I'm watching Jackie Brown and noticed that she is smoking inside an airport. Funny how things change. Speaking of which I watched an episode of The Twilight Zone recently where Captain Kirk was smoking on an airplane.
Anyone else miss things from the old days that aren't around any more?
I think there's an EU regulation that states that someone has to mention "white dog poo" in these Things You Don't See Anymore discussions, but I do not miss the stink of tobacco in public places one bit.
Yeah, smoking's not something I miss either. When I was at uni — art college in Cardiff — I was in the tiny minority that didn't smoke. I'd say about 80%+ of my friends smoked, about about a third of them were into weed. Every time I got home from the student bar, a pub or a club, my clothes and hair would reek, and my eyes would be extremely unhappy. I also got quite bad eczema for a year. Now, I can go to a pub and the air can be... normal.
Hard to think of anything I really miss, bar certain aspects of lifestyle (I really loved my student days). In terms of media, perhaps the thriving UK comics scene from when I was a kid; although I can't imagine me delving much into Nutty and Whizzer & Chips these days, it would have been fun for mini-G, rather than endless bags of tat with a comic mostly full of puzzles inside.
I was in a construction site hut for teabreak the other day, and the whole crew were (illegally) smoking. Now this would have been a normal day for all of my 20s, when 3/4 or more of my colleagues seemed to chain smoke, but dear grud after well over a decade's break it was utterly vile.
I miss having loads of kids comics to choose from on the newsagents shelf, I miss Clement Freud, Derek Nimmo and Kenneth Williams on Just a Minute, I miss my old dogs and I miss my grandparents' generation... Everything else about the past was inferior.
I miss :
reasonable rents/house prices
doorstep milk deliveries in bottles
local pubs on every street corner - in my old home town (Blackburn) and my current home (Hulme in manchester) virtually all the "locals" have gone - the smoking ban is one of the factors behind that.
Most of the things I miss however fall into the category of "wasn't life simpler before..." mobile phones, computers, multiple TV channels etc. I'm not saying life isn't better with these things but with great choice comes great headaches!
Ahhh...Nostalgia, it ain't what it used to be!
Just revisiting all the old progs after a lengthy hiatus (see welcome to the board) and couldn't help but smile at the adverts from back then.
Loads of ads from Woolworths (!) selling fishing gear, kites, roller-skates etc. Rayleigh bikes and Airfix models.
A far cry from kids today (First kids today reference, do I win £5?)
Quote from: Dandontdare on 26 January, 2016, 10:58:35 AMdoorstep milk deliveries in bottles
Once I got to uni, I never saw the point in milk delivery. The stuff from the shop lasted longer and was just as good. I recall the guy who was doing presumably the last deliveries in our town used to drop the milk at around 2am. That must have been lovely in the summer for those ordering it.
Quotelocal pubs on every street corner - in my old home town (Blackburn) and my current home (Hulme in manchester) virtually all the "locals" have gone - the smoking ban is one of the factors behind that.
Yeah, the former of those is a good point. The latter... I've seen plenty of arguments pointing at predatory and shameful tactics by breweries having the worst effect.
QuoteMost of the things I miss however fall into the category of "wasn't life simpler before..." mobile phones, computers, multiple TV channels etc. I'm not saying life isn't better with these things but with great choice comes great headaches!
Although I have nostalgia for old media, I don't really have any for media access. I used to wait 10 minutes for a game to possibly load on my C64, but can load it instantly today in an emulator. Old mobile phones were usability horrors, and also self-contained to the point you ended up with several different sets of contact lists. (And then you'd get a new phone and have to set up half the stuff from scratch again.)
Telly is another thing where I don't miss the old days. Having to be there or you miss it. Ugh. Once we got a dog, who wanted to go for a wee the SECOND a show started, we were so grateful for our catch-up PVR. Pause live telly! Imagine! Now we have a toddler, the very notion of having to only watch at set times doesn't bear thinking about. In fact, I'm fast losing any patience for all traditional telly (bar the BBC) and even shiny discs. Adverts? Pfft. Sitting through two minutes of copyright bollocks before watching a film? No thanks.
Quote from: richerthanyou on 26 January, 2016, 09:00:57 AM
Anyone else miss things from the old days that aren't around any more?
No.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 26 January, 2016, 11:33:54 AM
Sitting through two minutes of copyright bollocks before watching a film? No thanks.
