Old, Valued Things that nobody really cares about anymore

Grandma's china set... The old pump organ... Mother's mink stole... the steamer chest brought over from the old country

Do you have things you feel like you need to hold onto for reasons that aren't even sentimental anymore? I remember this steamer trunk we seemed to drag around for years, eventually acting as a TV stand. Everyone thought they were worth money but they're actually not worth shit. A lot of 'antique' stuff is just not wanted anymore, especially big heavy oak wardrobes and the like

List the treasured family heirlooms that are just dead weight to you at this point.. bonus for pictures

Went through this with both my mom and my grandmother (her mom). My sister tried to sell some things online, just gave up after a while. My grandmother used to collect those tiny spoons; they're on my kitchen wall now. I'll be leaving a warehouseful of dead weight when I check out, but--like many ILX'ers, I assume--in the form of physical media, not what the thread's about. In the furniture/heirloom/antiques department, I won't be much of a burden.

one thing that kinda troubles me is my late dad's college yearbooks: Humboldt State University, circa late 50's-early 60's. Apparently when Raymond Carver attended... they're probably worth something to somebody, but not me. I have them in a trunk, and I won't toss them out, but I'd like to find a reseller to get them into somebody's hands who would actually value them

Having once tried unsuccessfully to acquire some yearbooks from my own high school days--about 15 years after the fact, with an ad in a local paper--I think there is a demand for that if you figure out how best to reach people (especially if someone famous is in there).

My grandmother's spoons--I think they're very cool.

https://i.postimg.cc/26rv24yh/spoons.jpg

aww, those are cute.. and barely take up any space at all. I would hold on to the them unless you're sick of 'em

They'll be with me till someone else has to figure out what to do with them.

so weird that people used to collect shit like that just for collecting.. I guess people still do. I have a friend that collect giant japanese robot toys and then won't let anyone play with them

My grandfather’s duck shotgun. It’s not even worth anything, really.

Family stuff in general. I’m not having kids and I have no nieces or nephews so it’s going to a landfill when I keel over. I don’t get anything from the stuff but I’d feel guilty if I got rid of it.

Want myself and everything I own to become dust

Irrational as it might be, I want the opposite. No kids, but I want traces of me to live on--in stuff I've written, Zooms I've posted on YouTube, maybe my records and baseball books (ideally kept intact...no idea how that happens), something. Even though I'll be dead and will never know.

…and to VG, clemenza bequeaths his (checks notes) “Zooms he posted on youtube”

Sad, I know--my legacy resides inside a website that gave the world funny cat videos.

<3

i've now cleaned out the houses of two parents, both of whom were hoarders.

it's awkward to come to terms with, but none of that shit is worth anything and no one wants it.

i value knowing clemenza, even if i occasionally disagree with him about certain baseball stats/xgau. imo being a friend is incredibly worthwhile even if it doesn't necessarily 'leave traces' of one's passing

I do appreciate that, and this is something I grapple with constantly (good thread for thinking about this stuff): too much time not living in the moment, worrying about what I leave behind, including all the Old, Valued Things That No One Wants and Nobody Really Cares About Anymore. My sister lives entirely in the moment. I remember I was changing classrooms once, putting one thing and one folder after another to the side--"I might use that one day"--while one of my teaching partners was forcibly taking stuff from my hands and, with much laughter, tossing it into the garbage.

feeb liberal political parties

AtG, that's a good point; shit like funkopops, gundam models and warhammer figures are going to be the porcelain puppies, commemorative plates and souvineer spoons of 2075...

The charity shops of the late 21st century are going to be desolate. Although having said that, some charity shops are like that right now. A few years ago in a charity shop I saw a signed framed photo of Ant & Dec (UK TV presenters). Was that someone's valued thing at one point?

Ok a signed Ant & Dec poster would be a decent joke gift I reckon.

Useful things only need a fraction of a lifespan to get obsolete, so in absence of valuables and with the uncertainty of fashion revivals, trinkets act as funny testimonials. Anything you have lived with holds some value. Maybe it reminded them of people they met, things they dreamt of, places they couldn't travel to.

I say that, but I also hate junk.

ILX

Turned 50 last year and still getting the hang of it - but one of my firm preliminary conclusions was “get rid of all this STUFF man”

Definitely hoarding tendencies in my family and I don’t wanna saddle my kids with a mountain of old crap - I actually feel really fortunate to live in the era of eBay and FB Marketplace* just because it makes getting rid of stuff so viable.

*obviously also evil but if you wanna sell stuff fast it is the only game in (my) town

I've only got a couple of family things to remember my late parents by. The most treasured, for sentimental reasons, one is a painting that my mum bought at a school art fair in Africa. I keep it because I remember us going into the building, her looking at paintings and choosing and buying this one. Over 50 years ago!

https://i.imgur.com/tCBw8Yh.jpeg

Re the yearbooks — genealogy people want those things ime … idk try the Mormon church lol … my late uncle ended up after a few decades in journalism as an antiquarian book dealer specializing in stuff like that and many of his clients were mormon. Granted your dad and his former classmates would risk being post-mortem mormonized… idk.

I am having these conversations with my mom — the stuff conversations— how she actually is not a hoarder, she’s just a normal person born in the 40s who has a normal amount of clutter and bulky furniture.

My additions to the list: firewire cables, cookbooks (mom hasn’t brought up the cookbooks yet though the oak dresser, grandma’s rocking chair, and the wedding china have been discussed).

I worked at a history museum in San Jose for a while. The most common donation inquiries were asking if we wanted pianos or sewing machines. We had too many of both and wanted no more.

This 2017 article from The Takeout on exactly this subject has always stuck with me.

I bought a small, fancy Wedgwood dinner service a few years ago, which I use at Christmas or on other special occasions. I'm sure someone has the other half of what was probably originally a massive twelve-person set.

I like the suggestions of just using the china, even if the patterns wear off in the dishwasher. I have some antique epns soup spoons that are not rated for the dishwasher, but I put them in there anyway and they seem fine. Or just keeping one and getting rid of the rest.

I have a bunch of old RAM sticks, and even a couple of mid-2000s CPUs that were left over after upgrading a couple of laptops. I came close to having enough spare components to build an entirely separate computer at one point. But getting hold of a period-correct Pentium M motherboard is hard, and even if I had the components, what then? And yet perhaps one day I might find an AOpen XC Cube case lying by the roadside.

I also have a Power Macintosh G5, which is too awesome to throw away, too heavy to move around, too old-fashioned and power-hungry to actually use. It's essentially an object d'art. It was state-of-the-art in 2003. 64-bit. Two entirely separate processors. Twin hard drive bays. Nine fans. Aluminium case.

I remember reading posts on Photo.net in the 2000s. I remember one user boasting about his film storage cabinet. It was air conditioned and had separate shelves for all of his negatives. Light-sealed to stop the pigments from degrading. From what I remember his photos were uninteresting snapshots of municipal buildings in Wyoming or whatever. He was convinced that his kids were going to look after it all when he was dead and gone. I sometimes wonder how long his kids kept it going until they threw it all out.

The article is weird to me because I have never really been into rituals like that … my family had/has some, but I don’t think I have ever found reassurance or pleasure in them. … especially around stuff like dishes or other “presentation” aspects of food. It’s not that I am unsentimental either … I have and still use my mom’s 30+ year old mikita drill with her name engraved on it.

Selling off a late acquaintance's vast record collection a few years ago led me to the belief that a 'collection' is a very personal thing, and any meaning it has as a totality is inextricably linked to the person that owned it. Once they're gone it reverts to a pile of individual (and probably mass-produced) items that can be safely broken down into its constituent parts and kept/disposed of as desired. This would go for family heirlooms etc too of course.

In other words: keep the photos and allow yourself a few (small!) items, give the rest a little mental funeral and get shot of it. Otherwise it'll bog you down until the day you, yourself, die. This goes for your own pointless shit you're hanging onto for reasons unknown too.

Pertinently, I rarely practice what I preach with all this.

My mom is the queen of having her grandmother's glass serving bowl and her great-grandmother's needlepoint chair that was brought from England as part of a set, and my literal handmade baby dresses (which I just gave to someone who's having a girl type baby soon) and all of that stuff. They're totems for her. When she touches them she sees her grandmother's hands, her mother's kitchen, my infant self. Because I love her so much, I'm floored by the religious observance of it. It's almost like a spiritual practice for her, holding us all in her memory to be called up by these imbued objects.

Idk. It's not for me but I also haven't lost my mother yet. Ask me again when I can't touch her anymore and I just have a bowl and a lifetime of love with nowhere to go.

it's always best to start early on dumping stuff (everyone on the board is old now and if our parents aren't gone they're closer to the end of their journeys than not...) and by doing so you create life WITHOUT those things, so you don't miss them in the end because time marches on. i thought my grandmother had 'stuff' but not 'STUFF' - imagine my surprise when we were clearing out her house and all the drawers exploded like cans of snakes.

I have an acquaintance that runs estate sales locally, and I used to check them out when I was still in acquisition mode.. a lot of retired Berkeley professors' homes, that kind of thing... often beautiful mid-century houses. It's strange to see what's left after the family has taken the things that they want. And if does feel kinda creepy wandering through the emptying house, picking over things like seagulls on a beached whale.

The sales would usually start on Fridays at full price, and that's when the pros would come in, the resellers looking for certain valuable things (jade was really big for some reason). And then saturday would be 1/3 off, sundays 1/2 off.

