Things to Be Thankful For - Giving Up Gracefully the Treasures of Youth & Sixties & Seventies Rock'n'Roll

"Be alive while you are alive" ~ Unknown


"I was wise enough to see that one can't experience one's 
grandfather's revolution. Rip it up!" ~ Jp Valentine

There are a very many things that we need to be thankful for and I wanted to share just one of mine with you and hope that, after this, you'll take a few moment's time to close your eyes, relax and reflect on yours too. 

The one I want to tell you something that I have discovered the importance of nearly 35 years after it happened! All until this time, I was thankful that I was there and got to see it, but I never fully grasped how I was able to be a part of a bigger picture; a bigger "scene." Now that I have, I realize that God (Vishnu, Siva, Buddha, the Great Electrode, Bob, what-have-you) gave me such a wonderful present that I shall always cherish.


Usually, when you read these sorts of posts and articles about what we should be thankful for, you are given a litany of the usual things and those are things to be thankful for today: Family, a home, food, health... Of course, those are things to be greatly thankful for and to never forget. But, may I ask that you indulge yourself and take a time trip and be thankful for something you probably don't really think about all that much? And, perhaps, feel a little guilty about today if you stop, reflect and say, "Thank you for that wonderful time!"


I'm talking about being thankful for the past. The past that's never coming again. I'm talking about being thankful for the treasures of youth we received. And, I'm talking about giving up gracefully those treasures of youth so that we do not cling to to them like a drowning man clings to straw, but that we surrender them to the next generation with class befitting our age and experience. 


I'm talking about our youth. Those wonderful dates, places you visited, things you experienced that only young people can do. I want you to take this morning and reflect for a few moments on your favorite of those experiences; experiences that probably you, and only you, of all those around you know about.


This morning, when I woke up, I thought about my life and how lucky I am; how lucky I was. I enjoyed things that few people could have and, I'm sure, that you can say the same thing about yourself.  Everyone has enjoyed something special in their time in this cosmos that has happened especially for them that no one else can, or will, ever experience again.


For me, there are so many. But, like I said, I'd like for you today to think about and focus on one. 


Here's my "one" that I stumbled upon that I rediscovered yesterday and it was something that happened about 35 years ago! While I enjoyed it at the time, I didn't realize that it was so unique. Let me reminisce and tell you about it.


I wrote yesterday about a producer friend I have who lives in Hollywood. His name is Jp Valentine. Jp and I have become good friends, I like to think, yet we have never even met. We have corresponded greatly and he sent me a gift the other day that really has stopped me and made me pause and think.

The present he sent me was a book entitled, "Riot on Sunset Strip - Rock'n'Roll's Last Stand in Hollywood." It is a wonderful book filled with photos and accounts of the Golden Time between 1965 and 1966 for Rock'n'Roll music and the Sunset Strip that occurred for a few shorts months.


Here's a VERY short synopsis of the book:


For a brief period between 1965 and 1966, Rock’n’Roll music, heavily influenced by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as well as American acts such as the Byrds, the Doors, Love, Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas & the Papas and more, displaced cinema as the center of action in Hollywood. The scene appeared out of nowhere, lasted a few exiting and incredible few months and then just vanished just as suddenly as it appeared. The mix of London and Los Angeles gave rise to an eruption of local music and culture at that time. From this cultural explosion, Rock’n’Roll combined and quickly permeated television, animation, cinema and popular culture around the western world.  

Map of the Sunset Strip from "Riot on Sunset Strip - Rock'n'Roll's Last Stand in Hollywood."

Here is a snippet of a review of the book that I took from Amazon:


I loved this book because of the way it put me right on the Sunset Strip in the mid 60s, making me feel like I was sitting at Canter's Deli with Gene Clark and then dancing to The Byrds at Ciro's later that same evening. I also love the argument it makes about San Francisco's elitist attitude about its own 60s bands, versus those of L.A. Ask me to choose between The Grateful Dead and Love, between Moby Grape and The Byrds, between any SF garage band and The Seeds or The Music Machine, and I'm going with the Hollywood "cream puff" act every time. The book also makes you feel the tragedy of the collapse of the Sunset Strip nightclub scene, after the police effectively shut it down because some influential people in town didn't like the idea of the Strip being a place for teenagers to hang out and dance to groovy music. You get to know what a magical time and place the Strip was in 65-66, and it makes you want to be there.  

