September 16, 2024 • 24 mins
Remember the days when the family used to gather on the living room couch, overjoyed to watch the evening sitcom on a tiny lo-fi screen the size of your computer monitor? Or how about listening to records on your parents "hi-fi" system that was as big as a loveseat? From early Super 8 video recorders to our first Walkmans and pull out car stereos, Gen Xers have seen and heard it all.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm Tony. I'm Eric. We are the sons of San Fernando.But we've been friends for over 40 years. And
grew up together in the San Fernando Valley.These are the stories of our experiences as
adventurous Gen X latchkey slackers from backin the day. And don't forget to hit the follow
or subscribe button so you don't miss an episode.
(00:25):
They're just abbreviating it, you know what?The younger generation, they abbreviate everything.
You are so old. They abbreviate everything.Everything's down to like, they use that contraction.
Can I tell you what I have beef with? Please.I have beef with acronyms, speaking of abbreviations.
I hate acronyms. Just say the fucking word,just say the term, say the thing. Acronyms
(00:47):
make me feel like I'm in a cult. Yeah. I mean,you fuck acronyms. They make you feel like
you're in the cult. A cult not the cult. Thecult's good. A cult's bad. Okay. I'm, I follow.
In definite article cult is good. In definitearticle cult is bad. A cult, D cult. Yeah.
Wow, going deep. I'm going grammar. I'm goingall full grammar. You're FG. I'm going Kelsey
Grammar. You're going Frasier. Thank you. I'mgoing full Kelsey Grammar on your ass. Yeah.
(01:12):
No. I don't even know what our topic is. I haveno idea what this subject is that we're talking
about. Well, it's actually Frasier. It's TV.Oh right. We're talking about television. But
it's not television in terms of shows. It'sactually in terms of the types of... Do you
remember the television you had when you werea child? I didn't own a television when I was
(01:33):
a child. My parents did. CRT, that's what theywere called. Cathode ray tube. Yeah, they were
chunky in the rear. They had big asses and theywere heavier than she is. They may have only
been, okay, so what size, well okay, screensize. How big was yours? How big was yours
growing up? In our living room when I was akid, we maybe had a 20, 18 inch, maybe like
(01:59):
an 18 inch TV. Right. It was small. It was small.It was not. But so the they were like all wood
framed. It had like a veneer. It had a woodveneer on the outside. It was like it was a
console. It was a piece of furniture. And thenthere were dials. Yeah, okay. They had knobs.
They had an on off knob that was a clunk offa pole to turn on. I didn't have a pole. Mine
had a turn to turn on. Okay, we had a pole.We had a boom to turn on and a push to turn
(02:23):
off. Okay, so ours was a potentiometer thatyou pull that you turned with a click. And
then once it turned on, it was now the volume.We have that later on. And then we had two
dials, right? Two dials. You had UHF and VHF.And VHF. Unbelievable. And how many channels
do we have on the upper knob? Well, you hadtwo, well, at least in Los Angeles, we had
(02:45):
two, four. What, that's not 13 because therewas stuff in between that we didn't have. There
was no three. Right. There was no three. Youknow what three was. When you plugged in your
Atari, you picked it up on channel 3. Becausethere was no signal. Because it was modulated.
Right, it was a modulated signal. But the knobstill had 13 positions. You just didn't get...
Okay, we had channel 2. Yeah, stop with thepositions, because we weren't getting anything
(03:07):
on those channels. 2, 4, 5, no 6, 7, 9, 11,and 13. That's 7 channels. We had 7 total possibilities.
Except for UHF. Except for UHF. PBS. No, UHFhad some good shit. What did we have on UHF?
We had Sesame Street. We had- Oh, that's right,yeah. We had the electric company. PBS was
(03:32):
on UHF? PBS, PBS was on UHF, yeah. All of thefree shit. But nowadays, you've got- No commercials.
Netflix, you've got fucking- Oh, nowadays isbullshit. Amazon, you've got all that shit.
You had a billion fucking things to watch. Backthen, you didn't have much- You get crippled
by the options. Now, I sit down with Zoe onthe couch, we're like, what do we wanna watch?
And it's like, it's so much anxiety. And bythe way, if you wanted to change the channel,
(03:56):
it was work. You had to get up. You had to getyour ass up. And go turn the fucking knob.
But here's the thing, you and I, we were theremote controls, because our fathers would
send us to the television to change. Well, mydad would first send me to the kitchen and
make him another whiskey and water. Did yourdad drink whiskey and water? Oh yeah. Yeah,
I made some good whiskey waters. Interesting.Would you make them for him? Oh yeah. Yeah.
(04:20):
I would never sip the booze. You didn't sipthe booze? I wasn't a booze sipper, no. Wow,
he would ask you to make his booze for him?Yeah, when I was like three. I'm a booze-sipper.
and send me in there, go get me some Jim Beamand water. No, no, he didn't drink. Your dad
did not speak like that, by the way. Never.Completely opposite of that. Would your dad
(04:40):
ever sound like that? And he didn't drink JimBeam either. What did he drink? He was early
times. Early times, wow. Early times, he wasan early times whiskey drinker. But I digress.
You do digress. But the TVs. You also crossdress, which is nice. Only on Thursdays. But
there were big pieces of furniture, our TVs.Yeah. The the speakers were built in and not
(05:02):
very good. So shit. Hey, but that's how we watchedwide And why would CoSale? Yeah, what in the
wild world? sports is going on here I I lovethose TVs because they were immovable furniture
pieces. They weighed eight billion fucking pounds.Once they were- It's like they had their own
(05:25):
gravity. They had their own ecosystems and atmospheres.Once they got moved into the house by like
17 movers, you couldn't just- No. Honey, weneed to move the TV a little bit to the- No,
they were fixtures. Honey, we can't do it. It'stoo goddamn heavy. They were installed. in
your living room and that was it. It was likeif you wanted to move Stonehenge, you couldn't
do it. We also had a console stereo that wasa piece of furniture as well. Okay, so this
(05:51):
thing. It was in our entryway. This thing was,we had the same idea. Eight feet long. Probably
eight, seven, eight feet long. Two built-inspeakers, stereo speakers. On either side.