After having to rewind the video tape as well.
I've smoked...'counts on fingers'...5 cig's* in my life. Each time I was already pissed out of my skull, only for me to sober up the next morning and wonder how anyone could be addicted to the wretched things.
I've never smoked weed, falling on the autistic spectrum I fear for what lasting reprucussions this mostly harmless narcotic could inflict on me. I'm not saying others shouldn't, do what ever you want, but i'm not risking some kind of extreme anxiety attack and a come down harder than the Berlin Wall collapse just for a cheap (HA!) high.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 26 January, 2016, 11:33:54 AM
QuoteMost of the things I miss however fall into the category of "wasn't life simpler before..." mobile phones, computers, multiple TV channels etc. I'm not saying life isn't better with these things but with great choice comes great headaches!
Although I have nostalgia for old media, I don't really have any for media access. I used to wait 10 minutes for a game to possibly load on my C64, but can load it instantly today in an emulator. Old mobile phones were usability horrors, and also self-contained to the point you ended up with several different sets of contact lists. (And then you'd get a new phone and have to set up half the stuff from scratch again.)
C64? Mobile phones? We have a different definition of 'the old days' - I'm talking about when a Pong console was cutting edge, and the only mobile phones were attached to a briefcase!
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 26 January, 2016, 12:51:23 PM
i'm not risking some kind of extreme anxiety attack and a come down harder than the Berlin Wall collapse just for a cheap (HA!) high.
I miss the Berlin Wall. I was there months before it came down. It was ace.
Quote from: shaolin_monkey on 26 January, 2016, 01:03:35 PM
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 26 January, 2016, 12:51:23 PM
i'm not risking some kind of extreme anxiety attack and a come down harder than the Berlin Wall collapse just for a cheap (HA!) high.
I miss the Berlin Wall. I was there months before it came down. It was ace.
Remember the good old days of the soviet union? :lol:
Quote from: CalHab on 26 January, 2016, 12:40:20 PMAfter having to rewind the video tape as well.
The current fascination with cassettes some people have astounds me. I get the thinking with vinyl—the 'warmth' of the sound (even if that's down to the limitations of the medium); the fascination with the object; the process of playing. But tapes were always bloody awful: crap quality; horrible to use; irritatingly linear in nature; prone to getting eaten. I don't miss my stereo munching a favourite album at all.
Mmm. I hung onto a few old mixtapes, 'radio shows' my brother and I made, and gig bootlegs for sentimental reasons, but the rest of my tapes went straight down the charity shop the day I bought an iRiver. Probably still there. Ugly finicky short-lived linear things, and as for rewinding with a biro to save batteries...
We had a ton of tapes in the loft, and then realised we have nothing to play them on. The only things I kept are my uni work, on Beta SP, with a view to digitising it at some point. Everything else went to charity or the dump.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 26 January, 2016, 01:14:46 PM
But tapes were always bloody awful: crap quality; horrible to use; irritatingly linear in nature; prone to getting eaten. I don't miss my stereo munching a favourite album at all.
I remember the annoyance of stretched tape on favourite albums. Eventually everything started to sound like My Bloody Valentine.
I recall my first Walkman - you'd set out for the day with one tape in it, plus one in each coat-pocket - that gave you 4.5 hours of music (usually 6 single albums) which was plenty, you just had to choose your albums at the beginning of the day.
I've still got hundreds of tapes (I never bought records as my best mate's mum worked for a record company and he had thousands of albums and a good tape deck - I'd go round on a Saturday with a 10-pack of C90s and pick what I wanted and he'd bring them into school the next week) but most of them are unplayable now.
I recently bought a usb cassette player with which to digitise some old tapes. Only a tenner off amazon. Soon I will have some shit quality mp3s to listen too.
I miss nostalgia
I miss (to some extent) the time before ubiquitous mobile phone coverage and wi-fi everywhere. I remember being in Alaska in 1995 when mobile phones seemed to be just coming in and people were of the opinion "why the hell would I want one of those things? I don't want people to be able to contact me at any time... etc." and I can entirely sympathise with this viewpoint.
I see adverts on TV here in Norway, extolling the virtues of being able to browse Facefriend from your phone in the most remote corners of the country and I just think "Noooooo!" I want to go to those places to get AWAY from the inane background chatter that has become our lives these days, but it's all morons with selfie sticks, isn't it? Hopefully I can get my kids to view life and nature by actually looking at it, rather than taking pictures of it and putting them on Instagram and glancing at them later maybe.
