Discount Seventies

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I confess I heartily hated the seventies. The ethos of the time was blah, the ideas believed by most of the people in power were either stupid or outright criminal. And to top it all out, the aesthetics were a dog’s breakfast.

When we were looking for houses in Colorado, the last time we kept running into seventies houses, which to be fair were very cheap for the amount of floor space and general amenities. They were also often falling apart, but that’s something else. What they were mostly, like most things in the seventies, was very poorly designed. By which I mean they seemed to have been designed for a species not humans. Because, you know, the future was all open floor plans, and everyone was going to live in the open, sleep in the open and occasionally go to the bathroom in the open.

Quite possibly my “favorite” arrangement was a 1500 sq feet floor, with a kitchen huddled in the corner of it. I have no idea where the bathrooms were originally, but on the second floor, they’d added bathrooms randomly, and seemed to have closed them also randomly as problems developed, like tile falling from the walls, and built another bathroom elsewhere. And all the bedrooms were in the basement. Dan loved it, because he loves crazy things. As Dan does. (I mean it explains our marriage, right?) But to me it smelled of old sin and insanity.

Because what you have to remember about the seventies is that people were doing a lot of drugs. Also a lot of things that were WIDELY believed (and which stuck, because all there was WAS mass media) involved stuff like “We’re running out of everything” and “The world is going to freeze” (the remedy was, of course, socialism) and “planned economies work better; freedom is decadent” and “We’re reproducing ourselves to death” and– Oh, yeah, we were just waiting for the hammer of nuclear war to fall.

These things were earnest beliefs, and while I’m sure there were reasons to believe otherwise, no one heard of them, because again, mass media was the only media.

So reasonable people thought the seventies was the end of the road, and that socialism was the future.

If you’re looking at that cockeyed, yes, the establishment is indeed trying to do a re-run of the seventies.

They only have one problem: We know most of that stuff isn’t true.

How do we know it? Well, in the seventies you could sell “Oil is so expensive because it’s coming to an end.” It’s harder to do that when oil was cheap four years ago, and then the government closed the exploration and pipeline.

It was easy to sell “the future is all communal” when the mess of the late sixties hadn’t yet PUBLICLY exploded in everyone’s faces. It was easy to sell “The population is too high” when you weren’t opening the borders to give that appearance.

Yeah, the kids believe the nonsense today. Or pretend to believe it. They don’t have a hell of a lot of power, so they say what they think will get them what they want.

But in the population at large there is a lack of buying it, that the overculture doesn’t know what to do with.

They keep pushing tropes first debuted in the seventies, harder and harder, and can’t understand why it’s not working, or why absent fraud they would be voted out of every position including dog catcher.

You see, reruns are harder to sell.

And big lies are harder to sell too, when there’s a lot of places to find the truth and some of us have gotten addicted to truth telling.

Look at this article, and I’ll point out I fully agree with Tucker Carlson on what he said. You tell a truth, and another stands out and must be told, and then another. (I can’t believe his kid is eleven. I held him, long ago…when he was an infant, though neither he nor Jeff probably remember that.)

Look, I tell lies for a living. They’re called novels. It’s much harder to tell a lie that’s based on things people once believed but which have been proven to be lies. It’s much harder to tell a lie that goes against the spirit of the time.

And this forced seventies rerun is just ridiculous and built on air. It is like many things the overculture does, something they’re running with absolutely no support from anyone else.

And the audience is getting mad.

Sooner or later this nonsense is going to get cancelled.

Pray it’s done amicably.

189 thoughts on “Discount Seventies”

          1. I think my reply was eaten, apologies if it posts twice.
            My beloved is retired Air Force. I just played this for him.
            My, it’s dusty in here.

      1. One evening when I was taking a nice slow amble across the countryside somewhere in Iowa, Illinois, or Indiana and had just lain down for the night, a flight of three of those (or their cousins) from a nearby AFB came by, nice and low. Whoosh indeed.

        1. I was working on my roof a few years ago when a B-2 escorted by two F-117’s flew right over my house. Must have come from Miramar.

          I remember when an F-18 crashed, the pilot ejected, and the canopy hit my ex-girlfriend’s mother’s garage.

          I offered to fix the garage if they’d let me keep the canopy but the Navy refused. They’re no fun.

          1. In late 1990, just about every B-52 we had overflew my home on their way to Desert Shield. I was just off the southern runway approach for Patrick Air Force Base (now Space Force)

        2. December ’71, my friends and I were doing a road trip from U of Redacted to California. (Some visiting family/friends, some tourism.) As we were going through New Mexico on I-40, an F-4 Phantom did a low level, medium speed pass over us. Kind of cool.

          One of the nicer incidents of the trip. (The oddest was when we had wheel bearing/tire flambe at New Years near Blythe. By some chance, CHP was by with an extinguisher, and one of the guys just happened to have family there, (Thank you, Lord!) and we got to crash in the home of his cousin–who was in hospital with pneumonia. We cleaned the place, and got back on the road late on Jan 2.)

          Subsequent cross country trips were usually less exciting, though seeing the fuselage of an unidentified fighter-bomber (I think–big ass plane, in unpainted aluminum, barely fitting on the flatbed trailer) heading west on I-80 was unusual.

      2. That’s not a ‘very high speed fly-by’. There’s no KABOOM! There’s supposed to be an earth-shattering KABOOM! 😀

        Now kick in Supercruise and do it again.

    6. “Mommy, that crazy chick with wings is buzzing the blog again!”

      “[sigh] Ignore her, dear. She just does it for attention.”

      😛

  2. Everything these days is re-tread of the 60s -the 90s.

    Fashion (it’s dead, really) has been showing this malaise for a while. You’ll notice that the young women are back to wearing high-waisted jeans and crop tops, just like their grandmothers did.

