Which way the scales?

Looking for an escape.  Making one, on occasion, but always looking.  On that occasion, those escapes can last years. But over the 15 years of the Gold, as I think about life and what's been shared, that concept kept coming into my mind.  It could be read as "why can't you be happy with what you have?"  Well, there is enough of that already, no?  Isn't that day to day life?  

"Let's Do a Jacuzzi!"

The very people who used this setting as one for business deals, not deals of another sort, were still very much in charge at the beginning of this blog.  Their stories were simply endless gold deliveries, and most...MOST told them sheepishly.  Well, would you be proud of the fact that you were an hour late to get your wife at LAX because you just got some daffy dust and you wanted that gone before you got her?  And then when you got there she could tell you were "full of ideas" and there, in front of a soon to be completed Tom Bradley Terminal she calls you out and your high vanishes and you say it has to end, right then and there.  

That's a sad ending, but it's an ending that means that person could talk to you, in that hallway, in 2005.  Tread carefully, because you don't want to oversell and leave them wondering why life isn't the same.  In many ways, they survived.  Hell, they're still there, and in the end, decades later, you want to be that person telling the youth of America about shit that went down in your youth that you regret, sure, but the story is so nutty that it's an easy go-to for entertainment of "the old days."

But...there are others that vanished and now, 15 years later, even more are gone.  What seemed as relatively recent history then is even more far gone now...if it seemed like another world 15 years ago, what is it now?  Can you blame anyone if, reading it now, it starts to read like fiction?  Whoever is left will readily assure you it was all very real.  Unfortunately, fewer and fewer are around to do so. 

No, it was a comeback

It's not all depression around here...well, I mean, there ARE the weekends where some sort of facsimile of college football is still presented.  And you KNOW it warmed my heart completely to see CBS, carrying coast to coast, the afternoon football game of Appalachian State against Marshall.  This is how it could be: these schools mixed in with their usual SEC games.  I wanted the nation to know this.  Accept this, then embrace it.  Well, the results are in and needless to say that was not the case.  Look, you can't help people who don't want help, and I'm sure there are some overfed yokels out there who took one look at that game, thought it was Canadian football, and put in a tape of an old fishing show.  

Earlier in the day, however, Navy made quite the comeback: against Tulane, down 24-0 at halftime, they stormed back and won on the last play of the game.  Announcer Mark Jones yelped that it was the largest comeback in school history.  The Midshipmen were euphoric.  And then Mark decided to quote a lyric from LL Cool J from 30 years ago (to show he's hip to the youth of today).  It was the first lyric to "Mama Said Knock You Out" and even if you'd never heard the song in your life, you'd realize he was 100% wrong because what just occurred was exactly that: a comeback.  The same one that, seconds before, he was shouting about.  It appears the lesson will be learned, again, that announcers have shelf lives, some longer than others, and his appears to be done.  It was a good run.

The fall of Fall

I mentioned in my first Two Decades post back in January that the evolution of the "New Fall Season" has gradually tumbled in importance.  Year after year it was so...a decline that I thought last year's breathless advertising was quaint.  Like a long ignored chain store that was once popular: customers walk by, seeing big banners for sales of new products, and turn to one another and talk about their last visit.  "Wow, how long has it been?  Man, we used to go in there all the time.  Remember that?"

Well, now there isn't one, and the very topic which was first brought up 20 years ago, that "there is no season anymore" - a topic that started with Survivor and pushed beyond with all other viewing sources, now here we are.  There are shows, you watch them now, or later, or a while after that.  There's more than ever...and that's just the first layer.

It's hard to say that it will ever return, or at least not to what it was, say 5-10 years ago, because weeks become months and months are years.  It seems that way now; fuck if I know why.  To that point, when I looked for my first post on Pacific Gold, the title was "A Hope For Tomorrow during Maddening Frustration."  I can pinpoint just what it was I was referring to, but while the problem seemed large at the time, what did I know?  If I look at this time of year over the last 15 years, roughly 1/3rd of the time I'd consider what I was going though the same thing - I was in maddening frustration, but there was hope for tomorrow in some way.  Was it really not that big a deal, or was it and I didn't let it get to me?  Maybe I was too much of a blithe spirit to realize my surroundings.  Maybe...

Nobody said that life would be easy, nor would it be easy finding a shorter rope.  Now, as then, we press on like Farmer John ham.