Sliders, sliding covers of the speakers. Okay,we had those, we had those. We didn't have
sliding covers on the speakers, but on the top,it was like a wooden top. and it would lift
up on hinges. With a pneumatic little holderthing that would push it up, yeah. And then
(06:14):
you would have the turntable. Yeah. And we onlyhad. No, no, we, I think we had 45, 33 and
a third and 78. And we also had, did you alsohave the auto dropper? So you put multiple
records on. Multiple records and it would drop.When it would go to the next, it would lift
up, the arm would lift up, go back, it woulddrop the next record, and the arm would go
back. But most importantly, it did have a placefor you to plug in headphones. Oh, it did.
(06:38):
Because when I was younger. Right, ours didtoo. And I was listening when Prince put out.
1999, Purple Rain. I had a single. Should Ijust keep guessing? Sure. Well, okay, no, I'll
let you guess. Okay. What single? Little RedCorvette. Would I have to listen on headphones?
Um, uh, darling Nikki. Bingo. I had DarlingNikki on a B-side of a 45 on my parents giant
(07:07):
8,000 pound console stereo. That's cool. Yeah,that I had to listen to it on headphones because
they heard me listen to Darling Nikki. You hadit on a single? Yeah, a single, I had it on
a 45. You didn't have the full LP? No, I hada 40 fucking five of Darling Nikki. The Purple
Rain? It was on Purple Rain, why didn't youhave the whole LP? I probably didn't have the
whole LP. It's the greatest album of all time.But I was listening to Prince on this giant
piece of furniture, but everything back thenwas in it. Piece of furniture. It was, it was
(07:31):
huge. I know, we had the same thing. Everythingwas so much bigger back in those days. Yeah,
but the screen, so our TVs were huge, but thescreen on the TV was tiny. It was 18 inches,
it was ridiculous. Yeah, and then, oh my God,it just made me think of like early, early
on, these days on our phones we have. you know,we can shoot video. Yeah, it was good. And
(07:53):
we can shoot 4K. Yeah, and it's good. What didwe shoot on back there? What did our parents
shoot? The camcorder. Oh, Super 8, Super 8,Super 8. Super 8, that had no sound. With the
flat, with the light. My dad, did your dad havethe light that was the surface of the sun?
The sun gun. It, by the way. Is that what they'recalled? Yeah, Sun Gun. Well, it's what we call
it, the Sun Gun. But they raided the Sun Gunin candle power. They really, that was it.
(08:19):
How many candles? That's so medieval. My dadhad one that was eight billion candle power.
So imagine it's the Wibblesman household. ChristmasDay. Christmas Day in the two story house.
Yeah. And we're coming from upstairs, right?The kids are coming, we got our robes on. And
he's like, hold on. He's like, wait a second.And he's got the super eight and it's like.
(08:40):
And the super eight was a little reel of liketape. Oh absolutely, yeah. It was like a round.
Film. It's a reel of film. Grainy as fuck, nosound. And it did make that. Sound. But you
had to get some light on. That was pretty good.So dad had the. The. The sun gun. and he would
turn the sun gun on and the reason it was calledthe sun gun is because immediately you are
(09:02):
fucking blinded. Yeah, it was unreal. The brightnesslevel is beyond. I remember being like five
years old at the top of the stairs on Christmasmorning and dad's like, oh, it's, you know,
you see the Christmas tree is all lit up atthe bottom of the stairs. Like, here, I'm ready
to come down. Dad's, wait a second. I'm goingto shoot. And then blammo. Yeah, well. He hits
you with a. A billion lumens and you can't seeand you're falling down the stairs head over
(09:32):
heels over ass because and then and then you'reblind and then you're trying to open presents
and you're squinting you're still blind becauseyou're still blind i'm still blind to this
day and you still got the sun gun now 50 yearslater here's the thing i think that they did
damage our vision my retina is permanently scarredfrom the fucking sun guns speaking of things
that were corded yeah like had a connect toit. The remote. I will never, the remote, I
(09:55):
will never, you were the first. You know whatI'm gonna talk about. The VHS player. No, the
beta, you had the Betamax, right? No, I hada VHS. Was it VHS? I didn't have beta, I had
Betamax. It was a top loader. Yeah, you hada top loader. It was at you, and the buttons
were on the front and they were push down leverbuttons. Push down lever buttons. They weren't
push inners, they were push downers. You wouldput your tape in and Sham it down. Sham it
(10:16):
down. And sham, shamone. You would sham, youknow, by the way, Michael Jackson did not make
up the shamone. Did I have it told you this?No. Mavis Staples. Stavis Maples. But who invented
the sham? Wow. I don't know, but that's a greatproduct. I gotta get me some Sham Wows. I love
the Sham Wows. It really does what it says itdoes. Totally does, it's an amazing product.
(10:40):
I want them right now. It's got wow in it. Whydon't I have a shitload of Sham Wows? Well,
I need to take a break and go order some ofthose right now. I know, because I'm gonna
forget. All right, what were we talking about?We were on- Oh, the VHS player. Who are the
VHS? Top Loader. Top Loader and your VHS player.Like Kurt Loader, same era. Same era. Did you
(11:01):
just V? MTV, yeah. Kurt Loder, MTV News. Hewas so stoic. He kind of had like a stick up
his butt. He was no Tabitha Soren. No. He wasno Martha Quinn or Mark Goodman. Or Alan Rickman.
