Today is Tuesday 06-06-06. They say it's the date of a melinium. The thing is they're always coming up with dates we won't see in a long time. I remember how they were saying that the date November 29th. 1999 was a unique date because it's the last time in over a thousand years we would see all odd digits. And then there was 9-8-76, which was the last time we would see all declining single digits in a long time. Of course The Omen remake is being released today but Lord knows why they did a re-make since the original was such a masterpiece. I remember when me and one of my brothers saw it in a theater in July of 1976. He felt so "oppressed" he had to leave, and waited in the car. A roommate of ours Larry Lawsen had recommended it. He said it contained Christian witness because the priest said the line "You must partake of the flesh of Christ and drink his blood". The Omen is kind of a movie "meant" for those superstitious seventies. Both religion and psychic stuff as well as "After Death" experiances were held in a lot higher regard thirty years ago than they are now. I remember our church minister commenting on how depraved "The Omen" was. You see back then people thought the rapture or "Second Coming of Christ" or whatever would occur in 1982 when there was a con-junction of all the planets. (Astrology was also held in a lot higher regard back then) Nobody doubted it would happen. Of course on Sept 1st. 1977 Chuck Smith made the prediction at Calvary Chapel that "The Tribulation" would begin on September 24th. 1977 or just a couple of weeks from then. But releasing a movie like The Omen now makes no sence because the public hasn't been "primed" to listen to the propaganda. That's my oppinion.

A lot has changed in thirty years. The Anaheim Mall was just newly completed in 1976. That is, it was an all covered-over mall. But as you know after 1992 they tore it down and put up those garish looking "amusement park ride" color buildings in its place. The rate at which they put up buildings and almost as quickly blow them up never ceases to amaze me. Oddly, Cypress College was "not finished" in 1976 and so they put up temporary railings on their massive concrete upper walk ways- - to be completed at a later date. Guess what? They have not put up a single new building since 1976. Back in the fall of 1976 I was attending some socialogy class or something and they showed a VCR tape on TV (relatively new in those days) and on that tape they made the starteling announcement that the median price of a home in Orange County was now eighty thousand dollars. The median line was the Newport Freeway. Everything to one side was cheaper and everything on the other side was more expensive. Of course now you know what people mean when they say "South County". "South" was alltogether different in those days. Back then places such as Tustin, Huntington Beach, or Costa Mesa qualified as "South County". One time we were with a friend of ours named John, who put up houses for a living. And we were touring one of the new tracts in Laguna Niguel. Back then it was out in the middle of nowhere- - but that Zigarat building thing was still there, in the valley. Back in 1976 they had the Susan B Anthony dollar nobody used. I don't know why. There was a roomer prior to 1976 that the coin was a gigantic conspiricy to raise the price of a sandwich in a vending machine to one dollar. Of course they ran KFC adds ("Fried" wasn't a dirty word then) that said "Corn and cluck for under a buck" and Mac Donalds had one "Get a Big Mack, fries and Coke and get change back from your dollar". Actually the Susan B Anthony "dollar" would be worth about four of the Sacaguia (?) dollars of today. Today's coin dollar would only have been worth about a quarter in 1976. I never voted for Jimmy Carter. I didn't vote for him in June 8th. (?) primary, and I voted for Ford in the general election. Something to me seemed a little fake or wishy-washy about Jimmy Carter.

It was a day or two after that June primary election that Charlie L. died of a drug overdose. I remember Larry Lawsen making light of it saying "Cheer up. The sun is shining, the corn is high and the birds are singing". (We were actually growing corn in the back yard then) Back then all the "Marinotha" or "Christian" music sounded like the Eagles or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Back then disco was the devil's music. Back then it was shiek to be for Jimmy Carter because he was a "Christian" who was running for office. But in general it wasn't "shiek" to be political much at all. Christians were "above petty politics". How different things are today where George Bush, clinging to a political life preserver, is reaching out for the Christian right vote on areas such as gay marriage and flag burning.

Of course back in the mid seventies like 1974, 1075, or 1976 I was still using almost entirely reel to reel tape. One of my brothers had an expensive sound system in his trailer and I thought it silly that you would treat a cassette as a high fadelity tape because it clearly didn't sound as good. Back in the mid seventies of course they had "Quad" or quadraphonic. They had two types. They had descrete, and something called "SQ" that Columbia put out. One time my brother was playing "Third Degree" by West Bruce & Lang in quad- - - and I remember it was a longer fade-out on the end part than on the regular version. I remember Mike Mc Kinnon one of these times saying how much greated "Yes" was than "Emerson Lake and Palmer". Hey- - do you want an old myth demolished? Remember how the Beatles have "Revolution One" and supposidly the "slow version" was the first version they recorded and then George Martin or somebody convinced them to speed it up and put out a faster version. Well, that's a myth. Because one of the very earliest demos of the song recorded in George Harrison's livingroom back in the spring of 1968 and it was a recording of the song- played fast- where they were just then coming up with the lyrics to the song. My uncle used to have a joke saying "I never let the Truth get in the way of a good story". Next we'll learn that Marcion had the "origional" version of the gospell of Luke and it's the Church that changed it - not visa versa.

Just think how old anyone who was alive in 1976 has to be now. For a woman to even admit to being alive then is admitting a lot. I think life was better back then. There were no cell phones to constantly interrupt you. They had no personal computers. The only computer you could even posess in 1976 was an Apple I that you built yourself from a kit. Back then you could actually watch basketball playoffs in free TV, unlike today. Back then Monday Night Football was actually on free TV. In fact it wasn't all that long ago that Cable was considered some kind of a commie conspiracy- - and Free TV was as American as Apple Pie. Back then you didn't have to go broke in order to buy a home. Since 1973 the wage earning power of the US worker has steadily dropped. 1976 was indeed "The good old days". The rich wern't as rich then but there was more for the rest of us. Tax rates for the rich were 70%. Sports figures and CEO's wern't paid nearly as much but people had more of a heart. Service was more personal and people were definitely more polite. It's something to think about on this six-six-six day.