BOOMERS ANONYMOUS -- Care or Quit?

It's Memorial Day 2025 . Back in 1988, my future wife agreed to take a trip with me to San Diego to visit the parents. We were living in Los Angeles at the time. That Memorial Day weekend trip started it all, for us. The rest is history. I had to really grind to learn something new here. The the second solo and outro to this song were not part of the original sheet music, so I had to watch YT videos to learn it.   It's not perfect, but it's the real deal. Bruce Hornsby was emphatic about the fact that he wanted to convey "a sense of place" in this song. He grew up in the Williamsburg, VA area.  Who would have thought that a jazz infused, piano-based, rock song about civil rights in the Reagan era would become such a classic? Anyway, I worked pretty hard to get this one. And here's the good news . . . I didn't sing.  © 2025 by Roy B. Santonil

Happy Easter . Happy 420. Happy Birthday . "He is not here." © 2025 by Roy B. Santonil

This album has haunted me since my freshman year, when I played the crap out of this album in my dorm room.  It was recorded in the artist's home studio, and was the prequel to his biggest commercial success "Harvest." which had "Old Man," the song I covered here . "After The Gold Rush" has a strong country influence, and one of the tracks,"Southern Man," was the basis for the line from the Lynyrd Skynyrd song, "Well I hope Neil Young will remember, a Southern Man don't need him around, anyhow."  SPOILER ALERT: I've always thought this song needed another verse, so I added one, with a resolution in the final chorus. Hope you like it. © 2025 Roy B. Santonil

Next up on the Boomer Hit Parade comes from the land down under. "Cargo" was the 1983 release from the Australian band "Men at Work." There are some nice cover versions on You Tube. I think the best is this one by Lazlo Bean , in which the song's writer, Colin Hay, makes a cameo appearance.  The song gained a new generation of fans when Colin appeared on the hit TV comedy "Scrubs," playing this song over several scenes. This was a second upload because I had to fix the lyrics as follows:  I worry "over" situations I know will be alright, not "about" those situations. Ghosts appear "and" fade away, not "then" fade away. Insomnia sucks, but sometimes, it just makes you work harder. This one is dedicated to all my jamming buddies through the years: Ann and Andy, Max, Mark, Mike, Chris, Pam, Blake, Rocco, Ross, and Virgil. I will never forget you guys. I did what I could with what I had.   © 2025 Roy B. Santonil

This one was harder to produce than the previous three music videos, and in my opinion, it sucks. The video editor kept crashing, and just like the previous video, "Old Man," I had to restart after losing hours of work. It's also cringey. But I'm trying. Funny thing is, I'm nowhere near the boss battle in my music journey. Anyway, this song is dedicated to all the girls I've loved and will love ... Can't you kids see us boomers also want to stop hate ... except for evil.  It's OK to hate what is evil. In the end, True Love conquers all. © 2025 Roy B. Santonil

If you know, you know.  © 2025 Roy B. Santonil

So I did it. Here's the full cover version of the song, with both parts. [ These Days ] includes me trying to sing, as well as the lyrics Also, the YouTube channel will be under a pseudonym >>> Clarence Quemuel -- long story. Don't be cruel.   YouTube is hassling me about copyrights and whatnot. We'll see how long this lasts.  © 2025 Roy B. Santonill

The subject is angels. This is one you can approach from different --- angles. I do not want to be obtuse, so let me say: "It's Time." My musical journey has arrived at 2025 with a 50-year backlog of lyrical stress relief, and finally, I'm happy to share it with you, reader, in this stream of consciousness social medium.  I picked this as a first foray into YouTubery because, well, it's fairly simple to play, and more importantly there are no words! It may get worse if I start to sing, but it also might get better. It took a couple dozen takes, and there's still a minor flaw at the end of the piece, but that's not important. Basically, I needed to learn how to properly edit videos. I used OpenShot software, and recorded on my Samsung Note 23 Phone. It's only a first effort and we'll see how this journey evolves. Thanks in advance for (ahem) Liking, Sharing, and Subscribing.  Oh, and also, NEVER GIVE UP . Happy Birthday and Happy Valentines Day to ...

I like words. But words don't like me. The more I try and use them, the more they stick around, and the more they haunt me for using them. Using the wrong words can get you in trouble. Sometimes, words make ME laugh. Sometimes, words make OTHER PEOPLE laugh. And sometimes, words make other people BIG MAD. The internet is a big place. It is bigger than I imagined when I first connected to it with an IBM clone , running MS-DOS on a x286 CPU through a 14.4K baud dail-up modem in 1994. Back then, we lived out of a two-bedroom apartment, and I worked graveyard shifts to help raise our newborn baby girl. My my, hey hey. It is the best of times. It is the wierdest of times. It is time to communicate on another level because words to not do justice to explain reality. Justice seeks  --- its own resolution. Justice pays  --- no heed to the foibles of human desire.  What is the point?  I haven't posted since before what's-his-name was inaugurated to preside over the disso...

