkhead, stalking down the street, scowling and merely trying to get the paper at Christy's or get to the Red Line to go to Cambridge- weird to even re-visit that area on a summer Saturday- to merely go to Dunkie's and encounter torists of every stripe