Keeping up with the time theme ...

If you're like me, certain songs make you think of certain times, places or things. Certain movies remind you of people, maybe the people you went to the movie with "way back when." Certain episodes of certain TV shows, e.g. Family Ties, make you think of what was happening in your life at that time. I'm going someplace with this ...

I have several hundred cassette tapes that were purchased from Camelot Music (mostly!) in Traverse City back in the '80s. I bought some of the cassettes from Ye Olde Music Shoppe in Elk Rapids. The gist of the story is that I have a lot of cassettes and I bet haven't listened to one of them in over 12 years. But they're still on a shelf in a storage room. Will I ever even listen to one of them? Some good music, but most of it has been replaced by compact disk. Compact disks are a whole other story ...

Video cassettes are another storage nightmare. I purchased many of the video tapes when they were new, but I also have a couple of hundred tapes that I taped from TV. I have TV appearances by John Mellencamp (he had already moved on from Cougar), Billy Joel, even KISS; I have episodes of Growing Pains, Family Ties, CHiPs, Batman, and others. I have since purchased the DVD seasons of a couple of those series. They're worthwhile and have actually aged well. I'm waiting for Batman to arrive on DVD – maybe it never will. It's a funny, campy show. But, I have seasons taped (thanks, WTBS and Ted Turner) from many years and I suppose I should discard the VCR tapes. But, what if there's that one episode on DVD that is slightly different from the VCR tapes I have ... wouldn't that make a cool comparison. Yeah, right. Throw them out!

I watched a couple episodes of Batman a couple years ago, but other than that, the taped tapes stay in a large box, virtually untouched unless they're being moved from one spot to another. This is called CLUTTER. I'm working hard to dispose of some history because it's not really history at all. It's merely CLUTTER caused by a nearly obsessively compulsived hoarder.

Where am I going with this? To the clutter, er storage room, to toss a few items in the trash. Now, what do I do with all these Rolling Stones, Sporting News, and news magazines ... What do I do?


Someplace in the garage storage area at my parents sits this special issue of The Sporting News. How could anyone throw this out?


A great combination, Rolling Stone magazine and the 1989 movie Batman. Again, available in storage, unseen since, well 1989 or so!