We Didn't Have Any of That Sh!t When I Was Your Age! (Anniversary: Part 3)

Thirty years ago, things were different.

While The Blog was writing about his adventure west, and the two month rain storm that followed, he remembered a moment, a couple of weeks later.

The PC and his roommate Joe were in a record store (yes, there are still a few of those around. Some actually still sell records. Most, just CDs) on LaBrea Ave. in Hollywood.

Music+, it was called.

Music+ went out of business decades ago.

The Blog picked out an album...

                                                                       A 12 inch, vinyl recording medium.

                                                                  Manhattan Transfer's Greatest Hits, it was.

Which, coincidentally, featured the song "Trickle, Trickle, Drip, Drop (Tell Me Just When This Rain Will Stop,) which turned out to be the theme song for the next month or two.

He approached the checkout counter with his purchase and saw, for the first time ever, a five inch diameter, silver disc on the counter. Two, actually.

"WTF are those?" The young PC asked.

"They're compact discs," the clerk answered. "They are the next big thing in recordings," she said.

"Harumph." The young Blog thought. "That's what they said about eight track tape."

That was 30 years ago.

And holy shit, things have changed.

The PC eventually succumbed to the siren song of the CD.

That was before Mp3s and iPods™ came along.

In 1983, cable television was in it's infancy.

For a price, you could get, in addition to your local stations, a handful of minor UHF channels from places like Atlanta and San Diego. And a puzzling network called...

                                                                                   Home Box Office
Which seemed to play a never ending loop of "Beastmaster" during the day and soft-core porn at night.

VCR's were around. If you were rich enough to own one.

Pagers were owned by doctors and drug dealers.

Cell phones were still a few years away. And when they did arrive, they looked like...

                                                                              this.

When the young PC was in cosmetology school, hair mousse wasn't invented, yet.

That showed up around 1985.

The only person in the world that wore hair extensions was...

                                                                                          Diana Ross.
Video game systems?

                                                                                              Atari.
Home computers?

                                                                             Commodor64.
1984 introduced the revolutionary...

                                                                                        Macintosh.

The internet? What?

Something called "Prodigy" tapped you into airline reservations and car rentals, but not much else.

Since then...

The World Wide Web, email, newsgroups and message boards.

iPhones, Smart Phones, tablets, GPS and Tivo™.

None of those things were around in 1983.

And, oh yes...

Blogs.