also props to the summers when you would treat each week like it was its own olympic event. one week: football, the next: basketball, the next: tennis, etc...
Oh my fucking god yes. My mom always dreaded football week because, naturally, we played tackle football all day. But we were kids, and kids can shake off just about any injury if they're having fun. We used to beat the shit out of each other pretending to be the Steelers vs. the Cowboys, and man, was that fun.
Also, taking back even further: Big wheels! I got a Dukes of Hazzard big wheel for my birthday one year. That shit was mega.
On the MJ tip, when I was growing up, a bunch of the people who lived on my block were Pepsi execs. Naturally, when Pepsi sponsored MJ, I suddenly wanted to hang out at various neighbors' houses and try to pick up some MJ-related swag. They had these imitation "Thriller" jackets I would've killed for. Never got one, though.
I remember the first time I saw a home computer. I was convinced you could use it to fire missiles.
Things I learned from the Bloodhound Gang: Diamond scratch glass An egg will float in salt water Lemon juice can reveal invisible ink If you cut out a silhouette of yourself and affix it to a model train (BTW, model trains? Oh hell yeah!) that keeps going in a circle passing in front of a window, people outside the house looking into the window will think you are pacing back and forth.
"Whenever there's trouble/We're there on the double/We're the Bloodhound Gang!"
What about that intro where the word SPECIAL would spin towards the camera with the crazy tribal-sounding drums going off? I loved that shit 'cause some SERIOUS shit was about to go down! I'm talkin' some Charlie Brown or Claymation shit, hoLmes!
Yeah, that's them! I think mine depicted eagles smashing through brick walls. They were bully, on some screaming-for-vengeance shit. I lost points, though, for rocking them with the firecracker-red New England Patriots* snow suit that zipped straight up the crizzotch. Not fresh.
Hi, sween.
*I lived in Ohio at the time, but we were cheap, so I was always sporting some bargain-bin non-regionally-appropriate sporting paraphenalia: Padres pajamas, Detroit Lions play helmet, Patriots snow suit, whatever. The low point being the day when deep-winter cabin fever had pushed to an all-time high the classroom tensions between the "rich" kids that bought their lunches and the rest of us busted kids who packed their lunches. On said day, Moms sent me in there with a peanut-butter sandwich made the night before and a fucking Green Bay jersey. I spent my day getting clowned mercilessly by the "buyers" and frogged on the shoulder by the "packers" ("Thanks a lot, dill-hole!"). Except for the day they gave us polio shots, that might have been my worst school day ever.
On the day of my uncle's funeral, while my entire family was mourning and congregating, I snuck out to my uncle's 18 wheeler, climbed quietly into the cab and through to the "sleeper" where he hid all his porn.
I carried all those fucker--commando style, on my belly across the lawn so no one would see me from the window, it was dusk--to my mom's Dodge hatchback, hid them in the spare tire compartment underneath the rug (I remember FREAKING OUT that we were gonna get a flat on the way home and moms was gonna ask me to fix the tire). After mom was well asleep that night, I snuck into her purse, grabbed the keys, hotfooted it out to the apartment parking spot, unearthed the magazines and ran them back to my room and under my bed.
All that just to see some titties!
Oh, and...
Shit was very creepy, especially as the Woods was also where "Satan worshippers" hung out. I recently revisited this area of Westerville, Ohio and these Woods are no more.
There was a famous place outside of my hometown, called OXY. It was an old munitions manufacturing plant or some shit. Kids in school were always talking about the hell that was raised out there. There are satanic rituals at OXY every weekend... People die out there, dude.
I was a first rate Satanist, so I wasn't afraid of no ritual killings. "Fuck you guys, I'm riding my BMX out there now!"
"Don't do it, man, they'll get you!"
"I'm not scared! Who's coming with me?"
I managed to get a few of my more, how do you say... dimwitted, friends to join me (Jeff Fields, who later went to prison, was wearing parachute pants that day). OXY was way the fuck outta town. We rode for what felt like hours. You had to follow the railroad tracks to get there (why does everything creepy in childhood involve railroad tracks?). OXY was long abandonned, and it was all overgrown with weeds and big fucking piles of concrete. There was graffiti everywhere, most of it of the Iron Maiden variety.
