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"Back in the day..."


Snao Cone

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1 hour ago, coyote55 said:

Recently gave my teenage cousin a crash course in MS-DOS, so he could run an emulator that would play old, 8-bit computer games. That was fun, but definitely weird.

You had to mention that antique. Up until 2008 my company's inventory/receiving and disbursing program was a MS-DOS based system created by EDS a gazillion years ago. I hated it having been introduced to computers via Windows 95.

 

F1 = BACK on this screen, but you have to press F4 for BACK on the next screen.

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22 hours ago, tadkitty said:

I had the joy of explaining film photography to my nieces that are all under 10. 

LOL Not too many years ago, a Luddite friend of mine had to buy a digital camera, since his local developing vendor discontinued print. He must use one of those self serve kiosks now. 

 

No cell phone or tablet/lap top either.

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

Having just fallen foul of the digital age (my laptop stopped recognising my printer and I just found out that it's because the three year old printer has 'outdated software), I had to take a perfectly good piece of machinery to the dump today...all because we must 'buy the next thing'.:twisted:

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  • 1 month later...

No cable TV. ABC, NBC, CBS and a local station. TV was broadcast the same way radio was. TV screens were giant radio tubes called CRT's. Phones one could carry around were pure science fiction. No personal computers. The ones which existed at the time were the size of a bus and cost half a million dollars. Despite all this they had the computational power of today's calculators. No internet of course. For that matter, no calculators either unless one had an adding machine. No computer printers. One used a typewriter. Very carefully. Correcting mistakes was a tedious chore. Your spell checker was a dictionary. However, everything was far more fixable back then. These days it seems appliances are deliberately engineered to not be fixable. Especially true of cars these days. Then there was the red menace. America had to stop the spread of communism!! Why communists were everywhere. Under the bed. In the closet. Was that your neighbor or a communist that just looked like your neighbor? Growing older in this country demonstrates how it relies on the short attention span many of its citizens have. Now terrorists have replaced communists. The communists? Guess who our major trading partner is? These days everything we buy is made by communists. I remember when everything was made in Japan. Now its all made in China.  I think the only things that haven't changed much since then are traffic lights, mail boxes, can openers - and me.  

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23 minutes ago, Yeast said:

Phones one could carry around were pure science fiction

This echoes a tweet I just saw.

 

 

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There was a time you couldn't turn off or unplug your house telephone, so I guess the cartoonist didn't think about being able to turn off a pocket phone.

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My memories go back to the 60s. For TV we had the three networks from Buffalo NY, two networks from Toronto and a independent from Hamilton Ontario.

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No cash machines (ATM's) so you had to get cash from the bank, which didn't open on a Saturday 

 

A hand-powered food mincer 

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest Jetsun Milarepa

I gave my daughter and her boyfriend some DVDs of musicals from the 1950s to 70s....and they pointed out all the ways South Pacific was racist and sexist! Things have changed since then....but they loved the music!:blink:

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3 hours ago, chandrakirti said:

I gave my daughter and her boyfriend some DVDs of musicals from the 1950s to 70s....and they pointed out all the ways South Pacific was racist and sexist! Things have changed since then....but they loved the music!:blink:

Isn't it wonderful judging the past by today's 'standards'?

 

What do you expect from a generation that loves movies based on comic book characters. :rolleyes:

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4 hours ago, chandrakirti said:

I gave my daughter and her boyfriend some DVDs of musicals from the 1950s to 70s....and they pointed out all the ways South Pacific was racist and sexist! Things have changed since then....but they loved the music!:blink:

South Pacific is actually quite anti-racist for its time. When the film was being made, the producers wanted to drop "You have to be carefully taught" but the show owners refused. Listen to the lyrics.

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We are talking about an era when "In Sickness and in Health" was considered peak time television. Today it would be banned for racist content 

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Jackie Gleason had a show on old-time TV in which he'd say to his wife with a raised fist, "One of these days, Alice, pow right in the kisser!" and the audience would  laugh.  

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@Sally, considering his character, Buford T Justice, in the Smokey and the Bandit series that doesn't surprise me. 

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8 hours ago, Midland Tyke said:

South Pacific is actually quite anti-racist for its time. When the film was being made, the producers wanted to drop "You have to be carefully taught" but the show owners refused. Listen to the lyrics.

Here they are

 

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
 
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
 
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!
 
 
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There were only 48 states in the United States…

Cigarettes were only 30 cents a pack...

