The Graduate

I got to thinking about Betty's cousin Ron who lives just south of San Francisco. He was and still is really big on movies. I remember him purchasing video laser discs the last time we were down there, back in the early 90s. This was before DVDs were common (in existence?).

His guest bedroom was wall to wall books, tapes, and videos. He's pretty conservative in all other respects: his Pioneer stereo receiver was circa 1979, the speakers were a set of Bose 901s. Audiophiles will either nod or shake their heads at the mention of these classic reflecting speakers. I've learned from my brother in-law that only recently did he spring for a large screen TV, sans the home theater element—the sound from the TV speakers serve him fine.

One of his favourite movies is The Graduate. He keeps pointing out the scene in which Dustin Hoffman drives in the wrong direction on the top deck of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge while en route to Berkeley, cinematic artistic licence taken by the director so that the skyline can appear in the background [I've just confirmed this by Googling to here]. I can understand why it's one of his faves. Ron was the same age as Benjamin, the character played by Hoffman, and he attended Berkeley. A time and a place.

But I can never feel that way about this movie. Nor can anyone younger than me be sentimental about the music I grew up with. I've had so many "A-ha!" moments listening to the 70s music stations (principally on XM, sometimes on Sirius) that garner sorry looks from the younger people around me, the same look I would give somebody born in the 50s singing along to their 60s music, music that for me has always been and will continue to be, but always devoid of any personal attachment, too late to be incorporated into a young, plastic mind at the brink of making sense of the world.

Albert Hammond singing It Nevers Rains In Southern California, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Alone Again, Naturally; Terry Jacks, Seasons in the Sun; Slade, Run Runaway; Mac Davis, Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose, Argent, My Girl Bill, even tunes forgotten and best left that way—The Streak, Disco Duck; all these have a place and time. A small town. Tenth Avenue. Bell bottoms; high school; loneliness; music plucked from the waves over the Strait of Georgia, signals from a distant and future Vancouver.

I'm getting on in my years. The 80s stations are fast becoming sentimental favourites as well...