June was an especially brutal month for me personally and for our national entertainment collective.  We lost the lovely Farrah Fawcett,  long-time Tonight Show sidekick Ed McMahon, annoying TV pitchman Billy Mays (now we know why he was so hyped all the time – LOL), actor David Carradine (under rather strange sexual circumstances), actor from my youth Gale Storm, and who doesn’t remember where they were when the news of Michael Jackson’s death came!  Earlier in 2009 we lost the brilliant and personable Jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard.  I remember interviewing him at the Blue Note in New York City back in 1994; a real fun and cool guy!  June was also the beginning of the end of my cozy relationship with the girl from Eastern Europanima” for reasons I may never know which equaled no “closure”, and it seems more personal dominoes began to fall thereafter culminating in a total financial collapse of my old family (Mother), betrayal (younger sister) amongst my part-time suicidal thoughts and languishing in love’s limbo. Sounds almost like an episode of “Nip/Tuck” or the old knots Landing!

Within and against that backdrop was a spiritual revival and epiphany of sorts combined with people tithing to help me (see “the three mysterious boxes” blog earlier).  Needlesstosay, I am not sorry to see the double-oh-nine in the rear-view mirror, and have been so pre-occupied with retaining my sanity and intelligence that I didn’t realize until over the Christmas weekend that this is the end of  the decade of the “00s”  and beginning of the ‘teens” if you will.  It is cause for cautious optimism, I suppose.

I have written a letter to President Obama about some concerns I have.  It has been a while since I wrote to a President, having last done it as a youthful, idealistic boy – I think it was to President Johnson about Vietnam.  Just him being there has partially rekindled that utopian ember, meaning that I guess anything is possible if you hand in here long enough.  To those though, who would tell me that “money isn’t everything” – my answer is that so far as I can see…yes it IS!  From love to laughter and the ability to keep a roof over your head and a happy song in your heart it is!

I don’t make New Year resolutions, only goals that often fall short mainly because they depend too much upon the cooperation of other people. How about a New Year’s wish?  OK: I wish for a “system restore” be performed on my life.  I now know that the best choice in the short-term is to live days of our lives one episode at a time…ahh, even that is no consolation;”videotape at eleven”.

Pickhit: another overused meaningless phrase: “Hey you gotta do whatcha gotta do…” Usually said in response to a plea for honest advice.  Now there’s a plan! (sarcastic)

pickhit: Also two people I grew up respecting from the news and political area whose voices will and are already missed: “Uncle” Walter Cronkite of the original CBS Evening News, and Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy who overcame scandal and became the lion of the Legislators in Washington, D.C. – Maximum respect.