I turned 29 today, which means I only have one more year until I lose my ability to appreciate pop culture references.

For my birthday, Amy got me a marriage license and a book on perspective drawing (which I desperately need). She is the best person in the whole world.

Ehh....constructing perspectives is easy (granted I had been doing it before i got to architecture school - where they drilled it into our heads)

You want to know what will make you feel old? Me and two of my friends who are the same age as me, were talking with a group of friends who are all in their 2nd year of college. I said "Well now you know." My 2 friends replied simeltaneously "And knowing is half the battle." - Everyone else in the room just stared at us with blank looks on their faces. It made us feel old. - and it wasn't the first time that kind of thing had happened.

He-Man, Smurfs, Thundercats.....all these things are completely lost on them.

That blank stare....questioning....as if to say "Qua?".....its depressing

Bah.

<cranky old fart>
If you weren't born until after the 60's, you're a whinging little kid who doesn't appreciate how good you have it. Heck, you probably don't remember the bad old days of Reagan- much less Nixon, you crybaby.
</cranky old fart>

29? Old? Indeed not.

It's Diablo! He's distorting your perspective!

Happy Birthday jon!

In Response to Dynedain (#3026):

i'm forced to argue about the t.v. references. i'm only 18, well soon to be 19 if all remains as scheduled, but still just as young as your ignorant friends. i'm proud to say that i loved and still love he-man (and she-ra, of course!), smurfs, and a veritable cornicopia of other classic t.v. shows. i regret never having seen thundercats, but my best friend, who is but a month and a day older than myself did. so you must not assume that everyone of my generation is so unaware of the goodness of classic kids shows. some of us do understand.

I have the Power!!!!!

In Response to zamphir (#3027):

I don't remember Reagan? What, did I have some sort of memory-wipe? Hell, I remember Ford.

In Response to goat_girl (#3034):

they're not classic.

Or at least, they weren't.

Classic is Robotech. Or Marine Boy.

Or for the real old farts around here, "My Mother, The Car".

In Response to jon (#3036):

If you're experiencing symptoms of memory-wipe, you should stop sticking your floppies to the fridge with magnets...

But happy birthday, man. As they say in Monroe, Drink a little beer [berghoffbeer.com]

In Response to zamphir (#3041):

how about astro-boy? man i loved that show.

In Response to goat_girl (#3044):

Voltron (the original power rangers), Thundercats and GI Joe were my favourites. I am not very old, but I watched these every day of my childhood.

In Response to Dynedain (#3026):

It made us feel old. - and it wasn't the first time that kind of thing had happened.

He-Man, Smurfs, Thundercats.....all these things are completely lost on them.

Hold on - you get He-man references and feel too old because of it? I don't get He-man references because before it came out I'd given up kids cartoons to free up time for staring at girls in the park.

Shit, I feel old.

Cheers,
Graham

In Response to albionsoft (#3048):

Graham, you just are old! j/k

But I have to say, the time at which a person stopped watching cartoons really has nothing to do with their age. I'm roughly jon's age, and watch both girls, and cartoons, but if you speak to my wife, it's just the cartoons!

In Response to Dynedain (#3026):

Thunder... Thunder... THUNDERCATS!!!

Oh yeah and the smurfs too, all of them I am 18 and can give great recollections, and often do without even having sattelite/cable so I don't have the gift of retro cartooning e.g. boomerang, and to a lesser extent cartoon network, however things like rocky and bulwinkle, and say secret squirrel get lost among the newer things and people just don't get it, inferior drawing/coloring, they don't watch. We need to block the new and give the kids culture damnit!!!

Transformers, and Magilla Gorrilla. Oh Yeah!

In Response to Haddie (#3046):

<Pedant>
Voltron can not be accurately considered the 'original' Power Rangers. PR draws from a number of sources in Japanese popular culture.

The characteristics of both Voltron and PR that have the strongest correlation are not original to Voltron.

As an example, consider Battle of the Planets. Or later episodes of StarBlazers (or Battleship Yamato for the Anime geeks).
<Pedant>

<geek>
Dude, saying Voltron is the 'original' PR is like saying Poison is the original WhiteSnake.
</geek>

I know how you feel man,
  I'm 19, "BUT WAIT THATS NOT OLD" you say. when I was young(er) I had all the He-Man action figures, and I mean ALL of them, even the castles.(all of this now occupies a revered cardboard box in the garage) well, I was in Wal-Mart (mecca of the southern US) and I saw NEW He-Man figures! something that I played with when I was coming up has been redone and modernized! I felt very old. I've seen the new cartoons as well, and it just makes me think "What was wrong with it the first time around, that it needs redone?" I may not BE old, but it certainly made me feel it! Its hard to believe that I'm the only one of my friends that remembers the fall of the Berlin wall. But I am.
anyway
Happy Birthday Jon

Dave Tobin
Western Carolina University- Cullowhee, North Carolina
P.S.-- WCU loves GOATS: The Comic

In Response to Lonely Goatherd (#3063):

HeMan's not the only one we remember you whippersnapper...