Gas was only 25 cents a gallon…

People didn’t have to lock their doors or windows at night…

Transistor radios and FM radio…

pot was something you cooked in, not something you smoked

…and speaking of cooking, PRESSURE COOKERS…

women wearing head coverings in church…

girls not being allowed to wear pants to school…

”gay” meant “happy”, not homosexual…

flipping baseball cards…

using a clothes pin and a baseball card or playing card to make a great sound on a bicycle

Schwinn 10-speed bikes...

phonograph records, 8-track players and cassette tapes…

the milkman and diaper services…

only dialing 4 numbers on a telephone to call anyone in my town…

peanut butter had cyclamates and canned tuna had mercury…

percolators…

Hula hoops and “Footsie”…

Chinese jump rope and pogo sticks…

mini skirts and go-go boots (I’m not even gonna mention The Beatles…)…

being able to buy cigarettes when I was 10 years old (for my grandmother), no questions asked, no ID required…

driver’s licenses that were easier to forge because they didn’t have pictures on them yet…

Air Raid drills in the halls in school…

school was cancelled because President Kennedy was shot…

seatbelts?  What are seatbelts?!...

The Good Humor Man (or Pied Piper)…

old fashioned nickelodeons featuring Betty Boop and Popeye…

Pluto was actually a planet…

IBM typewritters…

Polaroid and Kodak cameras…

the “Ankh”…

$5 Concert Kits found at Spencers, along with incense, blacklights and lava lamps…

A teenage boy's first introduction to 'porn' was through National Geographic Magazine…

Emoticon?  What's THAT???...

The Empire State building in New York City was the tallest building in the world...

no such thing as an ATM or a "debit" card...

being a 'Soda Jerk' was actually an occupation...

hitch-hiking was a common way to travel...

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14 hours ago, Skycaptain said:

@Sally, considering his character, Buford T Justice, in the Smokey and the Bandit series that doesn't surprise me. 

But the show Sally was talking about was a sitcom. Of course it was all bluster - his wife ruled the household.

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4 hours ago, daveb said:

But the show Sally was talking about was a sitcom. Of course it was all bluster - his wife ruled the household.

Ralph was always coming up with some scheme that usually ended in failure.

 

I'm sure some AVENites from the southeastern portion of the US could comment on the Buford T Justice character.

 

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

I was thinking about this today. What I remember from the (very) late 80s and 90s as a kid:

 

- Cassettes. My dad had a 1976 (I think) Pontiac Firebird. The center console was full of cassette tapes. Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, the Animals...no CDs until I was in sixth grade I think it was. Definitely no downloading digital files. Had to go to an actual record store to get music. 

 

- Music in general was way, way better. Rock and roll wasn't dead. Rock acts could actually play guitars and sung about things other than being a self-absorbed rich white kid throwing a pity party in his suburban neighborhood because the girl he wants to fuck won't doesn't like him. Radio was decent for the most part. Concerts without a sea of smartphones in the air or LED video backdrops (just a solid curtain behind the band usually with the band's logo or new album art).

 

- Landlines and having hours-long conversations on the phone.

 

- Computers that looked like a box and weighed about 70 pounds, and life without one.

 

- Actually decent, entertaining shit on TV and MTV actually played music videos at all hours of the day and night (Headbangers Ball!)

 

- Print magazines and newspapers, they still exist but hardly anyone ever reads them.

 

- In general, people seemed more real, less plastic, less fake, and less narcissistic. Maybe they were and I was too young to realize. But now it seems everyone tries to portray a completely fabricated image of themselves, for the purpose of appearing like they have the perfect life on Instagram and (usually) of getting laid.

 

- No dating apps, Buzzfeed, facebook, or internet memes.

 

- Really honest to god ugly bright, geometrical clothes and pants with the waistband so high it was nearly in your armpits.

 

- Original movies, when cinematography was still an art, not remakes of everything with terrible CGI or the same rehashed rom-com over and over again.

 

- No idiotic slang (FOMO, twerk, YOLO, triggered, etc., etc...)

 

- Harley Davidsons instead of fiberglass sport bikes with tiny engines that sound like a swarm of bees when they pass you on the highway. Motorcycles don't buzz, they rumble and growl.

 

- Halloween with door to door trick or treating and neighborhood bonfires.

 

...I personally really hate most of the way society has changed in the last 15-20 years and this generation especially. Feels so cold and impersonal. I try not to let it depress me, but it's really hard sometimes. If anything, I'm glad I remember the world before it was ruled by smartphones and the internet. I think what I miss most of all is music. I can always listen to old records, but all those bands are gone, and music doesn't sound that way anymore. I love rock, but what passes as a rock act today is a complete joke, and rock music, for the most part, has gone the same way as jazz did 50 years ago. It's just non-existent in any sort of public or tangible way. Now it's all...yuppies with mustaches and oxfords standing still and playing the same note on a brand new Strat, droning in a whiny monotone about how hard adulting is. Or it's club music. Rap or dubstep. Everything is made with a computer. Music is acquired with a computer. Bands are found with a computer. Metal doesn't exist anymore, it's just overproduced metalcore now. None of it is exciting or emotive and meaningful in any way. 

