Category Archives: Nostalgic Obsessions

08/17/2017 · 1:46 pm

Mad Doctors of the Late 20th Century

Mad medicine was everywhere in the 80s and 90s. There were toys and playsets endorsed by mad doctors, for use by kids. Every time you watched cartoons, you saw a skinny dude with crazy hair in a white lab coat, maniacally mixing chemicals and potions for some nefarious purpose. Under the influence of this, I created my own mad medicine man; Dr. Kill-Everybody.

Dr. K (no hair), with Fronkin Steen and Psuto Moto.

Either the trope became shopworn around 2001, or something happened that discouraged children from playing with chemicals. You don’t see mad doctors and scientists like you used to. Maybe this is a good thing; maybe the concept was subconsciously driving impressionable kids away from lucrative STEM-field careers. I don’t know.

What I do know is this. Mad doctors once flourished in our society, even though they were annoying, and generally sucked.

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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee, Worst Of All

Tagged as 1980s, 1987, 1990, 1990s, 2016, Bionic Six, Bots Master, Casey Kasem, Cops, corporate crap, Dick Tracy, fake rap, New Jersey, RoboCop, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, toys, Transformers, Tyler Perry

08/15/2017 · 11:51 am

Barnstorming

In the early 1980s, video games were simple in concept, much like the “game apps” on phones nowadays. At heart, they were demonstrations of your skills with a joystick, paddle, or “track-ball” controller, performing one or more challenges. Eating all the dots, or climbing a scaffold to defeat a giant ape, to cite a couple of well-known examples. Navigating a maze while being pursued by killer robots. Killing a centipede, segment by segment. Swinging on vines over bottomless pits.

Or, flying planes into buildings. For fun!

Signed by programmer Steve Cartwright!

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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions

Tagged as 1970s, 1980s, 1981, 1982, Activision, Atari 2600, Carol Shaw, corporate crap, daredevils, David Crane, Great Videogame Crash of 1983, Imagic, New Jersey, Steve Cartwright, videogames

08/08/2017 · 12:47 pm

Dire Straits

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club

Tagged as 1970s, 1977, 1980s, 1981, 2000s, 2007, Bands I Useta Like, David Knopfler, Dire Straits, John Illsley, London, Mark Knopfler, movies, MTV, music, My Dinner With Andre, Neil Young, New Jersey, Pick Withers, Sting, strips, The Princess Bride, Wallace Shawn

06/22/2017 · 10:15 am

Matty Watches Transformers: The Last Knight

As an “underground” artist, I go broke often. Sometimes I have to sacrifice comfort or nourishment to pay my rent.

Sometimes, I’m broke because I’m a total assclown who takes public transportation across town to see a $22 popcorn movie, alone. (I didn’t have enough for actual popcorn.)

Even while facing the consequences, I have no regrets.

I don’t know what the hell Al Gore had to do with the history of Transformers, and I don’t want to know. I had to sit through the trailer for his second bullshit global-warming scare film, and he can go fuck himself with an iceberg.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned

Tagged as 1980s, 1986, 1988, 1990s, 1991, 1996, 2000, 2007, 2008, 2017, 3-D, Cartoon Network, corporate crap, Dark of the Moon, Godzilla, Hasbro, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Bay, movies, Optimus Prime, Revenge of the Fallen, Robert Loggia, Steve Buscemi, The Simpsons, The Transformers: The Movie, Tom Hanks, Transformers, Zero Mostel

06/06/2017 · 11:38 am

Willy Murphy

If you don’t recognize the name in the title, it’s okay. I’m not gonna browbeat you this time. This guy takes a lot more effort to be aware of, so don’t feel bad if you’re unfamiliar. In fact, let me introduce you to one of the funniest underground cartoonists of the 20th century.

From San Francisco Comic Book No. 4, 1973.

If you’ve read Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, you’ll recognize Murphy’s distinctive style. Willy was as much a natural talent as Gilbert Shelton or Robert Crumb.

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions

Tagged as 1970s, 1973, 1974, 1983, Art Speigelman, comix, Gary Arlington, Harvey Pekar, Ivan Brunetti, marijuana, R. Sikoryak, Ron Turner, San Francisco, underground, Willy Murphy

05/21/2017 · 11:17 am

The Pac-simile

Yea, I say unto you, I was in the right place at the right time for two major moments in American history. You must believe that what I’m about to tell you is the truth; it will seem like so much legend and myth.

The first: I was gifted a copy of E.T. (the game) for the Atari 2600, on Christmas, but that is a tale for another article.

I HAD TO PRETEND I ENJOYED THIS.

The second, and more significant: I talked my father into buying me Pac-Man for the Atari 2600, one of the most notoriously disappointing games of all time. Second only to E.T.,of course.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions

Tagged as 1980s, 1982, 1990s, Atari 2600, Atari 800 XL, corporate crap, Donkey Kong, E.T., Frogger, Great Videogame Crash of 1983, Howard Scott Warshaw, New Jersey, Pac-Man, smartphones, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Tod Frye, Tron, video games, Yar's Revenge

05/16/2017 · 10:01 am

Forgotten Freedoms

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Eatable Things, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions

Tagged as 2015, Bands I Useta Like, censorship, comix, cut-outs, despair, Looney Tunes, parental advisory labels, political correctness, prank calls, Throwback Thursday

05/14/2017 · 10:39 am

Rocketry Club

From BIUL II.

Kidding and perversity aside, we used to have “rocketry club” at school. Well, I didn’t; it was all done away with by the time I reached seventh grade. Kids could care less about the excitement of space and walking on the moon now.

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee

Tagged as 1960s, 1970s, 1983, 1986, 2002, 2007, 2011, Attack of the Clones, Bands I Useta Like, Buzz Aldrin, comix, Davey & Goliath, depression, despair, Florida, rocketry, Russia, Sandra Bullock, school, Stanley Kubrick, Star Wars, The Right Stuff, The Shining, Transformers

05/09/2017 · 2:35 pm

Chortle Combat

No reboot of Mortal Kombat has come close to the cultural coup-de-grace of the original series from the 1990s. It doesn’t matter how many new “Fatalities” there are, or how much blood, or how realistic the fighters look. There’s still a crucial ingredient missing.

The techno.