    I wonder if it will indicate that we are truly breaking out of this four decade retread cycle when people start wearing styles that weren’t popularized in the last century.

    1. And bell bottoms, er excuse me, “modified flare leg boot cut.” (No, those are bell bottoms. And they are still ick.) Oh, and “the Nap Dress™,” which is a 1970s sundress like I wore as a kid but in a softer fabric so you can nap in it or wear it out to events. [Ick. Pick one.]

      1. It was quite shock when I went from a small rural town (where everyone wore Levi’s…no, I didn’t care for the styles of Mod Sqad) to the big city and couldn’t find anything other than bell bottoms when I went shopping for pants. At least hip huggers haven’t made a comeback. At least, not that I’ve noticed. Those were ick, too.

        1. Man, was I ever glad when the stupid low cut jeans fad of the early ‘00s finally died. Coin slots…everywhere…and it made even the skinniest chicks look dumpy. How much do you want to bet we get that AND bell bottoms coming back within the next year or two?

          1. I liked the low-waist jeans, because I have a short waist, so they hit me right where the waist should go.

            This high waisted nonsense comes halfway up my ribcage…

            1. My problem is that I have a low waist AND big hips and a backside, so those “low-rise” jeans are supposed to go around people’s hips and end up paper-bagging at the waist. Medium rise seems to be the best alternative, along with a no-buckle belt to say no to crack.

              (My proportions are a thing of shopping nightmares. Short version is that most of me is built on a six-foot scale, including my back and inseam, and sturdy, but my hips threw in a vote of 5’2″ and are holding to it. Fit? Are you kidding?)

              1. “I have a low waist AND big hips and a backside, so those “low-rise” jeans are supposed to go around people’s hips and end up paper-bagging at the waist.”

                Yeah, that sounds familiar.

                There’s a reason why there are darts in waistband of nearly every pair of jeans I own.

                Except for this certain brand and style from Walmart, that by some miracle fit perfectly off the rack.

                I bought several of them.

            2. My Eyes! My Eyes!
              Alright, if you’re going to do that to us, imagine that wearer of said attire is 20 years older than her merry high school or college days, and 40 pounds heavier .

        2. Ditto. August 1972, made the annual pilgrimage to The Cities for the pre-school clothes acquisition and visit to the MN State Fair. It seemed our usual shopping destinations (eg. the Dayton’s & Donaldson’s department stores) had nothing but bell bottoms on the shelves. Nope. Nope. Nope.

          “But Bob,” pleaded Mom, “they’re the latest fasion.”

          “But Mo-om,” opined Bob, “they look stoopid!”

          Finally managed to track down some straight-legged Levi’s at J.C. Penny’s.

          And a half-century later, they still look ‘stoopid’. I suppose they might have some utility if, say, you were a sailor washed or blown overboard without wearing a lifejacket and needed to improvise some makeshift water wings. And even on my Bad Boat Ride, I never went on deck sans lifejacket. I may (have) be(en) a little nuts, but I’m not dumb.

          1. I ended up with a pair of tan, with blue splotches, bell bottom jeans. Did work good with cowboy boots. Note, I did not want them. But if I wanted new jeans, was only option. OTOH I didn’t have to wear them to school either. In fact, wasn’t allowed to (dresses only). By the time I was allowed to wear pants/jeans (jr/senor year) to school, those things were long worn out, and out grown.

    3. I have a long torso and I hate crop tops. I pretty much shop at thrift stores though so current fashion isn’t as much of a problem.

    4. Lest you tend to think of the ’60s as original, I relate this little ditty. Around about ’66-’67, I spent some of my first-job earnings on a high-fashion Carnaby-Street-style shirt. I went o show it off to my grandmother. (Cornell ’22). She said, “Hmm. I didn’t know paisley was back in style.”

  3. The first Star Wars movie was technically a 70s movie, and it booted that whole decade out the door and embraced the exuberance of the 80s.

    Which I suspect is part of the reason they’re so intent on erasing the OT trilogy and rebuilding from the ground up, new and “modern,” aka heading backwards.

      1. Even Lucas himself – old lefty that he is – had reservations about his own creation. Observe his attempts to ‘clarify’ the Han v Greedo scene.

        Death of the Author has been taken to ridiculous extremes and horribly misused, but I always thought that theory has a kernel of truth: Artists have influences they’re not aware of, and a person may be a creator, but he isn’t The Creator, as the religiously inclined would put it.

        Lucas, Gaiman, Whedon – even Stephen King and Alan Moore on occasion – tapped into something big and something true, and they did their best to shape, polish and present it well and keep it true. Then they changed and ruined their work by trying to get the approval of all the Best People.

        2. Mary Renault had her protagonist in The Mask of Apollo, say that about the author of, *The Bacchae.” The quote went something like, “It may be even that the author was trying to say that the gods are not. In that case, something breathed on the back of his neck while he was writing.”

        3. Lucas did a fine job recreating the Hero’s Journey as long as he followed the recipe, but he could neither follow it up nor improve on it.

          1. As I recall, the movie as shot was a mess, but his wife (at the time) created the final result with some very expert editing.

            Han shot first, and I’ve managed not to see the versions where he didn’t.

            1. The real problem was not so much the raw footage as Lucas failing to explain to Very Prestigious British Editor (John “Zulu” Jympson) what was going on, and having to fire him due to incompatible working styles and Jympson’s comparative stodgy take on the material (this is the “cinema verite” rough cut that you sometimes hear about).

