Remembering When

 I gave some thought yesterday after renaming RLP-6 "Shwashbuckler."  Where did this come from?  Even today, if I'm watching a storm from the lanai and my wife comes out and it's not raining she might ask if it's been raining.  I might say that it's a lot of shwash with little buckle.  Where does this come from?  Back in the 70's when we were first married, we would watch older movies on TV.  But we might consult with the TV Guide and see what they wrote as a review.

So, there was this pirate movie on that looked interesting called "The Shwashbuckler," and we looked it up in the TV Guide.  After their review we chose not to watch it.  Why?  TV Guide said it had a lot of shwash but little buckle.  So, if it's stormy without rain I will comment to my wife that it has a lot of shwash but little buckle.  Hence, I've never forgotten that movie review, but I still have never watched the movie.

So, if RLP-6 is like Captain Black Original, it just seems fitting that a name like "Shwashbuckler" fits.  I'm not saying RLP-6 has a lot of shwash and no buckle.  I just like the word.  Shwashbuckler just rolls of the tongue.  It's still a good word.  

It is said of those who grew up in 60's still remember the 60's, we weren't there.  Which means tongue-in-cheek, everyone was stoned.  Except if you remember, you're square.  I keep saying that the best music comes from the 60's and early 70's, but a lot of bad movies were made too.  Apart from ABBA, disco killed the music.  The music died with disco.  Well, sort of.  Some good stuff was produced from the mid-70's on, but not like so many hits from the earlier era.  

I still watch videos that are nostalgia vids of the 60's.  Movies were a phenomenon of that era as much as music.  And the music was just different with the introduction of folk music and light rock.  I could name groups and people, but the hippies rebelled against the artificiality of the 50's where life was a cokkie-cutter world.  I wasn't a part of the hippie movement, but really the Vietnam War defined the hippies.  Pro-war was seen as the establishment and anti-war defined the hippies.   Movies were no different.

In that sense I'm still a hippie, but I never felt the need to protest the war.  But anything about the sixties is still relevant today it seems.  Because that period was so different.  But that is not to say I am somehow stuck in the 60's or 70's.  I have to admit that if I heard a song on the radio of today's top 40, I wouldn't know it.  I don't know one Taylor Swift song.  But ask me which of the Beatles' song made it to number one on the charts, I can at least remember a few.  TV Guide instructed the world, it seems, to watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

Some either credit or blame the Beatles for the upheaval of the sixties.  Everything was so peaceful and quiet until they came along.  That period of time created the Beatles and not the other way around.  But through it all was TV Guide giving advice on what to watch on TV.  We had four TV stations and no Internet.  Today's kids do their homework with a cell phone in hand, while being on their computers watching Netflex, and the TV is set watching a station on Hulu.  

And we were told to do our homework after McHale's Navy.  TV Guide was the TV Bible in every household.  So, I haven't forgotten about The Swashbuckler.  I might watch it sometime, if I can find it.  I'm smoking my pipe today with my Swashbuckler tobacco.  Only you, the reader, know what that is, but that name is about as meaningful as RPL-6.  Just say it's a non-chemical Captain Black Original, but Shwashbuckler just sounds better.  Thank you for your time and Peace to each one of you.

Dave