I went to one that was clearly a friend or associate of Alice Waters, they had signed ephemera from the opening day of Chez Panisse.. lots of cool kitchen stuff. Just an entire lifetime of stuff and a bunch of strangers picking through it. Now I have their italian glass locking jar that I use for tea bags, it was full of ancient bay leaves when I bought it.

Otherwise it'll bog you down until the day you, yourself, die. This goes for your own pointless shit you're hanging onto for reasons unknown too.

see: Swedish Death Cleaning

I'm very much on the side of minimizing possessions to those that have a real place in your life-as-you-currently-live-it. Unfortunately I married someone who, while not a hoarder, has stronger attachments to outdated stuff. She inclines to the both the I-might-need-it-someday school and the sentimental-value school when it comes to keeping stuff. We've come to a modest accommodation around this, but when we move out of our current house into some assisted living apartment setup there'll still be a ton of shit to toss.

see: Swedish Death Cleaning

Yeah I'm not a minimalist, I like having things around that make me happy and make my life feel aesthetically good, but I think the experience of having to unload the previous generation's STUFF is also a particular historical moment. Our last few past generations lived under conditions where it was possible (even socially advisable) to accumulate all that stuff as evidence of a "good" life. Why did my grandma collect decorative tea cups???? Idk but her mom survived the Depression and couldn't throw away a piece of string so everyone is dealing with some shit here.

yeah, there's definitely some inherited trauma around the Great Depression! I had some uncles that could not throw out a length of bailing wire, it went into a cupboard with the other lengths of bailing wire

I don’t think it’s the Great Depression it’s just been generations of an over abundance of objects…like, why would I want my family dishes when I could get dishes at goodwill or target or … Temu. These things are so cheap in relation to income they don’t have the value they once had …

I've been paring stuff down for over a decade, since I mentioned to my daughter and son that I had the big oak dining table and chairs (from 1910! With the original shipping label still attached!) in storage for whichever of them wanted it. Neither did, and though they were kind about it I understood there was nothing of my stuff they wanted to deal with. The table went to lxy and jergins, put to use for art space.

I've been unsuccessful getting Mr. Jaq to stop bringing home physical media. No one will value the books, vinyl, CDs, DVDs, etc enough to want them for what he believes they are worth; no one is going to individually sell them on eBay or whatever after he's gone; no one is likely to read or listen to or watch these things. Maybe a few people will want one of these things as a token of remembrance. But none go out and more come in every year.

Maybe I'm wrong and things will be different - society will collapse enough that all of this will represent wealth and status and hoards of treasure. But I feel the "seagulls on a beached whale corpse" will be much more probable.

I've quoted this before (so had easy access to the exact quote), from The Worst Person in the World--seems especially pertinent to this thread:

"The world that I knew...has disappeared. For me it was all about going to stores. Record stores. I'd take the tram to Voices in Grünerløkka. Leaf through used comics at Pretty Price. I can close my eyes and see the aisles at Video Nova in Majorstua. I grew up in a time when culture was passed along through objects. They were interesting because we could live among them. We could pick them up. Hold them in our hands. Compare them...I spent my life doing that. Collecting all that stuff, comics, books, and I just continued, even when it stopped giving me the powerful emotions I felt in my early 20s. I continued anyway. And now it's all I have left. Knowledge and memories of stupid, futile things nobody cares about."

Almost the exact thread title.

My maternal grandmother was too young for the Depression but I think wartime and postwar rationing definitely affected her outlook on valuing stuff. But yeah, globalisation making shit cheap is probably the bigger factor.

Definitely. There's a way in which the older stuff is "nicer" -- handmade, almost certainly better quality, has lasted all this time whereas today's particle board and plastic shit will only be useful for a year or two and will pollute the planet in its disposal. That's the kind of stuff my family has that I'll probably have to deal with (or someone else already has slowly pared down). I don't have the physical media problem so much except for some books.

Although speaking of books I talked to someone recently who thinks we urgently need to preserve and protect books right now because access to knowledge will be increasingly restricted. Hard to argue with tbh.

here's a sad story of an old man who lived across the street from me and was hit & killed by a car (in a crosswalk), his little dog was also killed.. maybe about a year ago
Anyway, they put a dumpster on the sidewalk below the window and just tossed everything in his apartment into that dumpster. A lifetime of acquisitions (his wife shortly preceded him in death I believe)... no estate sale, just right into the dump. I was almost tempted to see what was in the dumpster but it was all a little too sad

Haha my mom said "When I go please don't let everyone paw over my stuff at a yard sale" and my sister and I looked at each other and were like "............................" lol

I have my grandfather's black tailcoat jacket. It's made from EXTREMELY heavy wool. Amazingly it has no moth holes that I can discover. He probably only ever wore it a couple of times. To some big fancy event, obviously, but what? Surely it must have been pre-war. Now there is a fashion that is never, ever coming back. It is one of these things that at one time was worth quite a bit - not just sentimentally, but just as a very desirable, high-end object, and is now worthless.

Big heavy wardrobes still worth quite a bit in Europe, where built-in closets are still a novelty!

That fabric is still something unique that probably can't be made any more for *~*reasons*!* and could be repurposed!

Ha--just turned up on my FB wall, some group called "American Memory Lane." Makes me wonder again if their algorithms are reaching into my activity on threads like this.

https://i.postimg.cc/7ZWKg20M/past.jpg

(I guess there's other activity from me that suggests I might be interested in such a group, horrendous name aside.)

this week I found this tiny handmade stool, about the size for a toddler, in the shrubs near my house. I took it home, scrubbed it, soaked it overnight so the wood would swell up and tighten the joints, etc. Now I plan to let it dry, sand it and give it a couple coats of danish oil

I can see where it once had been gaily painted with yellow and red, and a black stripe on the top. I imagine some grandfather building it for his new grandchild, it looks like it could be a hundred years old

Do I need it? Absolutely not. But I couldn't leave it in the shrubbery either. That's the root of my problem! Maybe I'll gift it to someone

<3

You could inject some wood glue into those loose joints with a syringe and clamp it up while you're at it. :)

yeah, was thinking the same thing

i have a tiny antique chair that my parents rescued from somehwere when I was little and did exactly what Andy is doing to his; I had it in my son's room when he was little, and I still have it. It's surprisingly strong for a tiny wooden chair, I can stand on it without fear of breaking it. It's small so I don't feel bad about keeping it around.

when my mom died two years ago I had the unfortunate task of clearing out her house. she wasn't a hoarder, per se, but she had a lot of shit, and she held on to things for a long time thinking they were worth something. Sewing machines, etc (nice antique ones!). But the stuff that sold at the estate sale was largely junk that people wanted to pay a buck for.

My house is full of dead peoples' stuff, something I've never really thought about before

No one collects or uses paperweights anymore, do they?

I use a paperweight, in part because we open our windows in warm weather and papers sometimes blow around. I just use a nice chunk of obsidian I found in situ on a camping trip when I was a kid. It's not like one of those older glass paperweights that people would buy as souvenirs of Niagara Falls or whatever.

I have a small 1970s bureau that my grandfather had in his living room, where he used to write his letters and pay his bills. He taught me cursive at that bureau when I was a kid. I was the only one who was allowed to use the fountain pen (even though my mother gave the fountain pen to my older brother when my grandfather died) and the only one who was allowed to go into the bureau to look for anything. Even more importantly than the bureau, though, I have my handwriting, and that at least doesn't take up any space and won't have to be sold on or held by anyone else when I'm gone.

My house is full of dead peoples' stuff, something I've never really thought about before

lol I grew up in a 100-year old house filled with antiques both inherited and bought at yard sales and out of people's barns.

I don't really think of it as dead people's stuff. I feel conscious of other lives and wonder who they were and how they used this object and that kind of thing? Doesn't everyone think that when they climb a stone stairway or cross a threshold and the stone is dished from centuries of other feet? Heck, I live in a 100-year old building NOW in Brooklyn, as do probably most people.

My parents started trying to offload stuff on me when I was in my 20s. After accepting a few — including a windup Victrola record player — I realized they took up a lot of room (especially in the apartments I lived in). So I gave back the Victrola and started routinely refusing their castoffs. I do have my grandmother’s old writing desk in the basement, which an insistent aunt pressed on me. It could be refinished to be a nice piece, but I have no such inclination. It will probably go in a yard sale eventually.

Maybe just me but so many homes in the 90s had a “living room” (in addition to a “family room”) which was more like a “museum room” that had china old stuff and nobody was ever in there and ironically it felt like a “death room”

I am ashamed of all the crap my family wasted money on, parents and grandparents. I know it was a slightly different world, but come on

not that I’m some beacon of frugality or generosity

The "living room" vs. "den" distinction goes back at least as far as the 50s/60s, as ranch house and other postwar designs expanded, and the companies marketing them looked for new marketing hooks. In a sense, they split apart the increasingly distinct functions borne by the middle-class "parlor," which was both a receiving room for guests (who, in olden times, might see no other room of the house!) and an imagined space of internal family togetherness. This is a little mushy in my head, though, as it's been a minute since I read the relevant material.

I have at least a dozen jackets and winter coats my father has given me over the years. We're about the same size, and he's from the generation where they don't really ever return things, so if a coat he bought was just slightly not to his taste, it became mine. He's probably not long for this world, so I keep these things that have accumulated in my closet over four decades even though there's only one or two I might actually wear (and then again, maybe not). I know I'll want something of my dad's when he dies but I often wish dude had collected watches or coins or something.