He was not a VJ. No, Alan. Alan? Curry. AdamCurry. He had a big mane of hair. Very good.
(11:27):
There were a lot, and Nina Blackwood. Oh, NinaBlackwood was great with the voice. She had
like that, like she smoked a thousand packsof cigarettes and then Martha Quinn was like
the really like bubbly cutie. The cutie, yeah.Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we would- Mark Goodman
had my hair. He borrowed your hair? Like- Yeah,it was my hair and also very similar to Brian
(11:48):
May's hair. That's right. Kind of very, verysimilar. Puffy lard, but puffy lard, puffy
lard, large, but that was, that was one of thethings we would tape on the VHS back in high
school was puppy lard ass. Yeah. PLA. Yeah.Hey, PLA. I'm over it now, but yeah, they did.
You're not over it. No, it still upsets me whenI hear it. You still go to therapy. Puppy lard
(12:11):
ass. Yeah. But LA. We would record, at leastI would record my early VHS tapes. I would
record MTV. Oh, of course. Because MTV was aboutout in 81. We had, from the 70s. an entire
episode of Saturnet Live from the 70s that werecorded with our VHS player. But the corded
remote was the best because they had the cordedremote on the thing. We didn't have that. It
(12:34):
was like two feet long. It wasn't long enoughto sit on the couch and you were like, how
do you, what does a remote if you have to likesit in front of the TV? Yeah, I wore it out
with purple rain, I can tell you right now.She's rewinding. You wore what out? Oh, the
remote, sorry. Oh man. Yeah, I don't know howwe had like a very early version of a VHS,
but there weren't a lot around at that time.And it seemed like that was gonna put who was
(12:55):
like, oh VHS players are gonna put movie theatersout of business, nobody's gonna go see movies
anymore because you can rent them, where areyou gonna rent them? At the video house, that
was the other thing that happened is going torent videotapes, man. Oh man, and I worked
at that, I worked at that. You worked at MusicPlus. Music Plus, we rented videotape rentals
were like the biggest fucking business. Everybody'srenting them. It was great. We would go get
(13:16):
a giant thing of red vines, you know, microwavepopcorn. Yeah, and some Milk Duds. And rent
16 candles. Yeah. On VHS. On VHS, yeah. Andthen you would leave the VHS in your car on
a hot summer day and it would melt. Un-rewound.Be kind, rewind.
(13:37):
I mean, come on. We had those signs all overthe store. Was that the M? Was that the M plus
logo? Be kind, rewind? Because people wouldbring it back to you. And then you'd have to
rewind it. We'd have to stick in the rewindor gsss No, they were slow as fuck. That's
why we said be kind rewind. Ours was so slowtoo, because who wanted to do that? He's like
we gotta return. Dude, I you could never getthose things back on time. That's why tapes
(13:59):
That's why tape you had to go you had to rollit back That's why we thought when laser discs
came out that was gonna be the shit. That wasgarbage. No, it was garbage No, who bought
fucking? I never had I didn't know anybody withlaser dicks laser dicks I don't know anyone
by the laser dick That sounds like the coolestthing ever. Laser dick. By the way, my buddy
(14:27):
Frank, he's got a laser dick. I gotta meet Frank.Yeah, but I don't think women would be interested
in the laser dick, Frank. I think he might beright. I think it might be right. It's more
men talking about the laser dick. But lateron, after the Super 8 video recorders our parents
had, I remember you had. What was the video,the camcorder you had that we used for everything?
(14:52):
First we had the one with the full sized VHStape that went in that you put on your shoulder
that weighed 6,000 pounds. It was like a professional...It looked professional, but it wasn't professional.
But it had that look, too. It looked like youwere in, you know, Groundhog Day, what's his
name? But then you graduated one that had thesmaller tapes. Yeah, the little mini-8s. High-8s.
(15:15):
We shot every... We shot... Stop motion animation.We did a bunch of stop motion animation on
a grease board, that was fun. We never stopped.Everything we did, we had to shoot and capture
on video. Like it was the biggest thing back...There was a lot of lip syncing. Back in the
80s, we did that. Everything we did, we hadto capture. Well, cause it was like, it was
(15:36):
a thing. It was like, we have this option nowto make these home movies in a way. I remember
we did like a lot of stop motion. We're like,we're on the bikes and like shooting basketball.
They were good, they were not bad. Yeah. Theywere not good. No, no, but they weren't, they
weren't bad. They weren't, they were maybe bad.But they were big and, like, everything was
big. But then the little ones were better. Andthen it wasn't until the 90s that they got
(15:58):
the actual, straight to the hard drive insideof the... Yeah, that was, but then, I don't
know. It was more fun when we had the big clunkyones. It's crazy because I just bought one
of those to shoot some video footage of Zoe'srehearsals and it's like from the two, it's
not even from the 90s, it's from like the early,it's not even the early 2000s, it's like 2009.
(16:20):
Okay, the early aughts, the late aughts of the2000s. And it's a Sony Handycam, which is the
top of the line stuff. And I just bought one,it was like 150, not even, it was 80 bucks
that I got it off of eBay. And so I took a bunchof footage with this thing to see what it looked
like, because I was trying to create a kindof grainy or weird or, it is garbage. The footage
is so bad. I mean, if you want it to look bad,that's what you've got, but it's so bad. We
(16:47):
were talking about video, but. If we go backto audio for a moment. Yes, cassette tapes.
Sony Walkman. I have two. I preempted you. Yougot it. You have Sony Walkman? No, I'm just
saying that was the shit. Sony Walkman. I neverhad a Sony, I had a fake Walkman. I had a Sanyo.
