Merry Retro Christmas

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Bringing It On: The Twilight Zone

My Slant on the Slinky

At a Gimbels Department Store in Philadelphia in 1945, the Slinky toy made its American debut and by 1946 it was introduced to the American toy market. Developed by a naval engineer from Pennsylvania, the Slinky was basically a helical spring made of steel. In its heyday, Slinky was manufactured in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, a bustling borough seven miles south of Altoona.

The Slinky's main claim to fame as a toy was that it could go down a flight of stairs all by itself, with a little push from a kid at the top of the stairs. Other than this, the Slinky was probably the most fascinating and also the most boring toy ever produced in the 20th Century. It was eventually made of plastic, which made it cheaper, tackier and even more boring than before.

No matter how you felt about it, the Slinky toy from James Industries, Inc. was one of the most popular kid-and-gravity-powered toys in 20th-Century America, along with the baseball, football, Frisbee and the plain old rock. Now manufactured by Poof-Slinky, Inc. — a result of the 2003 merger of James Industries, Inc. and Poof Products, Inc. — the Slinky was one of the few baby-boomer toys that wasn't manufactured by Mattel, Marx or Ron Popeil (Popeil, Ronco).

Bringing It On: The Honeymooners

The Vietnam War According To Sam

Leave It To Beaver Theme Song 1957-1963

See earlier post about this Classic TV sitcom

Al Capone in 25 Words or Less

Thanks to Prohibition, former Brooklyn bar bouncer, Alphonse Capone, became the biggest bootlegger, pimp, murderer, gangster and racketeer that Chicago or America would ever produce.

Diversity in a Nutshell

In the 1990s, "diversity" became a liberal catch-all term that meant willingly embracing all the wonderful differences and similarities between the world's human races, including everyone's right to enjoy and celebrate their own ethnicity, customs, holidays, religion and cultural heritage. Nobody in their right mind would argue with social concepts as uplifting and enlightening as these. But, there was — and still is — a dark side to this two-headed coin.

To many people in this misguided world, the notion of diversity also means accepting — against your will and better judgment and in the name of social responsibility — a great deal of aberrant antisocial, sexual and criminal behavior, misdeeds and misconduct which, before the word "diversity" became the liberal catch-all, were unacceptable activities rightfully attributed to remorseless misfits, sociopaths and criminals who couldn't care less about any body else or what was right and wrong.

There's a big difference between being "a liberal" and being "a libertine" but hardly anyone seems to know the difference anymore. And we wonder why there are a lot more social issues facing us today than there used to be. All those extra worries and troubles once had answers and solutions. But, from seemingly out of nowhere, those answers and solutions became, unimaginably, the biggest chinks in our human armor.

And that's our own fault. Whenever right becomes wrong, there aren't any more solutions. Just more problems.

The 1980's Pop Music Tsunami

For me, Ronald Reagan, Reaganomics, peacetime prosperity (yep, even during a recession, you can still have a taste of the good life in America) weren't the only things worth remembering about the 1980's decade. That's right, I'm one of those people who thought Ronald Reagan was one of our best presidents. Get over it.

If it wasn't for the creative, memorable tsunami of original music that hit the American shores in the 1980s, I'd say Reagan was the best thing about the Eighties. But he had great company. Call them "New Wave" bands or "Romantics" or whatever you want to call them (let the experts label them), the rock bands, composers and singers of the 1980s took America's Pop Music Culture somewhere it had never been before and would likely never go again. From 1980 to 1990, pop musicians from all over the place showed people like me that the "wave of the future" didn't necessarily mean "bad news".

Just when I thought there were no new frontiers for "rock" musicians to explore with the electric guitar, keyboards or vocals, along came the (mostly) young musical talent of the 1980s and artists from the 1970s who showed us that they still had a lot to offer. Even hard rock went in new directions and hip-hop eclipsed soul and rhythm & blues with a new sound of its own. And jazz, that American original invention that almost defies vocal accompaniment, saw a whole new wave of new talent come ashore. For me, the 1980's pop music scene introduced a new music genre that almost defied labeling. The Eighties provided me with new "head music", new "driving music" and some new "dance music" that had all the earmarks of a generation that was celebrating not only life but the simple joy of making music.

