Cool Thoughts , Anyone?
Let’s all take a moment to think cool thoughts- perhaps think of the guys in “The Thing” out in the icy desolate wilderness, but without the dying part…or,think of a yeti, or of Luke Skywalker riding his Tonton through the snow… is that helping? No? Hmmm…
What about thinking of things that you used to THINK were cool? We were having a discussion at work about some of these, and had fun reminiscing- and, it brought up some stuff I never would have thought of otherwise.
For example- do you remember “Zork”? It was a computer adventure game- but- uh- not the type you might be thinking of…no first-person shooters, no curvy Lara Crofts- in fact- no visuals at all! It was all text! I just remember having great difficulty with it. You’d type in what you wanted to do as the story progressed- I think you had to go into some entrance that brought you to an underground cavern, and you’d find various items, meet various creatures and challenges, all the time typing out what you wanted to do. Here’s an example of what would happen to me (I’m sure I have forgotten some of the details, but, you’ll get the idea…):
On the screen: A dwarf approaches you. I type in “say hello”. It replies He does nothing. I write “ask him his name”-it replies He does nothing. I try again “ask which way to go”. He starts to walk away. I type “Tell him to wait”. He stops. I write “Give him the sandwich” (at some point I had picked up a paper bag with a sandwich in it- pretty exciting find, huh?) He does nothing. (What- he wanted pizza?) I write “ask for help”. He stabs you with a sword. You die. AARRGGH! I cannot tell you how many times I died and achieved almost nothing. Plus, back then, it took a while to restart the whole game, so- it got tough and frustrating. I also remember being killed by topiary bushes that were shaped like animals and suddenly started to move.
I even had a similar game that a friend had given me that was based on “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” that was pretty cool, again, all text, no visuals, but, thanks to my lack of expertise, the earth would be destroyed and me with it, way too often. Nonetheless, we thought these amazing computer games were very cool.
We were also talking about the beloved eight-track tape players that many of my friends had in their cars. The eight-track cartridges were basically a tape loop , that would switch tracks to continue playing the album- it wasn’t like a cassette tape that you could turn over to play side two- the tape had one side, and always moved in the same direction, so it had “tracks”- duh- eight of them-two for each stereo channel, so, it’d flip to the next two tracks as the album unspooled- and often, the switch would occur in the middle of a song! So you’d have one of your favorite tunes playing, and suddenly there’d be a slight pause and click and the song would continue. If you played the song enough, you would memorize where the click came in, and started to think of it as a true part of the song. (By the way, I apologize for this lengthy explanation for those of you who, like me, lived through the eight-track era… and ,yes, we thought the eight-tracks were cool…)
One final memory- when we were kids (don’t you young people HATE to hear that phrase?!) and didn’t have air conditioning- the cool place to be in the house was the basement. It was literally ten or more degrees cooler than the upstairs house…and if you had an old black and white TV down there- that was the coolest way to spend a hot afternoon!
Did any of that help cool you off? Me neither. Back to thinking about movies- like “Ice Station Zebra” or “Jack Frost” (the one with the killer snowman) or “A Cold Night’s Death” (remember that? Made for TV? Robert Culp? Monkeys?… boy, I HAVE been in this heat too long already…)
20 Responses to Cool Thoughts , Anyone?
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Rich/Sven – Thinking back to the days when most places were not air conditioned, remember the shops, restaurants, and bars (okay, I was way too young to go into those), that did have AC? They would usually have a sign on the front door, usually showing a penguin saying something like, “Come In – It’s COOL inside”.
Right around 1960, my Dad bought a new Rambler station wagon (I was too young then to realize that station wagons were NOT cool) with a push-button automatic transmisssion. You pushed buttons on the dashboard to decide what gear you wanted to be in. I thought that was really cool. Of course, the car did not have AC. A car with AC was almost unheard of back then.
