I watched the pilot for a new US sitcom called Caveman. It’s based on a series of TV commercials, believe it or not, for an auto insurance agency. Those commercials depict cavemen in our modern society and everything about them is unremarkable – they speak good English, have educations, hold jobs, have families – except for the fact that they’re cavemen. The point being that the insurance company’s procedures are so simple, even a caveman can understand them. The series is scheduled to start airing in October but the pilot appeared on torrent sites over the weekend.

So in this new series, there are three cavemen who are roommates – two brothers and a best friend. One of them is engaged to the beautiful blonde-haired daughter of a rich businessman. And they’re very aware of prejudice and cavemen’s media image. (At one point, one says, “they still show Flintstones six times a week, what’s that all about?”)

The writing seems vaguely clever enough that I’ll watch a few more episodes to see how they string this out – nothing knee-slappingly funny but not overly obnoxious either. The thing is, I was sitting there watching this and I was thinking to myself, “This is the 21st century, is this still a message that needs to be delivered to the public, not to judge people based on their race?”

Well, I guess I forgot how long it has been since I lived in the US, because just a few minutes later, I came across this news item over at Yahoo:

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Before Boise State running back Ian Johnson married the girl he proposed to on national television, the couple prayed to end prejudice.

Johnson and Chrissy Popadics, the cheerleader he proposed to after scoring the winning points in the Fiesta Bowl against Oklahoma, were married Saturday in a traditional ceremony at Cathedral of the Rockies First United Methodist Church.

Johnson, who is black, has said he received phone calls and about 30 letters, including personal threats from people who objected to his plans to marry his white fiancee.

I guess we haven’t come as far as we should have by now.

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This has been a very quiet weekend for me. The only times I went out were for dinner and to join a friend for a couple of (non-alcoholic – yikes!) drinks Sunday evening. The US Navy’s in town. Apparently LKF has been mobbed every night because of some weekend carnival event there. I’ve chosen to steer clear.

Most of the Wanchai bars would like to hold similar events. But the last one was several years ago. They keep trying to do new ones but the District Council keeps turning them down. They refuse to shut down a stretch of Lockhart Road for a Sunday afternoon – “streets are for cars, not people” seems to be their philosophy.

It just strikes me as so freaking odd that so many major cities in the world don’t think twice about doing these kind of street festivals. People enjoy them and they generate great business for sponsors and local businesses. So why not here?

At this point all I can ask is what century is the Wanchai District Council living in?

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Another theme I’m planning on developing more fully later. Two albums I continue to play almost weekly for decades illustrate this theme. These are No Other by Gene Clark and Starfish by The Church.

Gene Clark was an original member of the Byrds. In 1974 he poured his heart and soul into an album, “No Other,” that was a total commercial failure. Decades later almost everyone who hears it agrees it is one of the great albums of all time. But in 1974 it only got up to number 144 on the Billboard album charts. It’s said that Clark never personally recovered from the failure of this album. He died from a bleeding ulcer at the age of 46.

In 1988, I saw the Australian band The Church play at the Bottom Line in NYC. They knew the audience was packed with music industry bigwigs and backstage, before the show, they said that they were going to go out and prove to them that they were the best band in the world. And that night they really were. It remains in my memory as one of the best concerts I’ve ever attended. The album Starfish yielded a hit single, Under the Milky Way. They really deserved to conquer the world but they didn’t. 20 years later they’re still together but their time has passed and they never quite scaled the heights that they expected.

Not only do you not always get what you want in this life, sometimes you don’t even get what you deserve.