You wanna feel old?
Tuesday March 18, 2008
Categories: Culture
Actual bedtime conversation between Your Working Boy and Mrs. D. Me: "So I never could figure out if I liked Epstein or Horshak more." Her: "What?" Me: "You know, 'Welcome Back, Kotter.'" Her: "Honey, I was three or four years...
Filed Under: Happy Days, Welcome Back Kotter
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Scary that you thought the something I did just the other day.
I pointed out to my sister that when she graduated from High School, the sinking of the Titanic was the same 'long ago' in # of years as her High school graduation is 'long ago' now. I also pointed out when a friend described a bar in Oak Cliff as being in the 'historic old Long John Silver' bldg, (making me laugh hysterically) I realized: That 1976 fast food fish shack shack is as old now as a World War ll place was then... in 1976.
My sister left saying I was giving her a headache.
Mr. Dreher:
It gets worse. I am hearing Tears for Fears, Wham ! and Men Without Hats on the local oldies channel. (Talk about the unfortunate musical legacy of the 1980s !) The station in question even has a special "70s at Seven" hour once a week. The "Saturday Night Oldies Party" is featuring early Madonna (before she became a tramp), ABBA and Donna Summer.
I overheard a commercial for "new episodes of your favorite comedies" tonight. The background music was the "Welcome Back, Kotter" theme. Nobody picked up on that fact.
What's next ? Foreigner and Styx on the "Music of Your Life" station ?
Just shoot me now and get it over with. I don't want to be turned into Soylent Green.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
1989. Elvis Costello put out his "Spike" album and Joe Jackson released "Blaze Of Glory".
"You better believe it - you know my dream's still alive
You can love it or leave it
But I'm never gonna be 35"
Heh, says the fellow with the gray beard.
I remember when they took the silver out of the coins in 1965, and when Cadillacs were long, low, and had killer tail fins.
Movies were 35 cents, and large Cokes were 25-35 cents at the theatre. In West Texas, we still did not lock our houses when we left. Gas really was 30 cents a gallon, and burgers at the drive-in were 25 cents or less.
And the Vietnam War, with the summer of love, the Year of the Assasinations, Tet, the race riots, Chicago, and Kent State, was only yesterday.
No Grecian Formula 44 for me ... I earned my gray hair honestly.
Lee
Here's something that will put time in perspective. My grandfather was born in 1899 (yes I'm a grey haired baby boomer). He was nineteen years old at the time of WWI (didn't serve he had flat feet). But what is really wild is that at that time he knew of at least two old geezers (late seventies or early eighties years of age)in his small Illinois town that fought for the Union in the Civil War.
I can beat gas at 30 cents a gallon. I remember 25 cents a gallon. Two gallons in my motorcycle during highschool could take me a hundred plus miles. In college my two room mates and I would go grocery shopping and each of us would put up $10. With $30 we could buy a grocery cart full and overflowing with food. Now you're lucky to fill up one plastic bag for that amount. And finally to any young lawyers out there, I went to law school at a public university (University of Washington class of 1978). Tuition for in state students was $215 a quarter or $645 for the year. And to all you gen-x'ers, keep working we need the social security payments. Yes, we are an annoying bunch with narcissistic personality disorders.
Vladimir: 'member NIGHT FLIGHT?
Estragon: You mean for those of us 1980s collegians for whom the smoke has cleared, as it were, just enough to enable recall of those Friday overnights when the USA Network afforded us of the pre-Internet Jurassic a two-hour freeform, left-end-of-the-FM-dial mélange of indie-band videos, irony-enriched hygiene and civil-defense films from the saddle-shoe and maltshop era as far back as REEFER MADNESS (1936),
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6696582420128930236
vintage movie bloopers (Porky Pig hammers thumb to stuttered "S.O.B."),
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nJuRVn2EIMM
underground cartoons due to bubble up like surfacing marsh gas unto mainstream life soon after, like Wes Archer's immortal "Jac Mac and Rad Boy Go",
wesarcher.com/jacmac_radboy.html
(prefiguring Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, &c.), and camped-out octogenarian ribticklers from nickelodeon, birth-of-cinema times like Georges Méliès' "A Trip To The Moon" from 1902,
youtube.com/watch?v=iEiSr6r-qrI
whose improvised stoner-geek Peanut Gallery provided the virtual ur-text for the entire MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 (MST3k) franchise...all that and announcer Pat Prescott's butterscotch sundae of a voice...
night_flight1.tripod.com/audio/pat_night_flight.mp3
Vladimir: Yeah, yeah, that's it...!
Estragon: No, never heard of it...
That's easy. Epstein. Classic. But then again there was Washington.:)
And,I'll admit it. I'm watching THE fluffy cotton candy pop show AI. (Sometimes fluff is good.) And my husband and I can't get over the fact that alot of these kids have never heard Beatles' songs til now. . . . Is that possible?
At least they still like them.
Old. But not ancient yet.
Yesterday I was introduced to a four year old as looking like Santa. He said I looked like Santa but he knew I wasn't. It told him that didn't matter because all of us old guys with white beards talked. I had an in if he ever needed it.