Anyone else have parents or grandparents for whom "return policy" is a foreign concept? I don't recall anyone in my family ever returning anything. Not sure if it's due to a dogged avoidance of the hassle ("you're telling me I gotta pack and mail this thing / drive all the way back to the mall? That's a whole thing")--which is a legit superpower in my family--or the irrational fear of embarrassment (ie "this impulsive purchase speaks to my fallibility as a person")

interesting, dr casino, I should probably read that “in every 70s home” thread

oh, that's a good 'un!

answer to thread question: most (if not all) Elvis Presley "collectibles"

I keep waiting for the same thing to happen to The Beatles but no luck so far

My dad will not return anything. If he buys something he’s sure he wants it and if he’s gifted something that doesn’t fit or whatever he’ll give it away or it disappears.

I have this rather unattractive 1960s square wooden clock with this coppery metal facia that belonged to my Gran that I can't bear to part with.

When she passed I asked my Mum to keep it back for me, because the ticking accents in an unusual way, like a lop-sided click track, and it eventually gets into your head.

It's the eternal sound of those quiet moments in my grandparents' front room from when I was growing up. My Gran, nodded off in her La-Z-Boy chair with the Paisley Daily Express spread on her lap, me lying on the floor reading.

I feel that, my grandfather loved clocks and their house was full of them, my mom still has at least one.

Can clearly picture that clock...

In 1985, the year i was born, my grandfather built a grandfather clock for my parents (some of his other kids also had these clocks, with varying designs). Ours was a deep, dark brown with a deep, dark chime. It had a drawer at the bottom where we kept manuals for household electronics and two little doors on the sides by the clock face that I liked to open so I could watch the gears turning.

Neither my sibling nor I were able to take it when we cleared our parents' houses. I think it's with an aunt and uncle, but I hope I can retrieve it one day.

Re returning things, both of my boomer parents regularly returned unsuitable items, even sometimes gifts they received. Too much money down the drain not to.

Plenty of other goodies to look forward to rediscovering from storage someday. The old pump organ isn't sentimental for me but is actually pretty cool, came from a quebec monastery, just don't try to actually pump it bc the air smells like a tomb.

There's a rickety old wood burning cooker from the 40s? that belonged to my grandparents, probably don't want. An old timey iron, maybe a good paperweight. A laundry washboard, not sure what that would be good for. Various other bits from the farm my dad grew up on. There were a bunch of vintage cameras, none worth anything, but I dragged them back from Canada to UK because they're small and make nice decor.

Washboards are good for playing zydeco!

It’s highly possible my mom still has a set of encyclopedias in a cupboard in the garage

If anyone needs a bucket of cold water w.r.t. this I wrote at length in the Aging Parents thread about hoarding and the true value of things on a long timeline. The tl;dr upshot is that my mom hoarded 23 tons of stuff - her Shirley Temple collection she insisted would be worth something? Worth zero because no one knows who Shirley Temple is. The tea cart made from mahogany that she insisted on taking from her parent's place because it's "priceless"? No one wants it, the thrift store won't take it because they already have seven of them and the woodworker in town doesn't even want it as scrap wood.

answer to thread question: most (if not all) Elvis Presley "collectibles"

There was a failing Elvis-themed restaurant in Garden Grove that was desperately trying to upsell its "valuable" Elvis collection to the next poor sod who wanted to run a failing Elvis-themed restaurant. In the end, I think they failed at that and it became a Mexican restaurant - only one with a large unrelated Elvis collection.

Oh, Elvis T's post just reminded me of the Disney collectable plates that my mom keeps in a glass cabinet, which she has been telling my siblings and I will be ours someday, tacitly suggesting that the sale of said collector plates will set us up for life

not my auction, but they're the same as these, which it seems were listed no fewer than three times and ended with no bids each time

it became a Mexican restaurant - only one with a large unrelated Elvis collection.

Chuy's might sue them for trademark infringement!

Sometimes it can be poignant. I just re-found this account of the last days of the painter Renate Druks (died 2007):

She lived in a studio apartment in Hollywood filled with her giant paintings (she was very interested in using large canvases) and plants, a little futon in the corner surrounded by her large canvas fantastical landscapes....Then when I moved back to L.A., she had to go into an old folks home because she had a mini-stroke, and I got to move into her studio apartment for a few months, to sort through her belongings for what she needed at the home, what could be given to charity, and what items needed to be packed up and stored. Living there was one of the highlights of my life. Not only was it within walking distance of my favorite bar (and other fun things – it was 2 blocks west of the famous intersection of La Brea and Hollywood Blvd), but there was nothing cooler than getting a bit stoned and looking through her beautiful old things...

...when I google her now, I see so much interest in her....I wish it'd been there when she was living and she could have known about it. I also regret that I haven't been able to keep better track of her little tchotchkes that I kept for myself when she passed. I had this beautiful pair of earrings she made while in Mexico, for instance, and they were seriously my good luck earrings, and somewhere along the way I lost one of them. I've also lost track of other little things of hers that were unique and uniquely her.

My mother-in-law has so. much. stuff.

The bad thing is, a lot of it, the old furniture and ancient china, is actually probably worth a lot of dough. Sorting that from the junk will be a pain but probably worth it.

My mother-in-law has so. much. stuff.

The bad thing is, a lot of it, the old furniture and ancient china, is actually probably worth a lot of dough. Sorting that from the junk will be a pain but probably worth it.

I once had a friend who died very young and her mom then entrusted me to sell off her (quite impressive) record collection. I drove all over South Florida trying to unload this stuff at 2nd hand record stores but was consistently disappointed with the paltry sums I was getting for what were basically pretty desirable items. In retrospect I wish I had just taken the whole collection for myself and paid her mom some decent amount of cash.

It’s chastening to think that probably no one will be the slightest bit interested in my amazing-to-me record collection after I’m dead.

I have carefully curated my library for 45 years to keep it under 500 volumes and reflective of my changing needs and desires. It's also an amazing-to-me collection, but I have no illusions about its monetary value once I die. The true value is all in my personal relationship with those books. At some point I'll need to halve its size, but I've made this sad task less difficult by staying in the habit of regularly letting books go to make room for others. Several thousands of books have passed through my hands and out the door again.

One of my best friends is a hardcore music collector. We’ve both agreed to will our collections to the other when we kick the bucket.

If it actually ever happens, our combined collections will be the most amazing thing ever it will achieve sentience and children will come from miles away to hear it speak of all it has seen.

The One Who Lives will have a pissed off wife, I can tell you that much.

My wife and I were looking around for a particular volume the other day and she said we should get rid of all these books so our daughter doesn't have to. I countered with "I have regretted every book purge I've done the past four decades, so heck no."

I have an acquaintance that runs estate sales locally, and I used to check them out when I was still in acquisition mode.. a lot of retired Berkeley professors' homes, that kind of thing... often beautiful mid-century houses. It's strange to see what's left after the family has taken the things that they want. And if does feel kinda creepy wandering through the emptying house, picking over things like seagulls on a beached whale.

I wandered into an estate sale yesterday for the first time. It was similar to this description (beautiful older home, a retired prof's estate.) I didn’t hang around for very long and didn’t buy anything, but it was a strange and interesting thing to see so much of a person's stuff in situ and up for sale – books, records, furniture, art, and decorations, all of which evoked a very particular aesthetic and personality. And yeah, being there felt awkward enough that I wanted to leave after a few minutes.

I love that feeling. I live for that dissociated dream state of being immersed in someone else’s life!

It’s highly possible my mom still has a set of encyclopedias in a cupboard in the garage

we had a kinda janky set (not Britannica) but it was still treated as something valuable and something to cherish and pass on... then came the internet. I don't think you could give them away now

hmm

I don't think you could give them away now

My grandfather purchased the deluxe version of the Encyclopedia Brittanica 11th Edition, calf-bound with its own custom made bookshelf that shelved them horizontally. This was in many ways the zenith and apotheosis of the encyclopedia movement, a high water mark never again challenged. This set was his prized object, all about ratifying his intellectual prestige when he was an underpaid associate professor. My mother inherited it and viewed it in the same light. It was the incarnate proof of her father's brilliant career in scholarship.

Before she died she wanted to pass it on to one of her children. I agreed, but only to make her happy. It went into the basement. When she was still alive, but no longer able to leave her apartment, I made a couple of stabs at finding a new home for it. No bites. No nibbles. Zero interest. I took it to Goodwill. I'm not sure even they'd accept it now.

What you need to do is embark on a project to turn all volumes into secret boxes so people can use the useless book to stash something they actually care about (drugs, valuables)

Once Wikipedia gets bought up by some billionaire tech bro who proceeds to flood the site with AI tripe, Encyclopedia Brittanicas will be the only reliable source of information in the world. You heard it here first!

a 'collection' is a very personal thing, and any meaning it has as a totality is inextricably linked to the person that owned it. Once they're gone it reverts to a pile of individual (and probably mass-produced) items that can be safely broken down into its constituent parts and kept/disposed of as desired.

a 'consciousness' is a very personal thing, and any meaning it has as a totality is inextricably linked to the person that owned it. Once they're gone it reverts to a pile of individual (and probably mass-produced) items that can be safely broken down into its constituent parts and kept/disposed of as desired.

I have two sets of encyclopedias downstairs. I remember buying a couple of second-hand sets for the classroom in the '90s, before tech in every classroom was a given. It felt like having them there really set our classroom apart.