Below is a list of memorable and very cool songs that really made me feel good about being (relatively) young and alive back then (I was 29 in 1980). Some of these songs are "New Wave" and some aren't. But they're all 1980's "Pop Music" and that's good enough for a guy like me who couldn't carry a tune of my own to save my life. I'll never stop loving the sounds these artists produced or the way they made me feel. I was more into their music than the way they looked or behaved in their personal lives. That meant very little to me. People who make courageous, awesome, insane, beautiful, cool and original music like they did certainly deserve a little retro credit. My hat is still off to them and this "Mix" is my tribute to the 1980s. Headphones are highly recommended.

1. Cars — Gary Numan (released in 1979 but hit U.S. Top 40 in 1980)

2. Call Me — Blondie (1980)

3. Rapture — Blondie (1981)

4. Once In A Lifetime — Talking Heads (1981)

5. Down Under — Men At Work (1981, ignore the 1982 on the video)

6. Super Freak — Rick James (1981)

7. Rock the Casbah — The Clash (1982)

8. Let It Whip — Dazz Band (1982)

9. I Melt With You — Modern English (1982)

10. New Religion — Duran Duran (1982)

11. She Blinded Me With Science — Thomas Dolby (1982)

12. I Ran (So Far Away) — A Flock of Seagulls (1982)

13. Electric Avenue — Eddy Grant (1983)

14. One Thing Leads To Another — The Fixx (1983)

15. Let's Dance — David Bowie (1983)

16. Hang On To Your Love — Sade (1984)

17. West End Girls — Pet Shop Boys (1984)

18. Take On Me — A-Ha (1985)

19. Everybody Wants To Rule The World — Tears For Fears (1985)

20. Material Girl — Madonna (1985)

21. Venus — Bananarama (1986)

22. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For — U2 (1987)

23. Just Like Heaven — The Cure (1987)

24. Kissing A Fool — George Michael (1988)

25. Love Shack — The B52s (1989)

P.S. I suggest you ignore the comments posted by You Tube viewers, who tend to misuse the video comment section at YouTube as an adult-oriented chat room and a space for hateful rhetoric that has no place in an enlightened culture. In far too many cases, they also disparage the music by attacking the personal lives of the artists. A lot of YouTube comments aren't fit for public viewing anyway. But YouTube allows anything and everything. Free speech and all that rot.

As far as I'm concerned, music is music and none of these artists single-handedly ran our world culture into the ground. By the same token, when I like a song that doesn't necessarily mean that I like anything else about the artist. Sometimes I even dislike them. But that isn't the point of this post.

My music posts at Blogger are about the music and the musical talent of the artists and nothing more. Except for Petula Clark, who was my older woman schoolboy celebrity crush in the 1960s — she and Julie Andrews, but that's another story — and whose voice and compositions I really liked. So, if you have a problem with any of the artists I showcased here, that's your problem, not mine.

Oil Wars: The Barons Strike Back

On October 17, 1973 OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) cut off oil supplies to the United States and The Netherlands because these two nations helped Israel defend itself from yet another military attack by Egypt. They helped Israel attack Syria in response to the Egyptian attack on Israel, which is about as appropriate as shooting the neighbor's cat because their dog bit you.

Then, while spoiled American consumers continued to commute hundreds of miles to and from work every week and who still went shopping at the drop of a hat for things they didn't really need, American gas stations began running completely out of gasoline. Not only that, OPEC's hateful, stubborn "hissy fit" against the West jacked up the price of OPEC oil being exported to Europe by 70%.

Everyone tried to blame the "Arab Oil Embargo" of 1973 on President Richard Nixon, whom everybody in the entire world hated for being a Republican and for simply being "an American president" during the Vietnam War. In fact, everybody in the world was so damn mad at the Israelis and the Americans and the Dutch they completely forgot that Egypt started the whole thing because Egyptian Arabs hate Israeli Jews more than any people in the entire world, except for Americans, who led the allied nations in saving the world from domination by Germany twice during the 20th Century. Wow. That's a funny thing to be hated for.

OPEC finally lifted the oil embargo against The U.S. on March 18, 1974, after getting the "Big Picture" that America will always defend Israel, probably forever, and that American oil speculators on Wall Street make a killing on oil stocks and oil futures every time tempers flare and bombs start dropping in the Holy Land.

What a world.

The Great Society in 25 Words

President Lyndon Johnson's political pipe dream about ending poverty and racial injustice that was squashed by the big-business of Vietnam, Johnson's poor health and Richard Nixon.

JFK Inaugural Address 1961

50th Anniversary
President Kennedy Inaugural Address
January 20, 1961

A 1950's "So Long"

The Roy Rogers Show 1951-1957