Survivors débuted on BBC, 16 April 1975, seven months before I moved from England to the US. I was nine, almost 10; my parents wouldn’t allow me to watch.
I remember catching a sneak peek, somehow—perhaps a babysitter was lax in her duties . . . Needless to say, it scared the shit out of me.
It’s back, re-imagined for the oughts; I assume it’ll eventually find its way on BBC America.
Who doesn’t love a good apocalypse?
There’ll never be days like that again . . .
Kenneth P. Johnson, who as editor of The Dallas Times Herald in the 1970s and ’80s transformed it into one of the most respected newspapers in the nation while fighting a spirited but ultimately losing old-fashioned newspaper war with The Dallas Morning News, died Sunday in Dallas. He was 74.
Johnson left the Herald in ’83, the year I graduated high school. I started at the Herald in ’87, the year I dropped out of university. I worked at the paper right up to the final edition, 9 December 1991. The end of my brief career in journalism.
Until I took up full-time fiction writing, the job at the Herald was the only one that gave me any satisfaction. I’ve been blessed; there are very few people who can say that even after a lifetime of jobs.
Since it looks as if we’re heading straight back to ’76, perhaps a return to the fabulous days of prog-rock is also in the cards.
Self-indulgent. Mad. Brilliant. Unfathomable. Prog-rock at its most bonkers. It’s all of those things, but most of all, it’s absolutely bloody brilliant.
I fear this is but a dream: Out shopping with The Wife on Saturday I watched a smiling 14-year-old kid carry a Guitar Hero box out of the store. I felt very sad for him as I recalled from 1979 far more magnificent smiles on the faces of 14-year-old kids walking out of Manny’s carrying their first real guitars, returning to the Connecticut suburbs to jam in parents’ basements with friends, heads filled with very real dreams that if they practised long and hard enough they might become rock stars like their vinyl heroes, those whom they (foolishly) worshipped in poster-decked bedrooms every day after school.
Most never became rock stars, but they learned to play, some of them very well, and in retrospect that was as good as stardom. In many ways, it was better.
Thirty-three years ago today my family landed in Miami, FL, en route to South Pasadena, CA, for what was supposed to be a six-month stay before returning home to England. Two weeks later my father was informed our stay was indefinite.
News from 1975:
Albums released in 1975:
Literature’s stars of 1975:
Madeleines? Not in California, dude! À la Recherche du Taco Bell:
But if my never-ending search for the One True Taco is just another manifestation of the Anglo obsession with Mexico the exotic, the earthy, the primitive, the unimpeachably Authentic (think of the gabacha feminist sanctification of Frida Kahlo as Our Lady of the Unibrow), it may mask a gnawing anxiety: the pervasive fear that reality is morphing into virtual reality—that Authenticity is just a philosophical mirage in the Desert of the Real, to use the philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s term for the media-warped, culturally remixed world we live in. It’s a world where tortilla consumption is up in the States but down in Mexico, and where, as the gabacho popularizer of Mexican cuisine Rick Bayless told a reporter for the Associated Press, “they’ve started opening Taco Bells in Mexico now and people consider it American food.” He added, “A friend of mine in a Mexican city said to me, ‘You’ve got to taste this dish, this American dish. We’ve got it all over the place in Mexico now. It’s nachos.’ ”
Perhaps it’s because I spent the first sixteen years of my life moving that I have no Proustian dish attached to memory. I’m grateful for that.
The death of the Famous Five, as reported by The Age of Uncertainty:
It is rather sad that the rights to some of our best-loved children’s books, including The Snowman, Paddington Bear and Beatrix Potter are in the possession of people who, in addition to making dull, self-important statements like [‘Already-robust brand portfolio’] . . . are able to allow a much-loved series of adventure stories to be transformed into a commodity.
I’m so glad I’m not a kid.
My old college roommate, Jo, chunneled in from England today; haven’t seen him for over five years . . . funnily enough that was in France, too . . . Provence 2003. Having a great time catching up with a dear old friend who’s done bloody well for himself . . .
Spent part of the afternoon at La Cloche des Halles and then at Willi’s Wine Bar before a very lovely meal at La Ferrandaise. Jo and I had the candied lamb shoulder which was meltingly tender and properly gamey; The Wife had langoustines with coco beans; but the veal for two (shared by the table next to us) looked like the real winner. A monumental cut of beautifully roasted veal that had The Wife and I sharing sharing smiles with the lucky couple. No such luck . . .
Came back home and logged in to see that England could only manage two goals against lowly Andorra. Once again, I’m so proud to be English.