              The cut we grew up watching was done by Marcia Lucas, Paul Hirsch (Carrie, Planes Trains & Automobiles), and Richard Chew (The Conversation, Risky Business, Shanghai Noon), with George himself helping out as needed. There isn’t a “bad George Lucas rough cut” that Marcia or others had to save; as with all OT stuff it was a George+teamwork effort that had gotten lost in the “George as auteur” propaganda by the time the prequels were made…and then people overcorrected in the other direction (credit anybody but George for the OT).

        4. It’s a pity, re: the Han Shot First debacle.

          One thing I did like about the 90s CGI additions were some little things in Star Wars. Stuff like the shuttle taking off in the distance on Tatooine while the Stormtroopers were searching the escape pod and little droids following the Stormtrooper squads around.

          Other things were not so great, though I laughed at the “Han chases Stormtroopers into a barracks” bit the first time, I prefer the original.

          If they’d stuck with the little tweaks, it’d been best.

          1. His redo of the trench run and destruction of the Death Star just feels off to me. There’s an urban legend that he redid that part to spite his ex-wife, if so, all he did was prove she was the better editor.

            1. Ego, pettiness, ingratitute and spite…

              Infuriating.

              I’ve long since walked away from Star Wars, but every now and then it just comes back and hits me square in between the eyes: one of the greatest franchises ever created, something that could have been part of America’s mythology, ruined.

              For nothing.

              None of this had to happen.

              Starting with Lucas himself and his raging ego and refusal to admit his limits with the prequels and ending with the sequels and their drive to erase and tear down the OT.

              The spite.

              The sheer, unadulterated spite.

              And now they’re talking about making a “fresh start” with the new Rey movies. A fresh start…after they’d torn down the OT, methodically degraded the original heroes, undid everything they fought and sacrificed for and destroyed all their accomplishments before their eyes, after sweeping away those problematic patriarchal male heroes, as well as Leia, who had committed the unforgivable sins of being feminine, falling in love and – gasp! – having children, now they want to “start fresh,” literally erecting an new hideous facsimile on their corpses.

              I know there are bigger things in the world to get upset about, but the sheer spite of their treatment of SW just serves as the perfect microcosm of this disgusting clown world.

              And we didn’t realize how lucky we were to have Christopher Tolkien until we lost him.

              But just remember: every time you think you’re worthless, Jeff Bezos spent a billion dollars just to piss you off.

              1. I will believe in the next Disney Star Wars movies, Rey or otherwise, when they start shooting, and not before. They’ve announced so much vaporware in that department.

                1. I’ll go that one better; “Another crappy Star Wars-takeoff abortion? Who cares?” I made the mistake of watching the first one (The Force Awakens?); never again. The second trilogy wasn’t great, but the third seems to be a disaster.

                2. Yeah, there at the end where she told the neighbor “Rey Skywalker” I was, “NO! You are damn well Rey Palpatine! Own it! And then forge your own path in spite of the old bastard!”

                  But, no, they had to take the cheap way out.

                  1. Oh, that would have been epic!

                    I’ve been on and off trying to figure out how to take the basics of that story and do it right. Partly because the ‘sort-of-child of evil space wizard + glowing fire swords’ sounds pretty neat on the face of it. Particularly because I love villain-hero relationship dynamics, and fighting one’s manipulative evil overlord parent while coming to terms with the darker tendencies you inherited from them could really work for external/internal conflicts.

                    Any thoughts? Also, how can I add in an interesting Admiral Thrawn expy without blatantly copying Timothy Zahn?

                    1. Weren’t you working on a “chosen grandmother” story or something already?

                      Focus, young lady! 😛

                    2. Take what you like about Thrawn and recast the other details. Does he need to be part alien? No, he needs to be an outsider and he needs to be competent. (And I really need to find that set and read it again. It’s been too long.) Play with the idea as you build your world and aou’ll find a character shaping up that has echoes of Thrawn but isn’t him.

                      Oh, and I’d recommend starting your ‘wait in line’ list for stories early. It simplifies matters. You figure out faster how many you rotate through and whether you’re going to have standing room only or not. Otherwise you spend twenty years floundering through idea starts and never finishing anything like I did. 😉

                    5. But John C Wright once posted an extremely entertaining rewrite of Episode 7 complete with a good daughter/grandaughter of the Sith analogs being raised by the Jedi analogs and with Thrawn as the villain. It served as the inspiration for his current “StarQuest” project and he’s since made it private, since the novels are now going in a different direction, but it was very good and well-received. He might let you see it if you contact him.

                    6. Wright’s rewrite – a summary outline actually – is quite literally what you’re describing.

                    7. Looks like a lot of people are doing the story equivalent of ‘the dog chewed up the curtains, but they were our nice curtains, so now I have to patch them back into something presentable.’ It’ll be very interesting to see how each person’s take is different from the others.

                      (Fun game a relative and I used to play: go into a search engine, find fantasy character art, agree on a picture. Each person goes and builds their own D&D character from that art, backstory and all. Once the character is finished, compare the two. It was a lot of fun!)

                    8. Nick Cole and Jason Anspach have done some interesting things with their Galaxy’s Edge series, leaning more into the purely military sf end of things.

                    9. Perhaps I’m dating myself, but I could never really get into the animated series Thrawn or the one depicted in the newer books.

                      The Thrawn who caught my attention was the figure from Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising and Last Command, the man who pulled the shattered remnants of the Empire together, inspired it with new leadership and took on the OT heroes at the height of their power, giving them a foe to truly test them and prove themselves the true heroes we all knew and loved.

                      The Thrawn who was – sorry if this is a spoiler – defeated by LEIA. Not General Leia, mind you, but Princess Leia, who bested him by reaching out to deadly enemies and turning them into staunch allies.

