The real 50's

Keep this clip in mind whenever you see a movie featuring "teens" from the 50's dancing.

Beach Boys on Shindig

Three things I take from this clip:

1. Every clip I've ever seen from Shindig I'm my life has been nothing less than awesome.

2. Dennis Wilson is a terrible lipsyncer. Doesn't matter though.

3. Even just dancing and singing backup, Mike Love sucks hard.

First day of Junior High 1963

The thing to keep in mind while watching this video is that the students pictured are the same generation that will be totally hippified a mere 5-6 years later as seen in innumerable PBS specials and Time-Life Music infomercials. What happened?

KU MU

From a time when KU/MU interactions were a little more genteel than today.

70's TV-movies are awesome

Although you might have trouble following the plot when skipping the first 8 parts of this video, what everyone is looking for, the horsicide, is at the 5 minute mark below.

35 things that were once common in my lifetime but are now extinct (or effectively extinct)

1. Smallpox
2. The TV Movie of the week. (On networks at least)
3. Lawn Darts
4. American Bandstand and Soul Train (how do kids today know when Saturday morning is over?)
5. Weekly World News
6. Hai Karate cologne
7. Five and dimes
8. Red dye #2
9. Junior High
10. Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Plymouth and Mercury Motors
11. PDA's
12. Candy Cigarettes
13. T-tops
14. Quaaludes (in the US)
15. Banana seat bicycles.
16. Leaded gas
17. Marathon candy bars
18. Howard Johnsons restaurants (effectively extinct)
19. Postum (I think my grandmother passing away is what finally did this in)
20. Heathkit kits
21. Camelot, Musicland and Tower Records.
22. DDT (I thought they had banned this well before I was born, not so)
23. New Coke
24. Pull tab drink cans
25. Chi-Chi’s Restaurants
26. The basic four food groups as the basis of healthy eating
27. Non-flatscreen monitors
28. Driver’s Ed classes in public high schools
29. Carnation Instant Breakfast bars and squares
30. Super Elastic Bubble Plastic
31. Montgomery Ward
32. Zima
33. Mademoiselle Magazine
34. Sear's Catalog
35. The after-school special. (How will kids today learn that tolerance is good and drugs are bad?)

Plus 15 things that surprisingly still exist, are in production and are commonly available

1. Pinball machines (although only one manufacturer is left)
2. Stuckey’s restaurants
3. Typewriters and dot matrix printers
4. Toughskins
5. Highlights Magazine (Gallant is an ass)
6. Drive-in theaters
7. Members Only jackets
8. Telegrams
9. The American Top 40 radio show
10. VCRs
11. Bonnie Bell Lip smackers (but do they still have the Seven-up flavor?)
12. Power Rangers
13. RIF – the Reading is Fundamental program
14. Shrinky Dinks
15. Roller rinks (Although, if they don’t have everyone wearing quad skates, the people not skating crowded around the Space Invaders machine, and a soundtrack consisting almost exclusively of disco and Journey, then they are dead to me.)

3 obscure british originals of not so obscure eighties songs