by John Coveleski

Created on: April 23, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

MY SEVENTIES MEMORIES: THIS INNER CHILD WANTS REVENGE!
There's quite a bit about the 1970s that's really easy to disparage. It's true, for instance, that just about everybody could have used a fashion consultant back then. I remember with some degree of dismay how much I liked flannel and Hawaiian shirts. And yes, a lot of the television programming was rather mundane and insipid. To this day I avoid the Mary Tyler Moore show like the plague. And how I'd love to find and torture whoever came up with ideas like Hamburger Helper, canned ravioli, Spaghettioes and disserts made with cottage cheese.

Of course, the question is just how to do it. Crucifixion seems somehow out of style, and drawing and quartering can leave an awful mess around the house, not to mention that I don't own even one horse. There's too mmuch controversy over waterboarding these days, so that option's not in the cards.
What to do? Nothing seems quite appropriate!
Well, after weeks of pondering, I think I might have stumbled on the answer. Some of the best discoveries, after all, are accidental, and this one came to me one day while I surfed the Internet looking for good music from my wasted youth. The good news is that I found it, and now I'm going to make myself a CD one day. The bad is that I uncovered old memories I thought I'd forgotten, and wish I could forget now. To put it mildly, the 1970s was the home of some real stinkers no matter what musical genre one was into, and some of these became actual trends, as if not enough insult had already been added to injury.
And oh, yeah! I nearly forgot to mention my chosen method of torture. I'm going to buy a big old mansion complete with a sound-proof dungeon. Then I'm going to get a stereo with the biggest set of airhorn speakers I can find. Finally, I'll haunt every Internet site, old record store or garage sale for some of the worst music of the 70s I can find. Then I'll search high and low until I find the subjects of my wrath, slip a drug into their drink, oatmeal or whatever else they might be consuming at the time, and hire some goons to help me transport them to my torture chamber.
Once there, my hapless victims will awaken only to find themselves chained to a state-of-the-art surround-sound system.
I'm imagining their faces frozen in a rather pleasurable mix of shock, bewilderment and fear as they ask, "What are you going to do?"
"Oh, you just wait." (Insert evil laugh.)
"Why are you doing this?"
"As if you didn't know!"

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