#270: Geek Nostalgia, Part 3

Podcasts Galactic Watercooler
#21

My Childhood Anime:

Kimba the White Lion, Amazing Three, Marine Boy and Gigantor.

Voltron came along far too late for me to enjoy, besides it was so butchered it was hard to take seriously. Gatchaman suffered the same fate when it was brought over here as Battle of the Planets, they castrated it. My friends and I used to laugh and wonder why they didnt just go straight to flaming sword whenever a baddie appeared?

And Robotech also came too late, I had just joined an Anime Club and was being exposed to really high quality Anime and was making copies of it when it came here. Robotech was three anime series smashed together poorly and repackaged for the US, and after seeing the Macross movie (Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do you remember Love?) none of us could stand to watch the tamed down Golden Harvest (or was it Harmony Gold?) version on TV.

Flintstones:

Enjoyed it as well as the animated movies as a kid. Never realized it was a remake of The Honeymooners until I was exposed to the series in my twenties. Also suddenly realized then that Yogi Bear was Edward “Ed” Lillywhite Norton from the ‘Honeymooners’…

NES:

Played the Hell out of Final Fantasy on that system, creating new teams and sending them through… :slight_smile:

C 64:

Silent Service, Red Storm Rising, Strike Eagle F 15, Space Cobra, M.U.L.E., Archon: The Light and the Dark… and so many many more… ahhhhh, good times. Plus I loved how it gave new life to my old Atari joysticks! And I was suprised how often I would spot a C64 or especially a C64 keyboard being used as a prop in a movie.

Cartoons Pimping Toys:

I believe GI Joe was the first American Cartoon to directly and unashamedly pimp toys. I may be wrong… Of course the Japanese had been doing it long before we caught on to the idea! :slight_smile:
Thanks for the reminiscing and the smiles.

#22

My Nostalgia:

Cartoons:

[ul]
[li]G.I. Joe - I lived on an Air Force Base for a lot of my childhood, so when G.I. Joe came out it was only natural that I watch it. I still enjoy the cartoon to this day and I share the old episodes with my son now.
[/li][li]Transformers - I was a BIG Transformers fan when I was younger. I always loved space and since the Transformers came from space it helped with my interest. (I lived very close to Kennedy Space Center when I was younger)
[/li][li]Robotech - I always loved the long story arc and drama of this series as a kid. A few years ago I bought that crazy box set and loved every second of it.
[/li][/ul]

Movies:
[ul]
[li]The Star Wars Trilogy (Original) - I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS
[/li][li]The Last Starfighter - My love for Space adventure and video games keeps this near and dear to my heart.
[/li][/ul]

Toys:

[ul]
[li]G.I. Joe - I remember setting up great epic battles in my back yard.
[/li][li]He-Man - Combined my friend and I had pretty much every figure, vehicle and playset and I remember having a awesome time playing with them.
[/li][/ul]

Video Games:

[ul]
[li]NES - I loved the Zelda games.
[/li][li]Genesis - Shining Force and Shining Force 2 were probably the ULTIMATE RPGs when I was younger and is what got me into RPGs in the first place.
[/li][/ul]

#23

Need more of Sean talking like an Elcor. I actually want to hear an entire Elcor cast.

#24

Naw, not everyone. And not all the time for Sean either.

Also, in the vein of actual anime rather than the over-dubbed stuff I grew up with, Crackle.com is hosting a lot of original series such as the first part of Robotech, Macross and Captain Harlock. They also have newer stuff like Viper’s Creed.

#25

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/secret-romance-mass-effect/63941

#26

Brilliant sir!

#27

Around the late 70’s, I picked up a copy of the Monster Manual around the same time I first saw Star Wars Ep 4. These event combined to drive me into a love affair with fantasy and Sci Fi. I’m very nostalgic over my D&D games through the 80’s, reading the Conan novels, watching He-man, Thundercats, and Star Blazers when I got home from school.

Star Wars led me into sci fi TV shows such as the original Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers, plus reurns of the original Star Trek.

With Audra, I too enjoyed L’engle as well as Christopher’s Tripod series, Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising, and Leguin’s Wizard of Earthsea.