Oh yes, Sanyos, right. And then I did get aSony with the one with the orange headphone.
(17:10):
You did? Yes. Oh, I never had one of those.I had to get one of my own. Ah, I never had
one of those. I saved up my money from mowingthe lawn Trim or blowing them all in the mo.
Yeah, I did whatever I needed to do to get moneyback in the day the back alley Of the donut
shop. I don't know whatever it took blowingthe Don. Yeah, low in the mo come on the lawn
(17:31):
The walkman was the shit you had your cassetteyou threw that in and you had your personal
like, you know Do you have an auto reverse?Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Don't have to take
that thing out flip it over No, no, no autoreverse and then that got replaced by the thing
that I probably wore out the most which wasin the car we had the Sony Discman when we
(17:53):
got to CDs. Oh yeah, those were dumb becauseit would skip. They would skip all the time
and in the car you had to use the cars weren'tready for that technology. So you had to have
the cassette adapter. Remember that? Oh god,that was the worst fucking thing ever. You
would stick that cassette thing that had a wirethat came out to your disc. Your butthole.
(18:17):
If you wired it into your butthole, it was alot better reception. Right, you could get
good reception from your butthole. But if youdidn't and you went right into the Sony Discman
and you're driving, the Dick's skin, the Dick'sman, it would skip like, you'd be driving,
you would hit the slightest little bump of thefreeway and it would skip. I know, they were
so stupid. And it would go back to the beginningof the fucking song. The Discman was dumb,
(18:39):
I think I had it for a short period, I did haveone, but they were just so useless because
they skipped all the time. You know, CDs werea weird kind of interim thing. It's kind of
like laser discs, very similar. I mean, butCDs really did take over for a long time. So
people collect CDs. What kind of lunatic, bythe way, is collecting CDs? Like, I totally
(19:00):
understand collecting LP vinyl because it'sbig, you get pictures, you have inserts inside
the sleeves. It's got a particular sound toit, the analog sound. It pops, it cracks. It's
warm. It's got an automatic compression. thathappens that's very pleasing to our ears but
collecting cd what psychopath but i see peopledoing this why would you do that you know i
(19:25):
heard something the other day that actuallyreally rang true about gen x and that is that
why we're so angry about music or in generalin general but partially about music is because
we grew up and we had to buy everything on vinyland then we And then we bought everything on
CD. Yeah. And then we had bought all the MP3s.Yeah. Oh, right. We had to buy fucking MP3s.
(19:50):
We had to buy all that. Oh, that's right. Onlyto then stream it out. And now we have to stream
everything. We've had to buy everything thatwe wanted to hear like five fucking times.
That's true. Yeah. That's fucked up. And Boomershad to buy eight tracks. boomers still have
their LP collections on buying. Yeah, you knowwhat? They don't give a shit. They're still
on that. Yeah, they never, yeah. Fuck what assholesthey use. All the resources had everything
(20:12):
perfect. You know, everything was great forthem. They had the fifties. It's those guys
are assholes. Giant. I'm, I'm sick of boomers.I'm sick of them. I wish they would all die.
Like everybody over a certain age. Like if wecould just say, okay, if you're above set,
well, I mean, this would include. the RollingStones, Paul McCartney, because they're boomers.
(20:36):
Those guys are boomers. But I will say Mickdoesn't carry himself, especially Keith. Keith,
maybe Mick does. Charlie Watts did, but he'sdead already. So that's a different story.
But Keith doesn't carry himself like a boomer.Maybe in some ways. Keith's unique, though.
Keith is unique. Do you think Keith ever shotany super eight? Here's the thing. When we
(20:59):
were children. We were like, Keith was old.And it was like, oh, Keith Richards, he's not
gonna make it another week. I remember. Andthen he fell out of a tree. Speaking of the,
working back in the days we had vinyl and cassettes.Yeah. I was working at the record store. Keith
came in. He never came in. But we- Fell outof a tree. That might've happened. But... We
(21:26):
had a Rolling Stones ticket sale for the SteelWheels Tour in 1989. People lining up outside
on the street, sleeping over. And you know whythey were lining up in 1989 for the Steel Wheels
Tour? Why? They thought Keith would die. Everybodythought it was the last tour. The last tour.
In 1989. I saw it. Coliseum was there. 10throw with Aaron Bronston. It was amazing. Amazing.
(21:49):
You know what? Love that show. Guns N' Rosesand then before Guns N' Roses was the cult
of personality Which McCall it's what's theirname living color living color with who sang?
Hussain no Who
is the singer of living color not in livingcolor that was the TV it was a hairboy What
(22:15):
was his name Cory Glover? I don't know why Iknow that but that but in 1989 Yeah in the
days of cassettes. That was a great tour. Wethought the Stones, this is, oh we gotta see
the Stones it's gonna be the last thing. There'sno way in hell Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
are gonna be able to perform beyond 1989. Andnow it's 2024 and they are 81 years old. And
(22:38):
by the way, the Stones, 2050. Guarantee you,they will still be playing. No, they'll be
long dead. No, no, 2050. No, you know why? Why?There are aliens. No, they're, you know, they're
boomers. They're just going to use up all ofthe resources until there's nothing left for
the rest of us. This is, this is the thing aboutthe boomers. This is what they do. They use
(23:01):
up everything. They use up the booze, the drugs.They did it all. This is why Gen Xers are like,
we, I get, I, everything's been done. Yeah.There's nothing for me to do. I want no responsibility.
I take no responsibility for all the bullshitthat's going on. I have no interest. I'm not
going to run. I'm not going to be civicallyminded or involved. I'm going to watch you
(23:24):
all. We're all kind of really very much anarchists.I think inherently in the Gen X vibe is an
anarchist sensibility. I just wish the Boomerswould have left us some Ludes. Yeah, Ludes
would have been good.