Wow! That sounds like a cool place! I love that sort of thing. Jp tells me these sorts of cultural booms happened in London, Paris, Berlin and America in the 1920s, as well as a few other places and times that I was too dumb to take note of. He also tells me that, besides 1965 ~ 1966 on the Sunset Strip, that it happened again, albeit very briefly, on that very same Sunset Strip in 1977.


The weird thing is that I was there in 1977 and saw it and was a part of it! I never realized that that time had its roots in a sixties rock movement in Hollywood. 


I knew it was fun and have always been thankful for being there and seeing it and being a part of it, while it was going on, but never realized how it fit in with the evolution of pop music culture in America until I read page 25 of "Riot on Sunset Strip - Rock'n'Roll's Last Stand in Hollywood." On page 25, it talks about the sudden disappearance of the Hollywood Rock music scene in 1966. It says, 

"Not even the smallest portion of the (Sunset) Strip would seem vital again until the emergence of the punk rock scene in the late 1970s..." 

That really astounds me. I never realized how the seventies punk boom fit into the overall history of Hollywood and Los Angeles. The seventies punk boom in Los Angeles, also, seems to me was there one day and then gone the next.

The Deadboys were one of the best live acts I have ever seen

I wrote to Jp:

"In my youth, I lived all over the USA moving almost yearly and changing elementary and Jr. high schools annually. It always made me a sort of outcast with few friends. I stayed in Calif. through high school but still was considered sort of "backwards" by my peers (even the slang and lingo and how kids talked was different from the Mid West - where I just came from - to California)." 

"When the punk boom happened, I used to drive my car, by myself, to Los Angeles and go see punk bands. I saw the Deadboys play, I think it was 5 nights in a row and Sham 69 play 7 nights in a row at (I think it was the Whiskey - can't remember). I liked it so much that I drove all the way from Venture to Los Angeles (about 1.5 hours) every night to see these shows! I loved it. I loved Hollywood. Guess what? I thought that the night club scene was the way it always was and always has been... Now I read that part in the book, "Riot on Sunset Strip..." and it really surprises me that it is not. I got lucky... I stepped into a Time Warp! I honestly didn't know. I thought it was business as as usual... Thank you, Jp. for allowing me to know this and thank you God for allowing me to be there."

Wow! That was a wonderful time. That was my time....


But now, we're back to today... I'm back to this blog post. It's a Saturday morning here in Japan and my family is sleeping and I am sitting here reminiscing about the past, a past they know nothing about.


It is a guilty pleasure of mine to enjoy those memories that only I know about and only I can recall...


Thanks for listening to mine. Now, it's your turn. Whether you want to write it down or not, why don't you take some time today or in the morning tomorrow to sit down and think back? Think way back to something you haven't thought of in years... Maybe it was that time with friends? Or that time with mom and dad when you were a child? Or maybe it was that time on that date with that someone you'll never forget?


Think back. Remember it. It is a present. Enjoy it.


Enjoy the wonderful memories and, while still cherishing them, gracefully give up the treasures of youth... 


Be thankful for them. Enjoy them. You have many more wonderful memories coming.  


Thank you to Jp Valentine

How to Stop Worrying So Much and Be More Successful at Life!

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” - Mark Twain

In today's world, there are plenty of things to worry about and the list seems to grow everyday. There's war, the safety of the food we eat, nuclear accidents, car accidents, "Will our children be safe?" There's diseases, pollution, taxes, will we still have a job next year? The list goes on and on. There' a million and one things to worry about. Take your pick.

You want to be a worrier or a warrior? Take your pick.

I have plenty of friends who seem to worry constantly. The biggest thing they worry about is work. I think it is pretty safe to say that they are their own worse enemy. 

The funny thing is they think I don't worry about work or these other things at all. But I do worry! I am a "worrier" for certain. They just don't know! I think, up to a certain point, worrying is perfectly normal human behavior, and we all do it. But my friends think I don't worry because I've found a good way to control it and I'm glad I did. It's easy to do and just takes 3 minutes every morning. That's a better deal than worrying all day, right?