 

In some ways, too, it's becoming more and more difficult to acquire clothes I like. It's all clingy knit leggings and oversized tunics and sandals or flats. I want my leather jackets and my dark jeans and my boots. I own three leather jackets. One I wear all the time. The other two are too special to wear regularly. I have fingerless gloves I made myself years ago, and a few bracelets and cuffs and a choker and a few necklaces I like. Boots I'm having a really hard time finding. Other than shit like plain riding boots or ones that are clearly meant for a nightclub and nowhere else. I had the most awesome pair of Doc Martens tall biker boots. I loved them, I wore them almost every day, even in summer. I felt so much like myself. Until they got so worn out and eventually got ruined because of my job. Doc Martens no longer makes them or sells them, can't find anything anywhere close to what they looked or felt like. I don't like any of the boots I see. Even standard Docs, I want the tall, tall ones, but it seems they aren't making them now. 

 

*Gets off soapbox*

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When a car was narrow enough it could fit in your garage, or a space in a car park and you could get out without risking banging a door. Bicycle saddles were actually meant to be comfortable, not torture devices. 

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Going outside and seeing kids playing

walking/ biking over to your friends' places whenever to play instead of organizing 'playdates' 5 days in advance

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

@Midland Tyke, @Skycaptain, @will123, I will definitely be reminding myself to get my daughter to look more closely at those lyrics. Mind you, I came from the era of 'Love thy neighbour' and 'Mind your Language' (the latter spurred me on to a secondary career in that area). Both were outwardly cringy, but on closer inspection....

 

Yes, @Tapioca, there are kids who have every second of their lives organised now, whereas we used to just play life by ear.

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@Palovana

 

I was thinking about this today. What I remember from the (very) late 80s and 90s as a kid:

 

 

- Music in general was way, way better. Rock and roll wasn't dead. Rock acts could actually play guitars and sung about things other than being a self-absorbed rich white kid throwing a pity party in his suburban neighborhood because the girl he wants to fuck won't doesn't like him. Radio was decent for the most part. Concerts without a sea of smartphones in the air or LED video backdrops (just a solid curtain behind the band usually with the band's logo or new album art).

 

Another grumpy person like me. Can someone tell me why a tatted up wanker like Ed Sheeran is popular?

 

On the topic of tattoos, when I was a kid in the 70s, the only persons with them were bikers or navy and army vets that my father knew. Now everyone and their dog (wait our beagle had a tattoo under her ear) has at least one. I always think when I see an attractive girl with multiple tats, “What are they going to look like when you’re 70 or 80?

 

 

- In general, people seemed more real, less plastic, less fake, and less narcissistic. Maybe they were and I was too young to realize. But now it seems everyone tries to portray a completely fabricated image of themselves, for the purpose of appearing like they have the perfect life on Instagram and (usually) of getting laid.

 

It’s all about me. We see it on a daily basis with the way tourist interact (I grew up in the city). Park, stop wherever they want. Yesterday a woman stopped with her flashers on IN THE LANE rather that pull over and park while she waited for a person to come out of the business beside our house. Traffic had to move over into the other lane to get by her. I’m pretty sure the licence plate frame was from a dealer in the town next to my home city.

 

 

- Original movies, when cinematography was still an art, not remakes of everything with terrible CGI or the same rehashed rom-com over and over again.

 

No more movies based on TV shows that weren’t all that popular ‘back in the day’. Who thought a gazillion movies based on comic books was a great idea. Probably a reason why I only feel strong enough about a movie once a year to actually go to the theatre to see one.

 

 

- Halloween with door to door trick or treating and neighborhood bonfires.

 

The PC police in local school boards have tried their best in Canada to eliminate it.

 

...I personally really hate most of the way society has changed in the last 15-20 years and this generation especially. Feels so cold and impersonal. I try not to let it depress me, but it's really hard sometimes. If anything, I'm glad I remember the world before it was ruled by smartphones and the internet. I think what I miss most of all is music. I can always listen to old records, but all those bands are gone, and music doesn't sound that way anymore. I love rock, but what passes as a rock act today is a complete joke, and rock music, for the most part, has gone the same way as jazz did 50 years ago. It's just non-existent in any sort of public or tangible way. Now it's all...yuppies with mustaches and oxfords standing still and playing the same note on a brand new Strat, droning in a whiny monotone about how hard adulting is. Or it's club music. Rap or dubstep. Everything is made with a computer. Music is acquired with a computer. Bands are found with a computer. Metal doesn't exist anymore, it's just overproduced metalcore now. None of it is exciting or emotive and meaningful in any way. 

 

 *Gets off soapbox*

 

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1 hour ago, will123 said:

Can someone tell me why a tatted up wanker like Ed Sheeran is popular?

I don't even know who Ed Sheeran is. :lol: 

 

But I know the type you're talking about, and I'm sure I wouldn't like him.

