A Letter to Hazey

Hazey, I want to tell you about the bright side.

I know how you loved your camera and the fun we had when we had our Yashicas. We don't have to use film for our cameras anymore. We can shoot as many frames as we want whenever we want. After we get done shooting, we can process them ourselves without darkrooms and enlargers. We can crop them. We can adjust their tones. We can send 'em to anybody we want and the person to whom we're sending them will get them immediately.

We do all of this with our computers which have become personal. Everybody's got one and they can do just about anything if they have the data. We have more data than we've ever had before and it's getting more personal every day.

Oh and get this, we can do all that shooting and processing with our telephones which we carry around with us everywhere we go so everybody's a photographer all the time. Our wristwatches are way beyond Dick Tracey. Among a million other things, our watches count the number of steps we take every day and buzz us to get off our asses and take more steps...all the while keeping track of our heart beats and blood pressure.

Movies are still great but get this. They come right to our house and we watch them on giant teevees with crystal clear reception, no more rabbit ears. Also we get a gazillion stations on what we used to call the tube. The Yankees have their own station. We can watch every Yankee game all year. Talk about a catbird seat! Now the catbird seat is on the couch in our living rooms.

Weed is legal in a lot of states and it won't be long until it's legal in all of 'em. No more shitting your pants when you've got a joint in your car and the red light starts flashing and suddenly you're faced with five years in prison and/or narking on everybody.

Gambling is legal in New York now as well. We just stop down at the sportsbook in the Racino and we can bet on any sporting event win, lose, draw, over, under and so many other kinds of wagers that you can win or lose a grand based on one pitch.

Porn is everywhere on our computers or even our watches but after awhile everybody grows out of it. No more peep shows on Times Square.

I'm still broke of course but I have more money than ever. Let's talk about beer. Remember drinking drafts at the Geneseo Hotel. A Bud draft cost fiteen cents for twelve ounces. We used to buy ten at a time if we had four guys drinking. You'd buy 10, I'd buy 10, Wild Bill would buy 10, Joe would buy 10 total cost six bucks. Today, those same beers would come to $160. Oh and they might not even have Bud drafts in the bar anymore and if they did they would be Bud Lights. Light beers have a lower alcohol content and contain fewer calories. You can drink more of them without getting smashed. Local breweries are taking over selling beer brewed right in the brewery in which you're drinking drafts that have never been in a truck and are as fresh as can be.

I'm typing this on a computer with word processing. Remember when college was basically a typing contest and we got shit grades because we were crappy typists. I'm still a crappy typist but I don't have to fiddle with whiteout or crumpledup pieces of typing paper anymore. Everything shows up on a screen in front of me and the spelling is checked automatically.

Football has taken over as the number one sport. Every NFL game is broadcast and if you want you can watch them all on something called NFL total package. We have split scene capability so you can watch four games at once and every time any team is getting close to scoring Red Zone kicks in so you get to watch the conclusion of every drive. The Super Bowl is like a national holiday faturing state pf the art television and billios of dollars worth of commercials. Yeah, I said Billions. Most of the middle class are now "millionaires" what with our crdit cards and savings accounts but we're still sort of broke. 

Music. The Stones are still rocking and so is Paul. Ringo's still around but John and George are gone. Oh and listen to this we've got a thing called Spotify which for the cost of two albums a month let's you play any single you want or any "album" you want as soon as you want to hear it. The music is played over our sound systems in higher quality than our stereos used to play and without the pings and skips.Whaddya want to hear? I'll put in on right now. 

Playing I Get Around

We look back at your victory in Nam as one of the great achievemnets in US history. I miss ya buddy and thanks for giving what you gave.

Playing  Victory at Sea