The Seventies were a demon-haunted decade, fraught with nightmares both real and imagined. The energy crisis and socio-economic malaise competed with various paranormal phenomena for space in the anxiety cortex of the collective consciousness. Paranoia triggers lurked around every corner, and the mass media wasn’t above amplifying those fears for increased market share and profit. […]

I’ve recently been scanning eBay’s listings for reasonably priced copies of old Sears Wish Books. While there’s a excellent online depository of these holiday catalogs, it has a few unfortunate gaps which happen to align with areas of particular interest for me. Besides, when it comes to this type of artifact, there’s no substitute for […]

If nostalgia isn’t an outright lie, it’s a selective interpretation of the truth. It’s easy to long for the past after the unpleasant bits have faded (or been willfully suppressed) from memory. Remove that tarnish and any period can seem like a Golden Age, which is a nonsense because I actually lived through such a […]

Come one, come all! Feast your eyes on the Only Bumflap That Matters! As the ad — ganked from a 1980 issue of Smash Hits — states, this was merely one of an entire line of hindquarters drapery available for sale. If you were curious about which other artists were available for posterior display, here’s […]

Maura and I had to drive out to Springfield on Tuesday. The trip took about an hour and a half each way, which meant quite a few searchers for the Least Shitty Song on the satellite radio’s roster of preset go-to stations and their shallow playlists. Somewhere on the outskirts of Auburn, I switched to […]

On an overcast afternoon, some time in 1980, my father picked me up at elementary school and dropped me off at my maternal grandparents’ place. I can’t remember the reason for this break in regular routine, but there did always seem to be some minor crisis going on with my family in those days. The […]

I’ve learned over the years that childhood ownership of the Remco monster toys — either the Mego-scale dolls or Star Wars scale figures — conveys membership in a secret cult of Spooky Kids whose interests and practices transcend both space and time. Maura still has hers in our attic somewhere. Also, my maternal grandfather bought […]

The past holds innumerable strange and disturbing monstrosities…and some of them are glorious. Recommended watching and listening: The sanity-wracking quintessence of 1980 captured on magnetic tape.

As my collection of K-Tel compilations began to grow, I realized my old assortment of platters included one of the label’s most celebrated releases. Rock 80 was a two-time hand-me-down. An older cousin passed it on to a tween-age Maura, who in turn handed it off to me during the early days of our relationship. […]

(from “How To Trap An Orchid!” by E. Nelson Bridwell, Ramona Fradon and Vince Colletta in Super Friends #31, April 1980) Many enthusiasts have been shocked to discover a supposedly “dead” specimen suddenly spring back into full bloom.