You know you are getting old when:

[2jakes]

I have never once heard one of the songs that I played in my youth used in an advertisement on the television, unless one counts the parody of "Look For the Silver Lining" which was used by the International Ladies Garment Worker's Union some forty years past.

When I called in sick from work, I'd stay in bed watching TCM.
Always made me feel better.

 

[2jakes]

 

[Trenchfriend]

@2jakes

What is it? A kind of "Schiefertafel"??

 

[BobHufford]

Early form of SnapChat...

 

[2jakes]

@2jakes

What is it? A kind of "Schiefertafel"??

 

[LizzieMaine]

You know you're getting old when you recognize Dr. Sivana there. "Heh! Heh! Heh!"

 

[Zombie_61]

I haven't been involved in the "comic books" scene for a long time, but these days I think you could just as easily say, "You know you're getting old when you recognize Captain Marvel there." Or know that "SHAZAM!" is a reference to him, for that matter. That will probably change when the movie is released in 2019, but even when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s I can't recall any of my friends talking about the character. It's difficult to believe now that there was a time when he was more popular than Superman and Batman.

 

[Trenchfriend]

15 years ago. June 2002. Ouch...

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

I haven't been involved in the "comic books" scene for a long time, but these days I think you could just as easily say, "You know you're getting old when you recognize Captain Marvel there." Or know that "SHAZAM!" is a reference to him, for that matter. That will probably change when the movie is released in 2019, but even when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s I can't recall any of my friends talking about the character. It's difficult to believe now that there was a time when he was more popular than Superman and Batman.

When I was a boy in the early '50s I saw the Captain Marvel and Batman and other serials at kid's matinees. We watched them utterly oblivious that they were already 15 or more years old.

 

[vitanola]

15 years ago. June 2002. Ouch...

I'm shocked to realise that this record, generally acknowledged to be the first Jazz recording, was waxed a century ago last month!

 

[Zombie_61]

When I was a boy in the early '50s I saw the Captain Marvel and Batman and other serials at kid's matinees. We watched them utterly oblivious that they were already 15 or more years old.

I wish I'd had that opportunity. The only "kid's matinee" I ever attended was hosted by a local theater in the early-70s. The warm-up act was a magician who really should have practiced more, followed by a Chilly Willy cartoon, which was followed by the main event--a showing of King Kong vs. Godzilla.

I have both of the Batman serials on DVD and enjoy watching them, but I've never seen the Captain Marvel serial; I should probably correct that one of these days.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I haven't been involved in the "comic books" scene for a long time, but these days I think you could just as easily say, "You know you're getting old when you recognize Captain Marvel there." Or know that "SHAZAM!" is a reference to him, for that matter. That will probably change when the movie is released in 2019, but even when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s I can't recall any of my friends talking about the character. It's difficult to believe now that there was a time when he was more popular than Superman and Batman.

I was just the right age when the good Captain was revived by DC in the early '70s, and became very fond of the whole "Marvel Family" -- the regular DC characters all took themselves way too seriously, but the CM stories in "Shazam!" never did -- you really can't, when your hero's best friend is a talking tiger in a sport coat and tie. I especially liked the many 1940s/early 1950s reprints run in that magazine, which were usually far better than the new material.

My all-time favorite Captain Marvel cover. Only a woman can truly appreciate the humor of this scene. Try a little Monistat there, Cap.

I still have a large stack of the 100-page "Super Spectacular" issues of "Shazam!," most of them autographed by C. C. Beck, Captain Marvel's creator, who is fortunately no longer alive to see what a ridiculous and offensively stupid botch DC has made of his character. I shudder at the thought of what the movie will be like.

 

[Stearmen]

I'm shocked to realise that this record, generally acknowledged to be the first Jazz recording, was waxed a century ago last month!

I am shocked also! I thought WWI fighter pilots sat around French Cafes listing to Jazz in 1915. I wish I knew enough to ask questions like this when my friend Reggie Sinclaire of the Lafayette Flying Corps was still alive!

 

[Edward]

For a good fifteen years or so until 2007 I read the New Musical Express every week without fail. For a long time, it was my Pravda. Back in those days, as well as the current charts, they used to list the chart from five, ten and twenty years previously. I'm not sure if they still do it now, but if they do, it would be second or even third time around for some of the stuff I saw listed....

I think about this all the time as I watch modern movies - and think some are very good - but rarely do I have any interest in seeing them again. Whereas, I can watch even (to be honest) mediocre movies from the '30s - '50s over and over.

The stars, the stories, the time-travel to a period I am fascinated by - I don't know why it is that I can see those movies over and over, but it is. Did the studio system - for all its faults and mistreatments - create stars in a way that today's freelancing can't? Did the limitation of the code force a different style that somehow produced stories one wants to see again? Is it just the style of that time is more appealing to me?