World Book? Brittanica? Fuckin Rag Dolls?

We had a set of Collier's Encyclopedia that got water-damaged when I was older, was sad to see it go. But the 10-volume "Young Folks' Shelf of Books" that came with the encylopedias is still with me.

I had a complete set of Charlie Brown ‘Cyclopedias when I was a kid and my mom kept them and gave them back to me. My younger kid had me read all of them to her. Some of it was out of date but that lead to some fun discussions.

I wonder if Encyclopedia Browns will fetch more than Britannicas on the resale market...

(xposts) In honour of Laugh-in, I have 1956 set of Funk & Wagnalls downstairs, inherited from my Dad's side of the family. This set:

https://i.postimg.cc/4NHZhMKS/funk.jpg

There's a time-worn bit about being poor and buying an encyclopedia one volume at a time.

One year all your school papers were about aardvarks, the next year about beavers, and so on.

I was looking at a Greta Garbo clip on youtube today and wondered if the 'classic age' of early cinema is going this way.. maybe some old white guy film snobs are still watching these movies but nobody else gives a shit about them

sad if true

I'd figure some of that is kind of hard to find. I was wanting to go back and check out a bunch of Bogart movies I saw as a kid and in college and outside the really big ones, hard to find them streaming in the usual suspects.

A lot is on YouTube

Sorry, I meant old Hollywood generally – don't mean to to suggest all the Bogart films you wanted are as I'm sure you looked.

I mean, I don't think lack of availability is the real reason people aren't watching films from the 30s and 40s much anymore.

Criterion et al have really tried to keep some of this stuff available on streaming but I just wonder if the demand is diminishing in general

Like everybody (who's into film) reads about Battleship Potemkin and knows a little bit about the iconic scenes, but how long will people actually watch the entire picture?

it has never been easier to access old movies than now... *someone* is invested in putting all this stuff out there.

well, especially if it's outside copyright protections

I imagine it's true with novels as well.. do people still read Silas Marner anymore? probably not

honestly i remember people thinking black and white movies were "old" and "boring" since i was a kid... if they're not available for streaming, i think that has more to do with the streaming situation being what it is. a lot of people i know have just started pirating things again. (not me - i never stopped pirating things in the first place)

I was looking at a Greta Garbo clip on youtube today and wondered if the 'classic age' of early cinema is going this way.. maybe some old white guy film snobs are still watching these movies but nobody else gives a shit about them

sad if true

― Andy the Grasshopper, Saturday, August 2, 2025

My best friend, an old white guy film snob, is a film historian who wrote two books about Garbo! He considers her one of the greatest film icons of all time. And I can see his point. She did her bit and made history and then disappeared and became a mystery.

She had to have been an Enneagram 5, an introvert whose need for privacy was among her primary concerns. She lived on the east side in NY for many years incognito after her fame

Her films will live on

I subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, and Criterion, and I see only one Garbo film available to stream: The Saga of Gosta Berling, on Criterion.

But I can rent 19 others (including Grand Hotel, Queen Christina, Ninotchka, etc.) on Amazon.

On a whim, I looked at the most recent Letterboxd reviews of Ninotchka, and 8 of the last 10 were in Chinese. Apparently it screened today at a film festival in Taiwan as part of a retrospective of screwball comedies.

I'm in discords full of ppl younger than me watching classic Hollywood - including some real crate diggers, like ppl who will watch the Bowery Boys and shit.

Other random gen z classic hollywood heads: when I was on twitter one of my mutuals was a girl otherwise heavily into lgbt issues and astrology, who at one point wanted to create a community for millenial and gen z classic Hollywood fans because she was sick of boomer bigotry; a female youtuber from Sweden whose account was called My Lovely Dead Friends or something like that and was full of Fred Astaire clips; most extreme and not strictly Hollywood but when we did some zoom hangouts for Talking Pictures TV during the pandemic the regulars were mostly older British ppl and then this one teem from Conneticut. He showed off his collection of autographs from British film stars of the 1940's!

There's also a lot of interesting criticism that's v much not old white guy stuff. A tumblr influenced thing is there's a lot of research being done on classic Hollywood "fandom" - fan magazines, letters, etc. - and how it interacts with modern versions.

I dunno, I'm not arguing that it isn't becoming more niche, but ultimately I feel like there's gonna be young ppl watching these films as much as there are still young people reading Balzac.

The most delightful cognitive dissonance was one twitter exchange I stumbled across where a group of zoomers were discussing Henry Fonda being "lowkey suss". I couldn't grasp in what context but was delighted nonetheless.

sounds like they aren't entirely fonda henry

I follow a tumblr that does tournaments of 'hot' vintage actors, there are a lot of tumblr people doing classic tumblr fandom posts about e.g. Errol Flynn and Eartha Kitt and for some reason Claude Rains?

(They class vintage as from the very beginning of cinema to the 1970s, I think - seems fair to me, though absolutely open to debate.)

re: the streaming chat it feels like what's on streaming is less about demand and more about what genius execs think demand should be. not claiming there's a huge demand for old Hollywood but streaming availability is def not a measure of demand.

Side conversation: ideally, I want less internet not more, but what I probably mean is *better* internet. So: do I need to try Discord (and/or dig around on Tumblr)?

re: garbo, i'll have to check out one of those books dan s. i worked with / for an older queer filipino-american man who obviously held garbo in high esteem, and i've been meaning to watch and read more about her since.

My nephew (age 29) is getting into film and catching up on older films but basically can't watch anything from before 1970 because it is too slow. I suggested he watch The Lady Eve when I saw him at the family beach vacation this past week. I am sure he can't wait.

A couple of decades ago i worked with a guy who claimed to be a film buff but when i first knew him he'd basically never seen any b/w movies -- i think The Godfather was the oldest he'd seen. (He later revised this... i remember him saying he'd watched Citizen Kane.)

I've been watching old movies since i was a kid in the 80s and in that time it's never been any more than a niche activity. It's heartening to see so many reviews on Letterboxd of old obscurities... good to know *some* interest in this stuff is being kept alive.

xp haha. i honestly never encountered that problem. if anything, golden age films could be too fast for me! like people talked too fast haha. i mean preston sturges otm. or just about a million other movies. i encountered a little bit of 'i have to watch this differently' with silent films the first time, because it's a little closer to theater. maybe your nephew tried a rivette film lol.

because it is too slow

And yeah i get this. It absolutely takes a different level of concentration to watch, say, pre-60s westerns compared to modern movies.

There are a few objects in my parents' possession that I covet: the baby grand piano, a few lamps, a few rather rare art prints, but otherwise, most of it will be junked. The things that I am most worried about are my dad's files, which go back to 1975 and take up 10 large filing cabinet drawers, as well as all of the ridiculous little tchochkes and godawful landscape paintings by their friends that they have bought over the past two decades.

I also hoard paper, though— I have collections of Philly punk flyers from 1995-2003, Bay Area flyers 2007-2015, the entire run of Punk Planet magazine, hundreds of chapbooks, thousands of books...

I have finally started getting rid of some of the books i know i will never read, don't need to read again, and have no possibility of ever reading. Some of the more valuable stuff I've sold online, the rest of it I have been slowly bringing with me to the farmers market on Saturdays and selling off of a blanket for very cheap.

Luckily most of my record collection is not worth much, though I do have some very valuable tape cassettes.

I also have an enormous VHS collection ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . Most of it I will probably trash or give away soon, except the porn, which still has some weird value, oddly enough.

I recently gave away all my old homemade cassettes and CDRs to a local record store, couldn't find anyone else who was interested

I mostly trashed my copied cassettes, but hung onto a few. Like Let’s Active’s Big Plans For Everybody is not on Spotify and I don’t have the vinyl.

true, I do still have 100-200 left

Yesterday I was listening to a tape of Suede demos I had dubbed from like Rock Over London or some program my college radio station got cds of. For some reason I listen to cassettes when I put away laundry, as opposed to other formats.

Amoeba won't pay you very much for the recordings you sell back to them (a lot of my stuff comes from Amoeba and Forced Exposure). Maybe I should parcel out my extensive CD/LP collection to you guys before it is too late. I have so so much interesting stuff, recordings from unusual or esoteric artists, and whole labels of stuff, CD and LP box sets, some popular stuff, also many recordings that are not currently available including a whole range of modern classical recordings from Cage, Feldman etc., and I can't stand the idea of it being trashed. I would give it free to ilxors if you want it and would even pay for postage.

I don't want to give it all to one person though. Maybe I could make notices on here periodically (through a new thread) of what I am prepared to give at the time and people can message me their preferences for what they would like. I'm not sure how to make it fair, maybe some kind of rotation.

I can only mail small-to-medium size packets at a time, since I have to walk down the hill to the UPS store. I don't mind spending the money to send things to people here who will like them

that's a lovely idea and generous of you. i for one would love some feldman on cd.

it pains me slightly to see the ilx marketplace go un-updated for years. perhaps it's time we brought it back to life

Side conversation: ideally, I want less internet not more, but what I probably mean is *better* internet. So: do I need to try Discord (and/or dig around on Tumblr)?

― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Sunday, August 3, 2025 12:17 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i had a similar thought, though can't escape the feeling that no amount of curated discord use will ever make me as cool as Daniel_Rf

Please sell unwanted CDs on ILX!!!

that is a lovely idea, Dan S. i would certainly take you up on a package sometime!!

tho also think you could sell stuff here, easily

Side conversation: ideally, I want less internet not more, but what I probably mean is *better* internet. So: do I need to try Discord (and/or dig around on Tumblr)?

― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Sunday, August 3, 2025 12:17 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

me: could we feed the entire internet to one of these maybe
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1mdknva/super_powerful_industrial_shredder_devours_just/

I made a thread
It Will Have Sparked Joy: physical media iso new home

Side conversation: ideally, I want less internet not more, but what I probably mean is *better* internet. So: do I need to try Discord (and/or dig around on Tumblr)?

― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Sunday, August 3, 2025 12:17 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hmmm, I'd say only if you're willing to spend a lot of time looking. I'm signed up for dozens (a lot automatically because they're for patreons I support), but only really check 2-3 with any regularity. If a discord is popular I find it impossible to keep up; if it's only like five people that is of course its own problem. And beyond that it's always a gamble whether the community you've chosen will be your vibe, a shared interest doesn't exactly guarantee that.

As a medium it's basically designed like a chat room, and those always gave me anxiety back in the day, so I can't say I'm a huge fan. But it is at least self selecting and moderated, which means I'll take it over social media any day.

Thanks Daniel. Leaning towards no based on that description. Sounds like it would have been great when I was bored in my old office job, but needlessly anxiety-inducing right now.

does anyone still collect Beanie Babies?

I have my mother's few pieces of 'fine' jewelry, in the sense that it is made of gold, silver or gemstones. This includes her gold wedding band and another heavy ring she had a jeweler concoct from a few wedding and engagement rings that had belonged to her mom and other close relatives. When her possessions were being disposed of none of my siblings wanted to deal with these at all so they gave me carte blanche and considered them mine to do as I pleased. (NB: my sibs are, like me, are largely devoid of sentimentality over such things.)

With gold running well above $4000/oz. I may finally take them in to a jeweler and see what they bring in. This decision is surprisingly hard compared to selling off just about any other collection of stuff I don't really want. I have strong feelings about my own wedding band, but the difference there is obvious to me.

I have my dad's wedding band from his marriage to my mother which ended in divorce

My stepmom took some gold rings and had a jeweler create a custom ring for me, but it's too small and I never wear gold anyway. So they both sit in a little leather bag of trinkets

Show biz stories about the pre-Kennedy/Beatles years...Someone posted a clip today of Colbert with Billy Crystal where Crystal says something like "One more Milton Berle story; I'm the only person left who has Milton Berle stories." It was kind of touching.

Show biz stories about the pre-Kennedy/Beatles years...Someone posted a clip today of Colbert with Billy Crystal where Crystal says something like "One more Milton Berle story; I'm the only person left who has Milton Berle stories." It was kind of touching.

― clemenza, Monday, April 20, 2026 6:54 PM (one hour ago)

oh for real. i was watching... this tape of a channel 5 broadcast from 1986, right after they'd gone from WNEW to fox but before "fox" was anything but a business entity, and they're showing classic "old hollywood" movies and arlene dahl and danny aiello are there telling stories about the old days, arlene's talking about, like, errol flynn and stuff, and yeah, nobody really much cares about that kind of stuff these days.

Always felt lucky to have been born in '61; my earliest TV memories are of that world, just before it faded away. (It lingered on things like The Tonight Show.)

Interest in that sort of stuff is perhaps niche but I certainly know lots of places online where it is disseminated with enthusiasm, mostly by people much younger than myself.

it is odd that the Golden Age of Hollywood is now a niche interest, like being into operetta, but I guess time continues its relentless progress, etc.

Those born through the mid to late '70s were the last to recognize the refs to WWII-era stars and pop culture, thanks to Looney Tunes.

much earlier too, a common comment I got about my pre-WWI mixes is that things sound like cartoon music, those Tin Pan Alley songs from the late 1890s and early 1900s were still known to my cohort (born 1979) but don't think most people born in 1989 would be familiar with them.

That is not true I was born in 1985 and Looney Tunes was huge during childhood, I knew that gangsters spoke like Edward G. Robinson long before I knew who Edward G. Robinson was. I also recall Donald Glover (b. 1983) expressing befuddlement at people younger than himself not knowing about Looney Tunes.

The 90's were a time of huge exposure for Warner Bros characters, Space Jam, Tiny Toons/Animaniacs, and the originals were always playing on Cartoon Network.

Born in the 80s, agreed, but they seem to start disappearing from the culture sometime in the 90s, so if you were born in 1989 and started being aware of culture in the late 90s that feels about right

we had these curated cartoon compilation shows Stay Tooned and Rolf's Cartoon Club (lol) on TV in the late 80s and early 90s, plus VHS tapes, plus they would be on TV to fill 5 minute gaps, none of this was on by the year 2000.

xp a few years back I was reading The Stepford Wives and Bobbie says about her son “not bad for a kid who looks like Peter Lorre”. I know Peter Lorre by name though I haven’t seen much/any of his work but I googled anyway to see what he looked like and I’m instantly like, oh! The guy from the cartoons! I grew up watching those too.

xp to Daniel sorry

I know people born in the 60s who don't get those references btw.

Gen Z and after exposure to Looney Tunes is mostly about BIG CHUNGUS.

ilxor.com

This convo reminds me a friend of mine is head of a P.G. Wodehouse Appreciation Society in Scandianvia, and every now and then he receives irate e-mails from old codgers all "we need to get some fresh blood in, the youths don't care about Wodehouse enough!".

He’s right u know

a couple of years back I had a chat with the head of the British Music Hall Society, he told me that they have warehouses full of memorabilia and nothing to do with it, their average member is 80 years old and they keep getting bequeathed collections which just get added to the warehouse, he said I was younger than any of their members (I was at the time I think 44)

does anyone still collect Beanie Babies?

I was gonna share this story before I even saw why you revived the thread heh. My mom had kept exactly one Beanie Baby for almost 30 years in a special box because it was so valuable. I asked her how she got it, she couldn't remember. I asked her how she knew it was valuable, she couldn't remember. But she was adamant about its value. I looked it up last year to find it was worthless and she wouldn't believe me, thought I got something wrong. I think she knows now but it's still sitting in the closet in that special box

Oh shit, that reminds me of a bummer that I experienced in 6th grade. I was staying with an uncle and aunt who I looked up to a lot at the time but in hindsight they had a lot of troubles and mental health issues.

My uncle had been into comics when he was a kid, in the late 60s and early 70s. Most of his collection had been worn out or trashed by the time I came along but he had a few that were in good shape that he knew would make them a lot of money one day. My aunt, not being a comics person, believed him.

So I’m 12 and looking at these priceless comics, stuff like Avengers #1. I notice that these are a mix of reprints and annuals, none of which were rare or in good enough shape to be worth much. I tried to delicately let my Aunt know this and she insisted I didn’t know what I was talking about. When I tried to explain how reprints worked she started getting upset and I dropped it.

Looking back, my bipolar wack-ass uncle had probably convinced my aunt that they were going to retire on these comics. And here comes a 12 year old breaking the news to her that no, that’s not happening.

Born in '68 and watched Looney Tunes in the mid-'70s but most of those Old Hollywood references sailed right over my head. Even though the old films were run on TV every single day such that they were like the fabric of life, I managed to avoid learning much about the personalities involved. Pretty sure I didn't know who Bette Davis was until the song "Bette Davis Eyes" came out in '81. Or Joan Crawford until Mommie Dearest the same year. And there was a movie about Frances Farmer out around the same time, who for all I knew was a star of the same stature as the other two. Would not have known Jimmy Cagney or Cary Grant or Garbo, or many others.

But by the time Johnny Carson retired I had caught up with Hollywood lore to such an extent that I felt sad that we were losing a major connection to the old culture, because Carson was the last of the American TV interviewers who was at complete ease talking to old movie stars, being only a bit younger than them. And his Tonight Show was the last big show to really indulge nostalgia for Old Hollywood by booking the old stars frequently.

I was a weird child who used to watch old movies with my mum and pester her on who Elisha J. Cook was or whoever.

I mean Elisha Cook Jr., of course!

I was telling my own mum (born 1955) who Ruby Murray was, she genuinely had no idea somehow, had only heard the name from the rhyming slang.

I find out about most of this stuff via Gregg Turkington's On Cinema character

Gen X here.

My paternal grandfather went to Hollywood in the late ‘20s/early ‘30s intending to act in films, but threw in the towel after a few years. Some of the friends he made during that time became huge stars, and my dad grew up with those stories and a huge appreciation for classic Hollywood b/w films. Both parents spent a lot of time at the movies in the 1950s and ‘60s, and encouraged me to watch films they’d liked as kids, or to watch new stuff featuring stars they liked as kids. By the time I was 13, I had my own taste and liked Powell/Pressburger films, while making my dad take us to film noir bills at rickety old Twin Cities film clubs.

Alternatively, our indie TV stations played things I didn’t like because they were ubiquitous - the ‘70s were wall to wall Laurel and Hardy/Little Rascals serials or B westerns, our elementary school showed Godzilla and Lone Ranger matinees during short holidays, and my other grandfather bought a umatic VCR and would tape me anything I wanted to see.

