Classroom Filmstrips have been a staple of kitch fans since time immemorial (that’s about four decades, in Kitsch Years), yet the Web still lacks a truly marvellous repository of the things. (Note: You can go here, but they are mostly films.) Collectors are apparently afraid to let them out of their little plastic tubes for fear they’ll crumble in the air. Others would rather compile them onto equally crumbly paper and weigh in on the matter with their own two cents. I found a few promotional items, like this Esther Williams swimming pool endorsement, and some from Ford Motor Corporation. But the only school related material I found relates to the sub-genre of anti-drug propaganda. But I’ve found little that relates to such all-important topics as personal hygene, public safety, good citizenship and religious instruction.
One of the topics that came up during my 
Back in the days before media saturation, folks relied on their own resources in order to amuse themselves. You could find people clustered under awnings, along roadsides and behind bus stations — notebooks in their laps, ball-point pens at the ready — all chuckling to themselves over their latest doodle or humorous cartoon. I miss those days; I still have all my old notebooks. Somehow, when I was younger, I had nothing better to do with my time than fill page after page with crude drawings. As I grow older and their memory grows more and more distant, these drawings make less and less sense to me. But I guess they must have made sense to the editors of 
The public spectacle of Elvis sleepwalking his way though the seventies is one of the more cliche metaphors of that decade. But the second half of 1974 is what many consider his absolute nadir. To help celebrate the 30th anniversary of the death of The King Of Rock And Roll, we present a compilation of live recordings taken from this period. Concentrating on his amazing rambling on-stage monologues, this collection documents one of the most difficult period of Elvis’s life.
Jingle writing legend Steve Karmen is probably best known for such hit songs as “Weekends Were Made For Michelob”, “Hershey, The Great American Chocolate Bar” and “When You Say Budweiser (You’ve Said It All).” In the time since his heyday in the 1970s, Steve has burnished his place in history with several books, including the definitive bible of his field, 
His book 
details his early years working with 
A few years ago, I tried my hand at writing CD reviews for web site devoted to local music. I suppose it seemed like a good idea to have a local celebrity pass out advice to a new generation of “alternative” artists. The problem was, I really had nothing to say to them. Perhaps all the years riding around in limos and sleeping on satin sheets dulled my ears to the “sound of the street,” but the groups all sounded pretty bad to me. Either way, it wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to make light of their earnest efforts (what if one of them found out where I live?), so I struggled to find encouraging and constructive things to say. But even my most diplomatic efforts were probably insulting.
The Doodletown Pipers were one of the primary purveyors of sanitary choral pop singing and dancing for television during my childhood. They specialized in the familiar, already-sanitary hits of the day, dressed up in perky matching outfits provided by Mister Marty Of California. They were very flexible: professional, but in a loose, green kind of way. Their stock in trade was enthusiasm, not precision. And you can bet that if a tight deadline was looming, they’d get their parts learned and be ready to hit their marks when the cameras were set to roll.