Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for July 21, 2017

Pastis is feeling 50 approaching.

If he thinks he’s feeling old now, just wait til 60 hits him.

sure is hard to keep up with the times

Turning 66 this year, but what’s really mind boggling is that my girlfriend is 65 this month! Happy Days, ya’ll.

I remember that episode and I turned 59 this year. Pastis is probably feeling 60 coming on.

I can recall missing the rebroadcast one Saturday in the mid-’50s of the first three episodes of The Lone Ranger because I was stuck up in my room with the mumps. I never caught those on television again and one of the first commercial video tapes I ever bought was of that group of episodes. I recently re-recorded that tape onto a DVD. That recording is of more importance than the shows it contains. Heaven only knows what I may have to re-record that disc onto some day.

The first video tape recorders for home use came out in the mid 60s. Betamax VCRs came out in 1975. That episode of Happy Days came out in 1976. So yes, there were VCRs by then.

According to Wikipedia, Stephan Pastis was born on January 16, 1968, so he is only 49 years old.

He was 7 to 8 when mass-market VCRs were introduced (Betamax in 1975, VHS in 1976). That means that VCRs already existed when he was old enough to send him to get ice cream. So unlike all the other technologies listed, it was just that his family didn’t have a VCR.

I remember those days.

Ah, Betamax. The possibly mythological unicorn of the video storage/retrieval universe.

Every day in every way I’m getting older and older.

Punk kid. I’m 76 and less worried about getting old than Pastis.

“Beta is Better”, was the mantra in our family when my kids were little. Of course, we lost THAT battle. Now I am paying Costco a fortune to convert all those home movies on Betamax to DVDs

In 1976, VCR’s cost around $1500…

and you could rent a small 2 bedroom house here in Santa Rosa for $150 a month.

Friends would get together to rent movies, even a few years after that…

Nobody had a VCR… we rented a player for a few dollars, along with about $5 each for the tapes.

In 1985 I bought a 35 pound second hand “pop-top” VCR, with “piano keys” and an “analog digital” counter… the numbers were on thin, tiny plastic cards that flipped like a mini Rolodex.

It came with the paperwork from when it was new in 1979… a fancy model…. it was bought on half price sale for only $999.

So yeah…. I’m old…

and the Pastis household in 1976 wasn’t likely to own a VCR.

I would show this to my kids to prove that I’m not alone. But then it’d take too long to explain “Happy Days” to them.

Well, go ask anyone under 25 why it’s called “Dialing” a phone when you call someone, and they won’t be able to tell you.

Remember how expensive microwave ovens were when they first came out? I thought I got a great bargain with mine, half price at $400 because it had been used for cooking demos. Didn’t even have a turntable. Today you can get one for less than $100 that has far more features.

Don’t worry Pastis, it wasn’t worth recording.

I will be ONLY 50 (hexadecimal) next week!!

My brother bought a VCR in the early eighties, and I remember being totally stunned by the technology that allowed you to watch a commercial free movie at home. Now, of course, that tech is as dead as buggy whips.

Some people don’t give up, however. I had a neighbor who had the complete works of Boxcar Willie on 8 track tapes, and he was totally convinced that some day they would be worth a fortune.

Grandma said that if you don’t want to get old, you have to die young.

One summer while school was out back in the early ‘80s, I watched every episode of The Fugitive. Except the last one. I still haven’t seen it.

We still had reruns!

And I can remember having only 3 network Channels on Television, as well as “Educational Television”, I.E. PBS BEFORE it was PBS, and one UHF channel we needed a converter box on the antenna to receive. AND, you had to get up, and walk across the room to change channels on the Television! And yes, it actually had the little dot in the center of the screen when you turned the T.V. off that wouldn’t fade for about 5 minutes…

My daughter asked me about watching netflix when I was a kid. My conversation was very similar to this. After explaining that there wasn’t even an internet when I was her age (well, there wasn’t the WWW at least) she asked me if those were the olden times. I’m only 34.

And you know, we did perfectly well. And, I think, were considerably more relaxed and certainly had fewer pointless distractions. You do NOT need a phone in your pocket when all you need is a dime. You do NOT need to spend a significant portion of your life trying desperately to see hundreds of movies and television episodes. You are no more satisfied with 100 than with 5. You simply have more to feel bad about missing. You do NOT need to spend hours of time reading the through the mundane minutiae of the lives of people you wouldn’t drive across town once a month to see in person. You are NOT better informed about events through the Internet. You are merely misinformed in more ways.

Some visitors to my home get upset since you have to travel at least 25 miles to get a cell signal! My internet is a DSL system through the phone lines, and I have NO cable T.V. or even antenna reception. And I don’t miss it AT ALL!!

Uh, Steph?

There’s this marvelous thing called YouTube…

For crap’s sake, people, it’s a cartoon, not a documentary. With all the talking animals, alligators with red wigs, rats operating ouija boards, and chain-smoking ducks, you’re worried about whether a cartoon person is lying about his age? And in the wrong direction, yet? IT’S FICTION. Deal.

64 years old here. I remember the thrill when my parents bought my brother and I a (ready for it) 19 inch black and white television!

Steve missed the opportunity to tell all of us what I tell my grandchildren. I tell them the reason we didn’t have these toys is we spent our time on vacant lots or parks playing with our friends. We made the mistake of inventing these toys ourselves for you guys so you can text back and forth while sitting next to each in the mall.

Maybe Stephan could have gotten the episode later on in reruns with a VCR.

79 years old and I remember when we sat around the radio and listened to the radio shows that not too many people nowadays remember and I remember the blackouts during world war II.

I love it when Stephan writes himself into the strip.

I’m so old, I can remember when MTV actually played music videos… 24 hours a day!

retort: If you guys didn’t have such short life spans, you wouldn’t think I’m that old.

Something I noticed a long time ago… anything that happens before one is about 6 is ancient history. I try hard not to fall in that trap.

When I was young, we had VCR. That was a great way to get movies, and you could fast forward through commercials after recording it.

I remember that three-part episode!

What’s really sad is that he has yet to get over missing the Fonzie/Pinky Tuscadero thing.

I remember my kids watching “Happy Days” !

VCRs were introduced in 1976 as noted, and that’s the same year the Pinky Tuscadero episodes were on, so yes the chances of his family being able to tape the show were pretty slim.

when I was a kid we didn’t even have commercially viable jetpacks.

Human lifespan is longer than Rat or Pig, Stephen was here before them, and will still be here once they’re gone …

Geez. guys – it’s a comic! made for entertainment! it’s not Wikipedia!!!

My 9yr old son sat in awe yesterday as I answered his questions about tv back in the “old days”. “So, what did you do when you had to go to the bathroom while the cartoon was on?” Me: Well I either held it in until a commercial break or I ran realllly fast to the bathroom and went as quick as I could! My son’s jaw dropped at that I told him it’s no different than when he has to go to the bathroom while we’re at the movie theater. But yes, it happened all day every day when watching tv.

Okay, so many people are mentioning “VCR’s”…but if you look at it, Pig is not asking about a VCR, he is asking about a “DVR”, as in digital video recorder. And in 1976, I don’t think digital anything was for sale to the general public.

We have a beautiful oak dial phone on the wall in the kitchen. My husband gave it to me for Christmas before we were married. It’s fun to teach young people how to use it.

The only ones out of that list I’ve never used are an iPhone and Netflix.

xxx

Is someone feeling Pastis prime today?

Don’t feel bad, Stephan — sooner or later, you can catch it on MeTV.

Hey, Cartoon-Boy1 You’re not so old!

The problem is Pig and Rat. They’re too young and uneducated!

I don’t know what’s sadder, that I remember that episode or that I’m the same age as Pastis.

Ah yes, I remember renting our first movie from “That’s Entertainment”, the in-store video rental shop in Safeway in Oakland in maybe ‘84 or ’85. Rented the player. First ever movie: “The Big Chill”. No griping about it not being letterboxed either. I remember all through the 80’s into the 90’s the talk of widescreen TV coming “one day”… how far we’ve finally come.

“Fonzie Loves Pinky: Part 1” & “Fonzie Loves Pinky: Part 2” first aired on September 21, 1976.

A suggestion to mr. Pastis : go on You tube you certainly find what you lost 41 years ago

You have to let it all go and get back to nature once and a while. Why just yesterday evening I went out to the back yard and spent a quiet, relaxing hour, rocking back on our swing chair … while playing video games on my mobile phone.

The “Happy Days” celebrated in the show were fewer than 20 years before the show aired. The show ended in 1984— 33 years ago.

Wether the family had a VCR or not, it wouldn’t have been running. Tapes cost money, and nobody ever had enough of them. You wouldn’t generally tape something you were actually watching unless it was something you specifically planned on replaying at a later date. VCRs were primarily used to record things you weren’t going to be around to watch (everyone used to tape Carson & Letterman because they were on so late; you’d rewind them in the morning while watching the weather report.) Only later on, when rental joints became common, they also were used for home movies.

Now he’s 50. Myself, I’m a young almost 20-years-old guy, so all of this technology started existing when I was much younger and probably just a few years before I was born. I’m totally NOT old-school!

Though, to be fair, the only thing Stephan specifically said ’didn’t exist’ back then was the DVR (correct). Everything else he just replied in the negative.