I'm fairly certain all my dudes were shaking in their boots. I remember my stomach telling me, after we jumped the fence and got close to the building, that it would rather wait outside.
When we got inside, we found mostly pigeon shit. And lots and lots of feathers, which I guess I thought was pretty cool in a satanic way. We found a few dark, underground passageways that smelled more like mold than human remains. We broke a bunch of glass and yelled into the rafters to hear our echoes.
That was the day that I conquered satan!
So proud was I, that I asked my guidance counselor to drive me out there with his Pentax so I could have a "unique" graduation picture. I remember how disappointed my mom was. "Why couldn't you have taken a normal picture?"
I don't think kids that are sixteen years old today will ever know what it's like to pore over liner notes to see what other rappers your favorite rapper was cosigning or to wait for The Source every month to see how many mics an album you're anticipating got, or what the release date for it is gonna be. Or to go to the store on Tuesday (Friday if you had the mom and pop hookup) and to actually not already know exactly what the album you're buying sounds like.
What about that intro where the word SPECIAL would spin towards the camera with the crazy tribal-sounding drums going off? I loved that shit 'cause some SERIOUS shit was about to go down! I'm talkin' some Charlie Brown or Claymation shit, hoLmes!
Oh, cot-damn, yes. Was it gonna be some feel-good Fat Albert Halloween shit, or some wistful, reflective, Charlie Brown shit, or some bugged-out Riki Tiki Tavi shit? YOU JUST NEVER KNEW! You just knew it was gonna be some shit. "Aaaahhh, Mom, it's a special! There's a special on! Don't let it start, don't let it start!"
Moss man was great. He ended up acting like a big lint brush and picked up all the crap from the carpet. A friend's brother had every he-man, every star wars, and the big walker from empire strikes back. He was in high school and didn't care, but my friend still refused to let us play with them. I remember I found some antique keys in his attic, stole them, and lied, saying I found them in my house - sorry, Will. The weird thing was, one of the keys fit my room door, and it was the only way I got privacy. Except one time I couldn't unopen my room door and my grandmother tried to saw the lock off with a hacksaw, because she thought I was in some kind of danger.
--Going to the family-owned video store damn near every day, pouring over the selection of Nintendo videogames, cartoons, kids and sports movies -- hoping that one of your hot ticket items would be in, but rarely, if ever, coming up. The tag would always be gone from the little metal hook but the box would be there like a tease. To this day, I haven't seen many of Hulk Hogan's biggest moments to say nothing about the Ultimate Warriers' Wrestle Mania dominance. Probably because most of the clientel were like my best friend, effectively banned from the store after they called his dad for ringing up $40-plus in late charges.
--Buying the teen-aged clerk at the video store a turkey sub in exchange for an out-of-circulation porno flick, then hurrying back to a friend's apartment to watch it before their parents got home.
--The five-cent candy bin
--Grafitti in the slides at the park
--Actual slides at the park -- "dangerous" shit like poles and pretty-high monkey bars, seesaws: all the stuff deemed too much of an insurance risk but were all that and a bag of chips.
What else ... Mystery Flaver Now 'n Laters Bikes with coaster brakes Skateboards with "the Bird" brand "lappers", rails, tail guards, etc Bradlees That walkman transformer with the cassettes (first thing I stole, actually) "Freak-A-Zoid" or "Jam On It" at the breakin' circle Cap guns ... or hitting a whole roll of caps with a hammer Nerf basketball (used to play for tapes with my bro) Mad balls Rad, the movie Ban the D.D.T. or ... Ken Patera and Canadian "Strongman" Dino Bravo's benchpress competition Throwing snowballs at cars when toy guns didn't have the stupid orange tips Park and Rec Life, be in it those McDonalds mini-burgers
when cereal didnt cost 6 bucks a box and bread wasnt 4 bucks a bag
little people
paragoric syrup
I had a big wheel but it was a horrible memory for me. It was a Daisy Duke Big wheel ( the dukes was my favorite show ) I was so stoked and my family was pretty poor so it was a big deal. The minute I got it some awful little evil mormon kids asked to see it and they took it around the house a tore off all the stickers. Fuckers. I will never forget that. I hope they all have 7 children and weigh 300 pounds.
this thread is awesome. I loved the color strip mention.