(23:47):
Thanks for listening to the Sons of San Fernando.Don't forget to hit that subscribe or follow
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I'm Tony. I'm Eric. We are the sons of San Fernando.But we've been friends for over 40 years. And
grew up together in the San Fernando Valley.These are the stories of our experiences as
adventurous Gen X latchkey slackers from backin the day. And don't forget to hit the follow
or subscribe button so you don't miss an episode.
(00:25):
They're just abbreviating it, you know what?The younger generation, they abbreviate everything.
You are so old. They abbreviate everything.Everything's down to like, they use that contraction.
Can I tell you what I have beef with? Please.I have beef with acronyms, speaking of abbreviations.
I hate acronyms. Just say the fucking word,just say the term, say the thing. Acronyms
(00:47):
make me feel like I'm in a cult. Yeah. I mean,you fuck acronyms. They make you feel like
you're in the cult. A cult not the cult. Thecult's good. A cult's bad. Okay. I'm, I follow.
In definite article cult is good. In definitearticle cult is bad. A cult, D cult. Yeah.
Wow, going deep. I'm going grammar. I'm goingall full grammar. You're FG. I'm going Kelsey
Grammar. You're going Frasier. Thank you. I'mgoing full Kelsey Grammar on your ass. Yeah.
(01:12):
No. I don't even know what our topic is. I haveno idea what this subject is that we're talking
about. Well, it's actually Frasier. It's TV.Oh right. We're talking about television. But
it's not television in terms of shows. It'sactually in terms of the types of... Do you
remember the television you had when you werea child? I didn't own a television when I was
(01:33):
a child. My parents did. CRT, that's what theywere called. Cathode ray tube. Yeah, they were
chunky in the rear. They had big asses and theywere heavier than she is. They may have only
been, okay, so what size, well okay, screensize. How big was yours? How big was yours
growing up? In our living room when I was akid, we maybe had a 20, 18 inch, maybe like
(01:59):
an 18 inch TV. Right. It was small. It was small.It was not. But so the they were like all wood
framed. It had like a veneer. It had a woodveneer on the outside. It was like it was a
console. It was a piece of furniture. And thenthere were dials. Yeah, okay. They had knobs.
They had an on off knob that was a clunk offa pole to turn on. I didn't have a pole. Mine
had a turn to turn on. Okay, we had a pole.We had a boom to turn on and a push to turn
(02:23):
off. Okay, so ours was a potentiometer thatyou pull that you turned with a click. And
then once it turned on, it was now the volume.We have that later on. And then we had two
dials, right? Two dials. You had UHF and VHF.And VHF. Unbelievable. And how many channels
do we have on the upper knob? Well, you hadtwo, well, at least in Los Angeles, we had
(02:45):
two, four. What, that's not 13 because therewas stuff in between that we didn't have. There
was no three. Right. There was no three. Youknow what three was. When you plugged in your
Atari, you picked it up on channel 3. Becausethere was no signal. Because it was modulated.
Right, it was a modulated signal. But the knobstill had 13 positions. You just didn't get...
Okay, we had channel 2. Yeah, stop with thepositions, because we weren't getting anything
(03:07):
on those channels. 2, 4, 5, no 6, 7, 9, 11,and 13. That's 7 channels. We had 7 total possibilities.
Except for UHF. Except for UHF. PBS. No, UHFhad some good shit. What did we have on UHF?
We had Sesame Street. We had- Oh, that's right,yeah. We had the electric company. PBS was
(03:32):
on UHF? PBS, PBS was on UHF, yeah. All of thefree shit. But nowadays, you've got- No commercials.
Netflix, you've got fucking- Oh, nowadays isbullshit. Amazon, you've got all that shit.
You had a billion fucking things to watch. Backthen, you didn't have much- You get crippled
by the options. Now, I sit down with Zoe onthe couch, we're like, what do we wanna watch?
And it's like, it's so much anxiety. And bythe way, if you wanted to change the channel,
(03:56):
it was work. You had to get up. You had to getyour ass up. And go turn the fucking knob.
But here's the thing, you and I, we were theremote controls, because our fathers would
send us to the television to change. Well, mydad would first send me to the kitchen and
make him another whiskey and water. Did yourdad drink whiskey and water? Oh yeah. Yeah,
I made some good whiskey waters. Interesting.Would you make them for him? Oh yeah. Yeah.
(04:20):
I would never sip the booze. You didn't sipthe booze? I wasn't a booze sipper, no. Wow,
he would ask you to make his booze for him?Yeah, when I was like three. I'm a booze-sipper.
and send me in there, go get me some Jim Beamand water. No, no, he didn't drink. Your dad
did not speak like that, by the way. Never.Completely opposite of that. Would your dad
(04:40):
ever sound like that? And he didn't drink JimBeam either. What did he drink? He was early
times. Early times, wow. Early times, he wasan early times whiskey drinker. But I digress.
You do digress. But the TVs. You also crossdress, which is nice. Only on Thursdays. But
there were big pieces of furniture, our TVs.Yeah. The the speakers were built in and not
(05:02):
very good. So shit. Hey, but that's how we watchedwide And why would CoSale? Yeah, what in the
wild world? sports is going on here I I lovethose TVs because they were immovable furniture
pieces. They weighed eight billion fucking pounds.Once they were- It's like they had their own
(05:25):
gravity. They had their own ecosystems and atmospheres.Once they got moved into the house by like
17 movers, you couldn't just- No. Honey, weneed to move the TV a little bit to the- No,
they were fixtures. Honey, we can't do it. It'stoo goddamn heavy. They were installed. in
your living room and that was it. It was likeif you wanted to move Stonehenge, you couldn't
do it. We also had a console stereo that wasa piece of furniture as well. Okay, so this
(05:51):
thing. It was in our entryway. This thing was,we had the same idea. Eight feet long. Probably
eight, seven, eight feet long. Two built-inspeakers, stereo speakers. On either side.
