Things I Should Throw Out: Clippings From The Eighties
17 Comments Published July 1st, 2008 in Trash
Thanks to the share-isphere, the best time for your fans to catch up with you is once you’ve died. It’s not like everything you’ve ever released isn’t already available for free several times over, but once you die, everything gets consolidated and much easier to find. Last year it was James Brown; the year before, it was Buck Owens. Right now, it’s George Carlin’s turn.
Thinking about George Carlin for the past week or so has kind of pissed me off. I can still remember how delighted I was to discover him back in 1972 (which, by the way, was inversely proportional to how disgusted my step-father was to discover him). But that seems like only yesterday, and now, just like George I’m getting damn old. And I’m also just about as charmed by the current state of affairs as he was. So, as liberating as his long-haired counter-culture material was to a twelve-year-old boy 35 years ago, the enlightened bitterness of the take-no-prisoners routines from the end of his life end up resonating with me even more.
I continue to think about George as I prepare yet another post of goofy newspaper clippings that managed to survive in my collection over the years. It used to be fun to collect and laugh at this stuff, but now it all feels somehow depressing — now that what had been presumed cultural anomalies at the time now stand reveled to look more like harbingers. Maybe it’s just because this particular batch is too new, and not enough time has passed to allow me the luxury of ironic distance. Or maybe the wounds haven’t had enough time to heal.
Or maybe these articles can actually offer hope, that if I live long enough, I might be able to find humor even in the events of today. I’m quite sure there’s plenty to laugh at in the links below; I’m sure I found them funny twenty years ago. But today, they feel just too uncomfortably prescient.
Councilman Asks Feds to Execute Drug Users
Nancy Reagan Visits The Ghetto
Prison Sentences for Presidential Insults
A Game of Grab the Corn Dog Goes Awry
The A.L.F. Visits the U. of A.
Sewage from Baltimore Still in Louisiana
Couple Accuses Proctor & Gamble of Being in League with Satan
LaRouche Supporter Defends His Sanity
The Man on the Street Demands to be Heard
17 Responses to “Things I Should Throw Out: Clippings From The Eighties”
- 1 Pingback on Jul 10th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
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I wish the dates were included! I remember many of those stories. In 1982 or so my friend’s father subscribed to War On Drugs magazine and somehow Lyndon LaRouche was connected to it and it made some of these stories seem tame. It was out there. As time goes by we get weirder and weirder, but not in a good way…Drug Coupons! Sounds Stasi-like to me.
I have a hefty batch of recent suchlike. Our local Catholic paper reported on Galileo being let into the Vatican after all these centuries. Reading the report, really, it’s like what century are we actually in?
Someone should try to find out if that cocaine guy lived.
This is like peering into the future for me…fingers crossed I will be able to laugh at them in 20 years time. Thanks for the time capsule!
Oops! I edited out the bit about my newspaper clipping collection! That’s what you get for trying to sneakily post a comment while at work
Brilliant! “Nancy Reagan Visits the Ghetto” is the funniest thing I’ve read in years. I literally have been in tears, doubled over in my chair…
I couldn’t ask for a better time tonight – thank you so much!
Our local Catholic paper reported on Galileo being let into the Vatican after all these centuries.
Awesome. Didn’t know the old fellow was still with us. Do you think he’d be willing to give a talk in San Diego? Besides all the moons of jupiter and dropping things off the tower of pisa stuff, maybe he’d tell some funny anecdotes about his trip to the Vatican.
The Nitro Love Slave article is pure joy of nostalgia. I don’t really even remember Nitro, but that only makes it funnier for me. Hair bands were just everywhere in the 80′s.
I need me one of those FUFO sweatshirts: “the glow-in-the-dark effect is the key to extraterrestrial recognition and bonding EXPERTS SAY”. Who am I to argue with experts?
I tried to order one of those sweatshirts myself, but my letter was returned. The company was already gone by the time I found out about it.
I used to wash dishes with Jim Gillette (of NITRO) at Monterrey Whaling Company in McCormick Ranch…now he’s married to Lita Ford (is he her love slave now?) and living in the Virgin Islands somewhere.
Hello, I just thought I would drop you a line and inform you that your website layout is really messed up on the Firefox browser. Seems to work good in Internet Explorer though. Anyways keep up the good work.
Well…it was designed in Firefox, so maybe it’s supposed to look that way.