Those toys called "Kabangers". Pardon the innuendo, but you held a plastic handle from which, yes, two hard plastic balls each hung from a string. You get the "balls" to bang together "rhythmically". If you demonstrated proper "coordination" with your "wrist action" you could get those babies to go "clack clack clack clack" etc.
Hopefully, in your elementary school (like mine) the young men took such an interest in playing with these plastic balls, and therefore creating such a distracting loud constant racket, that the principal had no choice but to ban those damned balls from the school
I still have a set. Maybe one day I'll share a photograph of my plastic balls.
hey paychecks. and prolly justin will know this. but remember when all the cool pinoys and asian dudes had like a dirt stache and either a long skinny braid or ducktail.
Oh man ... to this day I have a visible pencil lead (well, graphite) in my arm. I remember the nurse telling me that it was just a mark. Well, its been 20 years, bitch, and I can still see the mark.
In my school, kids got into breaking the metal clips off of pens and cutting eachother with them. You'd get a nice 6 inch bloody scratch down your arm. Ohhh, the things that become trendy in middle school.
How about punching out the ceiling tiles? Very few tiles were left in my middle school after my 8th grade class got through with them.
Cal: [Pointing to an action figure on a shelf] Is that the Six Million Dollar Man's boss? Andy Stitzer: That's Oscar Goldman. Cal: Why do you have that? Andy Stitzer: That's worth a lot of money. That's much more valuable than Steve Austin. Cal: Well, that may be the case. But none of this shit is sexy, okay? Andy Stitzer: I'm not trying to be sexy, man.
--
From my Montreal days I remember:
Humpty Dumpty potato chips - ketchup and dill pickle were the best
Wagon Wheels choco covered wafer cookies
My orange Six million dollar man sweatshirt (yeah!)
Ultraman - Japanese TV show on Saturday morning cartoons
The whole "lunchbox from a TV show" thing, with matching thermos
My first record - Beatles greatest hits on 2 x LP (or was it Snoopy's White Christmas)
Playing in piles of snow at the end of street, from the snow clearing trucks... some of those piles were as big as a house! hours of free fun
Going sledding even when the snow was melting, and ending up a wet and muddy mess
ABC afterschool TV specials
All those shows (electric co, zoom, 3-2-1 contact, brady bunch, partridge family, good times....)
Big_Stacks"I don't worry about hittin' power, cause I don't give 'em nuttin' to hit." 4,670 Posts
Yo,
What about:
-Underroos. -Pop guns. -Beebee guns. -Flying kites. -Climbing trees (fell out of one and sprained my neck). -School health rooms (I had a crush on my elementary school nurse). -Fights after school (before guns-related). -Monkey bars. -Sprint races in the street (whoever gets to the red car first wins). -The tooth fairy. -Gettin' up early on Christmas morning. -Long drives nowhere with the folks. -Gettin' on the swings at the park (I still do this sometimes to relax). -Go-karts. -Spring/summer county fairs. -Running or riding bikes everywhere you went. -Knocking on friends doors trying to start-up a sandlot football, basketball, or baseball game. -Running home after breakin' someone's house window playing baseball. -Collecting rocks for Earth Science class. -Playing kick the can. -Hoola-hoops. -Playing catch (baseball) with my older brother. -Beginning band class (mad noisy-related). -Taking the California Achievement Test/Iowa Tests of Basic Skills in elementary school. -School field trips. -Summer camp. -Boy's Scouts. -Recreation league sports (craaaaaaazy fun; I still have those pictures). -Picture day at elementary school (butterfly collar-related; My mom has whipped those out too many times and embarrassed my ass to girlfriends/friends/wife, etc. over the years). -Hugging the teacher on the last day of elementary school. -Having crushes on teachers at school (I still love you, Ms. Peterson). -When they gave flu shots in elementary school. -Sex education in 5th grade. -Driver's education. -Those scary videos they showed during high-school prom season. -Vision/Hearing tests in elementary school. -Paper football. -Paper airplanes. -Model airplanes, cars, etc. -Ships in a bottle. -The Von Erich family on Midsouth Wrestling.