Also: as much as email and whatnot is very, very handy I do miss putting pen to paper and writing yer actual letters and postcards. I can do something about that at least, just requires a little more effort and juggling of time and kids.
/pipe and slippers mode
I miss being younger. But that may be about it.
pj
I miss having a bit more hair up top to play with but could be much worse in that department.
Apart from family and friends who are no longer around – I can't say there is much I miss.
Was going to say what DDD said: talk of old Nokia mobile phones and the like don't count. All mobile phones are a modern phenomenon. Shopping with the better half pre-mobile phone days was a pain. Nowadays it's a case of: "er, I'm still waiting for you, where are you?" "I'm in the queue for the changing rooms" "Ok, I'm off to Forbidden Planet – will call you in half an hour."
Guess I miss some of the simplicity of old times though what with info overload. But better to have too much info than too little as was the case way back.
A lot of modern issues are about habit formation though. People say they don't have time to spend on X, but they may have rewired their brains to expect certain things (or get that little 'hit' from completing a task, such as 'checking Facebook'). With a small amount of willpower, it's easy enough to avoid doing this. The flip side is how totally amazing modern mobile devices are. In your hands, you have a tiny computer that's as powerful as laptops were only a few generations ago. It's a games machine, phone, musical-making kit, art pad, journal, web browser, and far more, all in one. Modern tablets and smartphones are science fiction in the present. Just make sure you turn off all the unnecessary crap you don't really need.
I do also vividly remember the end of my 'holdout' time regarding mobile phones. I didn't have one, and was about to do a course in London for a couple of days. I'd been told I could crash at a house friends were renting in Ealing. As I got out of the Tube, it was pissing down. I walked the 15 minutes to their house. No answer, even though someone said they'd be in. I trudged back to the station and found a payphone. I got through to a friend's mobile. He was, of course, at the house, and had probably arrived there about two seconds after I'd left the street. He noted that I wouldn't have gotten soaking wet and had an entirely unnecessary 30-minute trudge had I been armed with a phone. That said, I never really did like the crappy Nokia I ended up with (nor, really, any phone until I got my first iPhone).
I miss flipper dippers and tomato ketchup flavour walkers crisps.
And Firefly.
Och yes, much as I hate impatient clients and debt collectors hounding me 24/7, life before mobiles was a nightmare. From 1989 to 1997 (when I finally caved), my life seemed to revolve around cycling or jogging miles to queue at a midge infested phone box to make or receive a call arranged by post a week previously, only to find change/card pouring through my fingers like water, trying to exchange angsty words of love or job applications while half the locality peered over your shoulder. And send an email, despite having had an email address since 1990? Only on the college mainframe, son. I don't miss any of that crap one little bit.
My Nexus 7, bought a year ago for less than half of the price of a flight to London in 1989, is the answer to a lifelong prayer, what I always wanted from a Walkman,VCR, laptop, reference library and games console all in my jacket pocket. Miraculous days to be alive.
On that subject; I miss telephone boxes.
Now there is never anywhere to have a piss when your desperate.
I miss being able to go to a football match at the drop of a hat and it only costing a quid or two. These days I have to buy my ticket, and train ticket six weeks in advance, at the cost of a couple of days wages, just so SKY can change the day and time of the match to suit lazy bastards who would rather sit at home and watch the game.
I miss proper cinemas where the film would start at the advertised time (not 45 minutes to an hour later) and they wouldn't turn the damn lights up as soon as the credits started to role.
I miss real second hand bookshops.
I miss being younger.
Quote from: Tordelback on 26 January, 2016, 03:48:47 PM
Och my life seemed to revolve around cycling or jogging miles to queue at a midge infested phone box to make or receive a call arranged by post a week previously, only to find change/card pouring through my fingers like water.
I read that as midget infested, which I thought was a bit odd
Quote from: Mattofthespurs on 26 January, 2016, 04:30:07 PMI miss proper cinemas where the film would start at the advertised time (not 45 minutes to an hour later) and they wouldn't turn the damn lights up as soon as the credits started to role.