Many years ago, I used to worry so much that I wouldn't sleep well at night. The funny part is that I'd be worried about work! Think about that! I'm worried about work so much that I cannot sleep well. Then, the next morning I go to work and I'm tired. I'm so tired that I don't do a good job. So I worry so much about losing my job that I lose sleep and then, on the job, do a poor job because I'm sleepy because I didn't sleep well because I was worried about losing my job! What an idiot I was!

Doesn't make any sense, does it?

Worrying all the time is a proven cause of unhappiness and stress. Stress is a proven cause of a wide array of physical and mental illnesses and disorders. Life is rough enough as it is without our own thinking placing a heavier burden on our shoulders than we already have.

Think about it, is there any one of us who can do our best and achieve to our capacity - or even higher than that - when, in the back of our mind is this crawling negative fear - a worry - that binds us? Of course not.

So why do we do this to ourselves?

Today I want to give you two really good tips that can help you control your worrying. First off, I'd like to recommend that buy yourself a $1.00 pocket notebook and that you write down your top 5 or 10 goals first thing in the morning when you wake up everyday. Do it like religion or brushing your teeth.

Writing down your goals will help your subconscious mind to focus better on what is really important to you in your life and it will also allow the Law of Attraction to work in your favor. (There are several links at the bottom of this post to other articles with more details that you might enjoy reading).  

Here's how I do it: I wake up and sit down and think about what is really important to me. Do not cheat by looking at what you wrote the day before. Think. Really think about what is important for you and write it down. If you do this everyday and do not look at the previous day's goals, the things that are important to you and your life will naturally flow to the top. I used to write things about money and business as my top goals, but after doing this for so many years, I came to realize what is truly important in my life is not that. It is my family.

These are my recent top four goals (and I always add today's date at the end):

1) I am a wise and patient father and husband. I am a kind person.

2) Thank you god for all the wonderful things I have and am about to receive today.

3) All my loved ones are healthy and prosperous today.

4) I am a very successful businessman and 2012 is my best year so far. 2013 is even better!

Recently there are another 4 on the list, but those have to do with my work and financial goals. Everyone would be different, of course.

Actually, writing these things down is not my original idea. It is the method of success in life and business for many extremely wealthy people and the basis for a best-selling book: "Goals! How to Get Everything You Want - Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible" by Brian Tracey. May I suggest that you do yourself a great favor and read that book and apply some of the simple rules to your life? 

By the way, one of my dearest friends read this book and later I asked him about it. He said that he does write down his goals in his iPhone. Folks, the advice of millionaires say to buy a handy pocket notebook. It is extremely difficult for any computer or hand held device to be faster than a pen and paper. Why ignore the advice of these people who have succeeded and are rich for the $1.00 it costs to buy a pocket notebook? 

Also, I find that having a handy pocket notebook is great for lowering stress in that I never forget anything. Anytime I have a good idea or something that I must remember to do, I jot it down. It's so much faster with a pen and paper than any electrical device could ever be!

The second good piece of advice I have for those of you who find yourself in a serious pinch whereby you are worrying so much that it has engulfed your entire being is to realize that your brain can only think about one thing at a time. Seriously. It's true. The human brain can only process information about one thing at a time.

There will be people now who think I am wrong about this, but I am not. Just because you can multi-task at work doesn't mean that your brain can think about more than one thing at once. It cannot. Your brain can switch back and forth quite quickly so that the skilled person can multi-task but that doesn't mean that the brain can focus on more than one matter at any given moment.

Here. Let me prove it to you. Here is a sentence. Read it and them repeat it over and over in your head. You will see that, as you are repeating it, you are unable to think about anything else, unless you switch off the repetition. Here is the sentence:

"I am a positive and hard working person and today is the best day so far this year and tomorrow is going to be even better!"

Read it and memorize it. Now, repeat it over and over in your head. Do it many times. 

See? Your mind can only focus on one problem at a time. This is why constant worry is so dangerous. Because if you are only worrying, you will begin to make things worse as you will focus your entire being on that worry. It is a vicious cycle.

Stop it right now!

Anytime of the day, if you catch yourself starting to worry, stop. Take a phrase like the one I have given you above and repeat it in your head over and over until the worrying goes away. If the worrying (or panic) comes back, then start up the phrase and repeat again until the fear and worrying subside.

