Paul ([info]ace_combs) wrote,
@ 2007-12-05 22:21:00
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Entry tags:1970's, h.r. puff 'n stuff, hippie, lsd, rescue racer, trike, wheelie and the chopper bunch

Cure? Disease? Solution? Problem?
I hate the internet generally; I hate LiveJournal particularly. And I hate the 1970's too.

Take your polls, quizzes, memes, trivia, and stick them. Bad photography? Animal close-ups? One more image of the Eiffel Tower or Chicago Bean? A picture of your sad face to let me know that you're sad? Stick them all. Embedded YouTube video? Stick it.

It's a bunch of crap, you know it, and you're only doing it because it appears that everyone else is doing it too. Sure, connect with others -- but validate yourself. Are you waiting for approval from someone? Everyone? Stand up. Walk away from the screen. Read a "real" book. Take a trip to a place that no one goes. Go to see a small, bad play performed by really serious young actors. Vote. Grow a flower. Get off your ass and do something. Blah, blah, blah.

But I digress. A post in Flickr. A flashback. 1970's television serials:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelie_and_the_Chopper_Bunch


image.jpg, originally uploaded by Austie Jonez.


Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch
Look at these freaking episode titles:
Dr. Crankenstein
Camping With a Go Go
Dragula
Friday the Thirteenth
Johnny Crash
Is this a children's program, or a Cramp's album? I watched these. I loved them. I had Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch comics...

H.R. Puff 'N Stuff???
"H.R. Pufnstuf -
Who's your friend
when things get rough?
Can't do a little
cuz you can't get enough!"

God damn you Hippie bastards -- hanging out in the park and giving young people LSD. How was my young mind supposed to process that crap? A witch on a rocket-powered broomstick chasing a boy with a magic flute? No nightmares there...

I think, now, that H.R.'s "rescue racer" might have been the first "Steam Punk" object to have been created. Though I can't write that with certainty. And I'd hate to make any offensive suggestions.


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[info]mojokat
2007-12-06 06:45 am UTC (link)
yesterday I watched a video of Mr. Rogers break dancing, today i'm building a website for the Children's Burn Foundation, tomorrow i will play with my dogs

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(Anonymous)
2007-12-06 07:55 am UTC (link)
i remember watching eddy murphy on the "tonight show" as he insisted that fred rogers -- the other guest who occupied the stage -- had been a green beret in vietnam. eddy further insisted, that while "in country," fred rogers a/k/a mr. rogers, had received multiple tattoos -- thus requiring him to wear a sweater, in order not to frighten the small children who were his audience...

wikipedia tells me that's urban legend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Rogers#False_rumors

kids and animals are...the best. no pretense, no deception. that openness, actual desire, for genuine experience and real interaction is so contrary to the "virtual" life towards which so many adults seem now to be led...

but, really, i "come off" like a jerk in this entry and you're scolding me!

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[info]kini
2007-12-06 12:46 pm UTC (link)
hey, strops. old age is really agreeing with you.

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[info]ace_combs
2007-12-06 08:14 pm UTC (link)
the beard is wagging.

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[info]kazzibee
2007-12-09 10:54 am UTC (link)
baha!

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]ace_combs
2007-12-10 06:30 am UTC (link)
congratulations on sending mr. howard away.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]kazzibee
2007-12-10 09:00 am UTC (link)
easy peasy! there was no way he was getting back in this time.

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RE: Nightmares
[info]pop_o_pie
2007-12-06 03:56 pm UTC (link)
It's strange how time and memory change things and what's great about YouTube is that you can go back and actually see the media images that helped shape your perspective. I love seeing clips of David Bowie and Iggy Pop being interviewed by Dinah Shore or of John and Yoko introducing Bobby Seale to Mike Douglas' viewing audience. Those times were crazy and the media didn't 'get' the 70's while they were happening. What I miss from that time is the sense of 'moral outrage' that everyone seemed to have as the nation recovered from Vietnam and the Nixon administration. Everybody had an opinion.

I remember how exciting it was to catch 'Pump it Up' on Saturday Night Live. I knew things were changing. It was cool to take a break from synthesizers and the Tower of Power horn section for a while on the radio.

After all this time I can only say it seems that somebody left the cake out in the rain and that God didn't make the little green apples, and it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summer time. There's no such thing as Dr. Seuss or Disney land and mother goose, no nursery rhymes...



(Reply to this) (Thread)
no thank you, don't want any
[info]ace_combs
2007-12-06 08:10 pm UTC (link)
i am not interested in making new friends. i will not respond to you again. here's why: but for having known someone previously, but for having admired their [art, writing, etc] work, but for some pre-existing condition, mutual acquaintance, etc, i am not communicating with strangers on-line.

too often i see the same sort of scenario repeated: one person struggles, legitimately, with being a single parent, surgery, divorce, etc, and they are ignored. while another person, relatively affluent, attractive, in every real way advantaged, invents obstacles for the purpose of creating the myth of their own overcoming. "am i pretty? really? i just don't know..."

it's a whole new genre: the pretty young teen cam-ho who manipulates her audience -- or who, through her own insecurity, is manipulated, maybe even to the point of suicide: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/23/wbully123.xml

i want to be perfectly clear: while i am very concerned about the lack of "moral outrage" in our country at this moment, i really do hate YouTube. and i'm convinced that the increasing "verisimilitude" of the on-line experience is nothing but a liability.

the "answer," as far as i can tell, isn't spending more time on-line reliving the mostly worthless commercial programming of the past, or depending upon strangers for validation, but more "real" time with whatever friends, lovers, and family share the same ideas about original art, local food, alternative energy, political action, etc.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: no thank you, don't want any
[info]pop_o_pie
2007-12-06 10:47 pm UTC (link)
got it

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]kazzibee
2007-12-09 10:48 am UTC (link)
haha oh germz how i love you see you here now and then :D

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