If the Sears Wishbook isn’t enough entertainment for you on this long, sunny Friday afternoon, how about this: the immortal William Shatner performing Harry Chapin’s “Taxi” in the same melodramatic, spoken-word style that has made his rendition of “Rocket Man” such a classic.
[Ed. note: I moved the video player below the fold for the convenience of dial-uppers, and also just to keep the place tidy…]
Courtesy of Boing Boing, I’ve just stumbled onto an absolutely amazing time-capsule: somebody with lots of time on their hands has scanned what looks to be the entire 1983 Sears Wishbook for our Friday viewing pleasure.
I used to love the Sears Wishbook when I was a kid, as well as a similar catalog published by a local Utah retailer called LaBelle’s. (I think LaBelle’s was local — I don’t recall ever hearing about it being in other states — but I’m not sure. I may not even be spelling the name correctly. The company carried appliances, electronics, impractical gift items, and fancies for the home; it folded sometime in the late ’80s, as I recall.) Reviewing these doorstop-sized paeans to materialism was practically an autumn ritual at my home; I can remember sitting by the fireplace with my mom around Thanksgiving time, paging through the Wishbook and the LaBelle’s catalog and circling all the must-have Christmas items with a red Magic Marker. Naturally, I was most interested in the toy pages, especially when they featured some new Star Wars figures, but looking at this online archived version today, I find myself gravitating toward the items that no one really thought to hold onto or collect, the everyday goods that remind me of what it was really like to live in 1983. Seen through my usual haze of nostalgia, twenty years ago doesn’t seem that far away to me, but so much of this stuff looks so archaic when you really look at it, especially the electronics with all their tacky, faux-woodgrain cabinets… wow. My late grandmother’s antique ’30s-vintage radio (which now resides in my living room) actually looks more timeless than that stuff.
Here are some highlights:
This is turning into a regular feature here on Simple Tricks, isn’t it? I’m thinking I may have to start a sub-category for it. Anyhow, here’s today’s egregious turn of phrase, fresh out the warm, steaming interior of some copy writer’s PC:
Our consultants drive thought leadership in the security industry…
“Thought leadership?” What the heck is that? Sounds like it involves electrodes and clamps to hold your eyeballs open so you can’t look away from the product infomercials. Either that or it’s something Tom Cruise will be praising as the solution to everyone’s problems the next time he’s on Oprah…
Oh, my… here’s a interesting development: it seems that Scalzi came across the post I wrote about him and has linked back to me in a post of his own, using my full name and everything.
Here’s another gem of a sentence from something I’ve been proofreading at work today:
The company’s growth initiatives rely on a “layer-and-leverage” strategy: layering new products and services onto a legacy infrastructure and leveraging the synergies that result.
“Leveraging the synergies?” Arg. That’s just… arg. There are times when I really hate working in the IT sector…
As if it weren’t improbable enough that Bruce Campbell’s short-lived TV series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. is coming to DVD, now I hear that Bruce’s other short-lived TV series, Jack of All Trades, is coming, too. Not to mention one of my favorite Saturday-morning cartoons when I was a kid. Simply amazing.
As the title suggests, I’m having a giddy fanboy moment. You may wish to avert your eyes.
Still looking? Okay, fine, it’s your funeral…
Here’s another tidbit from my old Cinemark padfolio, a quote that I apparently found inspiring or at least interesting back in the day:
Writing, like film directing, is a matter of making endless decisions. Every word, every sentence, the order of the paragraphs — everything is a decision. There are an infinite number of possibilities in putting something together as you write. Because of this, if a person is not decisive, he will never write anything.
–Lawrence Kasdan
If the name isn’t familiar, Kasdan is a screenwriter and director best known for the ensemble dramas The Big Chill and Grand Canyon. He also wrote the screenplays for The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark, based on outlines by the Great Flanneled One. Click here for his filmography.
Writing last week about my Cambridge adventure reminded me of something I ran across as I was cleaning up after The Great Water-Filter Containment Failure and Basement Flood of 2006. It’s a padfolio, one of those cheap vinyl folder-thingies that you sometimes get as freebies at business functions, the ones that contain a mini-sized legal pad, a pen, and a pocket for miscellaneous papers. This particular padfolio is a souvenir of “Cinemark Customer Service University,” a corporate training session I attended during my old multiplex days. Yes, it’s true — my minimum-wage, name-badge-wearing joe-job at the movie theater required me to attend a half-day company pep-relly on how to become a better ticket-taker. As I recall, the path to usher’s nirvana basically involved more diligence in between-show lobby cleaning and never, ever questioning theater management about anything. As I further recall, this propaganda session and its breathlessly enthusiastic mantra of total obeisance to people who didn’t have as much on the ball as my pet duck was one of the final straws that convinced me it was time to start looking for a more grown-up occupation. (True story: the day I finally quit, I had to explain to my manager what I meant when I said, “I tender my resignation.” He’d never heard that expression before. And this was the guy I was supposed to bow and scrape to because he was my “superior.” Oy.)
Sour grapes aside, I’m not one to throw away free stuff, so, naturally, I used the padfolio and, naturally, I’ve still got it. And I’m sure by this point you’re all muttering under your breath, “Yes, fine, Bennion, we all know you tend to horde crap, but what has this got to do with Cambridge?” I was just getting to that…
Are you suffering from a vague sense of aimlessness? A feeling that you ought to be gearing up for something big and exciting, but you can’t think of what it might be? Wondering why it seems like there’s something different about this spring than other recent years? Maybe these cartoons will help you figure out the problem:
Ah, the memories…
[Ed. note: FYI and for the sake of doing it all semi-properly, those strips are from Mark Tatulli’s Heart of the City.]