Some astute readers will recognize what I have written here as a form of meditation, chanting, or prayer. Call it what you want, it will help you to defeat the worrying that is destroying your health and your life. 

I hope that, if you start to worry, that you'll try these these two simple exercises that will help you set your mind free and help you to relax. They've helped me greatly. I know they will help you too.

I do recommend the book, "Goals! How to Get Everything You Want - Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible" by Brian Tracey but, if you are a cheapskate (like me) and need more evidence, I've written extensively about it here below:

One Easy Step To Becoming a Better Parent and More Successful at Life

Pocket Notebooks: The Secret of Millionaires and People Won't Listen!?

Vacation is a State of Mind - How to Get The Truly Wonderful Things in Life

Why Having Compassion for the Handicapped and the Mentally / Physically Ill and Less Fortunate in Our Society is So Important For You and Me:

Why I write about having compassion for the handicapped, the mentally ill, the unfortunate in our society... 

My third daughter at 10. She is now 18. Some say she is "handicapped,"

I say she is "beautiful and perfect!"

I have received a mail asking why I write about the recent episodes concerning time spent in drug rehabilitation in a mental institution in Japan... Well, I have, in the past, written much about sharing our time, money and lives with the less fortunate like children with incurable diseases and about my own daughter's fight with a deadly childhood cancer. The episodes on drug rehabilitation begin in Drug Rehab at Asia's Most Famous Hospital - Part 1 (Life in the Cooler) Upon Arrival to Rehab Everyone Must Detox in the Feared Cooler


At first, the goal of these posts was to place "on paper" what had happened as a record before time completely destroyed the memories. It was also a sort of purgatory for my soul and to cleanse myself of some of my past deeds. On a more mercenary note, the stories, I think, are great stories and exciting and make a fascinating read (if I am able to write and do justice to what I witnessed). I wanted to, and still intend to, do something with this material whether it is a book or a screenplay.


I do that for posterity and for money... If I could get those...


As I began writing the episodes for Drug Rehab at Asia's Most Famous Hospital at first I wanted to make people laugh at the absurdity of the entire thing... I still do, but there is also something that I think needs to be said about it all. As I began writing more there is something to be said that is, of course, just not funny about this situation and how these poor folks are treated like outcasts. I also want people to understand a few very simple and important things about hospitals and people in them.


First off there is a fine line between what is insane and sane in our society. I'm certainly not the first to ever say that. We need to show more compassion, humanity and kindheartedness to people who are sick and in hospitals whether those people are there for physical or mental handicaps, incurable or terminal diseases...


Secondly, there are a very many of us who are quite fortunate in this world. We need to give back some of our good luck to those less fortunate. There are also those in this world, the vast majority who don't wish to admit their illnesses who also need our compassion and understanding.


Thirdly, even though they are not in a hospital now, there are so many right next to us who have all sorts of problems and addictions. There are families right next door to ours that are suffering from children with illicit drug problems or parents who have the same with over-the-counter drugs and pain medicines. There are many who are living secret lives of shame by having affairs or gambling or drink problems. There are many who do, or are on the receiving end of, domestic violence. There are many who have small children who will fall to the devastation and unfortunate occurrence of an incurable disease within the next 24 hours! 


Living a happy a productive life in this mixed up confused world is more and more difficult as the days go by. Let those of us who can and do live good lives show the world that we do care by our actions and not just by our words.


They say that "What goes around, comes around." I know the shock and devastation that comes with having your healthy child one day stuck down with a deadly disease. I also know the struggles and life shortening battles that come with.


I hope by reading some of these blog posts that you can become more thankful of what you have. 


But that's not everything and don't think that I am such a magnanimous guy. No. Even though I went to war with a childhood cancer and have a loving daughter who is wheelchair bound for her entire life; and even though I have suffered through terrible drug abuse and all sorts of marital problems... Even though I have been through these things. I am lucky. I am fortunate. I am thankful.


As they say, "It is not happy people that are thankful. It is thankful people who are happy."


We need to share what good we have. We need to spread hope. A little kindness and compassion go a long way. We need to be thankful and we need to share that in the short time we are here.