I wasn't a Loony Tunes guy, but along with my own childhood memories of all the '50s shows, The Tonight Show was key. Carson had a reverence for that era that extended not just to the Jack Bennys and Lucille Balls, but to people like George Jessel and Kitty Carlisle--they were treated as royalty all through the '70s and beyond.

that's awesome

I know '80s cartoons get shit for existing as marketing for toys, but G.I. Joe, Thundercats, and Transformers had interesting characters, snappy dialogue, and were well-drawn. At the dawn of the '80s the Sat morning cartoon lineup consisted of animated versions of TV sitcoms like Mork and Mindy and Laverne and Shirley, just wretched.

I was just thinking that the coming of the VCR, if anything, delayed my education in old Hollywood because with access to a VCR all I wanted to do was watch recentish films of the '70s and '80s. Pay Cable TV was a simultaneous factor in that.

I was thinking the other day...what was the last truly classic cartoon voice? A voice where, if you could do a half-decent impression, everyone would understand who you were trying to do? The most recent one I can think of is Spongebob Squarepants. Maybe Peter Griffin, idk which one came first.

I’ve never heard Spongebob’s voice and avoided Family Guy after only learning of its existence due to a plagiarism reveal

Several contenders on the Simpsons though.

Cartman, unfortunately, is quite likely in the running according to my generational cohort

her son “not bad for a kid who looks like Peter Lorre”

there's a recurring thing in Under the Volcano where the main character keeps seeing a poster for 'PETER LORRE en LOS MANOS de ORLAC!' which was actually called 'Mad Love' when released here... but I knew who Lorre was from Loony Tunes!

There was always Creepy Guy with a Lorre voice. My first "Hey, he's imitating Peter Lorre!" moment when I heard Ren's voice; I wouldn't have known had I not watched The Maltese Falcon my freshman year of college.

Rocky Rococo, at your cervix

My mom had kept exactly one Beanie Baby for almost 30 years

there was a local AM talk station that did multiple segments on Beanie Babies back at the turn of the century... an 'expert' would answer questions about valuation, people talked about them like they fucking Fabergé eggs or something.. I remember just shaking my head in disgust

I wonder if anyone successfully funded a lavish retirement with their beanie baby auction profits

circa 1999, a friend got a gig as an au pair in the extended royal family of a MENA nation, and when she was telling her grandma about it on the phone, grandma asked "Do they have different beanie babies over there?"

On the subject of Beanie Babies, the VEMIA musical instrument auction has just finished:
https://spheremusic.com/

It's a fascinating mixture of things that were treasured a long time ago, and are still treasured because they're useful - and also things that were treasured a long time ago and are now useless. The most recent auction had a mass of professional analogue TV gear. Timebase synchronisers, format converters, videotape time code generators, stuff that was expensive and valuable if you wanted to show a US NTSC television programme on UK PAL TV.

As of 2026 however it's totally worthless, and probably very hard to get working. Even if it could be made to work, the end result wouldn't be worth the time, unless you were perhaps making an analogue horror film about a demon that lives inside videotape and you wanted it to look period-correct.

Every year there was a load of gear from the touring set-up of Genesis, the band. Tapes that were meant to be projected on a screen behind the band. MIDI clock generators. Patch bays. Microphone cables. Keyboard stands etc. It was all theoretically still useful, but it was slightly too expensive because of the Genesis connection. Every year it went unsold because there isn't anybody in the world who is willing to pay a premium for a keyboard stand that was once used by Tony Banks, but not in a notable way. And yet perhaps there is such a person, and they just didn't bid. So every year it was relisted, and failed to sell.

You know, it's not quite the same, but I have a solar-powered power bank. It's a fairly heavy power bank with a set of fold-out solar panels. Every time it's sunny I carefully put it in the sunshine, taking care not to let shadows fall over any part of the solar panels. I charge it up, and charge it up... and never use it.

Because then it wouldn't be charged up. It's going to remain like that until it breaks. Then it'll have to go to the recycling centre because it's electrical poison. I charge it up, and then never use it. It's like a metaphor for something.

a life jacket from the Titanic just sold for $900K - an old valued thing that someone clearly still cares about

At the dawn of the '80s the Sat morning cartoon lineup consisted of animated versions of TV sitcoms like Mork and Mindy and Laverne and Shirley, just wretched.

That's especially hilarious, considering how much those shows already were basically live-action cartoons. Now I'm imagining a through-the-looking-glass scenario of someone who *only* knew the animated versions making new live-action versions, a la the John Goodman-era Flintstones (which, yeah, I know the cartoon was only 'loosely based' on the Honeymooners, but still).

I wonder if anyone successfully funded a lavish retirement with their beanie baby auction profits

Apologies if I've already mentioned this, but the Beanie Baby mania was so heavy in '98/'99 that I was able to supplement my meager AmeriCorps earnings by working at a gift shop, where I was paid about $10 per hour to engrave shiny metal plates bearing the names of the most popular Beanies, which would then be affixed to a fancy plastic case that contained it. For about a year, I could not engrave those damn plates fast enough. Then the boom was over, I was told I was no longer needed, and the owner was stuck trying to unload about 100 Valentinas, Hopes, and Millennia (and their associated plates).

A few years later, a woman I briefly dated invited me to her parents' house for dinner, and on one of their mantel pieces they had a Beanie Baby in a plastic display case. However, it was not one I engraved, but from a rival shop(!). No wonder it didn't work out!

a life jacket from the Titanic just sold for $900K

some billionaire's son has a wedding proposal planned

Circling back to this: Show biz stories about the pre-Kennedy/Beatles years

I miss this. I used to work with some dudes in a warehouse/factory setting (weed pipes, actually - about thirty years ago) and this was a constant source of conversation... Sammy Davis Jr ("My golf handicap? I'm a one-eyed black jew!"), Django Reinhardt punching holes in the walls of Paris hotels so his gypsy family could move more freely between rooms, boozy stories about Hollywood's golden age, blacklisted screenwriters and the snitches who tattled, Steve McQueen, Robert Mitchum, Peter O'Toole, the Kenneth Anger book, the rise & fall of doomed starlets, etc., etc.

I really miss all those conversations, but I guess there's a dwindling number of us that are still interested. Rock stuff seems more evergreen, but it's a younger, more counter-culture art form

Was thinking that another outlet for that generation through the '70s was game shows, Hollywood Squares especially. In my last budget-book order, I bought Don Rickles: Merchant of Venom. It'll be like reading a horror film--expect I'll have to hide behind my hands throughout--but I know it'll be filled with '50s showbiz stuff.

What was the book that came out a few uears aho about a hunk sleeping his way around gay old Hollywood? All I can remember is Charles Laughton being the freakiest of the lot with a shit fetish.

My grandmother had a copy of Hollywood Babylon that I was fascinated by.

I was gonna share this story before I even saw why you revived the thread heh. My mom had kept exactly one Beanie Baby for almost 30 years in a special box because it was so valuable. I asked her how she got it, she couldn't remember. I asked her how she knew it was valuable, she couldn't remember. But she was adamant about its value. I looked it up last year to find it was worthless and she wouldn't believe me, thought I got something wrong. I think she knows now but it's still sitting in the closet in that special box

― Vinnie, Tuesday, April 21, 2026 6:49 AM (fourteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

My parents have a set of Disney collectable plates that they've been telling us for years will be ours when they die, and they are convinced these things are really, really valuable. I don't have the heart to tell them that they're worthless and will be going to the nearest Goodwill right after the funeral.

also: anyone tried to unload baseball cards lately? Whoa, nelly. When I was a kid, my grandfather used to buy me the complete seasons of Topps cards for my birthday. They came in this rectangular box. Poor guy truly believed he was contributing to my college fund because there was, like, a Mark McGuire rookie card in there.

Aren't some baseball cards still worth tons of money?

Ruby Murray (...) from the rhyming slang.

Whoa, only this instant realised why a nearby purveyor of curry dishes -- run by English migrants -- shared her name. (Perhaps a decade after it closed lol. *blushes*)

Cow_Art: I know the guy you're thinking of, I started to watch a documentary about him (on YouTube) and got sidetracked--just can't remember the name.

Thank you, A.I.: Scotty Bowers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotty_and_the_Secret_History_of_Hollywood

Interesting revive, not least because my wife and I were wondering about when to introduce looney tunes etc. to our toddler. Given he is asserting his place in the world by victimising the cat; he does not need to know what Jerry or tweety can do to a cat with a frying pan just yet.

My parents definitely steered me towards the older looney tunes and hanna barbers stuff partly out of nostalgia and partly out of a slight horror at how 80s cartoons were so explicitly about selling toys. Nostalgia for that era was strong, there was a swing dance revival and who framed Roger Rabbit was a highpoint in that nostalgia.

My dad loved to show us TopCat especially. He has a deep and abiding love for Phil silvers from his child hood and will still, if given the chance at a fancy dress party, dress as Bilko (or Groucho) much to the bemusement of even people of his generation.

Nonetheless we would definitely watch the flintstones or cartoon time (with rolf harris) on a Saturday afternoon as a family.

The simpsons is obviously a revival as cartoon primarily as entertainment rather than as toy adverts, there was that Jim Henson’s dinosaurs one as well, puppets I think. Buts also ren and stimpy, rocko’s modern life, animaniacs and tiny toons etc.

Cartoon Network needed hanna barbera to fill a schedule when they started (in fact probably started to monetise the massive turner library of that stuff), now they have 30 years of modern archive.

It’s a shame though because I learnt so much about music from loony tunes and there’s some really funny stuff as well.

Kill the wabbit

Aren't some baseball cards still worth tons of money?