                      The Thrawn who gained new depths as a man of mystery in the Specter of the Past/Vision of the Future duology, who went against the will of his own people and accepted exile because of what he thought was right, and who believed the Empire could be something noble. And who set in motion a plan from beyond the grave that was nearly the end of the New Republic.

                      This new Thrawn? The guy who was chasing around a bunch of rebels and who gets carried off by a space squid? Didn’t really inspire me. It’s not only heroes that need a good villain: having someone of Thrawn’s caliber square off against anyone but the best diminishes him.

                      Likewise the new books, where he gets sent to Imperial school and used as an exterminator? Pass.

                    10. Not General Leia, mind you, but Princess Leia

                      Gurk. See, that hits one of my issues with Return of the Jedi and then the sequels. When people started calling her “General” Leia, I thought the obvious thing to assume was that it was an honorary post, like how the Prince of Wales is honorary colonel of this or that regiment, or else it was denoting her as titular commander-in-chief.

                      But then the you-go-girl bitch-boss-yay feminist types started in on “nuh-uh, she’s totally a combat leader, you sexist” and it just wasn’t ever demonstrated in the films.

                    11. The old EU “Legends” had their low points, but Leia accomplished far more as a princess, diplomat and political leader than General Leia could have ever dreamed of.

                      And she did it with a loving husband at her side and the support of her Jedi brother – who didn’t need to be turned into fools and weaklings so that she could stand tall.

                    15. “Not General Leia, mind you, but Princess Leia,”

                      Did no one ever ask how she got demoted and by whom?

              2. I suspect that Leia’s real sin was to have her actress die before Kennedy was through with the character.

                In any case, I suspect that the Rey movies will be DOA. And Star Wars will continue to recede into irrelevance until someone with a proper understanding of it gets their hands on it. One of these days either Disney will go bankrupt and Star Wars will be auctioned off, or someone who understands what the company should be doing will get in and give the place a thorough shake-up (it happened before). And at that point we might finally get a good Star Wars movie.

                In the meantime, I’ll be listening to hear about how they screw up Thrawn in the upcoming streaming series. He’s a much-beloved villain both in the Zahn books and in the animation (specifically, Rebels). But you know that the current crew will screw him up even though he’ll likely only have a supporting role as “the series villain’s boss” in the new series.

                1. Star Wars is dead to me. Once the deconstructionists got their money-grubby hands on it, the magic died and it’s never coming back. Same thing with Star Trek. I’m tired of the nth derivative of something that was new 50+ years ago.

                  1. Looks like the last ST movie I saw was First Contact. My rule of thumb for the first set was the even numbered ones were good, while the odds were sketchy. (III was sort of OK, but 1 and 5, yikes!)

                    For various reasons, I stopped watching TNG towards the end of the run, and of the followups, only saw Enterprise. (It coulda/shoulda/woulda been better if they used brains…)

                    I’ll skip the rest. Life is too short.

                2. Meanwhile, Warner Brothers is doing woke remakes of some of its classic films to destroy celebrate its 100th anniversary. #Headdesk

            2. The editor added the “impending doom” approach of the Death Star to Yavin-4.

              The original was the Rebels went after the Death Star elsewhere. They re-cut, and added “are they away?” And some related bits like the targeting graphic.

              Totally less dramatic tension without the immediately impending planetary doom, yes?

              That editor should have stood with the heroes to recieve a medal for saving the movie.

              And Han Shot First!

              1. Yep, some hand-animated “computer graphics” plus redubbing the Rebels watching the attack on the Death Star, plus some voiceover (“Rebel Base X minutes and closing”) over B-roll of Mr. Cushing’s profile, and they were set.

          2. The way they ‘enhanced’ the explosions of Alderaan and the Death Star makes zero sense in terms of physics.

            To be fair, Lucas got it wrong the first time, too — planets don’t just go KABOOM! like a stump with a case of dynamite stuffed under it. Assuming an explosion big enough to destroy a planet, it would look much, much slower at that scale. The effect looked like what it was — a basketball-sized model of a planet blown up with half an ounce of black powder.

            The Death Star was destroyed by an EXPLODING FUSION REACTOR big enough to power a planetoid-sized planet-killer starship. Hey, it cruises in normal space, it’s got hyperdrive, it’s a starship. A big round one. That wouldn’t look like a small charge of chemical explosives either.

            Scale makes a difference to how things look. Still doesn’t excuse screwing it up even more.
            ———————————
            “Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here — this is the War Room!”

            1. A fusion reactor couldn’t power that beam. To overcome the gravitational binding energy of an earth like planet requires ~2e32 joules. That’s 2 trillion tons of pure mass energy. Original deathstar, if made of Al and 90% empty space, would mass about 5e14 tons. Assuming a laser beam, the deathstar should have accelerated at 150000 g’s in the opposite direction from the beam. 😀

                2. Dear God I hate that guy. So pendantic about details while completely MISSING THE POINT.

                  Yes, the DS needed exhaust ports, but this was an UNSHIELDED exhaust port!!!!!

                  It was made clear in the movie, and they could have easily put shielding or better defenses, I don’t need him to go on and on and ON about why exhaust ports are necessity, just why didn’t you put a SHIELD on it?

                  1. “The port is ray shielded, so you’ll have to use Proton Torpedoes.”

                    Shielding? Covered.

                    And as later/prequel explained, the original architect built-in the flaw of that long, straight, torpedo-sized pipe.

                    Slave laborers building the tanks for the Third Reich would often pee in the wiring conduits and other places where saltwater was a Bad Idea.

                    Sometimes, all you can do is head-butt the hangman. Its never futile to do so.

                    1. Rogue One added in the detail that the architect deliberately added the flaw, then pointed the rebels in its direction.

