The past is a foreign country...

[Jennifer]

Last night I caught the second half of the first-ever episode of Happy Days (which I'd never seen before). The episode first aired in 1974, and the storyline apparently involved Richie going on a date with a girl who has a Bad Reputation, and he's alternately disappointed and relieved to find out that all she wants to do is kiss ... but one of the "jokes" which was presumably funny as indicated by the laugh track was a throwaway comment the girl made, strongly implying that her own school gym teacher tried to molest her (earlier in the show, when Richie tried and failed to unhook her bra through her sweater, he'd explained his behavior by saying something like "I was just smoothing down your sweater"; then near the end of the show, when the girl is talking about it to Richie she said something like "That's all right; Mr. What's-his-name the gym teacher tried smoothing down my sweater too") ... and that was a laugh-track moment.

[Mo]

One of the purported good guys in Good Will Hunting, in the ancient time of 1997, tries to make out with a drunk, passed out girl, who has a boyfriend, and her boyfriend getting ready to kick his ass over it maker him the bad guy.

[Jennifer]

Cross-posted from the "reading" thread, because I just now remembered this one:

One of the books I found at the library sale yesterday is called Safe Counsel, a 1960s or 70s paperback facsimile reprint of the 1928 edition (which itself was the 39th reprinting of a late-1800s first edition) of an old sex-ed/marriage counseling book. The modern (1970s) book cover promises "a riotous collection of fact and folklore from the early 1900s" and "practical advice about sex, sin and sane living--our grandfathers' priceless legacy to our wayward world."

So Jeff bought it expecting to find some hilariously outdated ideas, and sho'nuff there are plenty of those; I read choice excerpts aloud to Jeff on the way home, including this interesting statistic regarding masturbation: "Away back as far as 1876 various learned gentlemen such as Brockman, Marcuse and Berger began to investigate and report on the growth of masturbation. They tell us the percentage of young men and women who indulge in secret habits during adolescence ranges all the way from 50 per cent up to 99 per cent .... Personally I do not believe the percentage is nearly as high as the lowest estimate given."

But most of the book is too horrible to be funny. The full title of the original book was "Safe Counsel or Practical Eugenics," and there are entire chapters or subsections stressing the important of eugenics, the "Eugenic Marriage License," "Sterilization of the Unfit" and so forth. There's a brief paragraph describing "Who May Marry," and a large detailed multi-page list of who should NOT be allowed to marry (the book assumes married people are the only ones who procreate, and procreation the only reason to marry). People who should be barred from matrimony by law include anyone who has or had: alcoholism, arteriosclerosis, cancer, drug addiction, epilepsy, goiter, heart disease, hemophilia, mumps (because if you've had the mumps you might be sterile, in which case there's no point in your getting hitched) and obesity, among others.

My mother actually was sterilized due to cancer: in her late 20s, within a year of my brother being born, she had some sort of tumor which ultimately resulted in her getting a hysterectomy. I wonder if these people would've recommended preemptively sterilizing me and my brother, on the grounds that, as children of someone with cancer we shouldn't have been born in the first place and definitely shouldn't reproduce? (Not that I have, but my brother now has two kids.)

[Warren]

One of the purported good guys in Good Will Hunting, in the ancient time of 1997, tries to make out with a drunk, passed out girl, who has a boyfriend, and her boyfriend getting ready to kick his ass over it maker him the bad guy.

I don't remember that scene.

[Mo]

Wrong Robin Williams movie, I meant "Dead Poets Society".

[thoreau]

Dead Poets Society was well before 1997.

[Mo]

Well yeah, I IMDBed the wrong movie, but 1989 is hardly ancient times.

[Warren]

I still don't remember that scene

[Kolohe]

It wasn't the House guy, it was the Sport's Night guy, when he was at the public high school party.

[fyodor]

Feast your eyes!!

http://pulptastic.com/40-cringeworthy-m ... n-ads-70s/

[Sandy]

Feast your eyes!!

http://pulptastic.com/40-cringeworthy-m ... n-ads-70s/

#21 lower right is on point.

[Mo]

No wonder some people think homosexuality can be cured.

[Jennifer]

A few weeks ago, when Jeff and I were watching a rerun of the old Carol Burnett show, he commented on how fantastically awful the mid-70s clothes were, and we started playing a game: find the first article of clothing (other than blue jeans and shoes) which would be acceptable to wear non-ironically today. Neither of us could spot a single non-embarrassing garment.