A lot of it will be personal preference, of course, but beyond that.... I do think there might be something in what you say about the studio system. While it had its myriad downsides, people were more invested in then, rather than one dud and you're out. Similar to the music industry; the Beatles and the Stones were both given time to prove themselves. For the last twenty-five years it's been outsellf Nevermind on your first deal or get dropped. Of course, in both cases we're no longer dealing with a young and hungry industry, but a rich one with extensive and valuable back-catalogue that pulls in the real money, and is averse to taking risks on new product. Great for business, bad for art.

In terms of the Code, while I'm not one for prissy censorship of adults, I do undoubtedly feel that those sorts of limitations did force a higher level of creativity. Innuendo is always funnier than smut. Ditto for big budgets and effects. The ultimate example of the latter is Doctor Who: classic episodes had great stories and still work despite rubber aliens and wobbly set walls. In the Stven Moffat era, they have all the toys and can make it look beautiful, but Moffat's writing is so, so lazy....

I sort of agree about old movies but I won't go so far as to say I can watch them over and over again. But I can enjoy a very ordinary 60-minute B-movie that I've never heard of as well as more well-known movies. The reason is because it's fresh and compared with new movies, it doesn't feel like I've already seen it from having seen so many promos about it.

Today's over-marketing is definitely a turn off. That said, I do often enjoy watching out for inappropriate and crass marketing endeavours. I laughed hard atone of the Hunger Games sequels being sponsored by Subway.

(Another favorite scene)

And you know you are getting old when you are aware
of this:

Some more scenes:
Way Out West -- Laurel & Hardy dance routine.
The Kid -- Tramp fights authorities to rescue the "kid" scene.
City Lights -- Blind girl can see the tramp in the end.
Five Easy Pieces -- Diner scene.
It's a Gift -- Breakfast scene "What'sa matter Pop...don't ya love me?"
Orange grove scene in California....
"Hey Pop...look an orange!" .

Sons of the Desert gets me every time.

I've overheard parents attempting to explain "film" to their young children. Despite their best efforts, most of the time it was clear that the children were unable to grasp the concept.

I'm teaching final year undergraduates - born in 95/96 - who now struggle with this. They're 21!!!

"Where's the screen?"
"Where's the on/off?"
"You mean you can't text?"
"No music?"
"No photos?"
"Why is it so heavy?"
"What's a party-line?"
"This is so weird!"
"How do you use it when you're driving?"
"Bummer!"

kids today.

I don't think my brother's kids, seven and ten, have ever seen one of these, unless in their grandparents' garages. They think landlines are weirdly oldy-worldy - why wouyldn't you just phone the mobile instead? One day in the future they'll be old folks telling incredulous kids that they even remember landlines.

I just thought of something. Twenty years from now, there will be an entire generation of adults, who never knew of a time when there was a limit to how much data you could use on your cell phone!

Ha... My undergraduates no longer even remember dial-up, and they're the generation fuelling mobile internet to a great degree.

View attachment 70243

tattoos on women

when this use to be something only seen at a circus side show, now it's the norm , and seen as a form of art and self expression on young men & women, full sleeves is a common trend, something that would be considered abnormal for a lady back in the old days.

Well, visible tattoos maybe. I suspect there were a lot more of them back in the day that simply were never seen owing to clothing mores of the time. Of course, it was also a class thing: the English upper classes were big tattoo enthusiasts in the late Victorian era and into the early twentieth century. Victoria and Albert were, according to legend heavily tattooed; there are accounts of George V having almost an entire bodysuit. Lady Churchill (Winston's mother) had a floral tattoo on her wrist, and a specially commissioned diamond bracelt to cover it over if formality of occasion required.

At a junktique store this afternoon not long after the nearby high school let out for the day when a kid picked up a copy of Blondie's LP "Parallel Lines" from the record bin and said "My grandma has this record."

Ouch! Sunday Girl is the second single I can remember hearing on the radio.

"The only difference between tattooed people and not-tattooed people is tattooed people don't care if you're not tattooed." - Unknown

Oh, isn't that the ultimate truth!

For the most part I've found this to be true. Unless you're a tattoo artist; I don't know anyone who would get a tattoo from someone who isn't tattooed himself or herself.

I used to go to a bald barber, but yeah.... I'd agree. A guy with no tats doesn't fill me with confidence in his needleart. Doesn't have to be heavily covered....

They asked if I wanted to leave through another exit in order to avoid embarrassment.
I told them no, I had done nothing to be embarrassed about.

Doesn't sound like it was your embarrassment they were trying to avoid.

The only people I knew as a kid who had them -- that I knew of -- were old sailors, who had things like "OKINAWA 1944" on their forearms. There was, however, a faddish popularity in our neighborhood of lick-and-stick tattoos that came with bubble gum and depicted baseball players. I greatly upset my grandmother once by coming into the kitchen with a blurry reproduction of Pete Rose's face applied to the middle of my forehead. She didn't see well, and though I'd developed a bad case of impetigo.

