Darren’s Ditherings

I AIN’T GONNA TAKE IT, SO YOU CAN TAKE IT ELSEWHERE!!!!

Welcome, all, to the first installment of Darren’s Ditherings, a monthly opinion column from a proud, cranky, spunky, and dangerously unmedicated member of the Kingston community.  I’m 62, I own a computer, and my grasp on the world at large is tenuous at best.  Let’s do this before I fall asleep in my den chair.

LOCAL PROFILE:  Some of you know local resident Don Rogers as the bold crusader at the helm of the Save Our Neighborhood Action Group, the organization devoted to curbing unruly and disruptive student behaviour at such events as the Aberdeen street party.  You may remember that last year, the group prevented the detonation of three Atomic Bra Machines developed by a militant splinter group of student partiers, and quashed five separate uprisings of youthful impudence.  Did you know, however, that in 1965, Rogers and his garage-rock trio, Johnny Keep It Down and the People-Are-Trying-to-Sleeps, had a southern Ontario regional hit with the ditty “Common Decency (I Ain’t Tryin’ to Keep You Down, Girl)”, an ode to composed and respectful social behaviour that even had its own dance accompaniment, the “Watch Your Levels, People, and Let’s Use Our Indoor Voices Boogie Woogie”.  I will never forget the song’s ultra-catchy chorus, “Girls dig me, and I dig you/Common decency, girl it’s the least we can do/Now you know I ain’t tryin’ to kill your buzz/But there’s a line between reasonably boisterous or jovial behaviour, which I think we can all agree is a good thing, and conduct that is disruptive and constitutes disturbance of the peace, which no one should be indulging in, because it infringes on the rights of others to enjoy some measure of peace and quiet.”  The band broke up after a fateful after-show party at which the group’s drummer and bassist were caught drinking four feet beyond the porch area of Rogers’s house, which he insisted was an example of public drunkenness.  Rogers’s subsequent solo singles “Mercifully Subdued Study Party” and “Am I the Only One Who Has a Job to Get Up For in the Goddamn Morning?” sold poorly, leading Rogers to retire from music.  The spirit of those gloriously reserved songs, however, lives on in the community activism that has led Rogers to be designated by Mayor Harvey Rosen as “you there, the gentleman wearing the hat”.  Huzzah, sir, huzzah!

RANDOM MAUNDERINGS:  Sure are a lot of red cars driving down my street this morning—I wonder if that’s something I should be taking pictures of with this digimacamera thing my daughter bought me for my birthday… If I had my druthers, that Craig T. Nelson would be in every show on my good old T.V.—he’s got a remarkable forehead, and seems very polite… Those Frontenacs are off to another sorry start this year.  Good thing I don’t really care about hockey anymore, because none of the players these days have swell nicknames, like “Boom Boom” or “Rocket” or “Spinner”.  My handle in high school was “Dicky Rearguard”, a name I neither understood nor enjoyed… Is there a reader out there that can recommend a book that will help me to stop crying in the shower?  I’ve been burned so often in the past… I had the word “wi-fi” in my head the other day, and I couldn’t remember if that was a thing or not.  Is that a thing?… I almost forgot to say R.I.P. to the recently-deceased Jerry Reed.  Then I remembered, then I forgot once more, then Smokey and the Bandit was on cable and I remembered again.

‘Til next time!

Darren Springer