Sliders, sliding covers of the speakers. Okay,we had those, we had those. We didn't have
sliding covers on the speakers, but on the top,it was like a wooden top. and it would lift
up on hinges. With a pneumatic little holderthing that would push it up, yeah. And then
(06:14):
you would have the turntable. Yeah. And we onlyhad. No, no, we, I think we had 45, 33 and
a third and 78. And we also had, did you alsohave the auto dropper? So you put multiple
records on. Multiple records and it would drop.When it would go to the next, it would lift
up, the arm would lift up, go back, it woulddrop the next record, and the arm would go
back. But most importantly, it did have a placefor you to plug in headphones. Oh, it did.
(06:38):
Because when I was younger. Right, ours didtoo. And I was listening when Prince put out.
1999, Purple Rain. I had a single. Should Ijust keep guessing? Sure. Well, okay, no, I'll
let you guess. Okay. What single? Little RedCorvette. Would I have to listen on headphones?
Um, uh, darling Nikki. Bingo. I had DarlingNikki on a B-side of a 45 on my parents giant
(07:07):
8,000 pound console stereo. That's cool. Yeah,that I had to listen to it on headphones because
they heard me listen to Darling Nikki. You hadit on a single? Yeah, a single, I had it on
a 45. You didn't have the full LP? No, I hada 40 fucking five of Darling Nikki. The Purple
Rain? It was on Purple Rain, why didn't youhave the whole LP? I probably didn't have the
whole LP. It's the greatest album of all time.But I was listening to Prince on this giant
piece of furniture, but everything back thenwas in it. Piece of furniture. It was, it was
(07:31):
huge. I know, we had the same thing. Everythingwas so much bigger back in those days. Yeah,
but the screen, so our TVs were huge, but thescreen on the TV was tiny. It was 18 inches,
it was ridiculous. Yeah, and then, oh my God,it just made me think of like early, early
on, these days on our phones we have. you know,we can shoot video. Yeah, it was good. And
(07:53):
we can shoot 4K. Yeah, and it's good. What didwe shoot on back there? What did our parents
shoot? The camcorder. Oh, Super 8, Super 8,Super 8. Super 8, that had no sound. With the
flat, with the light. My dad, did your dad havethe light that was the surface of the sun?
The sun gun. It, by the way. Is that what they'recalled? Yeah, Sun Gun. Well, it's what we call
it, the Sun Gun. But they raided the Sun Gunin candle power. They really, that was it.
(08:19):
How many candles? That's so medieval. My dadhad one that was eight billion candle power.
So imagine it's the Wibblesman household. ChristmasDay. Christmas Day in the two story house.
Yeah. And we're coming from upstairs, right?The kids are coming, we got our robes on. And
he's like, hold on. He's like, wait a second.And he's got the super eight and it's like.
(08:40):
And the super eight was a little reel of liketape. Oh absolutely, yeah. It was like a round.
Film. It's a reel of film. Grainy as fuck, nosound. And it did make that. Sound. But you
had to get some light on. That was pretty good.So dad had the. The. The sun gun. and he would
turn the sun gun on and the reason it was calledthe sun gun is because immediately you are
(09:02):
fucking blinded. Yeah, it was unreal. The brightnesslevel is beyond. I remember being like five
years old at the top of the stairs on Christmasmorning and dad's like, oh, it's, you know,
you see the Christmas tree is all lit up atthe bottom of the stairs. Like, here, I'm ready
to come down. Dad's, wait a second. I'm goingto shoot. And then blammo. Yeah, well. He hits
you with a. A billion lumens and you can't seeand you're falling down the stairs head over
(09:32):
heels over ass because and then and then you'reblind and then you're trying to open presents
and you're squinting you're still blind becauseyou're still blind i'm still blind to this
day and you still got the sun gun now 50 yearslater here's the thing i think that they did
damage our vision my retina is permanently scarredfrom the fucking sun guns speaking of things
that were corded yeah like had a connect toit. The remote. I will never, the remote, I
(09:55):
will never, you were the first. You know whatI'm gonna talk about. The VHS player. No, the
beta, you had the Betamax, right? No, I hada VHS. Was it VHS? I didn't have beta, I had
Betamax. It was a top loader. Yeah, you hada top loader. It was at you, and the buttons
were on the front and they were push down leverbuttons. Push down lever buttons. They weren't
push inners, they were push downers. You wouldput your tape in and Sham it down. Sham it
(10:16):
down. And sham, shamone. You would sham, youknow, by the way, Michael Jackson did not make
up the shamone. Did I have it told you this?No. Mavis Staples. Stavis Maples. But who invented
the sham? Wow. I don't know, but that's a greatproduct. I gotta get me some Sham Wows. I love
the Sham Wows. It really does what it says itdoes. Totally does, it's an amazing product.
(10:40):
I want them right now. It's got wow in it. Whydon't I have a shitload of Sham Wows? Well,
I need to take a break and go order some ofthose right now. I know, because I'm gonna
forget. All right, what were we talking about?We were on- Oh, the VHS player. Who are the
VHS? Top Loader. Top Loader and your VHS player.Like Kurt Loader, same era. Same era. Did you
(11:01):
just V? MTV, yeah. Kurt Loder, MTV News. Hewas so stoic. He kind of had like a stick up
his butt. He was no Tabitha Soren. No. He wasno Martha Quinn or Mark Goodman. Or Alan Rickman.