You have weird cinemas, although I do agree the pre-film stuff is getting out of hand. That said, our local used to be a place where you'd stand in the pouring rain, queuing for a ticket, then go inside to not especially good screens that had clearly seen better days. The one advantage over modern fare: the food was normal pricing, for the most part. Personally, I like our local Vue: I can book my seat online and show up dead on time, rather than showing up half an hour early, just to guarantee not being struck at the front.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 26 January, 2016, 05:51:51 PM
Personally, I like our local Vue: I can book my seat online and show up dead on time, rather than showing up half an hour early, just to guarantee not being struck at the front.
Yeah, I'm a convert to the online booking system at Cineworld. Book specified seats for myself, the missus, anyone else who's going, download the QR code to my phone and just turn up and walk straight in.
Cheers
Jim
I did have weird (good) cinemas, but then I'm thinking back to the mid 1970's where you could walk in in the middle of a double feature and watch it as many times until they turned it off.
Oh, and people ate at home. Not in the f*cking place they went to watch a film.
Told you I was old.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 26 January, 2016, 06:11:07 PM
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 26 January, 2016, 05:51:51 PM
Personally, I like our local Vue: I can book my seat online and show up dead on time, rather than showing up half an hour early, just to guarantee not being struck at the front.
Yeah, I'm a convert to the online booking system at Cineworld. Book specified seats for myself, the missus, anyone else who's going, download the QR code to my phone and just turn up and walk straight in.
Cheers
Jim
yeah, I do that with my unlimited card with Cineworld. Not once have I been in a film showing with the screening more than 50% full. Nice to do but utterly pointless where I live. I've seen Star Wars and SPECTRE in, what I like to call, a private show. Ie, there was just me. Heaven.
pound notes...much lighter than the coins
Quote from: Mattofthespurs on 26 January, 2016, 06:13:42 PM
yeah, I do that with my unlimited card with Cineworld. Not once have I been in a film showing with the screening more than 50% full. Nice to do but utterly pointless where I live.
It's been invaluable with Force Awakens — we skipped three showings shortly after release because you could actually see how full the showing already was. Plus, whenever possible I blag the seats dead centre and two-thirds of the way back, which is perfect for the IMAX screen.
Cheers!
Jim
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 26 January, 2016, 06:28:53 PM
Quote from: Mattofthespurs on 26 January, 2016, 06:13:42 PM
yeah, I do that with my unlimited card with Cineworld. Not once have I been in a film showing with the screening more than 50% full. Nice to do but utterly pointless where I live.
It's been invaluable with Force Awakens — we skipped three showings shortly after release because you could actually see how full the showing already was. Plus, whenever possible I blag the seats dead centre and two-thirds of the way back, which is perfect for the IMAX screen.
Cheers!
Jim
My boy and I went on the first full day. 300 seater. 14 people in there. Love living in the middle of nowhere.
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 26 January, 2016, 03:24:51 PM
I miss flipper dippers and tomato ketchup flavour walkers crisps.
And Firefly.
Fuck off you're not allowed to be nostalgic. When we're all dead, we expect you to be on the 2000AD thought-net waxing nostalgic about laptops and human shop-assistants.
Hey! The 90's was a long time ago (thank fuck!). :lol:
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 26 January, 2016, 07:19:33 PM
Hey! The 90's was a long time ago (thank fuck!). :lol:
Nonsense, it's barely even the mid-'90s in my head.
Quote from: Tordelback on 26 January, 2016, 07:24:40 PM
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 26 January, 2016, 07:19:33 PM
Hey! The 90's was a long time ago (thank fuck!). :lol:
Nonsense, it's barely even the mid-'90s in my head.
Just past mid 70's in mine :'(
Remember when Man was the sole tool-making species & Saturn the only planet with rings?
I miss old Christmases.
I think old Christmases were more fun, people seemed to embrace the sense of occasion more and accept the tacky, naff side. Christmas decorations just had to be colourful and could be home made. Now people want a colour scheme and the decorations have to fit in with some sense of interior design (ugh)!
Advent calendars were a thrill because you got to see what picture was behind the door - not a chocolate in sight.
The food and drink was a real treat - the only time we ever had chocolates and fizzy drinks in the house.
The Christmas telly was an occasion in itself and we'd spend ages going through the Christmas Radio Times (for BBC) and TV Times (for ITV and 4) marking off what we wanted to see.
Maybe things are better these days but I'd go back to an old Christmas if I could.
Decorations and tree with lights on it.
wed on't even do that anymore.
