August 26, 2003

"I LOVE THE 70S" DELENDO EST

or THAT'S MR. MOODRING TO YOU, ROCCA!
or THAT PARTICULARLY BAD 70S SHOW

Just a frivolous mini-rant: nostalgia shows are to me what grains of rice are to a vampire- I have to stop and look at every one if I'm flipping channels. VH1's I LOVE THE 80S I particularly liked since that's the decade I went from adolescent to young adult and though I was listening to the music of the 30s/40s I was enough of a TV junkie that I loved the references.

However, I LOVE THE 70S is a bastard brother born of a particularly unclean Kalmuk serving woman and it must be driven into the desert.

Ian Black, Mo Rocca, & Hal Sparks- the hell? Do these guys even remember the 70s? Did any of them have an accomplishment in the 70s bigger than not making poopie on the playground? NO! Yet they feel the right to be smug and sarcastic and derisive about it.

Ian- your best gig to date has been Johnny BlueJeans; Mo- you're a third rate host on low rated cable shows; Hal- you make your living having naked guys climb on top of you and you're not even gay. None of you need to be throwing stones at Shields and Yarnell.

In fairness, the appearances of two of the original ZOOM kids and Robert Shields (of "and Yarnell" fame) was inspired, but the only other 70s tv icons seem to be rancid media whores like Fred Rerun Berry (Rerun is his legal name, incidentally; he recently sued his employer at a $1,000 per week circus job for $14 million in professional damage for using his What's Happening? likeness, incidentally), Leif Garrett, and Eric Estrada all still pathetically trying to struggle back up Olympos and all of whom would do an Aryan Nations Infomercial for $59 and screentime. Where are the better class of has beens? "My personal friend and e-mail correspondent" Alison "Nellie Olsen" Arngrim, for example, or Gloria Stuart who can recall what it was like being old in the 70s, some member of Kansas, anything...

And how the hell can you devote an hour to 1976 and ONE MINUTE to the Bicentennial? Did your producers just never happen to see the Bi-C stars that were displayed everywhere, the Bicentennial Minutes programs every night, the toy muskets and tricorns and Paul Revere action figures for sale at K-Mart, etc? It was the most gaudily and charmingly patriotic year in recent history.

Clackers as a 1977 fad? Please. My sister's clackers from the 1960s were still hanging in her bedroom. Where is the Lemon Twist fad, the Best of the West action figures I still miss (mine had a Holy War with my sister's Barbies that culminated with the tarring and feathering of original vintage Ken, the shaving of Barbie, and the arrest of original vintage Midge for convocating with Satan in the form of a Frito Bandito doll- she was purified at the stake set up in an abandoned calf pen, but my sister Kathi seemed to have no appreciation for my redemption of her soul)?

Amazing how much the smell of fire and burning plastic reminds me of the 70s- I did have at least 2 leisure suits btw (one lime green, the other rust orange).

Where were the Planet of the Apes Colorforms sets and View Master reels that weren't really bad 3D CGI?

But mostly it's the "what I think the 70s were probably like" snorts by people who didn't know they had thumbs until Reagan was in the White House. Oy ve.

Links later.