Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek
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)
Beware: Spoilers ahead.
Right. So there’s this really hot, stuck up high school girl who wants to be a journalist when she grows up and gets really pissed off when her journalism teacher tells her the piece she wrote to win the big summer newspaper internship isn’t good enough and that she should be a model instead. Hey, just because I’m really hot and totally into myself doesn’t mean I can’t be smart too, she says. But how to prove it? Well, duh!—I’ll just enroll as a boy in the neighboring school and show my boring paper to that journalism teacher to prove that my journalism teacher is sexist.
In this other school (how she/he gets in without parents or transcripts I don’t know) Terry (yeah, Terry) falls for sweet-but-dweeby Rick, which is like totally awkward because she’s supposed to be his best male bud and also she/he has to transform Rick into a cool cat to get him a date with the hot, stuck up girl who’s dating the jock-douche Greg (William Zabka, who played the same part in The Karate Kid).
If you think there’s not a scene where Terry is in fine-looking girl mode, waiting for her shallow college boyfriend to pick her up for a date, when the cute girl (the sexy, adorable Sherilyn Fenn) who has the hots for boy-Terry shows up, and Terry has to run back and forth switching from boy- to girl-Terry… Wait, what was I saying?
The denouement (look it up) unfolds at the prom, of course, when Rick fights the jock-douche and Terry shows Rick her boobs to prove that she/he isn’t gay, just a chick who dressed up as a dude to prove that her journalism teacher was sexist.
(Movie poster via movieposter.com)
These cavemen don’t stand a chance.
According to the book, by 2015 trips to the moon will become “as routine as an ordinary supersonic airplane trip.”
Check it out in detail at Dreams of Space (part one, part two, and part three), a brilliant site dedicated to vintage non-fiction books and ephemera about space flight and space colonization.
From Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, comes this Super 8 video of a Friday night D&D session in Lee, New Hampshire, 1981.
I am literally spellbound. (No, really, can anyone hit me with a Dispel Magic?)
(Source: Ethan’s YouTube Channel)
EDIT (1/28/13): I just found a Wired article Ethan wrote about the video. Go to it.
July 4, 1982. (Eric Luse/SF Chronicle)
Greenbrae Bowl, August 21, 1981. (Susan Gilbert/SF Chronicle)
March 16, 1982. (Steve Ringman/SF Chronicle)
Pier 39, August 3, 1982. (Eric Luse/SF Chronicle)
Star Castle rules. So do those bell-bottoms.
(Image sources: San Francisco Chronicle)
I’m dying to see footage of these babies, especially the Starcruiser, which apparently “flies into space under its own power.” You actually had to put fuel into this thing.
Holy shit! I found it. Look at the son of a bitch go.
(Images via the ever delectable WishbookWeb)
(Video via F3Aflyer)
May 19, 1981. (Bruce McKim/Seattle Times)
The TRS-80 cost a pretty penny back in 1981. This one looks like a Model III. I suspect we’re witnessing a family money laundering operation.
(Images sources: Seattle Washington Archive and Gearbits)
This movie is awesome and you should see it at least once before you die. It’s the semi-official Star Wars rip-off from Japan.
“I’m a human being from the planet Earth!”
(Source: Trash Trailers)
2 Warps to Neptune 