Comments
Oh my fucking god yes. My mom always dreaded football week because, naturally, we played tackle football all day. But we were kids, and kids can shake off just about any injury if they're having fun. We used to beat the shit out of each other pretending to be the Steelers vs. the Cowboys, and man, was that fun.
Also, taking back even further: Big wheels! I got a Dukes of Hazzard big wheel for my birthday one year. That shit was mega.
On the MJ tip, when I was growing up, a bunch of the people who lived on my block were Pepsi execs. Naturally, when Pepsi sponsored MJ, I suddenly wanted to hang out at various neighbors' houses and try to pick up some MJ-related swag. They had these imitation "Thriller" jackets I would've killed for. Never got one, though.
I remember the first time I saw a home computer. I was convinced you could use it to fire missiles.
Things I learned from the Bloodhound Gang:
Diamond scratch glass
An egg will float in salt water
Lemon juice can reveal invisible ink
If you cut out a silhouette of yourself and affix it to a model train (BTW, model trains? Oh hell yeah!) that keeps going in a circle passing in front of a window, people outside the house looking into the window will think you are pacing back and forth.
"Whenever there's trouble/We're there on the double/We're the Bloodhound Gang!"
EEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...................
What about that intro where the word SPECIAL would spin towards the camera with the crazy tribal-sounding drums going off? I loved that shit 'cause some SERIOUS shit was about to go down! I'm talkin' some Charlie Brown or Claymation shit, hoLmes!
Herm
Yeah, that's them! I think mine depicted eagles smashing through brick walls. They were bully, on some screaming-for-vengeance shit. I lost points, though, for rocking them with the firecracker-red New England Patriots* snow suit that zipped straight up the crizzotch. Not fresh.
Hi, sween.
*I lived in Ohio at the time, but we were cheap, so I was always sporting some bargain-bin non-regionally-appropriate sporting paraphenalia: Padres pajamas, Detroit Lions play helmet, Patriots snow suit, whatever. The low point being the day when deep-winter cabin fever had pushed to an all-time high the classroom tensions between the "rich" kids that bought their lunches and the rest of us busted kids who packed their lunches. On said day, Moms sent me in there with a peanut-butter sandwich made the night before and a fucking Green Bay jersey. I spent my day getting clowned mercilessly by the "buyers" and frogged on the shoulder by the "packers" ("Thanks a lot, dill-hole!"). Except for the day they gave us polio shots, that might have been my worst school day ever.
-Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom followed by Disney on Sunday night.
-Howard "fucking" Cosell- everybody imitating his ass
-Slip and Slide
-Merlin was my shit.
-Budweiser sleeping bag in the paneled basement rec room on a sleep over
-Station Wagons with the fucking fold out seats in the trunk and like 15 kids in their heading to soccer practice.
-Bowl games with no corporate sponsor names attached.
-Disco sucks cause Dance Fever was lame
On the day of my uncle's funeral, while my entire family was mourning and congregating, I snuck out to my uncle's 18 wheeler, climbed quietly into the cab and through to the "sleeper" where he hid all his porn.
I carried all those fucker--commando style, on my belly across the lawn so no one would see me from the window, it was dusk--to my mom's Dodge hatchback, hid them in the spare tire compartment underneath the rug (I remember FREAKING OUT that we were gonna get a flat on the way home and moms was gonna ask me to fix the tire). After mom was well asleep that night, I snuck into her purse, grabbed the keys, hotfooted it out to the apartment parking spot, unearthed the magazines and ran them back to my room and under my bed.
All that just to see some titties!
Oh, and...