Ha, I remember those being big when I was a kid, it was a late 70s / early 80s thing. They disappeared largley around 85/86, after the spread of an urban myth that claimed "bad men" were injecting them with LSD and then giving them to kids so that when they used them, they'd get hooked on acid. It's amazing looking back now just how seriously that rot was taken.

If I ever got a tattoo, it would be an image of mistletoe, positioned right above my intergluteal cleft.

Bravo!

When I talk to young people contemplating tattoos I caution them that their tattoos won't age the way their skin will, they'll be faded and distorted when they're middle-aged. But they can't imagine being middle-aged so it makes no impression.

Probably much less so than their grandparents' tats, given decades of innovation and improvelent in the tattooing world. Course, in middle age my saggy old body is faded and distorted compared to what it was, so.....

 

[Edward]

Lately the most dangerous call is one where the first thing they say is "Can you hear me?" What they want is to record your voice saying "yes." With that, they can get all sorts of stuff concerning you. I no longer answer the phone. They can leave a message and if it's someone I want to talk to I call back. Not otherwise.

That story has doen the rounds here; I think it's an urban myth, though - unlewss they also ask for an awful lot of other information that is commonly used for security clearance.

I was outraged some years ago when Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz" was used in a Mercedes Benz commercial. Poor Janis must have been rolling over in her grave.

Me too. I can only assume that either whoever commissioned that ad didn't understand the song, or they we utterly without morals.

Mind you, this was a man who visited his doctor one day when he was in his early-80s because he would get up early to do yardwork--tend to the garden, trim the hedge, prune the fruit trees, mow the lawn, and so on--and after a few hours he would get tired and have to go inside and sit down to rest for a while. "That never used to happen to me," he explained. His doctor just looked at him and asked, "How old are you???" In addition to his advanced age he was suffering from congestive heart failure and chronic lymphocytic leukemia, yet his doctor had to explain to him that it was perfectly normal for a man his age to become fatigued easier than when he was younger. He was living proof that age is only a number.

Soundsl ike my other half's grandfather towards the end of his life. The one of my great grandparents that I knew.... he lived until 97. In his middle eighties (this would have been around 1974/75), they had to confiscate his bicycle, because he was still gonig out for a daily cycle but his eyesight was going... He still went running.

 

[vitanola]

Sunday Girl is the second single I can remember hearing on the radio.

It is an old favorite of mine, too, but I have never heard it played on the radio, save for when I was the Disc Jockey. I'm pleased to see that you, too like Harry Reser. The Clicquot Club Eskimoes are my favorite of his many groups, though the Seven Little Polar Bears and the Six Jumping Jacks are pretty good.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You know you're getting old when you actually remember drinking Clicquot Club ginger ale. "Pronounced 'Klee-Ko!""

 

[2jakes]

If you remember when soda bottle caps had cork on the inside.

I carefully would remove the cork from the cap and attach the cap
on the outside of my t-shirt. The cork pressed from the inside of the
shirt to hold the cap in place.
I used my favorite soda pop brand to decorate my tees.

Also I would flatten out the soda cap with a ball peen hammer and
make a hole in the center then folded in two to make a whistle.

Steel pennies were flattened by placing on the railroad tracks.
I would decorate my bikes with them.

I used Shell & Mobil gas license tag toppers as hub caps.
Here's a photo of a guy with his bike and Shell toppers on the front wheel.
The colors have faded away to bare metal on his bike.

 

[Fading Fast]

The gym I work out in cranks a lot of new pop / rock music - most of which is just generic noise to me, but occasionally, some song will catch my attention. The beat, the chorus or a couple of lines of lyrics will jump out of the generic pounding from the speakers and I'll pay attention.

Now here's the "you know you're getting old part." When I bring the song up later to listen to it not in the din of the gym, more often than not, I'll recognize an older song in its beat and the lyrics will disappoint me as being, pretty much, cliches.

While I can argue why music and lyrics were better when I was a kid; in truth, a lot those were just recycled beats and cliches, but they were new to me then as the songs I hear in the gym today are to, well, the mainly much-younger-than-I-am other gym members.

So, I'm getting old because I hear the retread in today's music; whereas, I couldn't when I was a kid. Sigh.

Two songs that contributed to this observation:

 

[GHT]

Also I would flatten out the soda cap with a ball peen hammer and make a hole in the center then folded in two to make a whistle.
Steel pennies were flattened by placing on the railroad tracks.

Our pre-decimal penny was a huge coin that covered the entire surface of the track. If the train that thundered over it happened to be a heavy goods train, it would take a Herculean effort to prise the penny from the track, once it had been squashed.
As a young boy, I played out in all weathers. We used to make a winter warmer from an old tin can, the golden syrup cans were best. A small hole is punched either side then a long piece of strong wire threaded through the holes to create a handle. A small fire made from kindling sticks and then coal, we all burned coal back then. If you held the handle of your winter warmer, first making sure that it's firmly secure, spinning the fire round and round got a brilliant glow and although the heat was meagre, the placebo effect of thinking that you were warm was enough to keep you out a while longer.