Bringing It On: The Andy Griffith Show

In Memory of Andy Griffith

June 1, 1926 — July 3, 2012

a related post

Random Retro Reviews of the 20th Century

I Hopped A Roving Wormhole for the Summer

Sorry, it's a one-way wormhole. So, that's it, then. See you in the funny papers.

Timeless Rock

1960's Classic Rock Performances

Like a lot of aging baby boomers, I still have a soft spot in my heart for rock music. Others might call it "rock and roll" but I prefer to call it just plain old "rock" music because my favorite rock bands of all time were those British rock bands from the Sixties and the 1960's American bands that were influenced by them. I liked the big, brassy, live-stage sound of that early rock music, especially when I watched these bands perform on The Ed Sullivan Show or heard their songs being played on American Bandstand.

Being the nostalgic fool that I am and, yeah, I guess, the romantic fool that I've always been, I created another personal website this past weekend just to pay homage to the British and American rock bands from the 1960s that made such an impression on me as a teenager and as a young man.

And, yep, it still has an effect on an old, nostalgic fool like me who remembers quite vividly that 60's rock music was all about fun, dancing and, you bet, romance. Just click on the picture if you want to see the 5th and, hopefully, the last entertainment satellite I'll ever attach to my official website. 

Bugs Bunny At His Best

Funny Books

When I was old enough to read, back in the early 1950s, I took a keen interest in reading comic books, like most American kids. And, like most American boys, I liked to read action/adventure comic books that weren't really funny. But my interest in comic books didn't stop there. I liked all kinds of comic books and got a real charge out of the "funny" ones.

Eventually, all comic books became "funny books" to me, just like I called the Sunday comics in the newspapers "the funny papers". The funny papers would make another fun topic for this blog but, right now, I want to list some of the "funny books" that I read on a regular basis. And, yep, some of them were probably for girls, but when you grow up around girls, you often read what they read and then you find out that most "funny books" were meant for everybody. Even grownups.

Rather than make this blog post a mile long by going into detail about why I liked reading these "funny books", I'll just list the ones I was able to remember reading regularly, or at least more than once. One thing the comic books or graphic novels or funny books — or whatever you want to call them — did for me was to show me the lighter side of life and the creative, fanciful side of others that made me feel good about having a big part of me that could forego reality for a spell and enjoy action, fantasy and humor. Here are some "funny books" from my youth:

DC Comics

Batman, Green Lantern, Flash, Robin, Sgt. Rock, Superman, Swamp Thing

Dell Comics

Combat, Beetle Bailey, Bugs Bunny, Daffy [Duck], Donald Duck, Huckleberry Hound, Little Lulu, Tom and Jerry, [Marge's] Tubby, Tweety and Sylvester, Uncle Scrooge, Walt Disney Comics

Harvey Comics

Baby Huey, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Hot Stuff the Little Devil, Little Dot, Little Lotta, Richie Rich, Sad Sack, Spooky, Stumbo the Giant, Wendy the Good Little Witch

As you can see, the "funny books" from my past outnumber the action/adventure "comic books". But that never mattered to me. I wasn't keeping track of them. I wasn't counting them or categorizing them or looking over my shoulder to see who was watching me. I was too busy reading them. Over and over again.

Bringing It On: Newhart

Newhart was one of my favorite sticoms of all time. Right up there with The Andy Griffith Show, Barney Miller, Green Acres and Taxi. This was Bob Newhart at his best. My other favorite characters were portrayed by Julia Duffy and Tom Poston. Yep, you bet, I miss the 20th Century. But I'd never do all over again. That's what the future is for.

Remnants of the 20th Century

A short documentary by Baby Boomer Boy about lost artifacts from the last century and the previous millennium. You can find these discarded items in flea markets, yard sales and garage sales throughout the civilized world.

Author's Note 12-2-11: I added a soundtrack to my original 2010 silent version, originally posted on 4-4-10. Hope you like it. I think it's much better with music.

Author's Note 11-07-13: This video was uploaded by Michael Casher to Blogger. You can't watch this video at YouTube because it does not exist there. That is another Google redirect which is nothing more than a lie to get you to watch other videos at YouTube instead of the uploaded video on this blog post. This new uploaded format at Blogger was introduced in November 2013 by Google without notice to anyone.

Merry Retro Christmas

Click on the package

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.