― Cattedrale metropolitana di Santa Maria de Episcopio, Tuesday, April 21, 2026 9:11 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I think if you subscribe to the idea that a thing's monetary value is whatever people are willing to pay for it, I don't think so. You may have a rare and valuable Mickey Mantle baseball card, but how many people out there would be willing to pay what it's worth? Something can be "worth a lot of money," but if no one wants to buy it, do you jut hold onto it?

Another good example is fine china. My sister tried selling hers a few years ago, thinking the set would go for serious money on eBay or something, and she ended up selling the whole lot on Craigslist for like $200.

I think yes plenty of baseball cards are worth good money in regards to what people are willing to pay, but most are not worth that much. I also have a couple of mark mcguire rookies ha.

Getting equal amounts of Warner Bros and Hanna Barbera on Cartoon Network as a kid was also educational as you quickly learn the difference between great art and absolute fucking garbage.

I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house when I was a kid. My grandpa had been a journalist -- he was the radio and then TV critic for a big-city paper for 40 years, so he was completely immersed in the entertainment world of the 1930s to '60s. He'd listened to every radio program, watched every TV show in that era, and interviewed so many stars: Walt Disney, Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny, Lucy, etc. The stories he told were amazing in hindsight, but at the time it was more like 'Oh no, Grandpa's talking about interviewing George Gobel again...' And boy, when I was a kid staying over there in the 80s and early 90s the TV was constantly on. I was encouraged to watch Looney Tunes, Abbot and Costello (and some Laurel and Hardy), so many reruns. By that time the golden-age stars only showed up on Carson, game shows, and the odd episode of Matlock and Murder She Wrote, and to a 10-year-old they all seemed a bit frightening. But even then I had a wistful sense of Old Hollywood dying out.

getting a touted prospect's "actual" rookie card, even if they have not even proven themselves in the majors, will still set you back a hundo or so

Xps yeah growing up in the 90s watching old WB cartoons you’d get Lorre, Jolson, Edward g Robinson, Vincent price… you didn’t really need to know the reference for it to work. Also at that time the animaniacs ppl were going you know what kids go fucking wild for is extended takeoffs of Pesci in goodfellas & Hoffman in rain man. Throw in an orson Welles impersonation & you’ll be printing money

But even then I had a wistful sense of Old Hollywood dying out.

It is now officially extinct, right? Kirk Douglas and Olivia de Havilland were the last holdouts.

my brother and I used to do Orson Welles impressions all the time because of Animaniacs and The Critic, both of which referenced the infamous "Frozen Peas" tape, which I had no idea even existed until many years later.

one thing I remember about those days is how you'd hear the same voices across different cartoons. Billy West was in everything and he did the same voices a lot - Doug Funnie was basically Fry who was also the red M&M. one of the Powerpuff Girls had the Tommy Pickles voice. Maurice LaMarche would pop up in a bunch of stuff. dunno if you have dedicated voice actors like that anymore, I just assume Chris Pratt voices everything now

Other hand me downs from my dad included his spike jones records which have a lot of references to the same things as looney tunes. I should listen to those again.

I think you still get voice actors in tv animation but in movies yeah it's the same stupid parade of celebs every time. As with many things, we can blame Disney.

My dad, in the early 90s saw that there was a model train collector meetup at a local school, and carted down his boxes of 1940s Lionel trains which were beloved but we could only ever get to run intermittently even with new power supplies. Big O-gauge things. He walked out with a few thousand in cash, relieved because there was no one younger than himself. "This hobby is not moving forward into the future."

His brother left our grandmother's basement filled with slot cars and half-built remote control airplanes. Seems like a lot of these transport-based toys were replaced by video game sims.

Xps yeah growing up in the 90s watching old WB cartoons you’d get Lorre, Jolson, Edward g Robinson, Vincent price…

Did you get Vincent Price? Charles Boyer I remember and Charles Laughton I think?

"Of Mice and Men" was parodied constantly but it didn't really matter if you knew that or not, I certainly didn't and I imagine most other 8 years olds didn't either:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKxrJQlSMXs

I have never understood collecting sports cards.

I guess collecting in general is kinda pointless, but sport cards don’t DO anything. Books and records do something. Magic the Gathering cards are part of a game. I guess sports people are really into stats and the cards have stat stuff on them?

I understand that it’s simply not for me and card
collecting isn’t inherently sillier than what I collect but it boggles my mind.

Xps yeah growing up in the 90s watching old WB cartoons you’d get Lorre, Jolson, Edward g Robinson, Vincent price…

Did you get Vincent Price? Charles Boyer I remember and Charles Laughton I think?

Yeah I think Price was known because of other things, the Tim Burton stuff, "Thriller" and such. Looking this up I found out he did recite The Raven in an episode of Tiny Toons.

xp blew my mind a year ago when I found out my 13 yo nephew was collecting Pokemon cards seemingly unaware there was a game associated with it. like he never stopped to consider what any of the words or numbers meant. to him it was just a collectable thing that could be worth money and (lets face it) a form of legalized gambling for children

There’s definitely classic looney tunes with a character based on price, basically taking the place of what would usually be a Lorre clone

My MIL has collected a lot of figurines throughout her life, thinking that one day they would be worth money. Now that she's old and can't shop anymore, I get one every birthday and Christmas. I give them straight to the charity shop. Look, maybe some day the wheel will turn in their favour again and they will indeed be worth money, but at the moment they all seem to be worth about €20, if even that. I dread to think how much she paid for these things new.

I think the thing about something like baseball cards is the valuable ones were a way to connect with the heroes of youth, and the cards weren't yet made for collectability. So there was a scarcity, but it was also tied to memory. Those who have a direct emotional connection to midcentury sports figures has rapidly dwindled, while it seems there's a fairly renewable source of people who have an emotional connection to Beatles, Floyd, Queen, Miles, Fleetwood Mac, so maybe those things hold some value commensurate with existing supply. I think it's nice people can still buy the media they want for about the same inflation-adjusted costs they would have back in the day.

I guess we’ll find out in a few months if Looney Tunes is still viable in the 21st century. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-43VeYGiPM

Well there was also The Day The Earth Blew Up, the Daffy/Porky movie. Too much of a straightahead adventure film imo but it had some solid gags.

Only one family in the cinema at the screening I attended thom

_But even then I had a wistful sense of Old Hollywood dying out._

It is now officially extinct, right? Kirk Douglas and Olivia de Havilland were the last holdouts.

Slightly later generation but funny how Eva Marie Saint, Kim Novak and Tippi Hedren all survived Hitchcock and are still with us.

If they can survive Hitchcock, they can beat old age.

Baseball cards had actual functionality in the pre-Internet era if you cared about knowing player stats (and fans definitely cared about that), pre-1970 cards hold value but once the industry realized people would collect them they started producing a glut of them and destroyed their collector value (late 80s/90s).

Wouldn't real stats-heads just buy a little paperback book with a bunch of fine-print data? Those existed, right? Seems like that'd be better than not knowing an answer because you haven't yet acquired a particular card. I mean towards bendy's take, that it starts from being a kid into baseball, and being able to hold your heroes in your hands.

xp that coyote vs acme trailer. i bailed halfway through. the line "this is an opportunity to show people what you're capable of!" should not be anywhere near anything wiley e coyote related. just a complete desecration of a perfect artifact.

lol

heartened to hear Looney Tunes are exempt from yr shows-and-movies aversion, map!

https://i.imgur.com/YKDH4dP.jpg

"Exempt, that is!"

xp i screen "what's opera doc" on youtube regularly.

Alfred that content is not viewable in my region

https://i.ibb.co/KPGbNzy/images.jpg

"Region, that is!"

Th- I say, thank you kindly!

Foghorn Leghorn is an interesting one to bring up because while Looney Tunes prolonged cultural memory of Peter Lorre and Edward G Robinson, that rooster did not I think do the same to the Fred Allen Show character he's a riff on.

Well, Peter Lorre and Edward G Robinson were Hollywood actors, famous all over the world, whereas the Fred Allen Show was an American radio show - had to google that because I'd never heard of it or Fred Allen.

I'm sure Looney Tunes is full of references specific to American culture I still wouldn't pick up on.

I have spent more time than I would advise listening to 1930s/1940s US radio and it's a strange lost country for the most part, but the British shows from the same time are like another planet.

Tom D that is fair but I don't think anyone in the US knows either! They might know Fred Allen but not the specific character Foghorn is based on, unless they're really deep into this stuff.

I wonder if Bugs Bunny's constant cross-dressing puts him at odds with the current rightwing culture warriors

xp I can vouch for that, had no idea

Been going through old stuff recently and have found again my grandad's coin collection. Just had a look online to see what a few of them are worth and the answer is... basically nothing. Like I have a Churchill crown from 1965 here which is worth all of £2, and a bag of 40s/50s halfpennies which are worth absolutely nothing. Still nice to have, I guess.

I guess Hee-Haw deserves a mention on this thread

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge

i clicked on a hee haw the other night because i recalled my grandparents tuning in when we used to spend the night as a youngin'. i suppose at the time it had perceived value? it was honestly beyond tripe IMHO
xp

we watched that every fucking week when I was a kid, but only because my dad was a big buck owens fan (and hee-haw was not a good representation of Owens' talents)

Wouldn't real stats-heads just buy a little paperback book with a bunch of fine-print data? Those existed, right?