When I was much younger and still had a mother, things were different, and we did a bit of both. We used decoration we had purchased, but they might last for years, and some time we would buy a bit more to add to it, and then were were the home made ones that where two long strips brightly coloured paper were woven to tighter a bit like two Mobeius strips and they kind look better when strung around the place.
These days all that seems like waste of time and can't stand my other relatives with their families, so I avoid the big family Xmas a parties snow.
Non-chain cinemas, showing whatever piece of tat they could get their hands on even if it was a tv movie that was at least a decade old. I recall my local flea pit showing Columbo movies and an Ewoks double bill that seemed to do a decent trade, as well as a double of the Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century pilot movies (which apart from anything else must have been at least 4 hours long). These weren't "ironic" showings, either, they were what passed as proper films.
Mr Byrites.
Quote from: JamesC on 27 January, 2016, 06:59:56 AM
I miss old Christmases.
I think old Christmases were more fun, people seemed to embrace the sense of occasion more and accept the tacky, naff side. Christmas decorations just had to be colourful and could be home made.
Hmmm... sounds a wee bit like you just miss being a kid at Christmas, like everyone does.
Quote from: JamesC on 27 January, 2016, 06:59:56 AM
I miss old Christmases.
I think old Christmases were more fun, people seemed to embrace the sense of occasion more and accept the tacky, naff side. Christmas decorations just had to be colourful and could be home made. Now people want a colour scheme and the decorations have to fit in with some sense of interior design (ugh)!
My partner and I made our own decorations this year. They looked pretty cool too, though her paper snowflakes were much better than mine.
I remember when Xmas used to be about carefully cajoling your parents into putting the telly on for either an Indiana Jones film or a Star Wars film. Xmas has always been about Star Wars for me, 'cos those occasions were the only time you could see the films once they left the cinema. This year has been like Xmas finally returning, what with The Force Awakens, and all the cool Star Wars toys I got from just about everyone!!!
We have a mini-person in the house now, and so I expect we'll next year be making decorations, or at least having ones that are less breakable.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 26 January, 2016, 10:58:35 AM
local pubs on every street corner - in my old home town (Blackburn) and my current home (Hulme in manchester) virtually all the "locals" have gone - the smoking ban is one of the factors behind that.
Exactly the same has happened in the area of Dublin I live in. One after another, local pubs in the community have closed due to lack of customers, many of whom cited the Smoking Ban as their main reason for choosing to drink at home instead.
It's certainly why I rarely bother with pubs anymore. My social life was virtually non-existent in any case, so for me the decision was a very simple and logical one to take. If I'm going to be drinking alone anyway, why the hell would I bother going to a bar where I'm going to be forced back outside into the wind and rain if I want a ciggie, when I can drink and smoke in the comfort of my own little hovel? (But sure, I'm only a single, middle-aged oul fella and as I've learnt from experience, the likes of me don't really matter in this society. We never have and we never will).
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 27 January, 2016, 09:02:13 PM
Quote from: JamesC on 27 January, 2016, 06:59:56 AM
I miss old Christmases.
I think old Christmases were more fun, people seemed to embrace the sense of occasion more and accept the tacky, naff side. Christmas decorations just had to be colourful and could be home made.
Hmmm... sounds a wee bit like you just miss being a kid at Christmas, like everyone does.
This.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 28 January, 2016, 09:45:09 AM
We have a mini-person in the house now, and so I expect we'll next year be making decorations, or at least having ones that are less breakable.
Making decorations with kids is great fun - we do paper chains (my favourite, the saggier the better), paper snowflakes and snowmen, wreath for the door and for some reason at least one Christmas pud made from a paper plate. Add that to our tatty hoard of tinsel, ever-expanding tangle of lights, garish plastercasts and Star Wars/Disney tree ornaments and the place is like a maximalist anti-Ikea. I love it.
This was the first year we didn't make the kids' main presents ourselves, and I dread the day we no longer deface the house with their creations too.
...when you could find the original YouTube Gold thread so that you could post this: The Beach Boys sing "Hurt" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmNSFqyg_Z8)
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 14 November, 2023, 05:02:59 AM...when you could find the original YouTube Gold thread so that you could post this: The Beach Boys sing "Hurt" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmNSFqyg_Z8)
As much as I generally hate "A.I.", I can't quite bring myself to dislike
Johnny Cash being brought back from the dead to cover
Taylor Swift songs when it sounds like
this. (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lcBZ0laQ41c)
A burning ring of dire.