When I was a young lad long ago in the bland, faceless, smugly prosperous America of the 1950s, I had an itch to be somewhere else. As I heard the expression put first on the TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, I would indulge myself regularly in a game called “Anywhere but Here.” The Germans have a beautiful word for it: Wanderlust.
But … Read the rest
Content advisory 18+ When I was a kid back in America and would watch the sit-coms on TV (which now leads me to reflect “Did I HAVE a life?”), I was always struck by the laughter that would erupt in the background every time someone said something that was supposed to be funny. Didn’t matter if it actually WAS funny — the knee-slapping merry-makers in the television studio (“coming to … Read the rest
Third part. The second part is here. First part is here.
In the spring of 1968, a 'counter-culture' rock musical hit the Broadway stage. It was called "Hair" and was a celebration of the bohemian live-style and anti-war idealism of a generation of young Americans known as "Hippies." Along with the famous gathering on a spread of farmland in New York state which has come down to us as 'Woodstock', … Read the rest