Also when we were just kids (down in the Florida Keys), in the summertime, we would often walk up to this little store a few blocks away and buy a popsicle or fudgecicle to help cool off. And if we were lucky enough to really be in the money, we might spring for a ten cent comic book. I know as a kid, I had 1st issues of Spiderman, Fantastic Four, The Hulk – all read several times and then traded off to my friends. Just think if I had those today!!!
Sven/Rich, Yes, growing up without A/C in our home and car just seemed normal to us..except when we walked into the local theatre-the Tivoli in Downers Grove, for example, and it was nice and cool! We had the good, old and reliable “Vornado” fan in the upstairs window.
The Tivoli was cool (and still is) and in Downers Grove they used to have a Sears downtown that most people used to cut through from the parking area to get to the downtown area. If my memory was correct, that was cool also. Larry’s Book Store too. We had a cool basement too but it was a small basement under an add-on family room and it was dominated by a big ping pong table. No sitting room. The room was small so you could actually play your shot off the wall. We had 2 types of ping pong games, standard and off-the-wall. My grandparents had an add-on air conditioning unit in their car, we thought it was really cool (in this case neat), don’t remember how cool it was. The ice cream truck guy was really popular in our neighborhood and did not seem like an odd guy. We would mostly run under sprinklers and drink water from the garden hose to stay cool.
Hey Richard, My dad had one of those cars. I thought it was cool too. He bought it used from a dealer in Chicago named Steven Mitchell who used to sponsor Shock Theater here after Marvin was no longer the host. The car didn’t even last a year but the dealer did take it back and my dad got a used Impala. I had forgotten all about that car until you mentioned it.
I well rmember spending time in my basement with a Black and White tv,watching your “Son of Svengoolie ” on saturday afternoons! but I think I missd that Culp movie you mentioned
Sven/Rich, Yes, David from Downers Grove, you are totally right! We did the same cut-thru in the Sears store and Larry’s was cool! I went to the very old and non-AC’d Lincoln School for K-6 from 1960-1967 which really could get hot on the upper floors in both early June and September! Another cool place, at least from an architectural standpoint, was the original Carnegie-DG Public Library that was unfortunately totally torn down decades ago in the name of progress??!
Svengoolie, it is honestly too hot to think. Let alone remember things I thought were cool. You’re cool, does that count?
Richard: This must be Dodge Rambler day on Sven’s blog! I remember my dad’s old Rambler from the ’60s, too! I guess this shows that a lot of Sven’s fans are from the same generation, which includes not only Dodge Ramblers, but also FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND and all the shows on ME-TV!
Sending cool thoughts your way, Sven. I also like to put mind over matter by imagining myself on the icy cold planet of Hoth.
As for reminiscing about stuff I once thought was cool,I have one word : ” AAAyyyy!! ”
Happy Days and especially The Fonz were the coolest things around when I was a kid. Now I see that Henry Winkler is doing commercials for some type of life insurance. My, how times have changed!
How’s this for cool thoughts: I’m here working on and off in Prudhoe Bay AK (I invite you to look it up on a map) which is much farther north than home in Anchorage and just a wee bit farther north than back home in Henry County. Weather is not bad now though. Forget to bring my Sven shirt for a picture, dang!
Richard/Dale: My family also had a light blue 1959 Rambler. I remember it well. We had it until dad bought a 1966 Rambler/American Motors car. I remember because I turned 16, learned to drive and could not drive a stickshift. The new car had automatic transmission. I was so happy. Thanks for bringing back some wonderful memories. Also before the 1959 Rambler, I believe my family had a Nash.
Your mention of eight track players reminded me of my Magnavox portable record player. It actually took batteries, so if you really just HAD to have your favorite music on the road (guilty as charged) you could balance it on your lap in the back seat of your parent’s car when you went on vacation (well, on long stretches of freeway, anyway). Say what you will, but most of my L.P.s (please don’t make me explain) from those days were in pretty good condition in spite of this treatment (Boy, was I careful!). I was NEVER mistaken for cool (I’ll bet you guessed that…), but that record player was a very cool thing to have if you loved music more than anything else. Thanks for prompting that memory. Stay cool AND hydrated, guys!
