The Longest Day of the Year

Today is the longest day of the year, and the hottest.  They predicted this heatwave a whole week in advance and rightly predicted yesterday and today would set records. The summer solistis point and the exact moment of the full moon are hours from each other.  They call this the “Strawberry Moon” but it’s also called the ‘Honey Moon’ and the “Rose Moon”.   Great day for an arson at the old mental asylum.  Shawn is interviewing Abigail about what she remembers about the cause of the fire but only to realize she is non compus mentus and remembers her dead husband trying to rescue her.  Meanwhile Parker hasn’t suddenly turned eighteen like all the other kids they’ve had on the show.  He’s still a little boy.  Clowie hasn’t yet informed Nicole that Demas is alive and in her apartment.  In the news there was a rumor that Bernie Sanders owes the DNC a lot of money but I can’t find out for what.  Trump fired his campaign manager, Cory Luendauski, or whatever.  Hopefully the replacement will be better.  Frangela this morning said that Donald Trump is a perfect specimine of the composite worst humanity has to offer.  Apple has announced that he won’t sponsor the Republican convention in Cleveland no doubt because of their LGBT stance being likely.  They decided to delete Omar Metin’s pledge to ISIS, which was spoken in Arabic in the phone call transcript.  The justification for it is they don’t want to give Islam any more praise.  The US Senate rejects gun control bids but “new compromises are sought”.  Meanwhile the Supreme Court says that banning some semi-automatic rifles are OK.  Fifty years ago this month “Dark Shadows” began as a long running soap opera right before "Where the Action Is".  I only watched it occasionally.  This summer fifty years ago was when Grandma bought her red Dodge Charger, and Tim only sold it a few weeks ago and says that he doesn’t miss it.  It’s a family icon.  And it was fifty years ago this summer that “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf” came out, which plumed new horizons in sintilating dialog.  Music was just becoming drug oriented.  “We’ve Been Running Around” by the Jefferson Airplane was banned because it has the line “The nights I’ve spent with you have been fantastic trips”, with the LSD allusion.  We had “Psychotic Reaction” later in the summer.  “Sunshine Superman” was another pioneer album by Donavin, a classic, with “Mellow Yellow” kicking off the smoking banana craze later in the year.  “The Spirit of 67” was an album title that jumped the gun by Paul Revere and the Raiders”.  And there was "Eight Miles High" a pioneer album by the Byrds. “Paint It Black” and “Over, Under, Sideways Down” were two more psychedelic songs making the charts.  The photo is of the Beatles fifty years ago doing their last live TV show ever. The Beatles ran into trouble with the butcher block cover of “Yesterday and Today” and got in trouble with Marcos touring the Philipines.  Meanwhile I was struggling with quadratic equations in summer school at Kennedy. You could buy a sixteen ounce bottle of Royal Crown cola for sixteen cents including the returnable glass bottle.  Now the news is that shopping malls are pase and it’s no longer a good place to pick up girls.  That was true with the Anaheim Mall in 1992 just before they closed down the place entirely.  Now that’s happening all over the country even in ‘Classic malls”.  I went out and smoked these fat, stubby white rollie butts that burn quickly and irregularly and are hard to smoke because they weren’t rolled well.  Any breeze you feel is like the hot blast of a dryer.  We were limited to one glass of iced tea from Rico in the courtyard because he had to take the cart to the Senior Topics class.  Fifty years ago your dollar went a lot further.  You could buy a restaurant dinner out for a buck fifty and cigarettes cost only 35 cents, or even less.  You don’t see either cigarette machines or phone booths any more.  And now many mail boxes have you seen on the street lately.  Much fewer than just twenty years ago.  I guess this is important if you have your young grandchildren asking “Gramps, tell us what it was like in the old days”.  This was the first year 1966 – 1967 when for the first time the entire evening’s line-up featured shows in color.  Maybe the Beatles went bye-bye for months on end (too many people burning their albums in the south) but now you had the Monkees to take their place in television.  The Beatles stopped touring and stopped appearing on TV variety shows. 

The Cleveland Cavileers defeated the GS Warriors in game seven 93 to 89 to win the NBA championship.  I missed the award presentation because I was out looking for cigarettes.  Bill seemed to be boycotting the game or something.  It was still hot outside at a quarter to eight, which was the last time I was outside because the AC worked so well in here and the AC actually was still going on after I went to bed which was admittedly early.  I came back in and Lebran James was holding his MVP award.   It was a see-saw score and they said the score was tied eleven times and perhaps more during the game.  I turned on the game right at six and they were getting ready to perform the National Anthem.  The Golden State crowd was loud and in evidence the entire game.  I haven’t heard from anybody from the Federation, where I presume at least Bones was all gung ho that the Cavileers had won.  It was the first national championship in any sport for Cleveland since the Browns won the NFL championship in 1964.  The game ended perhaps twenty to eight.  After this I had some program on KNXT but I dozed off before nine and went to bed.  The covers seem to come off the bare mattress.  The mattress has needed replacing since I got it because it’s always been rock hard, and now it has holes in it.

I got medication from Tom and the line was about half way to the front door.  I woke before five thirty and was restless.  I took a cooler shower than usual but it wasn’t straight cold.  I had problems trying to get a cigarette but there were some of those white rollie butts at the other table to smoke.  I turned on Francis and Angela and they are holding down the fort for Stephanie this week while Stephanie was out bike riding at a hundred miles a stretch.  I’m on too much medication to trust myself riding a bike, certainly any distance.  I am out of money, of course.  Thom Hartman doesn’t speak French and worries whether the French people hold it against him for that.  We had oatmeal for breakfast followed by an omelet and half an English muffin with the jelly already on it.  I got two cups of black coffee from Rico, which I needed because at times I’m restless and tired at the same time.  I got my medication from Ida and that was a short line.  Glen was wearing a jacket of all things, and Phyllis Green was wearing a sweatshirt.  Already at a quarter to eight it showed signs of getting really hot.

I called Mom after breakfast.  I was worried I didn’t remember her phone number.  I need to write it down just in case I have a mental lapse.  Judy had a stroke on Saturday and is in St Jude’s hospital in Fullerton.  This is where Dad was when he had his ulcer.  I remember it was fifty years ago yesterday on a Sunday (Father’s Day) when Dad was out after four weeks in the hospital.  As I recall it was a hot day and we went to the beach and Dad picked us up or something. Judy was also diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease as of a few weeks ago but Paul was keeping that news from us.  This would impact her GNLD business because Judy never tires of informing us of all the government forms she has to fill out by law.  Paul took off work to be with Judy, which makes the whole thing sound pretty serious.  I assume he didn’t want to give out any tentative or incorrect information.  I’m hoping of course to speak with Paul directly.  I was curious how Mom is faring under this extreme heat.  I looked in Google News and they said it was predicted to be 107 degrees but that was in La Canada.  Tomorrow they are predicting 91 for La Canada, which should make it a lot cooler here.  Now they are talking about all of the inbreeding of European Royalty.  So there is a lot of hemophilia and insanity rampant.  Thom Hartman wants us to think about white, rich, male privilege and how out of touch the rich are with the rest of us.  Mom still gets ice water delivered more than once a day and I keep reminding Mom to drink water.  I told her about Bill’s doctor problems.