                      I didn’t love Rogue One the way everyone else seemed to, but I did like that little detail.

                  2. They were able to ray shield it, that’s why they couldn’t the x-wing’s cannons. Full particle shielding would have made it useless as a vent, so that was out.

                    Now a simple metal grate would have done wonders….

            2. I’m sorry, these are the same people with ARCHING, BALLISTIC FIRE in the Last Jedi during a space battle. Between spacecraft. Like, in space. Where there is no gravity.

              I think I shouted “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!!” in the movie theater. Have not paid money to see one since. Ballistic space weapons, for f- sake.

                1. Agreed, the B-17s in spaaaaace -dropping- bombs was dumber, but that one only made me roll my eyes. I didn’t yell until I observed arching fire in “space artillery.” Camel, meet straw.

                  Really, we only forgive the way Lucas films spaceships because it looks cool. The X-Wing flies like an aircraft. Which is simply stupid. Not to mention Lucas didn’t know what a parsec is, the grandest bit of science illiteracy ever filmed.

                  Best space battles are Babylon 5. Straczynski or somebody on his team THOUGHT about what a high performance space fighter would have to look like. It’s more than right enough for TV, anyway.

                  1. And even then, only the humans seemed to have grasped that principle. All the supposedly “older races”, including the Minbari and Vorlons, seemed to use the “airplane” model.

                    1. Full gravity control meant they could do a lot more. And I believe we did see them doing the strafing runs that Starfuries used, they just didn’t need the thrusters.

          3. If Greedo shot first, Han winds up either dead or Jabba’s prisoner. If Greedo was incompetent enough to miss at that range, he’d have been long dead and somebody smarter would be after the bounty.
            ———————————
            “Looks like it’s headed for that small moon.”

                  1. If you shoot properly, the other slug isn’t going to complain about it afterwards.

            2. There was an amusing parody of that scene made by fans showing Greedo firing constantly and all of his shots somehow missing Han, though I think Lucasfilm got butthurt and had it taken down from Youtube. Though I think more were made by other fans.

              I’m wondering when they’ll make Leia not shoot first. 😮

              1. Now we need SW Stormtroopers versus ST Red Shirts!

                I think I just ripped the universe…

                  1. Yes, that was a thing back on Usenet, when 486 processors were in their heyday.

                    Before Storm troopers vs Red shirts, it was a semi-serious (AKA “Get a Life!”, sayeth William Shatner) discussion of a Star Destroyer vs the Enterprise. (Which one, dunno. I skipped that rabbit hole other than to break out popcorn on occasion.)

                    I suspect the earlier discussion was turning into a flame war, so Storm Trooers vs Red Shirts was a relief.

                    1. It’s still on; it’s just moved to YouTube and now they have video demonstrations…..

                    2. There are times that I regret not having enough bandwidth to watch much video. This isn’t one of them. 🙂

                      (I used to hang out on rec.music.synth despite having zero skill at the keyboards. One of the more prominent members programmed his MIDI Time Piece so that the 8 LEDs would cycle a’la Cylons.)

                    3. I still have, somewhere, a 486 near-pentium upgrader cpu.

                      I sold my original 486 motherboards and cpus to my then employer, for significant cash, to fix a dinosaur board test system.

                      Heh.

    2. Pretty much everything I like or at least don’t hate from the 70s – A New Hope, assorted Clint Eastwood and John Wayne westerns, Horror Express, My Name is Nobody, Return of Sabata (when I’m feeling generous), Apple Dumpling Gang, the early 70s Emma and Persuasion adaptations, Hulk, Wonder Woman, Galactica – has much older roots, of one kind or another. The exceptions might be consciously anti-countercultural stuff like Dirty Harry or Death Wish, and they both borrow their leading men from 1960s Sergio Leone westerns.

    1. Irony that a nontrivial part of my listening list seems to have ended up a italio disco. Which is also something I’d never thought I’d say either.

        1. I don’t believe virginity
          Is as common as it used to be
          In working days and sleeping nights
          That black is black and white is white
          That Superman and Robin Hood
          Are still alive in Hollywood
          That gasoline’s in short supply
          The rising cost of getting by
          But I believe in love
          I believe in old folks
          I believe in children
          I believe in you

          Seems apropos.
          Full version:

      1. Point. Disco usually had a melody and didn’t use the Big Four words for 85% of the lyrics. Or so it seems – sometimes the gym where I lift has the PG-13 hip-hop channel on. Ick

        1. I have, on occasion, heard a rap song that was about another topic (other folk’s Spotify playlists at work.) One was about a rocket journey with escape velocity.

          Basically, there isn’t anything wrong with the form, it’s the content that’s usually the issue.

      2. Hides Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and the Sylvester LP.

        OTOH, I still like “Disco Inferno”. Traamps rule!

  5. You held Tucker Carlson’s infant son? Oh, please tell me, is there a secret society of the sane hidden among us?

    The open living-dining-kitchen plan has one advantage for some folks: it’s great for informal entertaining, especially with a catered buffet, especially if arranged so that the spaces are well connected but still distinct (by placement of stair, bathroom, closets, etc.)

    1. I think she held Jeff Goldstein’s infant son since that’s who wrote the article and she mentioned she doesn’t think that “Jeff” remembers it.

      That being said, yes. You are posting in one meeting place of the sane (for recognizing reality levels of sanity. We don’t promise that it’s NORMAL.)

  6. Hubby and I happened upon Tucker’s speech last night browsing the tube of you. I’d heard it was good. It was.

    I actually think you are completely right and he has hit upon what we all must do. Tell the truth. No matter what.

    There is evil, which is based on lies. And there is good which is based on truth.

    A lie of any kind will facilitate evil. Even the so-called white ones. The truth will facilitate good.