Growing up in a small town in Wisconsin, the coolest place to be on a hot summer day was the “root beer stand.” Can’t you just taste that frosty mug of A&W? There was nothing like it, and there never will be again. Ahhh…..memories!
I used to have a 4 track (before 8 track, needed an adapter for 8 track players) player in my 63 Ford Galaxie 500XL. No A/C, open windows and I lived in the SoCal Desert! Good Times!!!!! Seymore was my horror host on Saturday night on KHJ ch.9 in LA. I still miss him, But compared to what we have in San Francisco, You are a whole lot more fun on Saturday night!!!!!!! Thanks Sven!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi Sven. Another thing about 8 tracks is when the tape gets old and you hear 2 songs at the same time. The nasty heat you mentioned is arriving here on the east coast today. Yikes! Why don’t you have a tailor make you the same tux and red shirt out of nylon with vents for hot live shows…and maybe put a nylon vent on the top of your hat
Some of you are really coming up with some great, old memories. It’s hard to believe that I was just made fun of for not having cable and watching my videocassette collection when there’s nothing great like Svengoolie on over the air TV. And, yes, I just listened to an LP on my cutting edge stereo. Sven, you are right about the original The Thing. Watching that great movie really conveys the concept of COLD . . . except of course when they are trying to cook the Thing.
uhh, for me personally,
in a classic movie sense?
1. Robert Shaw as the fearless captain of the ” undersized boat”
facing what was to be the largest fish he had encountered in his lifetime ) …….(Jaws)
2. James Brolin , … Amityville horror
the scene where they have ” escaped” the house in that old van,
whereupon , they all realize..” oh. we left the family dog”
So, he ventures back into that scary pit from hell..
to ” save the family dog ”
I like to pretend I’m the Fonz, driving around my basement on Hoth in a rambler station wagon while listening to 8 tracks, chugging root beer, and playing text-only (I remember Bard’s Tale) role-playing games (in which my character is still the Fonz in a station wagon, and the elf in the game turns out to be James Brolin, but it’s the action Pee-Wee Herman James Brolin and when I offer him a sandwich, he’s like, “you don’t wanna get mixed up with a guy like me, I’m a loner Dottie, a rebel”, then he’s inexplicably attacked by ninjas and escapes on a motorcycle.) I do of course, own an air conditioner, but nowadays anyone with $40 can get one off craigslist or at a pawn shop, so air conditioning is boring. Man, it was way cooler back before air conditioning.
Sven/Rich:
I grew up in Pensacola Florida and around 1960 we had a horror movie host named Rigor Mortis on Channel 10. He came on Sat nite at 10:30. He was great and all us boys loved him. He would do experiments on people as they changed movie reels every 20 minutes….. I just got Svengoolie on MeTV here in Slidell, LA. I love the show! Last week with the Mummy’s Tomb you did a great job on the Mummy’s Tomb but I wish to register a complaint about the handling of the Flash Gordon episode at the end. I like for you to do SMALL interventions but you went way over-board and dominated the audio in such a way that was excessive. Please try to allow us to enjoy the original, even if it is lame. Remember, it was good for it’s era… All-in-all I love your show and will continue to plan my Sat nites around it.
Bill, I think I think I understand what you mean regarding the “Flash Gordon” redubbing. It had a lot of jokes on top of jokes; this causes (some) viewers to mentally picture Sven & his co-horts doing the voices instead of “believing” the film’s characters are delivering the funny lines. A character suddenly changing voices also contributes to that. Plus, I think it always helps when the redubbed version includes some absurd substitute plot that a lot of the humor pertains to, a la the classic ’60s TV show, “Fractured Flickers.”
However, I think I’m in the minority among Svengoolie fans when it comes to these opinions!