Life should make us happy, want to dance, want to laugh, and want to grab all the funny we can every day. Anything less is not living, it is existing. Dinosaurs did that and look what happened to them. Grab the giggles, nurture the joy in your life, make fun where there was none, and for the love of God... don't ever become Politically Correct. Run when you see the "psychic joy vampires" are nipping at your heels.

We are all "The sum total of our experiences." Perhaps your experiences and influences are different than mine, with us sharing the major events like seeing the moon landing, color TV, and 9-11... but having a very different musical road to dance down. Perhaps you didn't listen to Big Band, Swing, and Sinatra in the crib. We are the last generation to go thru childhood without a video game soundtrack blasting from the next room. Perhaps I would be very different if we'd had more than one small black and white TV on a rickety TV tray in the living room. My love of reading and learning came from inside me, not from some cartoon character on an after school show telling me to read. No one told me what to think, what to believe, what to say, or what to do. I didn't ask questions, I looked up the answers. It wasn't until Dark Shadows showed up in 1966 that I had any reason to turn on the TV during a weekday. I can't wait to see the Johnny Depp version. I love TV now and know what I want to "watch." As a child I knew what I wanted to "do."

There are a lot of TV mentions on this page as well as music because they blended together so early in my life. It wasn't until I started putting this page together that I realized what a huge influence the UK has had on me. It's also very obvious that in 1964 I saw shows like The Munsters, The Addams Family, Bewitched, Gilligan's Island, and others that led me to everything monster, vampire, and funny. Whereas shows like Joanie Loves Chachi, Knight Rider, Dynasty,and Falcon Crest had no influence on me at all because I worked nights in 1982 and never saw them. This would be one of the spots where you or I could have chosen that other road not taken and we diverged from shared experiences into other roads of fancy. I am always looking for more bad B science fiction movies, but have no patience with any bad TV show. Sharp and bright is what I want. If a show screams at me, or insults whatever bit of intelligence I have left after a long day, I know where the off button is. Life is supposed to be like the Elvis movies I was raised on and loved, where people broke out into song and dance, made the grand gestures, and were alive.

Maybe by today's standards, the old shows are "old fashioned." But if that means sans violence, murder, rape, drugs, close ups of operations, and car chases... cool. Do network suits think we all live that lifestyle in real life?! It's been a while since I've found a dead body in the park or watched an autopsy. Well, I've never done that at all actually. If I wanted to become a doctor I'd choose to watch real operations on film. Gore is great in a movie you know has FX gore in it. We went from using some imagination and being horrified at the hint of something, to being fed FX gore at every turn to keep our attention. Yuck. Parents who plunk their kids down in front of the tube 24/7 are not doing them any justice at all. They are training them to be little sheeple with no interests, no patience, and no ability to grow into what they might have become. Desensitizing children to things that should horrify them is awful. Spoon feeding them politically correct poop is awful. I've worked with sheeple in the real world, poor little critters. I thought if they just had a clue, or could buy a clue somewhere… if there was some big "Clues R Us" box store in town, they'd be so much better off.

There are not enough men out there now that would say society be damned, stand up in public, throw their arms in the air, and scream in a loud voice that they love you. In a couple of more generations, no woman will ever know the feeling of a catch in your throat TADA moment that sweeps her off her feet and makes her heart pound like a freight train. Nope, human relationships are melting into a mush of boredom, predictability, and mind numbing pain that souls who know no better can't recognize. (Note: Don't confuse a TADA moment with a Grand Gesture, or awe, or anything done when drunk and you just thought you were amazing.)

Dare to be grand. You owe it to yourself. Don't wait until you are "old" to have fun, and learn not to care what other people think of you. Use the good crystal, dance in the driveway, sing in the kitchen, have fun with abandon and society be damned.

Yours,
Samantha Phillipe



Post Scripts and Afterthoughts...
... See something you want to save to your computer? Save it in your Windows Media Player after watching.
... Some of the music choices on this page were limited by what videos I was able to find online. This is especially true of the choices I made for the click on samples for the musicals. In some cases the ones above are not my favorite songs from that film. I couldn't find even one for Guys And Dolls, Tammy, Man Of La Mancha, or Brigadoon. I watched the old musicals on TV as a kid and listened to my mother's albums over and over. I also haven't found a good video of the original, Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight? Or the Sandler and Young song If You Go Away, or Herb Albert, Joe Diffie's Third Rock From The Sun, Bobby Scott's Chain Gang, and the old song Cab Driver, among others.
... I did find some incredible clips and for various reasons are not part of my life's music but really need to be mentioned. 2000, Weapon Of Choice by Fatboy Slim only because Christopher Walken is dancing in it. A fan dubbed Puttin' On The Ritz over it on this version, and there is the Ritz Fred Astaire Version, as well as the Taco version above. Walken is also dancing in the Pennies from Heaven video above. Is there anything this man can't do?! Which brings me to my favorite torture and murder scene set to music and dance by the incredible Michael Madsen in Reservoir Dogs. A fan cut the scene to make it shorter and just include the music, with various film clips of the movie instead. Stuck In The Middle With You. You may also choose to see Stealers Wheel perform the song, with no clips from the movie. Here is 17 seconds of the gopher from Caddyshack. Yes! There is a whole song and not just the blurb you hear at the Scrubs TV show opening: I'm No Superman.
... Maybe someday I'll make a list of my favorite 100 movies. Since no one ever agrees with every choice in Best Lists created by professionals in music and film, no two lists in the real world would ever be the same. My favorite Gone With The Wind ( The Kiss ) is on the top of the lists that adjust the money earned into today's standards. After that I don't agree with any of the lists.
... Thanks for looking at my page and I hope you enjoyed your own trip down memory lane with it, and maybe found some new favorites. If you want to create your own page like this, be prepared for a lot of soul searching, long forgotten memories, and some mind blowing insights as to why you are as warped as you are. And that's just today while deciding what to have for supper, after seeing some of the clips above. Wait until you start working on your own page!
... See The Class if you want some help. Computer help that is.