bAcK In tHe DaY.....




These Days.

  Yes, those days when the standard unit of measure for political aspirations was Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Gandhi. When I had no idea that most of the wars in the world were a direct cause of greed, selfishness, and more greed. At the age when I believed in the goodness of men and the decency of women. Then I grew up and reality came crashing in. I saw men for what they really are, I learned that behind the smile of most women, there lay a dangerous fang. One that bit hard& deep, with intent to harm.
But childhood was filled with more than illusions about the nature of man. There were some real pleasures to growing up in my day.Let's go back in time and reminisce.



The Facts Of Life.

 Actually Funny Comedies. 
Seriously, the comedy at that time was hilarious. There were hardly any laugh tracks, the jokes were actually funny. People did not necessarily pick on other people's weaknesses in an attempt to be funny. Unavoidable weaknesses, that is. A bad hair do is laughter material. A family destroyed by a political scandal is not.  I remember shows like"Just shoot me," "News radio," "The facts of life,"..."Mind your language,"and the winner of them all, "FRIENDS." I do not care what any one says, "How I met your mother " is no match for "Friends". None of that cast can match Phoebe's weird nature or Chandler's satire or Ross' plain wussiness. If wussiness is a word. We grew up watching Will Smith be funny and truthfully, I can't say the same for people growing up on "Shit my dad says."
Bound to grow into crap-spewing adults.

Real TV.
No program director worth his name would have allowed things like "Amarula Family" to even get past the reception area of the station.HOW??? And risk choking viewers to their death on their own puke??How all these Spanish soaps have increasingly managed to penetrate the TV arena in the last years is proof that things are not good. Mbu...simanyi" It could be you"...People, we grew up on "The young and the restless," we watched "The bold and the beautiful" and more serious dramas. Deception, lust and lies were the real thing.
Your mother stole your boy friend and you only found out on their wedding day, where you were the maid-of-honor. You were not able to predict the ending of the series, and when time to close shop came, they did.
Nothing like unending seasons of the day to day life of Jack Bauer.Our producers knew when to quit.
These days they expose the kids to reality TV. "Kendra.....blah, blah...," "Keeping up with the Kardishians...." How about someone feel sorry for Kendra and buy her a brain? How about we stop exposing children to totally-scripted& plastic life styles and then complaining when they want the Iphone4 at 13??

If you are going to be a bad enough parent and show your kids the shallowness& deceit that fills the life of those society worships and most admires, show them the real thing.

These chicas were not simple.

"Footballers' Wives" will do.

Music.

I shall not put an adjective before the word. Simply because there is close to no decent music these days. In days gone by, music was....music. Deep, catchy and sang by people that could actually put their vocal cords to decent use. The pass these days is simply being able to speak. Say a few words and the producers will create magic. Or almost-magic. Miley Cyrus has refused to respond to all forms of magic spells. Even the hip hop fraternity had real beef to match their talent.Tupac and Biggie were the real deal. Nothing like,



Hit 'em up!!!

 
"This is why I'm m hot, this is why you're not,
I''m hot coz I'm fly, you aint coz you not...".
Seriously? I could pen badder lyrics. Music meant to be funny had lyrics to match. Case in point, "Every day people" by Arrested development.
Folk like Diddy formerly known as P.Diddy were kept away from recording studios.There is need to create a curriculum on the history& making of real music, compulsory for all wanna-be-divas& rappers. Anyone that needs auto tune to make semblance of a tune is failed.
And sent to writing school. Red Pepper is in dire need of basic-grammar armed writers.

ALZAWADI.
If there is any thing that university children of the current era have missed, it is that bar. Alzawadi...SIGH!!! Let me tell you about this bar ma props...(erm, properly).
Otherwise known as street bar to my year mates, with the main bar the size of a small carry-away-only fast food joint. Mostly because 99% of the patronage was out in the street. Yes, we dressed up in barely there skirts, tried to concoct cool hair stlyes from our otherwise bland& plain braids and did what the the majority of college students do, partied till dawn. In the road. Red pepper wouldn't have had to hack into people's face book accounts in a bid to create stories. The sights at that place would have created real scandal worthy news.
Yes, bars continue to sprout all over the place. But the difference is, we were allowed to be young at Alzawadi. We were allowed to look our age& try to act older by drinking things that would burn a car engine down, but still, the silly innocence was firmly in place. Who walked in with what man barely mattered in my 1st year. Now you go to Casablanca and 15-year old girls are attired in dresses that would make Carmen Electra blush and name-dropping boy friends' names. Men who buy them a cocktail and in return, take their innocence.
Younger boys are smoking things even Elephant Man wouldn't touch. Kids trying to be adults. The truth is, adulthood does come around. And it's not so glamorous. But by this time, these kids have been carrying around the burden of trying to seem older for so long, they don't realize there was a time when the world would have forgiven them anything.
The world is not as kind to careless real adults. You pay for your mistakes in hard currency.



Schweppes!!!

 Schweppes!!!!!
I am happily addicted to coca cola. I do not think there is any other soft drink on the surface of the earth...scratch that. I KNOW there isn't any other drink on the entire earth that even on its best, best day,( having had the brightest chemists work on it for about ten years) would match the ishness of an ice cold coke.
People puhuliz!!! Coke is the best thing ever invented by man. Right after Gin.
But, before coke, there was Schweppes. In pineapple& cream flavors. Sunday family lunches were spent trying to get a much color on your tongue from this awesome drink. Then there was crush..Heavenly...sugary drinks were exactly that, wicked!!!
Now they go and make things like mountain dew. And fanta berry( Coke, am so sorry. But your purply relative is lousy. She must be a distant cousin's aunt on the other side, right??)
Fanta strawberry is  very much trying to resemble Schweppes cream, but so far only the scent sort of gets it.  And am guilty of liking the past so much, I buy it for that reason. OK, I also sip it. Delicately though.
Replicated drinks are an acquired taste.

In a Word;
I love the fabolous(ity) that comes with growing up. I love that conversations get deeper, that you start to know what actually matters, and that you let go of pre-conceived ideas which by the way, were put into your mind by a mother trying to keep scare you away from the deadly sins and purgatory.
But I miss the things that pushed us through childhood and nudged us into adulthood. No, we didn't have FaceBook, we didn't have Android-whatevers but we had clean, mind-jogging television.
Most of all, we had adults that would have died to protect us, adults that let us be children but ensured we grew into adults who'd not hate their own mirror reflections. Am all for growing up& maturity, but could we please stop charging the children we're meant to be sheltering? Making them pay a fee that breaks their hearts& steals away their carefree& happily-naive souls?
Could we please give them a chance at a baggage-free adult hood? And while we are at it, could we tell the U.S.A to stop having double standards? Oil-loaded or not, a war-torn state deserves all the help it can get. Somalia...Sudan...Northern Uganda, where the hell were you?

Then, because we need a reason to make us forget all present-day troubles, could we bring back some real TV?




I HAD TO PUT THIS IN!! DUH!!?!



I am not stuck in the past, no. I am simply saying let us make the present a time that will bring some sort of light to the history books.
With Love,( in those days, this actually meant something, not an attempt to get something)
Moe.