[Warren]

I dig it. It's mostly the brostache that I find unfashionable. Were I still in my 20's or 30's today, I'd totally wear half that stuff unironically. #noshame

[lunchstealer]

Y'all remember how people keep saying that the '80s were the worst?

NO THEY FUCKING WEREN'T

[Warren]

Y'all remember how people keep saying that the '80s were the worst?

NO THEY FUCKING WEREN'T

Bro, 70's style drinks 80's style's milkshake, shoves the glass up it's nose, and pisses on it's head.

[tr0g]

Feast your eyes!!

http://pulptastic.com/40-cringeworthy-m ... n-ads-70s/

#21 lower right is on point.

What are you trying to look like, a pot-addled Gandalf wanna-be? Then yeah, totes the look.

[Sandy]

Feast your eyes!!

http://pulptastic.com/40-cringeworthy-m ... n-ads-70s/

#21 lower right is on point.

What are you trying to look like, a pot-addled Gandalf wanna-be? Then yeah, totes the look.

You say that like anything about that is bad.

[Jennifer]

It's weird how very quickly commonplace things can be completely forgotten. Jeff and I were watching old episodes of "Match Game 78" on the old Game Show channel. The idea behind the Match Game is that you-the-contestant hear a sentence or phrase with one word missing (replaced with "blank"). Six celebrities then write a word to fill in the blank, you guess the word, and win a point for every celebrity whose answer matches yours.

If you win and make it to the bonus round, it's a little different: instead of asking the six celebrities to fill in the blank, the studio audience was interviewed beforehand, and their three most common answers are listed; the contestant wins varying amounts of money for matching the first, second or third most popular answer.

So in one episode, the bonus-round question was "Whip and BLANK." Jeff and I guessed "whip and chain" or "whip and chair," but the number one, single-most-common audience answer was "Whip and chill," which made zero sense to us. So I Googled it: in the 1970s Whip and Chill was a very popular instant-dessert mix, maybe similar to instant pudding or mousse. Jeff and I were both alive in 1978 and have actual memories of the year (vague childish memories, but still). We may have actually eaten Whip and Chill back in the day -- if our own moms didn't make it, surely one of our friends' moms did. If nothing else, I must have seen boxes of it every week, when I had to go with my mother on a grocery-shopping trip. Yet I have no memory of it at all, and something similar happens with about a quarter of the super-popular answers -- everyone on the show speaks my language, but it's like they're from a completely different culture, maybe even a slightly different alternate reality from mine.

[Highway]

Some of that is certainly that things weren't nearly as national back then as they are now. So something in California wouldn't necessarily be on the east coast. But there's a lot of stuff that comes up in Match Game that is just "whuuuuuut?" So much of that stuff just didn't transfer to under-10-year-old me at the time, so they might as well have done it in 1968 as 1978 for all I remember about the pop culture references.

[Jennifer]

I've been watching old (early 1960s) episodes of To Tell the Truth, including the old black-and-white in-show commercials, and by modern standards, the sexism in them is unreal. I just saw a commercial for "Enden" (a dandruff shampoo, by show sponsor Helene Curtis) showing a very elegantly dressed woman; the voice-over said something like "Run in your stocking? It can happen to anybody. But dandruff on a Paris gown is as unacceptable as a shiny nose."

Jeff literally laughed out loud at that.

[JD]

It just occurred to me today: when President Obama was born, the Civil Rights Act had not yet been passed. James Meredith had not yet enrolled in the University of Mississippi. Interracial marriage was still illegal in many states. The Black Panthers didn't even exist yet. It's kind of amazing how much has changed in 50-odd years.

[JD]

A scanned collection of mid-nineteenth century menus:
http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/p15195coll34

[JD]

Here's a cool find: a 1960 Soviet filmstrip called "In the Year 2017", about how in 2017, thanks to socialism, we will have space travel, and underground cities where it's perpetually spring, and videophones, and flying weather-control stations - at least until the world's last remaining imperialists threaten to ruin it all.

[Painboy]

Here's a cool find: a 1960 Soviet filmstrip called "In the Year 2017", about how in 2017, thanks to socialism, we will have space travel, and underground cities where it's perpetually spring, and videophones, and flying weather-control stations - at least until the world's last remaining imperialists threaten to ruin it all.

Durn imperialists and their meson bombs.