He was not a VJ. No, Alan. Alan? Curry. AdamCurry. He had a big mane of hair. Very good.
(11:27):
There were a lot, and Nina Blackwood. Oh, NinaBlackwood was great with the voice. She had
like that, like she smoked a thousand packsof cigarettes and then Martha Quinn was like
the really like bubbly cutie. The cutie, yeah.Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we would- Mark Goodman
had my hair. He borrowed your hair? Like- Yeah,it was my hair and also very similar to Brian
(11:48):
May's hair. That's right. Kind of very, verysimilar. Puffy lard, but puffy lard, puffy
lard, large, but that was, that was one of thethings we would tape on the VHS back in high
school was puppy lard ass. Yeah. PLA. Yeah.Hey, PLA. I'm over it now, but yeah, they did.
You're not over it. No, it still upsets me whenI hear it. You still go to therapy. Puppy lard
(12:11):
ass. Yeah. But LA. We would record, at leastI would record my early VHS tapes. I would
record MTV. Oh, of course. Because MTV was aboutout in 81. We had, from the 70s. an entire
episode of Saturnet Live from the 70s that werecorded with our VHS player. But the corded
remote was the best because they had the cordedremote on the thing. We didn't have that. It
(12:34):
was like two feet long. It wasn't long enoughto sit on the couch and you were like, how
do you, what does a remote if you have to likesit in front of the TV? Yeah, I wore it out
with purple rain, I can tell you right now.She's rewinding. You wore what out? Oh, the
remote, sorry. Oh man. Yeah, I don't know howwe had like a very early version of a VHS,
but there weren't a lot around at that time.And it seemed like that was gonna put who was
(12:55):
like, oh VHS players are gonna put movie theatersout of business, nobody's gonna go see movies
anymore because you can rent them, where areyou gonna rent them? At the video house, that
was the other thing that happened is going torent videotapes, man. Oh man, and I worked
at that, I worked at that. You worked at MusicPlus. Music Plus, we rented videotape rentals
were like the biggest fucking business. Everybody'srenting them. It was great. We would go get
(13:16):
a giant thing of red vines, you know, microwavepopcorn. Yeah, and some Milk Duds. And rent
16 candles. Yeah. On VHS. On VHS, yeah. Andthen you would leave the VHS in your car on
a hot summer day and it would melt. Un-rewound.Be kind, rewind.
(13:37):
I mean, come on. We had those signs all overthe store. Was that the M? Was that the M plus
logo? Be kind, rewind? Because people wouldbring it back to you. And then you'd have to
rewind it. We'd have to stick in the rewindor gsss No, they were slow as fuck. That's
why we said be kind rewind. Ours was so slowtoo, because who wanted to do that? He's like
we gotta return. Dude, I you could never getthose things back on time. That's why tapes
(13:59):
That's why tape you had to go you had to rollit back That's why we thought when laser discs
came out that was gonna be the shit. That wasgarbage. No, it was garbage No, who bought
fucking? I never had I didn't know anybody withlaser dicks laser dicks I don't know anyone
by the laser dick That sounds like the coolestthing ever. Laser dick. By the way, my buddy
(14:27):
Frank, he's got a laser dick. I gotta meet Frank.Yeah, but I don't think women would be interested
in the laser dick, Frank. I think he might beright. I think it might be right. It's more
men talking about the laser dick. But lateron, after the Super 8 video recorders our parents
had, I remember you had. What was the video,the camcorder you had that we used for everything?
(14:52):
First we had the one with the full sized VHStape that went in that you put on your shoulder
that weighed 6,000 pounds. It was like a professional...It looked professional, but it wasn't professional.
But it had that look, too. It looked like youwere in, you know, Groundhog Day, what's his
name? But then you graduated one that had thesmaller tapes. Yeah, the little mini-8s. High-8s.
(15:15):
We shot every... We shot... Stop motion animation.We did a bunch of stop motion animation on
a grease board, that was fun. We never stopped.Everything we did, we had to shoot and capture
on video. Like it was the biggest thing back...There was a lot of lip syncing. Back in the
80s, we did that. Everything we did, we hadto capture. Well, cause it was like, it was
(15:36):
a thing. It was like, we have this option nowto make these home movies in a way. I remember
we did like a lot of stop motion. We're like,we're on the bikes and like shooting basketball.
They were good, they were not bad. Yeah. Theywere not good. No, no, but they weren't, they
weren't bad. They weren't, they were maybe bad.But they were big and, like, everything was
big. But then the little ones were better. Andthen it wasn't until the 90s that they got
(15:58):
the actual, straight to the hard drive insideof the... Yeah, that was, but then, I don't
know. It was more fun when we had the big clunkyones. It's crazy because I just bought one
of those to shoot some video footage of Zoe'srehearsals and it's like from the two, it's
not even from the 90s, it's from like the early,it's not even the early 2000s, it's like 2009.
(16:20):
Okay, the early aughts, the late aughts of the2000s. And it's a Sony Handycam, which is the
top of the line stuff. And I just bought one,it was like 150, not even, it was 80 bucks
that I got it off of eBay. And so I took a bunchof footage with this thing to see what it looked
like, because I was trying to create a kindof grainy or weird or, it is garbage. The footage
is so bad. I mean, if you want it to look bad,that's what you've got, but it's so bad. We
(16:47):
were talking about video, but. If we go backto audio for a moment. Yes, cassette tapes.
Sony Walkman. I have two. I preempted you. Yougot it. You have Sony Walkman? No, I'm just
saying that was the shit. Sony Walkman. I neverhad a Sony, I had a fake Walkman. I had a Sanyo.
Oh yes, Sanyos, right. And then I did get aSony with the one with the orange headphone.
