Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek
Okay, those Big Bird and Yoda costumes are seriously creepy, and I don’t think they’re supposed to be.
The Wonder Woman mask with horse teeth and drug addict eyes is not very flattering, kids. And the “popular characters from Star Wars” are all the bad guys, naturally.
(Video sources: William Presley and tk421maul)
Let’s stick with the Star Wars theme, shall we? The photo is from The Trek BBS, a Star Trek forum. It’s Halloween, 1977. The poster says she took sketches in the movie theater and made the whole costume herself.
Show me a sixteen-year-old who cared this much about The Phantom Menace. Are you listening, Disney?
Disney just bought Lucasfilm for $4 billion. Says George Lucas, about 12 years too late, “It’s now time for me to pass ‘Star Wars’ on to a new generation of filmmakers.”
I wish I could be optimistic about Episode 7, but, as the song says, I won’t get fooled again. If there’s an entity more corporatized and bereft of originality than Lucas, it’s Disney.
Via Sam Howzit/Flickr. There’s an awful lot of awesome here. Let’s make a list.
1. Donkey Kong on the Atari 2600
2. Righteous Empire Strikes Back wallpaper
3. Snowspeeder and Slave I under the bookshelf
4. Lego Space on the table, and Lego Space (one box and a bowl of loose bricks) under the TV
5. I think that’s a picture of Catherine Bach (Daisy Duke) next to the Legos under the TV
5. Hand embroidered Pittsburgh Steelers pillow on the bed
Do yourself a favor and click pic to enlarge.
“The story of a boy, a girl, and a universe”? What the shit does that mean? Just because the story takes place in the universe doesn’t mean the universe is part of the story. Unless the story is about the Big Bang, which it’s not. Maybe I’m being overly philosophical. My point is, what’s with all these creepy narrators ruining trailers for classic ’70s movies?
I do kind of dig the ambient strings in the background, but it’s way more Star Trek than Star Wars. Was the pompously awesome John Williams score not ready yet? Here’s a later trailer with the original music.
This is better. “No legendary adventure of the past could be as exciting as this romance of the future” is pretty lame, but the narrator is not as invasive, and there’s nothing about a boy-girl-universe love triangle.
Friend J. sent me the first clip. He’s hunting down more as we speak.
My kingdom for a sound file. How many thousands of times did I squeeze this trigger?
I think we had that exact same painting in our living room.
Gen X rules.
(Image via Snaposaurus Vintage & Collectible Photography)
Fascinating. The year is my best guess. Defender came out for the 2600 in 1981, and the 2600 here looks like the four-switch “woody” model, first produced in 1980. We had ON TV for a short time, a subscription service that would unscramble participating UHF channels. In September of 1982, ON TV aired Star Wars for the first time ever on national TV on a pay-per-views basis, despite very few households being wired for the service.
Yes, yes, yes. Sadly, I never got to pump any fuzz back in the day, but lots of kids did. They pumped the fuzz, shaved it, rolled it up into a ball, licked it, ate it. The fuzz was good. The fuzz was salty. Just watch the kids in this commercial pump fuzz. They’re happy as hell. If adults pumped this much fuzz, we’d have world peace in a week.
(Image source: WishbookWeb)
(Video source: BlytheWorld1972)
2 Warps to Neptune 