Star Wars, Transformers (for the umpteenth time), Scooby-Doo, GIJoe (yet again), etc. Even the Cabbage Patch Kids have gone through multiple iterations (anyone remember the satirical trading cards, the Garbage Pail Kids?)

Hell...I even have original PacMan toys.

Berlin Wall? That was like yesterday...oh wait...nevermind...

I'm the only one of my friends who doesn't remember Challenger, but that was because we didn't have a TV (my mom would make a great Amish)....but yet I can sing all the old tv cartoon songs....strange

In Response to Dynedain (#3065):

I would like to point out, first and foremost, that the brain begins to deterriorate after age 18. So by being young, I have a foot in the door. For a while anyway. This also means my life is on an official downhill (brain-wise). I hope it isn't a quick drop.
              I remember Challenger, even though I am not positive I was walking. I only remember it because my dad is an astronaut (seriously) and he is reminded by stupid fans every day. (How do you feel about challenger... when are you going to the moon.... Other such nonsense)
              I had every Ninja Turtle. Every single Ninja turtle. Is that not disgusting? I also owned 1.4 billion lego (exaggeration... maybe) and a mess of army men. I also owned an army mountain with openings. Since when do army men hollow out a mountain, but still make it obviously accessable to attack? I loved it then, so what does it matter?
              I don't exactly know where I am going with this... But then again, nobody really seems to have a point. It seems to be a fun memory thread.

As far as fun memories go, here is my favourite -
I had a huge treehouse, two full rooms. It had a trellis that spanned from the tree to the closest building, the side of the garage above the rose bushes. If you were quick, you wouldn't slam into the wall and hit the bushes... if you were slow....
I wish I still lived there.
I would play in my treehouse right now.

How about Atari or Colecovision (sp? - I didn't have one of them, too poor), and everyone's favorite game, pong. Now I actually remember playing it, not just hearing about it years later, or the hand held football game that was just a few red dashes that you moved across the display. Ahh, the olden days.

In Response to coolhand (#3068):

I play that (or some other graphic-challenged) football game from the olden days on my computer during class regularily. It is far better than any modern game, let me tell you.

Thank god for emulators.

In Response to Haddie (#3066):

I kept dragging big sheets of plywood up into a large avacado tree untill my dad finally decided to build me a real fort. Our house was on a hill and so the yard terraced down rather steeply. Off one edge of lawn terrace was a large stand of Sumac (native trees that grow sort of like giant bushes). My dad chopped out a whole bunch right in the middle, and built me a 2.5 floor tower that was 8'x8' and about 16' tall....major construction here, ladder, trapdoor, fullsize door on the ground level, spy's nest, etc. The top floor was about the same hight as the lawn terrace and his boss was dismantling his children's play structure. So I got a heavy-duty suspension bridge stretching about 10' from the edge of the law, through the sumac to my fort - it was the best kid's playstructure I have ever seen.

In Response to coolhand (#3068):

What I remember about that football game is that there was a relatively simple pattern of movement for the offense that was unbeatable for the defense, regardless of whether the defense was the "computer" or another player.

Fortunately, the "computer" didn't know that pattern.

In Response to coolhand (#3068):

I had a C64 - it was a hand-me-down from my uncle, who in turn had bought it used (i think).

You'd think it was useless...but when I got it, I had no problem walking into any software store and picking up new games for it.

You see kiddies, software stores used to have seperate sections, IBM Compatible, Macintosh (i remember when that section was added), Apple (for the IIe and IIgs), and C64/128.

I remember buying my last C64 game, Uridium, in 1993....it was in the bargain bin, and I'm pretty sure it was the absolute last piece of C64 software in the store. Not long after, the store went defunct (I don't remeber if it was Egghead Software or Software Etc.)

In Response to coolhand (#3068):

speaking of pong...

http://www.madblast.com/oska/humor_pong.swf

no i can't make it an easy to use link, because i'm a electronically challenged retard. you'll just have to copy and paste. but i know you can do that, i have faith.

In Response to goat_girl (#3073):

Harumph.

Ok, a quick URL tutorial. The only tools you need are your hands and a keyboard -- and I assume you used those to type the above unusable URL :)

First, type an <. Then an a, followed by a space. Next, type href=, then a double-quote. Now type the URL, just as you typed it above. Then another double-quote, and then a >. Now type some text, which will be the text we click on. (For a link with no sentence as context, the URL again would work.) Finish with </a> , and you have a working hyperlink.

Put it together, it looks like <a href="http://http://www.madblast.com/oska/humor_po ng.swf">this</a> , and it renders like this [http].

I think I've found a new section for the FAQ.

In Response to mea37 (#3076):

and of course you screwed up :)

there should only be 1 http:// in the HTML tag
like so:
<a href="http://www.madblast.com/oska/humor_pong.swf" >this</a>

so that the correc link would look like this [madblast.com].

In Response to zamphir (#3060):

I have sadly seen neither Battle of the planets or Starblazers.
I have (surprise) seen voltron. This is where my assumption comes from.
Are the other two the same exact plot andn small animals morph to giant creature theme?
Are they much older than voltron? If so, there is no way I could have seen them given that voltron was probably one of my earliest fascinations.