Frak, yeah.
In a decade or two, that’ll be seen as an influencial film. Mark my words.
I loved Speed Racer too. I didn’t like the movie at first, not just because it was yet another live action re-make of an old TV show, but because of the modern magic that could have gone in it. I was able to appreciate it more after losing my preconceptions. I still think it should have been animated though. Nostalgia for me is remembering the little kid who use to say: “This is cool, but the animation sucks.”
Nostalgia Craaaaappp:
OK. Let’s start with one of my first memories.
Matchbox / Hot Wheels
One of my friends had an area next to his garage that was meant for another garage or a pool. Instead, it was an open area of dirt. To us, it was a construction zone. We would take a piece of cardboard and draw roads on the ground. We would create a literal town and city, with a raceway on the outskirts of town. We spent many an afternoon constructing and deconstructing, mapping out new roadways, etc. All for the pleasure of driving our various Matchbox or HotWheels cars around.
Whenever I am in Toys R Us and happen upon a Matchbox car, I think fondly back on those days and hearing my Mom scream, “What the frak have you been doing all day? You’re filthy!”
Atari 2600 / Commodore 64
One Christmas, my family got an Atari. Unfortunately, I got really bored with it. That is until a friend of mine said, “Hey! Why don’t you bring your Atari over my house?” Lugging that thing back and forth and playing Adventure all day long was so much fun. We would rank each other out and call each other names the whole time. His brothers would show up, kick the power cord out, and then chase us around the house. To this day, I still have scars from those fights.
I got a Commodore 64 (another Christmas gift) for “school”. My father was clueless about computers except that they did “stuff”. He assumed I knew how to use the frakkin thing. All I knew how to do was LOAD “*”,8,1 Often he would pass my room while I was playing Accolade’s HARDBALL or Simon and Schuster’s Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative and say, “Can’t you do anything with that besides playing frakkin games?” Eventually (out of guilt) I checked a book out of the library about BASIC programming and took a stab at it. I made a few silly programs; changing the screen color / font color, moving the cursor around on its own, and of course a maze. My father was unimpressed.
My favorite C64 memories though are spending a whole summer playing EPYX’s Summer Games. My brother from another mother and I competed all summer long. We used different joysticks for different competitions. It was a blast.
LEGO
I love LEGO. I got my first set from my Father’s mother (me Grandma). It was Space Lego Set 6929: Starfleet Voyager. Followed by the Space Lego Set 894: Beta-1 Command Base. And finally the 497-1: Galaxy Explorer. I had my own Lego Starfleet. I wish I had a tape recorder while I played with that stuff. I had some pretty epic stories going on.
One day I got home from school and my mom had cleaned my room, moving where I had all the ships et al. stationed. I opened my door, dropped my napsack on the floor and shouted, “Mom!! You left the Beta Quadrant open for conquest!!” I put my face in my hands, “We struggled so hard for that corner of space.”
Last year, I found a site selling old Lego sets. I purchased the Galaxy Explorer set just so I could look at and be reminded of that time.
VCR Programming
For all you younglings out there. This was a time before Hulu/Youtubes/torrents, DVD sets on Amazon, DVRs, Blockbusters, or Cable in every home. You were at the mercy of airwave programming. When a favorite show was on you had to be home or you missed it. Then, the VCR appeared. You could program a device to tape your shows and watch them later. What a concept!!
This is how I got to watch Star Trek. So you know I learned how to program that dang thing. Mind you, there was no onscreen menu or any fancy wireless gadgets. You had to punch buttons and flip switchs and then make an offering to the electronic gods and hope it was pleasing. I think the gods like Star Trek since I never missed an episode.
I Dream of Jeannie
I have to give a shout out to Barbara Eden and I Dream of Jeannie. That show and particularly that outfit has the honor of giving me my first boner. It was a bit of a shock. I was lying there watching Jeannie bouncing around the screen. And BAM
I was alone so I didn’t get embarassed or anything. It was just sort of a surprise. When you never experience something like that and then do. Well, it’s weird. Your body is doing stuff without you knowing. Have to admit. Whenever I see the show now I get butterflies in my stomach. It’s like a first kiss. Thank you, Barbara.
Woah dude, way to throw the gauntlet for awesome post. As an aside I agree with all your items, except I Dream of Jeannie. However, I look at her now and go, “Hubba hubba”
Sony Walkman
Kids, there was a time and place until very recently that you couldn’t carry 100,000 songs with you at all times. The Sony Walkman introduced the concept of portable music. I remember vividly the first time I put a cassette in one and walking around the house amazed that music followed me wherever I went.
Wizardry
We have talked about Zork, Ultima and Atari which I was a huge fan of (I know I have that Ankh around here somehere. But there is one game that holds a special place in my heart: Wizardry
It is embarrassing to think how many days of my life I spent playing this game. Talk about your imagination filling in the blanks. One of the first create a character, crawl around a dungeon and kill beasties.
Groo
I collected comics like everyone else, but not really the usual stuff. I was a big GI Joe fan, X Factor (original X Men rebrand) but the one I loved most of all, the one I rode my bike one hour from home to pick up the new issue:
Groo chronicles the tale of the stupidest warrior ever. All he wants is cheese dip and usually in the pursuit of said cheese dip inadvertently burns down a village or two.
I love the opening credit song in The Muppet Movie. Now there’s a movie I’ve love to have Second Screen on!
Talos, I honestly had never wondered what lucky lady had given you your first hint of manhood, but somehow, I’m glad I now know that it was Barbara Eden.