There was a famous place outside of my hometown, called OXY. It was an old munitions manufacturing plant or some shit. Kids in school were always talking about the hell that was raised out there. There are satanic rituals at OXY every weekend... People die out there, dude.
I was a first rate Satanist, so I wasn't afraid of no ritual killings. "Fuck you guys, I'm riding my BMX out there now!"
"Don't do it, man, they'll get you!"
"I'm not scared! Who's coming with me?"
I managed to get a few of my more, how do you say... dimwitted, friends to join me (Jeff Fields, who later went to prison, was wearing parachute pants that day). OXY was way the fuck outta town. We rode for what felt like hours. You had to follow the railroad tracks to get there (why does everything creepy in childhood involve railroad tracks?). OXY was long abandonned, and it was all overgrown with weeds and big fucking piles of concrete. There was graffiti everywhere, most of it of the Iron Maiden variety.
I'm fairly certain all my dudes were shaking in their boots. I remember my stomach telling me, after we jumped the fence and got close to the building, that it would rather wait outside.
When we got inside, we found mostly pigeon shit. And lots and lots of feathers, which I guess I thought was pretty cool in a satanic way. We found a few dark, underground passageways that smelled more like mold than human remains. We broke a bunch of glass and yelled into the rafters to hear our echoes.
That was the day that I conquered satan!
So proud was I, that I asked my guidance counselor to drive me out there with his Pentax so I could have a "unique" graduation picture. I remember how disappointed my mom was. "Why couldn't you have taken a normal picture?"
I FOUGHT THE UNDERWORLD, AND I WON!
Oh, cot-damn, yes. Was it gonna be some feel-good Fat Albert Halloween shit, or some wistful, reflective, Charlie Brown shit, or some bugged-out Riki Tiki Tavi shit? YOU JUST NEVER KNEW! You just knew it was gonna be some shit. "Aaaahhh, Mom, it's a special! There's a special on! Don't let it start, don't let it start!"
i had Will Clark.
Moss man was great. He ended up acting like a big lint brush and picked up all the crap from the carpet. A friend's brother had every he-man, every star wars, and the big walker from empire strikes back. He was in high school and didn't care, but my friend still refused to let us play with them. I remember I found some antique keys in his attic, stole them, and lied, saying I found them in my house - sorry, Will. The weird thing was, one of the keys fit my room door, and it was the only way I got privacy. Except one time I couldn't unopen my room door and my grandmother tried to saw the lock off with a hacksaw, because she thought I was in some kind of danger.
--Buying the teen-aged clerk at the video store a turkey sub in exchange for an out-of-circulation porno flick, then hurrying back to a friend's apartment to watch it before their parents got home.
--The five-cent candy bin
--Grafitti in the slides at the park
--Actual slides at the park -- "dangerous" shit like poles and pretty-high monkey bars, seesaws: all the stuff deemed too much of an insurance risk but were all that and a bag of chips.
--Suicide slush
these have become depressingly rare these days.
Can someone match this w/ an album cover.
Oh hell yes ...
What else ...
Mystery Flaver Now 'n Laters
Bikes with coaster brakes
Skateboards with "the Bird" brand "lappers", rails, tail guards, etc
Bradlees
That walkman transformer with the cassettes (first thing I stole, actually)
"Freak-A-Zoid" or "Jam On It" at the breakin' circle
Cap guns ... or hitting a whole roll of caps with a hammer
Nerf basketball (used to play for tapes with my bro)
Mad balls
Rad, the movie
Ban the D.D.T.
or ... Ken Patera and Canadian "Strongman" Dino Bravo's benchpress competition
Throwing snowballs at cars
when toy guns didn't have the stupid orange tips
Park and Rec
Life, be in it
those McDonalds mini-burgers
Slap Bracelets
when cereal didnt cost 6 bucks a box and bread wasnt 4 bucks a bag
little people
paragoric syrup
I had a big wheel but it was a horrible memory for me. It was a Daisy Duke Big wheel ( the dukes was my favorite show ) I was so stoked and my family was pretty poor so it was a big deal. The minute I got it some awful little evil mormon kids asked to see it and they took it around the house a tore off all the stickers. Fuckers. I will never forget that. I hope they all have 7 children and weigh 300 pounds.
this thread is awesome. I loved the color strip mention.