    Enough people refuse to lie and the whole edifice of evil crumbles. I think we are getting to the point where enough people are seeing the lie. We just need to move forward to telling the truth.

    1. There is a speech out there by Tucker? Hmmm. Must go find and listen.

      I agree. “Tell the truth. No matter what.”

  7. “Also a lot of things that were WIDELY believed (and which stuck, because all there was WAS mass media) involved stuff like “We’re running out of everything” and “The world is going to freeze” (the remedy was, of course, socialism) and “planned economies work better; freedom is decadent” and “We’re reproducing ourselves to death” and– Oh, yeah, we were just waiting for the hammer of nuclear war to fall.”

    Word.

    Everything in The Future was going to be shortages, our cities would be glowing radioactive ruins, we would all be scuffling to refurbish old garbage into something useful, and so forth.

    I used to be convinced, as a teen, that if I didn’t get a decent stereo and the records I wanted before I was 20, that I never would because they’d all be gone. A job in the city was crazy, the place to live was The Country. Because the city is in a targeting computer in Moscow.

    I also used to be convinced that music was the most important thing in life, and without it we would all just shrivel and become dust. Or something, there really wasn’t much of an “or else” about it, music trumped all. (Spoiler, it doesn’t.)

    Well, here I am living in The Future. I’d love to be able to call 17 year old me up and tell him it was all going to be okay, because apart from the PTSD the kid did good. Go me. ~:D

    1. Gordon Lightfoot was youngish, Ian and Sylvia were still young (and/or alive), and we shall not speak of that thing called disco.

        1. I think what most people hated about disco was the fashion choices and the glitz and decadence of the subculture. The music qua dance music was pretty good (Sturgeon’s Law operates always, of course). It was much better to dance to than, say, house music 1989-1993.

          2. The dance moves were sometimes hilariously bad, though. I saw the opener for an international dance competition and some of those folk were just bad. Like “are they actually serious or is this a parody?” levels of bad.

            I mean, some of them were good, but falling to the ground and faking a seizure isn’t a dance move.

            1. Or, as the line from the “Total Eclipse of the Heart” literal video has it, “Since when does spazzing out qualify as a dance?”

                  1. Professor of Rock revealed that it actually was a song written when the songwriter was in high school, and was writing a duet for a proposed vampire musical.

                    This explained a lot.

                    So yes, it is filk.

            4. There’s more than one year of this, but here we are with 1980 and the very first contestant at 4:30 (it should auto-start at that point) is the one who falls to the floor. These are supposed to be the best in the world at the time.

              I think our standards have gotten much higher for dance.

            1. I suspect they were thinking “I’m so high on ecstasy I just want to bounce up and down mindlessly for two hours”.

      2. Then I’ll keep my appreciation for Van McCoy “The Hustle” and the girls who would occasionally get together for a line dance to it, to myself. My tastes in that era ran more toward the likes of Buck Owens, Susan Raye, and Linda Ronstadt anyway.

    2. Because the city is in a targeting computer in Moscow.

      Which is also BS, because nuclear targeting doesn’t work that way.

      The problems with most people’s ideas of how nukes are used is a loooooooooooooooong rant by itself.

    3. cities would be glowing radioactive ruins

      I have a little list where that might be an improvement. Though a WW2 blockbuster dropped on City Hall would be far better.

      (Little list, not a lot…)

  8. I’d like to think that the last time the (D)s chanted “Recreate ’68” they had no clue as to what went on with their side that year. Now I’m starting to think that a few want to try it again, but with feeling.

    Stagflation, price-controls [do NOT ask an older rancher what he thinks about Nixon], gas lines, protests and urban follies, a lot of sucky music and clothing I’d prefer to forget about, Israel coming within a mile or two of disaster (Yom Kippur War), the Arabs being Arabs, evacuating our embassies . . .

    I’m so tired of reruns.

    1. Correction: If asking an older rancher what he thinks about Nixon, and, in some cases, Carter, be sure to have popcorn ready.

  9. I do feel like the 70’s are being replayed, then as tragedy now as farce. Bad as Disco was, it was better than most of the crap we have now and there was a great deal of really good music around otherwise.

    Bliss it was to be underage in CBGB’s or Max’s Kansas City or The Peppermint Lounge watching The Ramones, Richard Hell, Iggy Pop, or Jim Carroll.

    70’s fashion … Shudder,

    1. 70’s fashion…

      …reminds me the French chef’s[1] take on British cuisine…

      “There is no such thing.”

      —
      [1] Fictional, most likely, but…

  10. As an aside here, I’d like to make something clear that I didn’t grasp until long after the fact. Decades, as we experience them are not really defined by zeros. The sixties, as we know them in our memories, really date from the Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 to the end of the US involvement in the Vietnam War in 1973 or perhaps Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Likewise, the 50’s really date from the appearance of Elvis in 1954, and the simultaneous emergence of the first baby-boomers from toddler-hood to prepubescence, until the arrival of The Beatles in the US.

  11. So, likewise, the 70s really go from Nixon’s denouement until 1984 or so when the Reagan prosperity started to really hit.

  12. There were a few things that came out of the 70’s that have been a blessing. Microprocessors, the start of some much-needed “deregulation,” and me.

    1. One of the uncomfortable little truths about the 70s is that Carter was the one who began the massive wave of deregulation, not Reagan.

      1. The Reader always wondered whether that rabbit was whispering in Carter’s ear with the voice of Milton Friedman. The deregulation push was so at odds with the rest of his administration that it didn’t make any sense, even though it was a good thing.

        1. He kept his idiot economic advisor for a long time. Then near the end Carter fired that guy and hired the one that Reagan would continue to use.