OPENING SCENE: A patient is lying unconscious in a hospital ICU. The camera pans down to follow the plastic tubing from his catheter, flowing and bubbling bodiliy fluids into a plastic tank. DR.HOUSE: "The drug addict . . . is peeing blood." CUT SCENE: A med school class where Dr. House is lecturing. He looks at a handful of yellow crayons, chooses one and begins coloring in a coloring book. DR.HOUSE: "How do they teach you to tell someone that they're dying?" (Blank looks from students wearing white coats.)   DR.HOUSE: "It's kinda like teaching architects how to explain why their building fell down." (Continues coloring book) "Do you role play at stuff?" STUDENT: "Yeah. One of us gives the bad news, and one of us gets the bad news." DR.HOUSE: "What do you have to do to get an A in - You're Dying 101? Do they grade you on gentleness and supportiveness? Is there a scale for measuring compassion?" (Changes crayons) ...

Start here . OK, this is a tough one. Looks like we made it.  5 of 5, or should I joke?  6 - 3. No joke. In this Series Finale of Dobbs for Dummies, we talk about "RESPECT FOR THE COURT," and the impact that this decision has had and will have on American governmental institutions, law, and civil discourse. Not to mention millions of lives in utero . As an officer of the court, I am essentially ogligated to be honest, transparent, and fair to everyone involved in this legal debate. It is settled for now, and I say that presuming we maintain a constitutional republic and not surrender to barbarism. Perhaps we should just end it here , and going forward each of us can just figure shit out on our own. Thanks, Dad . © 2024 Roy B. Santonil

"The internet never forgets."   But, it could die.     Herein below (stupid lawyers) is what I could scrape from the interwebs, the remains of my written, posted work from blog posts over the last, oh, say, 15 years.  I will always contend that much deep thought went into these rants. Luckily, some of my thoughts have been captured, successfully. These thoughts, framed by bits of time, are fueled by one American citizen's concern -- I tried to serve as a voice, an advocate, for ourselves and our posterity.   With my mother-in-law's funeral service coming next week, what I can honestly say is that I have done and what I have done here to express, despite the degrees of separation the internet creates, what I know to be true, good, consistent, and above all, based in Scripture.   In the words of Nathaniel Benchley, "Only Earth and Sky Last Forever."   I'm not trying to out-perform "mean Tweets." The Divine Comedy keeps me laughing. With all our y...

Hello friends, and welcome back .  I pretty much stopped writing since January. When your precious, charming, lovely, smart, witty daughter gets married and buys a house, you had better be there to help them make transition, or you have no purpose in life. I also got a part-time job at my true habitat, a local municipal golf course, so 2023 has been a bad year for my blogging. Still, in the past year, I have managed to cross off a couple of items on my musical bucket list, and learned the guitar solos to Hotel California and Kid Charlemagne .  Maybe it's time to start posting videos? Our legal journey can be summarized, so far, as follows: the Dobbs decision is a resultant of two primary vectors. These vectors are moral force and social experience .  Applied through Reason during the course of Time, our common law system arrived in 2022 at a place where logic could lead, where apolitical imperatives could survive, a place where -- after 50 years in the jurisprudenti...

Play it safe. A brief review --  Part 1. Conscience is annoying.  Jiminy Cricket represented that part of an incomplete persona, the part that relentlessly tweaks our moral compass. He irritates our inchoate spirits, urging us, never stopping until that moment you take a chance, opening your heart to being "real." Conscience is self-knowledge. With it, you objectify yourself, and you recognize the possibility that, " Hey, maybe I can expend some energy thinking a thought, maybe two, maybe more - discerning whether certain propositions, certain thoughts, words, and actions are inherently right - or wrong. " Part 2. Culture , on the other hand, is one of the primary exogenous forces that shapes the thoughts, feelings, and to be sure, significant opinions affecting humanity. It lends credence to the rules under which we choose to live.   To minimize the impact of art, music, literature, architecture, animation, language, sports, etc., on human experience, will lead i...

Start here . Welcome back, and thanks for tuning in.  To review Part 1 ( link ), you may recall it ended with a bit of time travel. You were led to an obscure Commentary written 38 years ago in a law school newspaper. The writer spoke from the past about how Roe v. Wade had weak, and more likely non-existent, constitutional underpinnings. He asserted that Conscience is the true final arbiter of moral questions that society attempts to answer through legal sophistry. That writer has been doing honest homework on those issues, sustained by a steady diet of locusts and honey, so plentiful in the wilderness of legal unemployment.  Such is the price for honest legal opinion.  Such is the price for sticking to your guns. But today, it is, finally, water under the bridge.  The river has run its course. As Thomas Paine put it, "Time Make More Converts Than Reason." Fortunately, you have not been triggered by my past comments enough to have me assassinated, just because I t...

Start here . I'll admit it. Three months is really too long of a break between blog posts.  Or has it been only two? It feels like a lot more than a trimester has passed since we last ventured into these post-Muskian Twitter Senior Citizen Cyber-rants. And another thing, why "a trimester?" It just seems so random.  Nothing is random. Hello Boomers and friends of boomers. ( Technically, I am NOT a boomer, but that is another issue for another time .) It's A Mestery Do you remember when trimesters were only a quarter? (Shutup, Dad) . On this day in 1973, legal use of the term "trimester" began costing us innocent lives, silenced hearts, and tiny ripped limbs. Until last summer's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Center for Reproductive Health 597 U.S. ___(2022) , the number of human embryos aborted surpassed 63 million.   63,000,000 is a lot of dead babies.  : ( sad face They coined that word -- trimester -- to serve as the skele...