It’s fruitcake season ... pass it on

It’s ba-a-ack. One of the high points of the Tech’s Performing Arts Series every year, Mariachi Christmas, is hitting the Macey Center stage tomorrow night. Big hats and embroidery and dancing and singing, and I love those fat guitars.

This year, Mariachi Mexico MestizoI and Ballet Folklorico are bound to put on a dazzling show, but I can’t help but reminisce about the shows the late Les Torres put on for a few years. I don’t know if you remember, but up until about 2016, Les’s Merry-Achi Christmas featured touring mariachi bands, upcoming artists and a lot of local talent, sometimes running three or four hours. Les told me once that he loved putting all the time and energy into organizing it as a way to introduce Socorro’s youth to the rich tradition of mariachi music.

Oh, before I forget it, December is National Fruitcake Month, a time to recognize that weirdo uncle you don’t like to talk about. No, I’m talking about the sometimes rum-soaked kind that can age up to 25 years under certain conditions and is a perennial holiday gift item.

With that in mind, if you were wondering if it wasn’t rude to regift the fruitcake gifted to you last year, according to the guru of gentrified etiquette, Miss Manners, it’s okay (since regifting has become a national pastime). The main thing, she says, is to make sure to remove the first card before passing it on, and “after proper aging, It will eventually reach the two or three people in this world who love fruitcake.”

Mark your calendar: National Regifting Day is December 19.

But I’m digressing.

We’re coming up on the day that has lived in infamy. Of course, I refer to Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, December 7, and thanks to my parents – who both heard the news flash on the radio – I was taught to remember it every year.

My father put studying for his doctorate on hold and joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, becoming a radio operator, and my mother wanted to do her part by enrolling in nursing school in Birmingham, which is where they met. Like millions of Americans, they could never forget where they were and what they were doing when they heard on the radio that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.

And how glued they were to the radio when President Roosevelt asked Congress the next day to declare war on the Empire of Japan formally. Nowadays, Japan is not an empire anymore but a regular government with an emperor, like a constitutional monarchy. Selling Camrys, TVs, smartphones, et al.

It’s hard to believe these days, but there was a time in my youth when things “Made in Japan” were thought to be a cheap knock-off of something made in this country. Like that little Sony transistor radio I had when I was a kid. So yeah, they’ve come quite a long way.

I try not to harp on how quickly technology has advanced in a seemingly short period of time, and honestly, I don’t really think it’s because of the ‘good old days’ syndrome.

I mean, I’ve even heard older millennials make that ‘good old days’ observation.

My daughter once was ruminating about how when she was little, she relied on cassette tapes, “and then CDs, and now you can listen to music streaming on the internet. All you need is a little thing you can keep in your pocket.”

Hmm. It sounds like that Sony transistor radio to my 1962 self.

My son, a Gen X-er, remembers the Stone Age - well, maybe Bronze Age - of 45s and LPs. He also remembers a time when you saw a film in a movie theater, but if you wanted to watch it again later you had to wait around until it showed up on network TV.

But you didn’t need a password or prove you aren’t a robot.

Just don’t get me started on two-step verification.

A lot of us first dipped our metaphorical toe into the World Wide Web waters in those dark ages – say, 1995 – with a squawky dial-up modem and when email was not much more than a novelty. I remember a joke back then that if you checked your email more than twice a day, you were obsessed with it.

To be sure, my own relationship with the internet is somewhat dyslexic. If I may, it’s Timothy Leary’s 1966 hippie mantra “turn on, tune in, drop out” all over again. I think my computer’s on LSD. I turn it on. I tune into the internet. The internet drops out.

OK, it’s back, but I now get the Blue Screen Of Death.

Something tells me that trusty ol’ desktop has OD’d. Does Narcan come in a USB version?