        2. Also, deregulation was an idea who’s time had come.

          The structure built by Wilson and FDR had hit it’s “can’t go on” / “and now everybody gets to starve” point. In some sense Carter was utterly irrelevant. He neither caused what happened, nor was the one to buck the trend.

          He was simply the one who happened to be at the wheel when the technocrat economy keeled over and died.

      2. Some of it actually went back to late LBJ or early Nixon, but took a decade or more of political wrangling to actually happen.

  13. This has been something I’ve been saying for years-that we’re entering into a rerun of the 1970’s. And we’re seeing the same things, over and over again.

    Movie genres being overdone (1970’s-Westerns, spectacle films; 2020’s-superhero and deconstructionist feminist movie remakes), followed by movies made for the people that made movies and not a wider audience. Terrible TV shows with the few…okay…shows being like corn seeds in poop. Music being hideously overproduced to reach weird demographics. Most other forms of entertainment being tweaked or “manipulated” for their own needs. The over-“educated” escaped from college campuses they used to hide from the Vietnam War drafts and had their heads filled with French deconstructionism and Marxist theory and they just had to share it with everyone…

    (Oh, and gay “cruising” and “party” culture becoming just mainstream enough that the straights tried to emulate it.)

    Fear, fear, fear-fear of nuclear war, that the Soviet Union was going to “win” and we might as well accept it, that we were eating the planet alive, Silent Spring (I actually got to meet two of the environmental scientists at SJSU in the mid-90’s that debunked most of the points made in Silent Spring), and cult religions. Not even some of the more honest forms of paganism but dangerous faiths with nasty habits (I still hold at the only difference between L. Ron Hubbard and Charles Manson is Mason’s failure to market and to quickly establish an Inner Church/Party for himself).

    Books that were the Cause Of The Week and utterly unreadable outside of that particular Cause (which only seemed to exist to people in Manhattan or LA).

    The only thing we can do right now-personally-is to stay sane, keep our corners of the world clean, and don’t have the turkeys get us down.

  14. A lot of us who lived through the seventies didn’t believe the party line back then. We saw pictures of the oil tankers sitting offshore, not unloading because Nixon’s Federal price controls had prevented the free market from working.
    We saw Jimmeh’s incompetence as an Executive (he had competencies, leadership was not among them). So we elected Reagan, and gave SDI (“Star Wars”) enough public that support Congress couldn’t completely defund it (though they tried).

    And I’m still fond of Progressive Rock 😉

  15. Life is what you make it.

    I quite enjoyed the seventies (As well as the fifties, sixties, etc.), & shucky darn, I can even say there are some moments in these twenties I can’t find too much fault with.

    Never held Jeff’s nor Tucker’s kid but I can say I allowed my savage teenage granddaughter, when she was only a year or so, at twenty degrees below zero, on the ice in the middle of the Chena River, to be held by Sara Palin while we discussed important current events such as ice thickness, snow conditions and various entries in the Tired Iron snow machine race. & yes, I’m quite sure Sarah doesn’t remember. -grin-

  16. Regarding the coming of the Ice age due to pollution and other causes …. I was a child. Not a child anymore.

    1. Don’t recall the context, but Carl Sagan intoning that Nuclear Winter will finish us off hit the over-the-top moment for me. Took me a few years to embrace conservatism (Cali’s attitude towards gun control was a major factor…), but there were nudges earlier.

  19. As a newly minted 60 year old I can say that “they” have been full of stuff my entire life! Their scarcity and doom mantra filled me with fear until my 20’s when I had the revelation. There was never a silent spring or global ice age or global firestorm, we didn’t run out of oil or food or ideas. Neither the Russians nor Ronald launched the big one, and regular mild recessions didn’t destroy America or turn into a global zombie apocalypse.

    So I am going to be happy and believe the future holds wonderful things for me and my family, and freedom will win; I have no patience for people who spend their days crying “flee for your lives!”

    Yes, there will be some bad times. Yes people will get hurt and persecuted by their government. Yes, it might be me someday. But this is all the more reason to be satisfied, work hard, create and have lots of fun. Oh, and keep your powder dry!

    1. I thought “Chicken Little” was a children’s tale about how silly mass hysteria. I did not expect to hear “The Sky Is Falling” solemnly intoned in my senior decades by news editors and congressmen as the Truth which one Dare Not Question.

  20. And here I thought they were trying to do a rerun of the 1930s, this time starring as the totalitarian socialist states. They may have 1970s lack of style, but they have 1930s ambitions.

    1. 1930s ambitions without 1910s and 1920s bloodthirsty ruthlessness. Although it appears they are trying to work up to that.

      1. A Southern farm is the beau ideal of Communism; it is a joint concern, in which the slave consumes more than the master, of the coarse products, and is far happier, because although the concern may fail, he is always sure of a support; he is only transferred to another master to participate in the profits of another concern; he marries when he pleases, because he knows he will have to work no more with a family than without one, and whether he live or die, that family will he taken care of; he exhibits all the pride of ownership, despises a partner in a smaller concern, “a poor man’s negro,” boasts of “our crops, horses, fields and cattle;”, and is as happy as a human being can be.

        George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South: or, The failure of free society (1854)

        You will own nothing and be happy

        The World Economic Forum (2016)

  21. At least in the Seventies Saturday Night Live was fresh, and funny, and played no favorites. They skewered liberals and conservatives alike. But when the original writers and actors left all at once, the new people they brought in had but one idea: “Reagan is evil, Reagan is evil, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare.”

    1. I saw very little of Saturday Night Live, but one of the very few episodes included the “Bad News Bees” sketch. Priceless.

