Snapshots: 1983, Part One

I’ve mostly used this blog as an outlet for geekery about stuff like station IDs and old movies. That stuff isn’t going to stop (is that good or bad? you be the judge), but I do want to get a little more personal every now and then.

Well, what better inspiration than old photos? I have recently acquired a shiny new scanner/printer/copier machine doohickey. This makes it much easier to make such posts.

So, let’s go on a little trip back to 1983, shall we? We’ll start on February 9, the day I came into the world.

On that day, I looked like this:

In case you’re a moron, I’m the little purplish-red…thing. It’s a wonder my parents even decided to take me home. I’ve watched enough episodes of that “A Baby Story” show on TLC to know that most babies aren’t exactly pretty when they first come out, but I never saw one as hideous as I was.

And sadly, my mom doesn’t look much better. But she has a good reason for that. She was 38 years old and had just finished pushing out a 10-pound-3-ounce hunk of baby. If you did that, you’d probably look like death too.

My grandpa has told me that he didn’t want to hold me because I was so ugly. Hey, Grandpa, I’m the only one that’s allowed to say that I’m gross. Back off. He got over it though, because there are pictures of him holding me a few months down the road.

There’s Dad and me. Thankfully, I’m looking much better there.

Here’s a similar picture, but Dad is missing something:

The lip ferret is nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, it would not be the last time he did that. He did it again when I was about three years old and I flipped the hell out. Apparently, I cried, “You’re not my daddy!” To my knowledge, he’s never done it again since. Now, in general, I don’t like facial hair, but Dad is an exception. Even though it’s all salt-and-pepper these days, I still think he looks far better with the mustache than without.

Anyway, I plan on doing more of these in the future. I’m really partial to my old photos and I think it’ll be a lot of fun to write about them. Hopefully you guys can enjoy them too, and if not, well…you know what you can do.

A Brief Glimpse Back at 1987.

I really wish I could think of a better title for this post, but I’d like to publish it sometime in the next three hours.

As you can see, I haven’t really been inspired to write for this blog much of late. Part of it is because I was instead motivated to work on my story for once– which is not a bad thing, it just meant putting NJ on the back burner for a while.

However, I’ve been looking at my collection of old station IDs, movie intros, and commercials, and I think it’s time I write about that stuff some more. Because I’m sure that’s the kind of thing everybody wants to read about! And please don’t complain to me about there being no pretty pictures to look at. Why do you need to look at screencaps from the video when you can just watch the damn thing?

Let’s kick things off with this clip from CBS, recorded in December 1987. I believe this was shown between A Garfield Christmas and some other holiday special, though I’m not sure which one.

Check-a check it out, y’all.

Get NJ on LJ!

Excellent! I figured out how to do this RSS stuff, and am happy to announce that you LJ users can now view NJ updates from your friends page! Convenient, eh? Now I don’t have to make those “Hey, I updated” posts anymore.

All you have to do is add http://syndicated.livejournal.com/nostalgia_junk/ to your friends list. It’s easy, so do it right now, or the giant HBO logo will come for you in your sleep.

Okay, back to wasting time.

The Power of Space Ghost Compels You.

Okay, as you might have guessed, I’m finally writing about one of my favorite TV shows of all time, Space Ghost Coast to Coast. I know, Space Ghost toes the line as far as being “retro” is concerned, but this is primarily a nostalgia blog anyway, not necessarily a blog about “retro” stuff. So ease up out my face, if you were ever in my face in the first place. Ace. Mace. Race?

SGC2C, as it’ll be referred to for the remainder of this post, was one of those defining shows of my adolescence. (Maybe that’s why I turned out the way I did.) In case you don’t know, it’s a talk show in a very loose sense of the term. Of course, Space Ghost is the host. Zorak, the bandleader and Moltar, the director, are Space Ghost’s former nemeses. He has imprisoned them and forced them to work on his show. The result is the worst best talk show ever. If you’ve never seen it, oh man. You’ve missed out on a real winner if you like off-the-wall, surreal humor.

“A Star on Earth, A Star in Heaven”

They say the brightest stars burn out the fastest. 25 years ago today, one of the brightest stars the world has ever known went dark.

I usually don’t do the whole heartfelt tribute bit, but I think for someone as brilliant as Karen Carpenter was, I can make an exception.

And, in the process, I’ll try not to be further saddened by the fact that her memorial was held the day before I was born.