Anyone remember corporal punishment in school?
Hopefully, in your elementary school (like mine) the young men took such an interest in playing with these plastic balls, and therefore creating such a distracting loud constant racket, that the principal had no choice but to ban those damned balls from the school
I still have a set. Maybe one day I'll share a photograph of my plastic balls.
I had this baby ... though I wish to hell I knew where it was now!:
i never had one.
Oh man ... to this day I have a visible pencil lead (well, graphite) in my arm. I remember the nurse telling me that it was just a mark. Well, its been 20 years, bitch, and I can still see the mark.
In my school, kids got into breaking the metal clips off of pens and cutting eachother with them. You'd get a nice 6 inch bloody scratch down your arm. Ohhh, the things that become trendy in middle school.
How about punching out the ceiling tiles? Very few tiles were left in my middle school after my 8th grade class got through with them.
Cal: [Pointing to an action figure on a shelf] Is that the Six Million Dollar Man's boss?
Andy Stitzer: That's Oscar Goldman.
Cal: Why do you have that?
Andy Stitzer: That's worth a lot of money. That's much more valuable than Steve Austin.
Cal: Well, that may be the case. But none of this shit is sexy, okay?
Andy Stitzer: I'm not trying to be sexy, man.
--
From my Montreal days I remember:
Humpty Dumpty potato chips - ketchup and dill pickle were the best
Wagon Wheels choco covered wafer cookies
My orange Six million dollar man sweatshirt (yeah!)
Ultraman - Japanese TV show on Saturday morning cartoons
The whole "lunchbox from a TV show" thing, with matching thermos
My first record - Beatles greatest hits on 2 x LP (or was it Snoopy's White Christmas)
Playing in piles of snow at the end of street, from the snow clearing trucks... some of those piles were as big as a house! hours of free fun
Going sledding even when the snow was melting, and ending up a wet and muddy mess
ABC afterschool TV specials
All those shows (electric co, zoom, 3-2-1 contact, brady bunch, partridge family, good times....)
What about:
-Underroos.
-Pop guns.
-Beebee guns.
-Flying kites.
-Climbing trees (fell out of one and sprained my neck).
-School health rooms (I had a crush on my elementary school nurse).
-Fights after school (before guns-related).
-Monkey bars.
-Sprint races in the street (whoever gets to the red car first wins).
-The tooth fairy.
-Gettin' up early on Christmas morning.
-Long drives nowhere with the folks.
-Gettin' on the swings at the park (I still do this sometimes to relax).
-Go-karts.
-Spring/summer county fairs.
-Running or riding bikes everywhere you went.
-Knocking on friends doors trying to start-up a sandlot football, basketball, or baseball game.
-Running home after breakin' someone's house window playing baseball.
-Collecting rocks for Earth Science class.
-Playing kick the can.
-Hoola-hoops.
-Playing catch (baseball) with my older brother.
-Beginning band class (mad noisy-related).
-Taking the California Achievement Test/Iowa Tests of Basic Skills in elementary school.
-School field trips.
-Summer camp.
-Boy's Scouts.
-Recreation league sports (craaaaaaazy fun; I still have those pictures).
-Picture day at elementary school (butterfly collar-related; My mom has whipped those out too many times and embarrassed my ass to girlfriends/friends/wife, etc. over the years).
-Hugging the teacher on the last day of elementary school.
-Having crushes on teachers at school (I still love you, Ms. Peterson).
-When they gave flu shots in elementary school.
-Sex education in 5th grade.
-Driver's education.
-Those scary videos they showed during high-school prom season.
-Vision/Hearing tests in elementary school.
-Paper football.
-Paper airplanes.
-Model airplanes, cars, etc.
-Ships in a bottle.
-The Von Erich family on Midsouth Wrestling.
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak