online community focused on sharing and reminiscing about video, audio, and images that stir our memories of the past – old television, theme songs, commercials, print advertisements, the sights and sounds you remember
Right after the invasion of Pearl Harbor, the newspapers often had headlines like this such as in San Francisco and Los Angelos. Reports were confirmed by the military but there was never any proof of the enemy planes. After the war, Japan confirmed that it never flew over the coast of California. If you look at the history books and newspapers from that time frame you would see that Japan was very busy in the China Sea with major offensives. Wikipedia has an interesting write-up about this called Battle of Los Angeles where they say it might have been weather balloons.
Oh, there was magic and dreams in this book! The hours I’d spend putting together my wish list for Christmas and birthday. With the ease of online shopping I don’t there there is as good a collection put together as the Sears catalog was! I remember this cover like it was yesterfday!
Some interesting interviews of the 20th century are now streaming on various online services. Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, and Merv Griffin all interviewed the headliners of our time.
One such episode was on August 26, 1965 The Merv Griffin Show had two interesting figures of World War II.
Mitsuo Fuchida was the commander of the Japanese attack force during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He explained to Merv and the audience that there were no plans to occupy Pearl Harbor or the mainland USA, just diminish the naval capacity by destroying the ships docked there.
Frederick Ayer Jr was also a guest on the show. Ayer in 1941 was a young FBI agent who was following the traffic of the rumblings of war with Japan. General George Patton was Ayer’s uncle.
The thing I found most fascinating about the interview was how Ayer and Merv discussed how on the night of the invasion how there was a huge traffic jam in San Francisco going to the beach to watch the Japanese arrival!
Captain Fuchida agreed that dropping nuclear weapons saved lives. After the Japanese surrender during General MacArthur’s occupation, Fuchida met a street minister and turned his life over to Jesus Christ. Fuchida spent the rest of his life as a minister and as an author writing about the war. Fuchida died in 1976.
I did not link this interview because it will change to and from various streaming services. This was season 2 episode 79.
John “Motormouth” Moschitta Jr., also known as “The Fast Talking Guy became most popular from the FedEx commercials starting in 1981 which lead to six Cleo awards. Cleo’s celebrate the excellence in advertising. Since then he appeared in over 100 commercials, this FedEx is probably his most remembered ad. Moschitta first appeared in the ABC TV series That’s Incredible. He has been credited in the Guinness Book of World Records as the World’s Faster Talker at 586 words per minute.
John has been on many television shows from Sesame Street, Garfield and Friends, Pinky and the Brain , announcer on Hollywood Squares (2003-2004) and as himself in Family Guy as the FedEx voice guy in the Fox-y-Lady episode in 2009. He is credited in movies like Young Doctors In Love, Starchaser, Transformer Movie and the radio announcer in Dick Tracy.
Here is a commercial from 1967 when McDonald’s was boasting that they had 600 restaurants. I probably haven’t heard this jingle since I was a kid and I was able to start singing along with it. A perfect jingle since the goal is for you to remember the place and hopefully, the song gets stuck in your head!
Oh, the kids today don’t know the struggles. Everything in our day was physical media and subject to all sorts of problems. Photography, video, and even money are now digital/electronic. Sure, it is not without its problems but they are so much less today! But I remember wanting to record on my cassette player the first run of the Brady Bunch off the TV in the 70s. Recording TV was truly revolutionary!
It’s hard to believe this song was performed on the Lawrence Welk Show in 1971. At the end of the clip, Lawrence Welk calls it a modern spiritual song. It is not known if this was serious or if a writer pulled a prank on the show but this song One Toke Over The Line was originally performed by Brewer and Shipley and the lyrics are a direct reference to smoking the Mary Jane, weed, reefer or jive LOL.
If your dad made you watch Lawrence Welk like mine did, you can now show them the type of abuse you had to endure!
I have over 5,000 songs on my mp3 player from the ’60s through the ’90s. I like putting it on a mix to hear a large variety. It also gives me ideas for this page.
Holdin’ On came on and it had that driving sound from the ’80s but I couldn’t remember who performed. Turns out to Be Tane Cain. At first, I thought that was the band name but that is the performer.
She is the daughter of actor Doug McClure and she first appeared in the TV series The Virginian when she was just 5 years old. In the 1970’s she met and married Journey’s keyboardist Johnathan Cain. Now known as Tané Cain she got a record deal with RCA. The first release Danger Zone failed to chart but his song Holdin’ On made it to number 37 on the Billboard Hot 100. Billboard described her as “an artist to watch” She hated when people compared her to Pat Benatar even though her music was produced to sound like Bentar’s. She prefers the comparison to her idol Grace Slik. RCA never renewed her contract and she never recorded again. She went on to play Elle Woods in the 2001 movie Legally Blonde.
Oh, the money I spent on collecting these mini helmets, twenty-five cents at a time. Of course, you would get duplicates and never the team you wanted it seemed. Fortunately, I grew up with four other brothers that I could trade with but these weren’t like the baseball trading cards most of my friends collected. Today, you didn’t have to buy them a couple at a time but you can go to eBay and buy the whole collection for just twenty-five bucks!
