Happy 40th anniversary (shameless plug)

I sat on my bed and listened to the big Hitachi transistor radio that my parents had bought me for Christmas 1968. An announcer at NASA ticked off the altitude as the craft drew closer to the moon, then a pause, and then: "Uh, Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed."

What better way to mark the 40 years that have passed since July 20, 1969, than to get your own copy of a fabulous retro science fiction novel that includes some key scenes and, um, earthshaking events on the moon itself?

Yep, it's a shameless plug for my first novel, The Imaginary Bomb. Ain't I a stinker?

In the beginning ...

When I started this blog, I thought that with a name like "Montag" and a subtitle like "and the clocks were striking thirteen," I should make a minimum commitment of posting every Monday at 1 p.m. It's not 1 p.m. yet - oh, sure it is. It's always the 1300 hour somewhere.

In my introductory note, I mentioned libertarian themes and lists of pop culture stuff, so I'd already set the parameters.

I find a good way to introduce myself to people is to give them lists ... my favorite books, favorite movies, favorite TV shows, favorite musicians.

Of course, if a mind is engaged those "favorites" tend to shift and change. Billions of people live here, and millions have made books, movies, TV shows and music. Funny, though, a person keeps going back to the old and familiar.

Radio once gave music lovers a way to explore new territory. Now I'm finding Internet streamers are where the adventure is. I recently found Folk Alley, and I have their stream going as I type this. Mark O'Connor is playing "October Impressions." Very tasty. Highly recommended.

No, I'm not reflecting on the beginning as a way of saying this is the end. Au contraire. It's a bit of a renewal. Glückicher Montag.

Greetings from 1966

I am standing in the cashier's line at a discount store. There is a new Beach Boys album in what today we think of as the impulse-buy rack. I'm excited — if the album contains that wild new song I'm hearing on the radio these days, I will gladly slam that thing down on the counter and pay the $2.74 for this thing.

But I'm disappointed. Sure, the album has "Sloop John B" and "Wouldn't It Be Nice" from last spring and summer, but there's no sign of "Good Vibrations." And the cover photo, of the band feeding a bunch of animals at a petting zoo, is pretty lame. No sale today.

I love the new song, but I haven't been a hard-core Beach Boys fan before this. They're my older brother's band. Maybe someday I'll buy this one, but it's not going to be high on my priority list unless they have a string of tunes like "Good Vibrations." It never occurs to me that it might be 35 years before I actually purchase and hear this album in its entirety and recognize how cool it is. My next album purchase will instead be "The Monkees." Not that there's anything wrong with that!

It occurred to me the other day that each and every one of us is a time machine, carrying sights and sounds and smells and tastes of a long-ago time on the biological hard drives that are our brains. From time to time we access that drive and do our best to communicate what it is we see, hear and smell in our storage device. That communication gap is the main problem: I can't just upload my first encounter with "Pet Sounds" to YouTube. But it remains one of those watershed moments nonetheless.

"It is one of the great jokes of existence. When people take the courage to journey into the center of their fear, they find — nothing. It was only many layers of fear, being afraid of itself."

— Peter McWilliams

what so proudly we hailed ...

... at the twilight's last gleaming.

When they turn off the Web, the man with pencil and paper will rule

Every so often I wander over to jomama's regular compilation about the end of civilization as we know it, for a reminder that the government is broke and eventually we will need to invent new ways to earn our daily bread — or return to old familiar ways.

Perhaps I'm naive or vaguely insane, but it almost sounds like fun.

The great relief of having sudden dancing

I needed this today.