Good morning and greetings, sunrise fans. Ah, what a short, strange trip life is. We never know what’s around the corner or why the grass is greener on the other side of the defense. It’s not that I’m feeling my age, because I really believe that 60 is the new 58. When I gaze into the mirror, I generally like what I see. But still, for someone like myself, being 60 years old still blows what’s left of my mind. Because let’s face it, I’m no spring chicken, although I am very tender and have a high ratio of white to dark meat.
Now I can’t say for sure how how long I’ll be around, because that’s the number only the Big Guy and my life coach knows. But with my father being 96 and still telling my mother how gorgeous she is, and mother, at 87 not hearing half of what he says, things look good for me penning these verbs of wisdom for a while. I believe it was Oscar Wilde or Oscar Madison who said, “The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life’s tragedy.” Well, that and my favorite police drama, ‘Southland,’ being cancelled on TNT. The show was critically acclaimed and more authentic than half the stuff on my resume.
So with my wordsmanship, it’s all about trying to create something semi-coherent with 26 of my favorite vowels and continents. After meditating and praying like in mantis in an effort to come up with a topic for this post, I came up with a blank slate. Normally, thoughts burn inside me like a urinary tract infection, but I just wasn’t my antibiotic self.
So nothing was really stirring inside except for my thoughts on the NBA playoffs, which I had been lucky enough to be spouting off about over the radio air waves for the past month. Unfortunately, in just a few weeks from now, I will go cold turkey, which I happen to like with a little cranberry sauce, as the the basketball playoffs will have ended. I will then be left with the question, what to do with all this free time? Except for a couple of nights when I decided to delight my wife and go NBA free, I have watched basketball every evening for six and a half months without winking or blinking.
As a result of I being engrossed watching players who earn more in a day than I do in a leap year shooting a sphere through a hoop, a lot of TV hours await me on my DVR platter. Now, you might be thinking,”Geoff, how can you spend so much time watching TV?” Life is supposed to be an adventure, to be spent zipping around the planet, not through TV commercials. I believe it was Marshall McLuhan’s cable installer who once said, “The great thing about television is that if something important happens anywhere in the world, day or night, you can always change the channel.”
I had a wonderful childhood, with memories of weekends at the beach, summer sleep away camp and almost being breast fed. I remember as a child integrating with my parents while watching black and white TV classics like “The Honeymooners’ and ‘Sergeant Bilko.’ And then there were the educational shows like ‘The Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello and the Bowery Boys.’ Laughing at their hijinks was pure unconditional joy, and now thanks to God and You Tube, I can replay many of those classic moments anytime I want. What a great society we live in, as when we’re not watching TV, we can sit in front of a computer screen and spend hours and hours being entertained by one disease Bill Gates and his foundation will never be able to cure.
I know that not everyone loves or bows to TV. Woody Allen said, “In Beverly Hills, they don’t throw their garbage away, they make it into television shows.” To some, “Theatre is life. Cinema is art. Television is furniture.” Steve or Frank Lloyd Wright called TV “chewing gum for the eyes.” Erma Bombeck chimed in with “If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead, but should be resuscitated if the third game goes overtime.”
Okay, so the boob tube is not a great motivator for children, teenagers or family pets. I believe it was Oprah’s strength coach who said, “TV. If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they’ll have with twenty-six. Open your child’s imagination. Read a book.” Now I love to read, which I often to while watching TV. It’s like killing two birds with one Sharon Stone.
Comedian Jason Love speaks for me when he says, “I could have been a doctor, but there were too many good shows on TV.” Yet many folks remain bitter about what the tube is doing to the youth and storm chasers of today. Author Dan Spencer is one of them. “On cable TV they have a weather channel-24 hours of weather. We had something like that where I grew up. We called it a window.” Hey, sometimes I need to know the rainfall numbers in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Keeping you ahead of the storm, Sunrise Santa Cruz.
So here’s the soft truth about the cold hard facts. We all have to make sacrifices. Ahead of me is a road full of network and cable dramas, crime shows and the new Hawaii Five-O. Many talented people in Hollywood have spent a lot of time writing and producing these shows, and as a full-blooded American, I want to be part of the television solution, not the problem. So when the NBA season winds to a halt, I’ll sit down and give these shows the proper respect and my full attention, which my wife knows is rarely a simple proposition. For us, TV is like a stroll through the redwoods or a drive along the coast, as it brings us together and it gives us a chance to talk about people who don’t exist and the situations they get themselves into. It’s pure magic with no commercials.
But occasionally, like in all relationships, conflicts arise, but these easily resolved. Or in the words of writer Donna Gephart, “Today, watching television often means fighting, violence and foul language-and that’s just deciding who holds the remote control.” Hey, all’s fair in love and cable.
Today’s photo adventure brings us back to the morning of January 25. This turned out to be a truly incredible date on my Selena Gomez calendar, as the twelve hours of daylight were spectacular in the skies above Monterey Bay. We’re talking about a gorgeous sunrise, followed by thunderhead clouds and topped off by a magnificent sunset that had photographers and shamans lining up like bowling pins along the coast.
I shot the first four photos from the field facing east at Lighthouse Point, capturing the sun as it rose over Steamers Lane. I then shifted my focus and aura to the west, as the fog was blowing in off a West Cliff Drive, and it made for a stunning contrast to what was happening in the eastern sky. All in all, it was a day of spectacular color and surprises that my camera and shadow will never forget.
To check out these photos, click on http://SunriseSantaCruz.com/blog