Two Plugs for Conan fans: Spawn.com put out 2 series of Conan figures and DK books put out a Conan Insiders Guide by Roy Thomas who I believe wrote the Marvel comics Conan series, but he’s quite the expert.

http://www.amazon.com/Conan-Ultimate-Worlds-Savage-Barbarian/dp/B003D7JYF4/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1305252197&sr=8-2-fkmr1

Delaware Dean

#28

Yes, yes, yes and yes!

Actually, I remember reading and liking The Dark is Rising in 5th grade but I don’t remember a damn thing about the story itself. Nothing. So I picked up a copy at the bookstore about a month ago. It’s up for a reread as soon as I get through the Song of Ice and Fire books.

I also loved the Chronicles of Prydain.

#29

Muppet Love:

I loved the Muppet Show as well, my friends and I were always amazed at the caliber of Celebrities that would show up on what was considered by some nothing more than a glorified puppet show. But it was always a smile and laugh inducing event, and the musical numbers were always a delight! The fact that it never took itself seriously only made it all the more endearing.

The Muppet Movie is on my Space ipad list under the heading of ‘musicals’, I often had the soundtrack in the cassette player of the olde ‘Deathmobile’. Though my girlfriend at the time used to get annoyed if I looked over at her and smiled while singing along to ‘I hope that something better comes along’… :smiley:

Such an under-rated soundtrack. :slight_smile:

#30

Regarding both “Good always wins” AND kid logic, I can remember in the middle of Rocky 3 turning to my older, wiser brother (He was like 13 and I was merely 10 or 11) and exclaiming (much, I’m sure, to the anger of the theatergoers around us) that they should just let Rocky win, because Mr T is too mean.

My brother tried unsuccessfully to convince me that that’s not how boxing works.

#31

Oddball’s Nostalgic Top Ten ( not obvious and in no particular order)

(1) Avalon Hill Board Games
(2) Amarillo Design Bureau ( Star Fleet Battles )
(3) Advanced Dungeons and Dragons
(4) Shep Payne’s Diorama “How To”
(5) Atari 2600 cartridges
(6) Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever
(7) Elric of Melniboné
(8) Frank Frazetta
(9) The Brothers Hildebrandt
(10) John Hughes movies ( Hey sexy girlfriend! )

this excludes the obvious which are … well … obvious.
Star Trek, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Planet of the Apes, Heinlein, Bradbury, Clarke, King, Asimov … etcetera etcetera etcetera.

oh,and whoever mentioned “Kimba the White Lion” … thanks for putting that darn cats theme song in my head for most of Thursday … arrrrgggg!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQsQqOlPjhs

:slight_smile:

#32

Sean, just watched the Green Hornet last night thanks to your recommendation on this podcast. My wife and I loved it.

Thanks again

#33

Your welcome! :smiley:

#34

One of my favorite classes at the Air Force Academy was not a hard-core science and technical “rocket science” class, although those were fun too. I had the opportunity to study orbital mechanics, space navigation, propulsion, satellite systems engineering and even had the opportunity to lead a design team for an experimental rocket propulsion system. Those were all fun classes for me, however the class I’m referring to was Political Science 465, US Space Policy with Major Van Tassel.

Sadly, most of my notes for this class have vanished with the years, but I was able to retrieve some of the surviving paperwork and notes from my basement archives and located a couple of the books related to the class among my home office shelves.

Granted, this information is now almost 20 years old and looked backwards even further to the 1950s and 1960s, but a couple of points are still relevant to the discussion between the crüe and Juan regarding the past US space program and the future of human space exploration.

First of all, yes the Soviets can claim a bunch of firsts in space. But the United States took the crown jewel in July 1969 by landing on the moon. And what makes it even more special is that no one else has done it yet. So in the grand scheme of things the united States still has the first place trophy of “firsts in space” 31 years and running.

Also, there has been a lot made over the years of why the United States just decided to go to the moon in the early 1960s and we were able to do it within ten years but we haven’t done anything close to that since. The simple answer of why the United States did it? It was because the country was in the middle of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the government wanted to demonstrate to the Soviet Union and the rest of the world that it could place a ‘payload’ anywhere it wanted to within a couple of feet and do it anywhere and do it anytime. If you substitute ‘Nuclear Warhead’ for ‘payload’ in that sentence you are getting the real drift of the meaning. Couple that goal along with just beating the Soviets to it and able to ‘claim’ the moon by planting the United States flag on it and you have a national will to fund such a program. But after the United States proved it could land a manned crew within feet of where it was supposed to land it’s national strategic objectives waned.

