Back when I was your age

[Docwagon 856]

Inspired by Drifter's "Get off my lawn" thread.

 

Back when I was your age, we all knew sluts got famous by being sluts.  Madonna's cone bras and bustiers, Cher using her hair as a bra, that whole basically topless except for the things coming off my Egyptian hat thingy, it was how you got "discovered."  Nobody debated on WHY they were being sluts, they were being sluts because that's a tried and true formula to fame for female celebrities.  Miley is not breaking new ground here, she's following a very worn and proven path.  She's just had to up the game a bit because what sluts used to wear (say, Kelly Bundy on Married with Children) is now less slutty than what Disney girls wear.  Plus, you know, sex tapes and whatnot.  You just have to keep out-slutting the last generation to get the media attention.  On a side note, we used to use the word "sluts".

 

The Japanese were taking over the whole damned world.  They were this efficient little super race slowly eating us alive with the ever widening trade deficit.  Wal-mart would proudly hang signs over a toaster or pair of socks that would read "this item produced 15 jobs in Chickenfuck, TN" or where-ever.  Oh, and Wal-mart used to close for the night!  Hell, just before that there wasn't even a Wal-mart in most towns.  Yeah, I know.  China made plastic party favor shit and most people figured they were still using rickshaws and wearing pointy straw hats in their rice fields for the most part.

 

Let's see, what other catastrophes were going to kill us all.  Well, the Cold War until the Berlin Wall thing.  Yeah, the Russians were the bad guys back then.

 

Smokey Bear was telling us not to burn the damned woods down, and did it so well that apparently we didn't let the woods burn quite as often as we should have.  Sorry about that.

 

Alar on apples was poisoning us.  I guess that shook out ok.

 

Drunk driving was WIDELY accepted in society.  Then MADD came along and the pendulum swung way way way the other way.  To this day, we don't do checkpoints for any other misdemeanor, how many TV commercials have you seen about not doing some other misdemeanor crime?  Yes, kids, drinking and driving is bad, but holy crap to we emphasize enforcement of that (along with seat belt laws) way out of proportion to its actual damage to society.  On a side note, seat belts were optional.  Not just use, but installation.  Older folks had new cars with no seat belts at all.  I had two that had lap belts but no shoulder belts.

 

We didn't know we wanted more cowbell.

 

 

 

 

 

[spectre 633]

nice post

[TigerBurge 2,375]

Awesome post!

I got one to add, cartoons that we grew up on we're actually good. Not this shit they have today or even the past ten years. What happened to the Saturday morning cartoons? G.I. Joe,Transformers and Thudercats. We had He-Man,youth today has crap. Not one of today's cartoons can come close to Scooby Doo or Looney Tunes.

[uberwarrior 373]

Lol, the latter day Tom & Jerry cartoons are just so crap compared to the Fred Quimby one's.

 

I remember going to the cinema every Saturday morning, and getting excited about there being a Godzilla movie being the main feature. Yeah, man in a rubber monster's outfit ripping up a model city, stuff of legend.

 

Thunderbirds was awesome and Captain Scarlett was slated for being too realistic.

 

Football (soccer) players didn't know the meaning of rolling around the floor for 30 minutes if they were tackled heavily. You'd have to have had a broken leg to come off injured. Ron Harris and Norman Hunter anyone?? Kevin Keegan and Billy Bremner going at it during the Charity Shield.

[Drifter 851]

In my day what I knew??

 

Chuck Wollery would always be back in 2 & 2

 

You could not touch Hammer

 

Three was company

 

Dungeons & dragons was cool

 

Patrick Swayze was THE MAN

 

77 Cutlasses came from the factory with no rear bumper lol

 

Kelly Labrock was the sexiest woman alive

[spectre 633]

That movie with the Baldwin brother having a sex scene with Cindy Crawford was a definite watch.

[Dattebayo 446]

Back in your guy's days, I was a sperm.

[Drifter 851]

Back in your guy's days, I was a sperm.

 

touche'........................bitch!

[uberwarrior 373]

Back in your guy's days, I was a sperm.

Hahahahaha, nice one!!

[spectre 633]

... women creamed their jeans over hair bands.

[Chookes 965]

Back in my day there was no Sky+, just normal Sky. You had to actually watch shows by their schedule, shocking.

WWF was good.

Channel 5 had Friday night softcore porn.

[Plumbers Crack 4,067]

Childrens TV - Andy Pandy, The Wooden Tops, The Flowerpot Men, Muffin The Mule (I kid you not, the days of innocence) and TV was black and white

Family TV (yes, we all watched TV together kids, in one room!!!) - Z Cars, Dixon of Dock Green, Sunday Night at The London Palladium, Doctor Who, The Saint

Football (not eggball) - two teams of 11 with no substitutes

Family car - Ford Prefect no seatbelts fitted

My first cars - Learnt in a Rover 100 (2 1/4 ton straight 6 monster!) and Mk 1 Ford Cortina

Information Resources - walk to the Public Library, an absolutely brillant place which made you think!!

Those were the days!!

[Docwagon 856]

To continue:

We didn't get so damned worked up over cartoons.  If you liked Transformers and I preferred GI Joe (which I did), we didn't make it a gay marriage issue and entrench in respective cultural norms.  No, we talked about who could kick who's ass (GI Joe, they blow up vehicles all the time while the Transformers *never* kill a human) and what a bunch of pussies the Thunder Cats were.

 

For some reason, we did get pretty worked up over shoe brands.  Alas, I was never one of the cool kids with the pump up shoes.  Urban legends of the day were full of street robbers cutting off someone's feet to get their tightly laced pump up sneakers.  We didn't have Snopes back then.

 

At least in my area, the accepted term was still "colored" for black people.  The hypenation process started a bit before I went in the Army, IIRC.  My recruiter, being used to hilljacks, casually mentioned that we should refer to black soldiers as "African-American" and not "colored" when he took me to MEPS.  I was aware of the shift, this was not a revelation to me.  I still occasionally forgot and said "colored".  No one seemed offended.

 

Foreign cars were econo-boxes.  Sure, a Toyota got good gas mileage and was reliable, but souping one up?  Fuck that, might as well stick to lawn mower racing.  The Mustang and Camaro was the hot rod platform of the day, for the most part.  We'd have laughed someone out of town if they'd shown up with one of those big fart can mufflers on a rice burner.  We weren't real crazy about the lowrider trend, for the most part, but that might be more of a rural thing than an age thing.  Lowered trucks don't do real well on gravel roads.

 

Oh, we still had gravel roads.  Far as I know, there's only one left in the county I'm from today, and its in the forestry.  They paved the road I lived on some time when I was in junior high.

 

We knew who are daddy was.  He may or may not be around, but we knew who he was.

 

Running a still was common place.  So common that I'd been a cop for about 4 years when I found out it was illegal.  Who knew?

 

We knew how to drive a clutch.  Most of us knew how to back a trailer.  Again, this might be a rural thing.  I amazed the shit out of some city boys this week backing a 26' enclosed trailer into a warehouse on the first try, and several of them were about my age.

[BO7H B4RRELS 2,453]

Back in my day there was no such thing as sending your kid to "time out."  No, for me, it was just "times up" and you got an ass whoopin'

[Dattebayo 446]

Back in my day there was no such thing sending your kid to "time out." No, for me, it was just "times up" and you got an ass whoopin'

Still was that way to me.

La chancla voladora!