But LEGO. That is what’s really important here. Lego was the best possible toy for a burgeoning nerdling like me who went through some tough times between about ages 7 and 10 and had no friends. I also built truly epic, sprawling Lego compounds and the stories to go along with them. Some of them involved pirates, many of them involved space ships, and a fair few had epic soap operatic domestic scenes. I didn’t have too many matching sets that were part of the same line, but I did have two of the big buckets of random pieces, so I could cobble together pretty much anything. Including, for a while, a Professor Xavier-style wheelchair that my magical heroine/personal stand in rode around.
As I started getting into my tween years and even beyond, I was lucky to have a brother 7 years younger than me. I played with Lego until I was about 14, but by then it was secret, because I had friends again like a normal kid. But every xmas and birthday, Connor got Lego from me. It wasn’t really a gift for myself at all… noooo…
Right now at the National Building Museum in DC there is a cool little exhibit of Lego architecture. I was delighted to learn that several of my DC friends also loved Lego and were thrilled to go check it out with me. Hooray for geek friends!
Two words: FRAK YEAH. Muppets are right at the top of my nostalgia list.
I loved Groo. Even now when I visit my local indy comic book story ( You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy ) … I ask if they have any.
Actually it finally struck me. The TV show I am probably most nostalgic for is 3-2-1 Contact:
Shooter, that sounds like a great class. I would add three things. First, I think that beyond strategic considerations, Americans were genuinely locked into a contest to prove which was the superior civilization in everything from athletics to science. Second, I think that Americans in the 1960s believed that the US was an important civilization in the history of the world and that it was important to have achievements beyond the accumulation of wealth and power (just like in the game Civilizations!). Third, I think Americans equated space exploration to solving problems on Earth. Like in Star Trek TOS, as people mastered space exploration, poverty and war would fade away. I would argue that all three of those ideas have gone by the wayside.
I have a lot of nostalgia for C64 games. Almost always, though, they were more anticipation than anything. Take for example the cover and a game shot from The Hobbit:
Open Chest
Get all from Chest
Open Door
N
It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Your points are well taken and as I’ve stated before, the 1960’s were the point in life that the WWII “Greatest Generation” were at their peak in wanting to contribute to…well…EVERYTHING. They were altruistic and enlightened from world experiences and education through the GI bills.
However, the fact that the space program was altered forever following the moon landings is indicative that the country could no longer support it financially. Unlike the Eisenhower Interstate system or the TVA hydro-electric system or the mass military industrial complex that gave rise to such innovations as commercial air jet travel, the computer, and the internet (sorry Al Gore, it was DARPAnet and GOPHERnet), the space program didn’t give back any economic benefits that the others couldn’t already give. So the “jobs program” that was NASA was scaled back and we lost our funding to put people on other planets and moons.
Also, Nixon has asked Werner Von Braun what the future of space would be like. Werner replied in the vision that is laid out in the movie 2001. When Nixon told Werner he could only have a Space Shuttle or a Space Station due to available budgets, Werner chose the Space Shuttle thinking that it was the first step and that we could rapidly progress from there. Unfortunately the cheap reusable shuttle took most of the annual $14 Billion NASA budget (roughly) so the large LEO space station in the movie 2001 never could be financed. In fact, the United States had to get rid of plans for its own Space Station Freedom for the internationally funded International Space Station.
So once the Cold War strategic requirement for funding manned space flight to other planets was gone, the United States stopped funding the effort. I’d be very interested to hear more on the subject though if anyone had any other information.
~Shooter Out
LEGO was a refuge. I would escape to my own little world. Sean mentioned in this cast that he never minded being alone. I feel the same way. I could and have literally spend/spent the whole day alone with LEGO.
That being said, I really enjoy all that community and folks have to offer. When you’re ostracized for whutever reason, you reach a point where you just accept it and get used to being alone. You like being around you because, you dig the stuff you dig. GWC is wonderful because because there is a whole community of folks that dig what you dig. And this is the most important point. If they don’t dig it, that’s ok also. There is so much I don’t know and have learned by being a part of this community.
Thanks GWC.
I also like and even need a lot of alone time (not in the euphemistic sense, here). Solitude is comfortable and relaxing. When S and I first moved in together we got on each other’s nerves because we both needed more time by ourselves than our little apartment allows, so we started scheduling time when one of us had the place to ourself. As my life has gotten busier and my ambitions greater I have given up a lot of minor hobbies to preserve time to just be by myself and be quiet.
I didn’t have any friends for about 4 years because my parents had a traumatic divorce and we moved from Oregon to Boston to Naples FL to Palm Beach County in the space of 2 years. I was shell shocked. I was the new kid at school every year in 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th grade. It was way easier to just retreat from the world for a while. Not in a dangerous or socially-stunting way. As it turns out, when I have my sh*t together I am actually somewhat outgoing. I just need my breaks.
And, yeah, echo the Thanks GWC. Can’t say it enough.
Another Hanna-Barbera cartoon show I remember watching? Godzilla: http://www.amazon.com/Godzilla-Original-Animated-Vol-1/dp/B000EXZKR6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305418142&sr=8-1
Oh, LEGOs. I had forgotten about that. I too was somewhat friendless (with the exception of my siblings, mostly) for swathes of my childhood, and I fondly remember a) building crap with my 2 Erector Sets (I had both a “new” one and my Dad’s from when he was a kid) and b) building sprawling LEGO cities, complete with public transportation systems thanks to my brother’s wooden train sets, that my siblings and I would take turns destroying and rebuilding a la Godzilla. Good times.
Oh yes, I forgot about Prydain. They were great YA books. I hope everyone with tween children are taking notes.
Delaware Dean