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Music from Outer Space: Leonard Nimoy and Song of the Second Moon

Published July 25, 2012 Music from Outer Space , Star Trek , What the Future Sounded Like Leave a Comment

Dig these trippy sci-fi tunes, man. I’ve been listening to Leonard Nimoy jams on Spotify (Spaced Out: The Best of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner) and loving every minute of it. Nimoy put out several albums in the ’60s, the first one (and half of the second one) in his Mr. Spock persona. You can listen to many of the tracks via Synthasia.

If you dig this, then you absolutely must check out Song of the Second Moon, by Thomas Dissevelt and Kid Baltan. The album was originally released in 1957 and is considered the first popular synth/electronica album: “The soundtrack to a charming and utopian future (that has yet to arrive).” I just bought the 2012 reissue, but have a listen courtesy of manfromuranus.

Ten Forward on the USS Enterprise-D

Published July 2, 2012 Space Travel/Exploration , Star Trek 1 Comment

This is where I would like to be if I were in space. I would get a drink (none of that synthohol shit), have a seat by the windows, and listen to the steady hum of the galaxy class starship on its way to discover new worlds.

1980 J.C. Penney Christmas Catalog: Galactic Attack Dome, Buck Rogers Toys, Star Trek Toys, and Star Birds

Published June 20, 2012 Catalogs , Marx Toys/Playsets , Multiple Toymakers/MPC , Space Toys/Playsets , Star Trek 6 Comments

First things first. On the bottom left of the first page you’ll see a caption, CONSUMER INFORMATION ABOUT ADVENTURE TOYS. The text underneath reads:

The active, imaginative play that adventure toys stimulate provides children with a socially acceptable way of releasing tension. These toys take children into a pretend world and yet help them to express their feelings about the real world and to act out adult roles. It is the child who controls the action with these toys. This helps the child feel less dependent.

Fascinating. How much bloody tension could we have needed to release? It’s like we were all one empty Ding Dong box away from turning into Macaulay Culkin in that movie where he plays crazy evil kid who tries to throw Elijah Wood off a cliff. The line about the pretend world somehow bringing us closer to the real world is bullshit, but it’s sophisticated bullshit. Sure, the pretend worlds of Beethoven and Shakespeare express feelings about the real world, but the Galactic Attack Dome does not, even though it’s bloody fantastic and I’m seriously bitter that I never got a crack at it. The Navarone set is a beauty too, and a Marx classic.

I don’t remember these Buck Rogers Toys, but I watched the trashy series with my dad, who suffered through the silliness for glimpses of Erin Gray in her skin tight spacesuits (yum). The Star Trek stuff looks so antiseptic, doesn’t it? How do you turn such a cerebral show into a line of action toys? I guess that’s why they didn’t last. The Star Birds were spaceships that, like, made noises and stuff. The Retroist talks about them here.

(All images via WishbookWeb. Click to enlarge.)

Movie Theater Marquees

Published May 21, 2012 '70s Movies/TV , '80s Movies/TV , Movie Theaters/Marquees , Star Trek 1 Comment

Rights reserved by JoyTheater

The Joy Theater, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1986. Remember in Star Trek IV when Spock and Kirk were on the bus and that obnoxious punk rocker had his boombox blasting really loud and Kirk asked him to turn it down but he wouldn’t so Spock gave him the Vulcan nerve pinch and everyone in the bus cheered? Yeah. That was awesome.

Rights reserved by patricia_poland

Village Cinema 4, Monroe, North Carolina, 1986. Back to School (1986) is an ’80s comedy staple starring Rodney Dangerfield and Robert Downey Jr., but I had to look up the others. In Thunder Warrior (1983, a.k.a. Thunder), a Native American wreaks vengeance on the law when his tribe’s ancestral burial grounds are destroyed by developers. The Patriot (1986): the poster speaks for itself. Toxic Zombies (1980, a.k.a. Bloodeaters) is about hippies who turn into zombies after their pot crop gets dusted by an experimental pesticide. There’s no way it’s going to be as bad-ass as the poster, but I’m going to watch it anyway.

Via listal

http://www.moviegoods.com

Via listal

Rights reserved by joelgllespie1957

Clemson Movie Theater, Clemson, South Carolina, Fall, 1977.

Rights reserved by David Lee Guss

42nd Street Film Theaters, New York City, 1977. According to the photographer, David Lee Guss, “This shot was taken from the Hotel Carter (formerly the Dixie) a year after Taxi Driver was made.” I can almost taste the grime. Tentacles (1977) and Squirm (1976) are classics of the trashy creature feature/”nature run amok” explosion of the ’70s, which included Night of the Lepus (1972), Frogs (1972), Empire of the Ants (1977), The Swarm (1978), Kingdom of the Spiders (1977), The Food of the Gods (1976), Piranha (1978), Chosen Survivors (1974), etc. I remember watching many of these flicks on Saturday mornings/matinees, and a couple of times I even convinced my dad to pick me up early from school so I could catch them on weekdays.

http://www.moviegoods.com

http://www.movieposter.com

1983 Sears Christmas Catalog: Lego Space, Crossbows and Catapults, and `Far-Away Worlds’

Published March 13, 2012 Catalogs , D&D , Lego , Lego Space , Star Trek 4 Comments

These are from WishbookWeb, an absolutely brilliant site where you can find beautiful scans of complete Christmas catalogs all the way back to the ’30s. Yes, my plan is to go through these catalogs (from the ’70s and ’80s, anyway) one page at a time and post the stuff I like and probably circled when making Christmas lists as a kid. (Click images to enlarge.)

Lego may be the single greatest toy line ever produced for kids, and Lego Space, in my opinion, is the company’s greatest achievement. We essentially built our own visions of life in space. Sure, the first time through we followed the directions and built what we saw on the front of the box, but after that the Legos went into giant Tupperware containers with hundreds of other Legos, at which point we relied exclusively on imagination. Unfortunately, Legos have always been too expensive. All the kids in my neighborhood would have to get together and combine Lego forces to produce our individual and collective masterpieces. Nobody ever went home with the same Legos they brought to the table. And that was okay.

I had a lot of fun playing (mostly with myself) Crossbows and Catapults, until all those goddamn caroms got lost. A hundred years from now, if the houses we grew up in are still standing, the inhabitants will still be digging these things out from the crevasses. And they would really fly, man, especially if you double-wrapped the rubber bands on the catapults.

It’s funny to see all the satanic D&D stuff (notice the Endless Quest books?) in a respectable catalog. I remember seeing the Star Frontiers ads in the comics of the day, but I never had it or played it (apparently some of the old folks still play it today). The Star Trek RPG came out in ’82, although I was too into D&D at the time to notice.

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