They existed but cards were just more fun (and tended to have more up-to-date info than a book that would lag behind by a year or two most likely). In an era where you had no online video or stat lookup sites, the immediate utility of a card with a player photo and current stats on it was apparent. Now it's vestigial and secondary to the card-as-collector-item.

like as a kid in the 80s if you wanted to know who was on your team that year, you could consult the box scores in the newspaper, buy a program at the stadium, or get a team card in a pack - we definitely tried to collect every player on our team each year (also an era where players didn't bounce around from team to team nearly as much)

the cards had chewing gum as well, which was the actual product... the cards were a coercive to purchase

hee-haw was not a good representation of Owens' talents

I watched it as well and it was only MUCH later in life that I learned that Owens and Roy Clark had this whole other life beyond that corn pone show. It was really anachronistic - it started during the height of womens lib/anti-war/heavy rock/back to the land counterculture, and quaintly looked back to the Opry and stuff like that

Same thing when I learned that Dionne Warwick had done a couple things before Solid Gold ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the Hee-Haw commentary reminded me of a hospital room for a brief while last year— my roommate, an older man, was watching reruns of The Waltons, a show I had never seen, and which I doubt anyone younger than me knows anything about

I guess this show is about to make a comeback on Netflix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2khlhrI83U

Hee Haw: I was probably the last generation to grow up singing “WHERE OH WHERE ARE YOU TONIGHT
WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME HERE ALL ALONE
I SEARCHED THE WORLD OVER AND THOUGHT I FOUND TRUE LOVE
YOU MET ANOTHER AND (blow massive spit-spraying rasberry) YOU WERE GONE”

ha I remember that tune

or Junior selling a car, license plate BR-549

I’m going through job interviews and all the managers interviewing me are significantly younger and this thread title bums me out, mods can we change it to “old useful things that will find a satisfying purpose.” Thanks!

Hi Cow Art I am doing the same thing, it fucking sucks

I was gong to say I'm surprised no one answered this thread with "me"

I considered posting "the US Constitution (not the USS Constitution)" but decided against it.

when AI takes away my livelihood, I intend to dress up as a Miner '49er (with a pick axe and gold pan, and a bedroll) and sing 'Oh Susannah!' for San Francisco tourists.. but they won't be carrying cash anymore

That's something I'm painfully aware of now - homeless people must really suffer because no one has cash to hand out anymore.

@ f.hazel - that makes sense!

x-post In DC I've seen panhandlers with signs for their Venmo or other such accounts.

Big Issue sellers (who are all unhoused) in London have card readers.

Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things
And battles long ago

Remembered it from my Wordsworth collector card

here's a sad story of an old man who lived across the street from me and was hit & killed by a car (in a crosswalk), his little dog was also killed.. maybe about a year ago
Anyway, they put a dumpster on the sidewalk below the window and just tossed everything in his apartment into that dumpster. A lifetime of acquisitions (his wife shortly preceded him in death I believe)... no estate sale, just right into the dump. I was almost tempted to see what was in the dumpster but it was all a little too sad

― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, April 18, 2025 1:51 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is rough. who is 'they'? his family or like the management company? & how far down was the drop from window to dumpster?

and a bag of 40s/50s halfpennies which are worth absolutely nothing. Still nice to have, I guess.

When we were kids we used to use these to play cards with my granny. They could then be exchanged for the stale fizzle sticks she kept in a tin under her bed.

My aunt told me that my granny used to cheat when she played us at switch. Mad old woman.

that sounds like a landlord move, if there had been an executor of his estate they would not have done that

we had a quality street tin of big victorian pennies that we used when playing newmarket with gran.

xpost Square readers are cheap, only about 10 bucks or so.

(ebay prices vary from £1.50 to over 100 depending, apparently, on the hairstyle. or £25 for 100)

(^ victorian pennies)

penny was spoilt victorian
penny was spoilt victorian

I have my mother's collection of Royal Copenhagen xmas plates, late 50s to mid 60s, no idea if valuable. Also my parents' coin collection, most of which has base value for its silver content, probably no collector's value except maybe the Stone Mountain commemorative half dollars from the 1920s. I've been sitting on all that for years because trying to maximize return and not leave too much $$$ on the table sounds like so much work.

who is 'they'? his family or like the management company?

Not really sure... it was a second floor apartment, and they were literally throwing things out the window into the dumpster, just like some hired dudes

I was thinking that Elliot Gould's characters in The Long Goodbye and California Split fit in with some of the recent discussion on old showbiz...he's wandering around in the early '70s with all that stuff floating around his head, talking his own private language that most of the world has already lost interest in: the Seven Dwarfs, Barbara Stanwyck, Dumbo, Claude Rains, etc. (Not completely private--George Segal and the security guy who does movie impressions share it.)

If they remake California Split in 2042, two drunk women will be sitting in a bar trying to name the five Spice Girls:

"Okay, I've got Sporty Spice, Ginger Spice, Scary Spice...Grumpy Spice?"
"There's no Grumpy Spice--that's a different crew."

> quality street tin

Why is it that painted tins feel...valuable and worth keeping around? They're useful, yes, but not to the extent the various awkward and incompatible shapes jammed into shelves and under beds attest. All those spools and cards of thread in all those tins, all those tea boxes filled with coins, a box of Dutch cheese crackers that just fits the checkbooks we barely use.

There's a guy in my work who is the double of Claude Rains but I'm left with the agony of not knowing who to tell about it.

But does he have the mellifluous voice, the urbanity, the savoir faire to complete the resemblance?

Elliot Gould was born just a year before Snow White came out; he and his audience of war babies and Boomers would have grown up saturated in Disney theatrical re-releases, storybooks, songs broadcast on The Wonderful World of Disney, etc. I'd say this is like watching elder millennials talking about The Goonies or Back to the Future - it's not exactly *their* pop culture, but it is the pop culture they grew up stewing in.

oops - he was born the year *after* Snow White came out! Could have been a screaming baby annoying the rest of the audience!

and then you have all the "old-time movies on late-night TV" stuff in When Harry Met Sally... i think the cultural shifts of the 60s undoubtedly moved the Golden Age from the center of culture, but it took much much longer to cease comprising a meaningful bank of references and shared lore.

I remember my grandmother telling me about Jimmy Durante's "Goodnight, Mrs Calabash" line and when I asked who she was, the reply: "Only he knows."

i always associate Claude Raines with the Invisible Man hence I don't know what he looks like; bandages and sunglasses

I would refer you to Casablanca, but that might be too remote for some.

The essence of Claude Raines is on display in several important scenes in Lawrence of Arabia.

also prominent in the verses of Science Fiction Double Feature from Rocky Horror!

that song itself is a paean to an entire universe that was flickering and fading even back when I went to RHPS screenings in high school

loving RHPS and Bowie's Diamond Dogs in the early 90s kinda felt like you'd hitched your wagon to a doomed milieu

Nick At Night was around for a while, doing good work.

There was different kinds of nostalgia happening in the early '70s, yes: Bonnie & Clyde/W.C. Fields-era, Bogart/Mitchum/noir-era, and, most of all, American Graffiti/Richrd Nader/much else '50s-era. I do think those two Gould characters are presented as being a little out of step with most everyone they encounter (like Marlowe played off against the nude space cadets next door in The Long Goodbye).

i always associate Claude Raines with the Invisible Man hence I don't know what he looks like; bandages and sunglasses

"We'll begin with a reign of terror," is still my favourite thing to say when I put on new sunglasses.

The movie Casablanca is set in Morocco, in North Africa.

The plot revolves around an airplane flight and a mysterious woman.

The character of Captain Renault is a morally compromised man who seeks absolution and redemption.

This explains the song that goes I bless Claude Rains down in Africa.

re: those Gould characters: for sure! he, and Altman even moreso, have some solid generational distance on the space cadets in question.

maybe part of their appeal was sort of like a beatnik sensibility --- pretty hep, anti-establishment, charting their own course, but not really "of" the 60s in a youth-culture sense. and in the 70s they could connect with that countercultural sensibility while honestly wearing enough wry detachment to regard the hippie generation with both appreciation and a raised eyebrow. and maybe an attachment to pre-1950s pop culture is one of the things that marks that distance. "Hey Nineteen," and Steely Dan in general, are like the same phenomenon displaced by ten more years.

Not to derail the thread, but the Claude Rains reference in California Split is one of my favourite bits in the movie. It's when Gould is sizing up all the poker players for Segal and comes to the empty chair at the table:

"Who can tell, right? Very tall stack of chips. A little impressive...I dunno, unless it's Claude Rains in The Invisible Man. If you see your chips floating up away from you, you know the game is too tough for us and we’re going and we hit something else, right?"

The Steely Dan conection to this thread is dead-on, making me wonder if there is a term for the timeframe when a reference to the past still has cultural cache, and another for when it totally disappears. I'm thankful that I saw so many pre-1980s films with older people to fill in the gaps on any references of which I was unaware, because if I was to watch them for the first time nowadays, I'd regularly be totally lost. I'm guessng this is why any sitcom made before 1980 feels so much of another galaxy.

(Now I'm imagining a cantankerous Donald Fagen doing the exact opposite of glazing a dying past, like a 2026 post-Becker live performance where after the "..in sixty-seven" line that opens "Hey Nineteen", he adds "That's right, I just said SIIIIIX-SEVEN! SIX-SEVEN!")

I work with a cadre of thirtysomethings and they consider me funny but chiefly as a non-sequitur machine because I make lots of referential jokes but they only catch like 1 in 20 of the references, they love the 80s in the abstract though (I try not to talk about how vicious and cruel it was)