  23. Phew! For a second there, I thought you were reduced to shilling for thrift shops as there is a Discount 70 store nearby which fills the bill.

      1. Whazat? (Looks it up.) Ah, seems to be a Minnesota (metro Minneapolis?) small chain. 70% off.

        2. Actually, just one store ATM, but with an online presence. I’ve heard talk of them wanting to expand to alternate venues, but they’re having trouble finding enough people to staff their current location.

          1. “Staffing shortage, what a surprise!”, said nobody this year.

            I walked into the Flyover Falls Walmart yesterday, and the checkout setup was rather(!) different than before. The previous time (2020, maybe), there were a couple-four self checkout stations and the rest regular cashiers. Now, it’s a few dozen self stations, maybe two cashiers and one (I think) roving helper.

            To a lesser extent, the Kroger affiliate is moving that way. They had 6 self checkouts, now 12, and one rover. Where there used to be a half dozen or more cashiers on shift, now it’s three. OTOH, the “we’ll shop for you” people have gone from a few to a lot. OTOH, those people don’t seem to be former cashiers. It’s busier on Saturday, but my peopleing skills prefer much smaller crowds and shorter lines.

            We’re not at the $15 minimum wage, yet, but it’s $13.50 in the flyover counties. $14.75 in Portland metro. I’m suuuuuuuuure that helps. /sarc

            1. The local QFC a/k/a Kroger here in West Seattle has 14 self-checkout stations and five cashier lanes, but even at 6:00pm on a Friday they can’t keep more than one bank of 8 stations (one rover) and one cashier lane open.

            2. Costco in Eugene has 9 self check out. Rumor is they are doubling the number of stations. There are plenty of helpers. But not two/self-check. They sign on the receipt circling the number of items checked. They also scan heavy items. Depending on how busy, there still is a lot of standard checkers, all with long lines.

              In other news about Eugene Costco. Their front counter food court has been redesigned. Where as before they added the self order and pay credit only stations, but still had the ability to go to the counter order, and pay in cash (or credit). Now the latter option is history. Don’t do it often, but now the $1.50 cash (usually 6 quarters) hotdog is history, dang it.

            3. the little 4 store chain here has self Checkout at the Menominee store. I’ve not visited the Manistique store, but I’d not be surprised if they too have them. Whitless bumped Minimum wage again, and while it used to be a good number of highschoolers working, especially summers, now it’s almost all older and fewer cashiers.
              Provng again Min Wage is ZERO. the Wisconsin stores have more young kids, but they too are fewer in number. Still the occasional bagger though.

              1. Whitless bumped Minimum wage
                …………

                Problem is the only people who can afford to work at minimum wage, no matter what it is, are those who have supplemental income. Be it older folk, working to supplement SS (don’t quite lose $1 SS/$1 earned, and $0 SS/$1 earned at age 70), or boredom, students (even college level although they likely need the money more) who still are supported by parents, or is secondary household income (no matter how much needed to make ends meet).

  24. I find myself highly annoyed by the 70’s. The “Sexual revolution” was in full swing. AIDS was still a problem for the future. And me? I was a neurodivergent (before much was known about neurodivergence…still isn’t really), weirdo from a poor family who couldn’t take advantage of that fact. 😛

    1. On a more serious note “the most trusted man in America” was only so becuase there was no one to call him on his bald-faced lies. There’s the old joke: “The secret to success is sincerity, so once you’ve learned to fake that, you’ve got it made.” That was Walter Cronkite to a T.

  25. That was so funny,
    “Smelled of old sin and insanity”
    I remember looking for a house on the front range in the early 90s, like you said, most were like they fell out of the 70s or before even,
    Big crazy house with a hot tub in the middle of the sunken living room and a kitchen you could use to open bottles of alcohol or cut lines!
    Musta been some wild times back there,

  27. And all the bedrooms were in the basement. Dan loved it, because he loves crazy things. As Dan does. (I mean it explains our marriage, right?) But to me it smelled of old sin and insanity.

    I’ll admit that I love the idea of the bedrooms being in the basement. The basement is the coolest part of the house, and the time I want to be coolest is when I’m trying to go to sleep. It seems to me that these two make a perfect pairing! I spend the mornings and afternoons in a place that’s warm and cozy and full of sunny spots to read, and then when I’m ready for bed go down to a nice cool, dark place.

  28. My 1954 Montana home is tight, well insulated, and designed with almost no dead spaces. Thick oak flooring and six inch outside walls. They don’t make ’em like that now.
    The original owner built for keeps

    1. Sib and Sib-in-Law’s house was built with steel girders. In the Midwest, in the 1950s. We can’t decide if the owner/builder was prepper before the term came into use, or a tornado-phobe. The house ain’t goin’ anywhere!

      1. A major tornado devastated the neighborhood of a high-school buddy. Their house, built like USS Constitution of much solid timbers, mostly survived. Just about everyone else was leveled in the mile-wide catastrophe.

        And also survived was one other neighbor’s place. The outer shell was peeled off, revealing a reinforced concrete inner building, designed to survive a multi-megaton bombing of the nearby Pittsburgh.

        1970s survivalists of substantial means built the thing inside an existing home, during remodeling, complete with basement bunker.

        Upon disaster, out they came like army ants to help everyone, like a do-it-yourself Morrow Project.

        Tools. Food and treated water. Skills.

        It was magnificently American.

        They eventually re-skinned the house, sold it, and moved elsewhere.

        No one had a prior clue they were anything other than slightly odd in keeping to themselves mostly. And the lengthy remodeling.

      2. Those girders can do terrible things when they twist as a result of a fire. You may know that firefighters sometimes speak of saving the foundation. I’ve heard of one where, because of girders, they didn’t even save the foundation.

Comments are closed.