 

I miss when rockstars looked like this:

 

Image result for motley crue

 

Related image

 

That's Motley Crue (top) and Ronnie James Dio (from Sabbath, Rainbow, and Dio), for any kiddos who might be reading the thread. ;)

 

(Fucking LOVE the Crue's androgyny by the way...)

 

1 hour ago, will123 said:

On the topic of tattoos, when I was a kid in the 70s, the only persons with them were bikers or navy and army vets that my father knew.

I was going to mention this! Yes, absolutely. I remember being a kid and anyone who had visible tattoos was stigmatized. And no one really had them except bikers and service members (although this was already changing by the time I was about ten years old).

 

Though I disagree with what you say about attractive young chicks with tattoos. Idk if I'd call myself attractive, but I've planned out tattoos for more than a decade. Lucifer (yes, Satan, that one) and a phoenix, to be made into half sleeves, and others. But I know what you're saying. Blonde suburban white chicks getting a feather inked on their shoulder blade while drinking a skinny vanilla latte and posting a billion pictures of it and herself in the parlor on Instagram. That's the exact opposite of what tattoo culture originally meant.

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11 minutes ago, Palovana said:

I don't even know who Ed Sheeran is. :lol: 

 

But I know the type you're talking about, and I'm sure I wouldn't like him. I miss when rockstars looked like this:

 

Image result for motley crue

 

Related image

 

That's Motley Crue (top) and Ronnie James Dio (from Sabbath, Rainbow, and Dio), for any kiddos who might be reading the thread. ;)

 

(Fucking LOVE the Crue's androgyny by the way...)

 

I was going to mention this! Yes, absolutely. I remember being a kid and anyone who had visible tattoos was stigmatized. And no one really had them except bikers and service members (although this was already changing by the time I was about ten years old).

 

Though I disagree with what you say about attractive young chicks with tattoos. Idk if I'd call myself attractive, but I've planned out tattoos for more than a decade. Lucifer (yes, Satan, that one) and a phoenix, to be made into half sleeves, and others. But I know what you're saying. Blonde suburban white chicks getting a feather inked on their shoulder blade while drinking a skinny vanilla latte and posting a billion pictures of it and herself in the parlor on Instagram. That's the exact opposite of what tattoo culture originally meant.

I knew who the Crue was, but was thinking more Stephen Van Zandt (Silvio on The Sopranos) in the second pic.

 

I was referencing the females that HAVE to wear a low cut top to show off the indecipherable text on their left breast. Or the ink on the side of the mid-drift. When you get old and saggy it'll all look terrible.

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1 hour ago, Palovana said:

I don't even know who Ed Sheeran is. :lol: 

 

But I know the type you're talking about, and I'm sure I wouldn't like him.

 

I miss when rockstars looked like this:

 

Image result for motley crue

 

Related image

 

That's Motley Crue (top) and Ronnie James Dio (from Sabbath, Rainbow, and Dio), for any kiddos who might be reading the thread. ;)

 

(Fucking LOVE the Crue's androgyny by the way...)

 

I was going to mention this! Yes, absolutely. I remember being a kid and anyone who had visible tattoos was stigmatized. And no one really had them except bikers and service members (although this was already changing by the time I was about ten years old).

 

Though I disagree with what you say about attractive young chicks with tattoos. Idk if I'd call myself attractive, but I've planned out tattoos for more than a decade. Lucifer (yes, Satan, that one) and a phoenix, to be made into half sleeves, and others. But I know what you're saying. Blonde suburban white chicks getting a feather inked on their shoulder blade while drinking a skinny vanilla latte and posting a billion pictures of it and herself in the parlor on Instagram. That's the exact opposite of what tattoo culture originally meant.

Dang!  I actually KNOW one of those "hair band" members from that era! His name is Mark Clarke and he was a member of Uriah Heep for a short stint.  Also worked with Billy Squire and was one of Davy Jones best friends.  He was an 'adviser' for Motley Crue, and worked with Mountain on a few gigs.  His wife went to high school with my late husband and we lived right next to her parents.  His kids have known my kids since his kids were 5.  (they're all now in their 20s)

 

Mark was very professional.  He liked to separate his home life from his professional life.  Oh, he would tell us about the tours...and the groupies...and the parties.  But he couldn't wait to get home to his family.  

 

The 'rock star' life isn't always about parties and getting laid by some 'unknown'.  

 

 

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44 minutes ago, chandrakirti said:

Like this guy....

 

 

 

 

Saw this guy when I was 9 years old. My dad was obsessed. Used to drive around in town in his old car listening to the Darkness album. Bruce was my first concert ever. He was dancing on the piano to Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out and eventually had to change his shirt, and Steve was chatting up the ladies in the front row. :lol: 

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@Palovana, much jelly, I really want to see The Boss one day, and reading his autobiography has only enhanced this 

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