(17:10):
You did? Yes. Oh, I never had one of those.I had to get one of my own. Ah, I never had
one of those. I saved up my money from mowingthe lawn Trim or blowing them all in the mo.
Yeah, I did whatever I needed to do to get moneyback in the day the back alley Of the donut
shop. I don't know whatever it took blowingthe Don. Yeah, low in the mo come on the lawn
(17:31):
The walkman was the shit you had your cassetteyou threw that in and you had your personal
like, you know Do you have an auto reverse?Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Don't have to take
that thing out flip it over No, no, no autoreverse and then that got replaced by the thing
that I probably wore out the most which wasin the car we had the Sony Discman when we
(17:53):
got to CDs. Oh yeah, those were dumb becauseit would skip. They would skip all the time
and in the car you had to use the cars weren'tready for that technology. So you had to have
the cassette adapter. Remember that? Oh god,that was the worst fucking thing ever. You
would stick that cassette thing that had a wirethat came out to your disc. Your butthole.
(18:17):
If you wired it into your butthole, it was alot better reception. Right, you could get
good reception from your butthole. But if youdidn't and you went right into the Sony Discman
and you're driving, the Dick's skin, the Dick'sman, it would skip like, you'd be driving,
you would hit the slightest little bump of thefreeway and it would skip. I know, they were
so stupid. And it would go back to the beginningof the fucking song. The Discman was dumb,
(18:39):
I think I had it for a short period, I did haveone, but they were just so useless because
they skipped all the time. You know, CDs werea weird kind of interim thing. It's kind of
like laser discs, very similar. I mean, butCDs really did take over for a long time. So
people collect CDs. What kind of lunatic, bythe way, is collecting CDs? Like, I totally
(19:00):
understand collecting LP vinyl because it'sbig, you get pictures, you have inserts inside
the sleeves. It's got a particular sound toit, the analog sound. It pops, it cracks. It's
warm. It's got an automatic compression. thathappens that's very pleasing to our ears but
collecting cd what psychopath but i see peopledoing this why would you do that you know i
(19:25):
heard something the other day that actuallyreally rang true about gen x and that is that
why we're so angry about music or in generalin general but partially about music is because
we grew up and we had to buy everything on vinyland then we And then we bought everything on
CD. Yeah. And then we had bought all the MP3s.Yeah. Oh, right. We had to buy fucking MP3s.
(19:50):
We had to buy all that. Oh, that's right. Onlyto then stream it out. And now we have to stream
everything. We've had to buy everything thatwe wanted to hear like five fucking times.
That's true. Yeah. That's fucked up. And Boomershad to buy eight tracks. boomers still have
their LP collections on buying. Yeah, you knowwhat? They don't give a shit. They're still
on that. Yeah, they never, yeah. Fuck what assholesthey use. All the resources had everything
(20:12):
perfect. You know, everything was great forthem. They had the fifties. It's those guys
are assholes. Giant. I'm, I'm sick of boomers.I'm sick of them. I wish they would all die.
Like everybody over a certain age. Like if wecould just say, okay, if you're above set,
well, I mean, this would include. the RollingStones, Paul McCartney, because they're boomers.
(20:36):
Those guys are boomers. But I will say Mickdoesn't carry himself, especially Keith. Keith,
maybe Mick does. Charlie Watts did, but he'sdead already. So that's a different story.
But Keith doesn't carry himself like a boomer.Maybe in some ways. Keith's unique, though.
Keith is unique. Do you think Keith ever shotany super eight? Here's the thing. When we
(20:59):
were children. We were like, Keith was old.And it was like, oh, Keith Richards, he's not
gonna make it another week. I remember. Andthen he fell out of a tree. Speaking of the,
working back in the days we had vinyl and cassettes.Yeah. I was working at the record store. Keith
came in. He never came in. But we- Fell outof a tree. That might've happened. But... We
(21:26):
had a Rolling Stones ticket sale for the SteelWheels Tour in 1989. People lining up outside
on the street, sleeping over. And you know whythey were lining up in 1989 for the Steel Wheels
Tour? Why? They thought Keith would die. Everybodythought it was the last tour. The last tour.
In 1989. I saw it. Coliseum was there. 10throw with Aaron Bronston. It was amazing. Amazing.
(21:49):
You know what? Love that show. Guns N' Rosesand then before Guns N' Roses was the cult
of personality Which McCall it's what's theirname living color living color with who sang?
Hussain no Who
is the singer of living color not in livingcolor that was the TV it was a hairboy What
(22:15):
was his name Cory Glover? I don't know why Iknow that but that but in 1989 Yeah in the
days of cassettes. That was a great tour. Wethought the Stones, this is, oh we gotta see
the Stones it's gonna be the last thing. There'sno way in hell Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
are gonna be able to perform beyond 1989. Andnow it's 2024 and they are 81 years old. And
(22:38):
by the way, the Stones, 2050. Guarantee you,they will still be playing. No, they'll be
long dead. No, no, 2050. No, you know why? Why?There are aliens. No, they're, you know, they're
boomers. They're just going to use up all ofthe resources until there's nothing left for
the rest of us. This is, this is the thing aboutthe boomers. This is what they do. They use
(23:01):
up everything. They use up the booze, the drugs.They did it all. This is why Gen Xers are like,
we, I get, I, everything's been done. Yeah.There's nothing for me to do. I want no responsibility.
I take no responsibility for all the bullshitthat's going on. I have no interest. I'm not
going to run. I'm not going to be civicallyminded or involved. I'm going to watch you
(23:24):
all. We're all kind of really very much anarchists.I think inherently in the Gen X vibe is an
anarchist sensibility. I just wish the Boomerswould have left us some Ludes. Yeah, Ludes
would have been good.
(23:47):
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