My wife this week is celebrating spring break with our oldest granddaughter. She will be twenty five this year. She can't cross my mind without making me smile.
Our youngest granddaughter will be two this year. According to my wife she is just like our twenty five year old granddaughter was at that age. I didn't meet my oldest granddaughter until she was five so I'll have to take her word for it.
I look at my two granddaughters and they make it clear that getting old is a small price to pay for the pleasure they bring. In between those two is three grandsons and another granddaughter. More of the same you might say.
I've always been an optimist. So as the body applies the brakes I'm taking advantage of the opportunity to see the scenery. I am getting older. That's okay. Things are getting better.
The past is another country but it's never that far away. I once figured out that I'm only four handshakes removed from George Washington...
That being said, the changes between 1955 and 1974 were far more dramatic than those between 1989 and now. The very notion of security is just one example. In 1955 it never would have occurred to my parents (just then becoming teenagers) or their parents to lock their homes' front doors at night, or when they were out. Heck, they usually left it open. In 1974 and in 1989 everyone locked their doors, and that's an assumption that has been unchanged to today.
I started Metamucil some years ago. *sigh* Not tried the Grey Goose, however...
I don't feel 44 - honestly, I don't. 44 year olds are well-established in their lives, ships firmly set in a direction, with only retirement looming as a possible course change.
But 44 I am. And my goodness, it all feels like an adventure if I do not allow my self to either get bogged down by the mundanity of any given day or get sucked into the Vortex of Total Perspective that sees little ol' me as that proverbial blip in the universe, staying just in the place God put me.
Haha, guess how old I was in 1989? Nine. :) And I have no idea who Epstein and Horshak are. :)
If it makes you feel any better (though it will probably make you feel worse), I feel old, too. I'm turning 28 in a couple weeks, and it hit me the other day that it's TWO YEARS FROM THIRTY. I know, cue the violins...
I have conversations like this with my wife (eight years younger than me) all the time. They often result from pop culture references on current TV shows we watch (The Simpsons et. al.) that I get but she doesn't ("Don't you know who the Fonz is?" etc.) Then the conversation devolves into her teasing me about how old I am. I swear I can feel a new gray hair grow on my head every time it happens ; ).
Y'all are making me smile with your talking about younger wives. After Saturday my wife will be five years older than me until July. Then the calender will be turned back to her only being four years my senior again.
I know.
It's a rough row to hoe being a boy toy.
Welcome to old age.
Signed...
My husband is six years older than me. He always tells people "You're only as old as the woman you feel." ;-)
I'm 53. I remember where I was when President Kennedy was shot.
Okay, I was only two when Happy Days went off the air, and wasn't even BORN when Welcome Back Kotter went off (I know, I know, I'm young!) ....but I was obsessed with re-runs of shows from the 50s-70s.
Epstein is my choice. :)
I'm 63. I was in college when Kennedy was shot. I remember watching Joe McCarthy on the (little tiny screen) TV. I remember radio drama. ("Sgt Preston of the Yukon! (wolf howl in background).") I remember President Eisenhower's presidential campaigns. ("I like Ike.") I was living as an "adult" (22) in the Haight Ashbury in 1967, with all that entails.
You X'ers are but children. If I don't feel old (I don't) there's no excuse for you-all. :)
Personally, I was depressed back in 1984 when I realized that my favorite baseball player, Don Mattingly, was younger than I was... and that, before long, ALL the ballplayers would be younger than I was.
And it was even scarier when I realized a few years ago that there were
guys younger than me playing in the Yankees "Old-Timers Day" game. Hey!
Joe Dimaggio was an "old-timer!" Phil Rizzuto was an "old-timer." Don
Mattingly and Tino Martinez are NOT old-timers!
Back to Rod's pop culture point- the first Led Zeppelin album came out
in 1968, which is 40 years ago. When I was a freshamn in high school,
"40 years ago" was 1935.
In other words, for a teenager today, Led Zeppelin is as relevant and
cutting edge as Bing Crosby, Tommy Dorsey and the Andrews Sisters.
And the Beatles are Al Jolson.
This is the first year there's been a serious presidential candidate who is (just barely) younger than I am. People running for president are supposed to be OLD.
"Put a shot of Grey Goose in my Metamucil, and send me to bed."
I can remember when the drink of choice for our elders was the Philips Screwdriver.
I was born in 1970, which puts me 'bout bottom-middle o' the pack, from what I gather. 25 years after the end of WWII, of which my father was a veteran. Nixon's second term. My youngest grandparent was born in 1900. (We mate old cuz we're ugly). My oldest grandparent was born in 1892 in Germany. I never met him, but my 3 year old son carries his name. Another grandfather bought some shrapnel in the Great War while riding a bicycle into town to do something which was probably no good.
I certainly remember "Mr. Kotta" and "Happy Days", of course. And Jimmy the Dhimmi Carter. My favorite show at that time was Popeye, but still.
Oh, and I just got my first gray beard hair.
Take that....
Blessed Lent to all.
"I was born in 1970...Nixon's second term." - HM
1st term: 1969-1973
2nd term: 1973-1974
Well whadda you expect? I was 2.
Heh.
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