THIS WEEK I’m taking the ‘Retro’ straight back 25 years ago to the Summer of 1984 – right around my 17TH birthday. I had just finished my Junior year at Langley High School in McLean Virginia.
Here’s a happy me posing in my bedroom next to my brand new AM-FM stereo and cassette player / recorder and record player.
Here’s me playing on my very first computer – a Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer 2. My monitor – Channel 3 of our living room TV.
Here’s me somewhere on a family vacation, and I’m looking out from some type of a tower up above the surrounding land. This could be an amusement park (such as Kings Dominion or Hershey Park).
… And back in the Summer of 1984 this was one of the hottest game shows on daytime television. It’s still a cult classic to this day.
I’ve owned 4 cars over the past 25 years of driving. My very first car was a beige 1980 Chevy Citation. I bought it in 1984 with my paper route money. I was supposed to have it for at least several years, but as it turns out I only had it for a single year. I had to sell it fast just before I got shipped off to the U.K. to move to my first duty station within the USAF.
I returned back home stateside in November 1987, but it wasn’t until a year and two months later that I bought my second car – and my first brand new car. It was a red 1989 Geo Spectrum. To this day it’s the longest-running car that I’ve ever owned. I put 96,745 miles on that car over the course of eight years. That was eight turbulent years in my life in which I lived in seven different homes in less than three years due to the effects of Hurricane Andrew.
My 3RD car overall was a dark green 1997 Saturn SL1. That was the first of my three Saturns that I’ve owned over the past dozen years. I replaced that first Saturn with a gold 2001 Saturn SC2, and that Saturn was subsequently replaced by my current silver 2003 Saturn Ion Quad Coupe 3. I’ve owned my current Saturn a few months shy of the combined time that I owned my first two Saturns. I thought about buying a new car last year (a Honda), but I ultimately decided to enjoy the fact that my current car is totally paid off. It’s the first time that I’ve owned a car long enough to actually pay it off since that red 1989 Geo Spectrum was paid off in full during the early-1990s.
I can see myself still driving my current car for at least a couple more years. I’m in no rush to replace it with something new (and the new car payments that would go along with that). I’m content with what I have.
And so that’s a little history of all of my cars through the years.
The theme is “Cars”, and so this weekend for your ‘Saturday Night Retro’ review I present to you this 1979 / 1980 pop smash from Gary Numan. The now 51-year-old musician is still very much active. He’s still recording new music and touring all around the world. It’s hard to believe that when this song was an International pop smash the kid was just 21-years-old. Check it out, and feel free to get up and dance like a robot can’t dance no more !
If you were to ask me who are my favourite comedians I could probably give you a list that stretches for as far as the eye can see because comedy is my thing. I love to laugh. A smile turns in to a giggle that turns in to a chuckle that turns in to a laugh. If the laugh is hard enough then it morphs in to a full-blown crack-up. Some crack-ups are mild while others are severe. 😆
If you were to ask me who is my favourite comedian in the entire history of comedy as I know it (even from before I was born) then there is only one true answer my friends – Jack Benny. He’s my all-time favourite comedian from vaudeville, radio, and television. I’ve listened to hundreds of his original radio shows from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, as well as his television shows from the 1950s into the 1960s. He’s my favourite entertainer in the entire history of entertainment. Nobody will ever come close … EVER !
Jack Benny (1894-1974)
And so this week I’m combining ‘Saturday Morning Shenanigans’ with ‘Saturday Night Retro’. The following 7-minute cartoon recently celebrated its 50TH anniversary. It was released on April 04TH 1959. My little brother actually discovered it for me way back during the early-1980s when he saw it on TV, and he recognized it as something that was nearly identical to what I was listening to on the radio and on tape at the time.
This – my friends – is ‘The Mouse That Jack Built‘ – the animated version of ‘The Jack Benny Program’. I present it to you for your ‘Saturday Morning Shenanigans’ and ‘Saturday Night Retro’ review, and for my ultimate entertainment enjoyment forever and ever.
In 1979 I was an 11-year-old that became a 12-year-old in June. I graduated from Magnolia Elementary School in Lanham Maryland (right in my own neighbourhood):
Magnolia Elementary School, Lanham Maryland
That was my school for Kindergarten from 1972 to 1973, and then again for 3RD, 4TH, 5TH, and 6TH grades from 1975 to 1979. The street that I lived on (Red Wing Lane) was located directly in front of the school by a couple hundred yards, but that was not the proper way to walk to and from school because you had to climb the fence and walk in other people’s yards to do so. The proper way to walk to and from school was up / down the hill and over to the left-side main entrance.
Incidentally the more things change the more things stay the same. That school looks exactly the way it used to look 30 to 35 years ago – right up to the facade of the building, the spray paint residue on the left-hand side, the breezeway out front, and the lightposts. A lot has changed since the mid-1970s. The outside of that school is not one of those changes.
If you walk through the front entrance, take an immediate right at the first hallway, and take that hallway down all the way to the very end you should come across a big painted map of the U.S.A. directly on the surface of the wall (if it’s still there). My class painted that as a special project way back then. I specifically painted Hawaii. It was a masterpiece !
It’s amazing the things that I remember from back in the day.
And now for your ultimate ‘Saturday Night Retro’ review I present to you this # 1 gold pop smash that everyone was singing and dancing to in their living rooms and in their cars just before 1979 morphed into 1980. This my friends is English musician Robin Scott – better known at the time as simply ‘M’. Here’s the official music video for “Pop Muzik” – one of the first videos ever made for television – more than two years before MTV even went on-the-air. This video was sleek, stylish, solid, and state-of-the-art for its time. Check it out:
Until next Saturday night my friends – keep on makin’ history !
CountUp 