Also, if you’d like to understand how the United States made it’s early decision to fund Space Station Freedom, check out The Space Station Decision by Howard E. McCurdy. (On Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Space-Station-Decision-Incremental-Technological/dp/0801887496/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305299007&sr=8-1-spell or Johns Hopkins University Press here: http://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/ecom/MasterServlet/GetItemDetailsHandler?iN=9780801887499&qty=1&source=2&viewMode=3&loggedIN=false&JavaScript=y ).

Of course today we are retiring the Space Shuttle fleet and re-creating NASA back to the R&D government body that it should be. My biggest beef with this is why did it take so long? If the United States wasn’t going to return to the moon or head off towards Mars after establishing a foothold in Low Earth Orbit why did the government actively prevent private citizens or corporations from doing so?

In the end I’m just glad to see it finally happening. While it’s too late for me to set foot on Mars or the Moon, I’d love to be able to see my kids or grand kids do it in my lifetime.

~Shooter Out

#35

Yet another thing we have in common. This is one of my favorite book series to give to kids, now, too - because they’re unlikely to come across it on their own, but once they read it they love it :slight_smile: (at least, the kids I’ve given it to)

#36

I’m a bout 30 minutes in and wanted to fill Audra on 2000AD

It’s an ensemble comic which has been running since around 77 or so, each issue is called a “prog” the flagship Character is Judge Dredd who’s appeared in every issue excepting, oddly enough, issue 1. Judge Dredd is set (as the crue probably know) in the late 21st century future city, 97% unemployment and heavily armed militia require future cops to have the power of instant death sentaces, almost everything is a crime, littering alone can get you 6 months in the iso (lation) cubes. There’s a lot more to it but that gives you a flavour.

there are usually 5 -6 stories in each issue running between 4 and 6 pages, the stories themselves can go anything up to twenty odd issues and some collaborations with the spin off judge Dredd magazine in the early nineties had stories in alternate comics, each part running side by side on both.

the other characters included spin offs from the Judge dredd universe as well as stories covering all sorts of angles and varieties of sci fi ballad of halo jones (odd futeristic stuff) Slainé (ancient celtic mythology) Flesh (time travelling people farming dinosaurs for meat) Flynn (contemporary but with magic using and mythology mixed in).

I collected this myself in it’s various forms for 13 years from the early 80s to the mid to late 90s, it’s a good comic and is still going.

Virtually every major British comic book artist and author (and quite a few American ones) got their start in 2000AD, Alan Moore and Garth Ennis to name but two.

2000AD have, in the interest of collections released bound trade paperbacks of the judge Dredd case files (up to volume 16 now) Slaine, Sam Slade robo hunter, judge Anderson psi division and a fair few others, they are available on Amazon and I buy them here when I can

If you want to know more about 2000AD ask me questions, I know quite a lot but don’t want to bore everyone by going on and on, I’ll comment on the rest of the cast once I’ve heard it.

Phaze
on the “now watching the Chicago code starring the lovely ex l-word star Jessica Biel” ID

#37

I love the Muppets too, but they have been known to make mistakes now and then. Here is a video of some of there most hilarious bloopers:

//youtu.be/3KANI2dpXLw

#38

Hehehe…love that one! Here’s a fav of mine:

//youtu.be/xpcUxwpOQ_A

#39

Nostaglia shows:

Star Trek (but is is still called nostaglia when you still like it today?)

Battlestar Galactica The Original Series

Speed Racer

Brady Bunch, The Partridage Family, The Rookies, S.W.AT.

And for Saturday Morning cartoons:

School House Rock

Superfriends (1973 - 1974 version).

#40

I was given the set at probably the loneliest moment of my life and dove into them and just loved every moment. Oh god, I wanted to be Taran Wanderer so badly.

Someone (the crazy uncle who lived with us? my father?) had a VHS tape of old Speed Racer that I watched about a bazillion times when I was 6. It was rad.