The thorn in the Rose Bowl – parade and football game – is that the weather on New Year’s Day is invariably picture-postcard perfect, so sunny and warm it entices waves of people watching the telecasts in their Midwest igloos to pack up like “The Beverly Hillbillies” and move to Southern California.
Similarly, the downside of Ventura hosting the X Games last weekend is that the TV coverage with our gorgeous ocean backdrop and pastel sunsets that seemed painted by Monet were the equivalent of a skywriter spelling out: “Hey, world! Move here! The 805 is paradise!”
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Speaking of the X Games, the “Moto X Best Whip” competition – basically daredevil astronauts on motorcycles launching themselves into orbit off a giant ramp and doing dizzying spins and twists, and even front or back flips, before safe reentry back down on earth – makes Evel Knievel’s “death defying” jumps in the 1970s look like a kid riding a tricycle off a curb.
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Pulling into my driveway the other day, on four wheels not on an acrobatic motocross bike, it struck me that the instant gratification of today’s music platforms offering most every song on command have stolen the magic of hearing a favorite tune that makes you stay in the car after arriving at your destination and listening to the end.
Now you can just go inside and simply say, “Play it again, Sam/Siri/Alexa/etc.”
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Now in my 60s, but age 6 at heart, I still get a small thrill and a big smile when I’m out on a run near railroad tracks and a train comes rumbling along and I pump my fist up and down in the universal “honk!” gesture and the engineer, bless his soul, blows his LOUD! horn.
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I like the challenge of scraping, scraping, scraping an empty jar of peanut butter to get enough for one last sandwich. Even more, I love being the first to dig into a brand-new jar – and hate it when doing the former means someone beats me to the latter.
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Add gooey silliness. My wife and I have an unspoken challenge where we squeeze, squeeze, squeeze the life out of a tube of toothpaste in order not to be the one who opens a new one. For the record, I’m usually more stubborn.
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A note from a reader regarding my unromantic wedding proposal that I shared a short while back gave me a laugh. My recap…
College Girlfriend: “I’ll go wherever you go after graduation.”
Me: “I guess we might as well just get married then.”
She (Now-Wife-of-40-Years): “Okay!”
Wayne Saddler confesses he, too, popped his “inglorious proposal” in unacceptable “Jeopardy!” fashion of not being in the form of a question: “Well, I guess we should get married.”
To which his girlfriend responded: “Let’s do this right – go ask my father for permission.”
“I was nervous during my 45-minute drive to her parent’s home,” Wayne continued. “When I asked him he responded, ‘You’re asking the wrong person.’ That was almost 47 years ago.”
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Lastly, and bestly (not a word, but should be), thanks in no small part to so many of you dear and generous readers, Erick Aleman, a track and cross country athlete at Rio Mesa High School, will be getting a state-of-the-art $15,000 “blade” prosthetic and promises to be running faster than ever with it by summer’s end.
As Erick’s coach Garrett Reynolds relayed to me to relay to you: “A massive THANK YOU. Erick and I are at a loss of words for how grateful we are for everyone’s support.”
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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
