Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for June 23, 2022

I was twelve in 1969. Pop music consisted of the Beatles and The Rolling Stones.

12? No.

No.

22 or so, absolutely.

Nice touch as the people speaking refer to “the person reading this”.

Thanks, Council of Real Artistic Pronouncments!

This.

This is the greatest TtDB of all time.

Dodgers over the Yankees 4-0. Guess the year.

I suppose I could go along with saying that pop music was at its peak in 1971, as the strip suggests, but there are other years both before and after that are also contenders.

What is unquestionable, though, is that pop music died on Saturday, July 1st, 1989 when I was thirty years old. Because that’s the day Milli Vanilli first got a song to #1.

When I was 12? Are you kidding? When that stupid song was constantly playing on commercials? That must be the the dumbest— Wait, didn’t that one game come out in the same year? Maybe it was the best period. Then again, the movies released in that year were a mixed bag. I need to think on this.

This comic speaks to me. One of my pet peeves is all the comments under music videos by old boomers (like me) whining about how our music was so much better than the crap being written today. God that gets tiresome!! And of course, we boomers conveniently forget how often the older (than us) generation dismissed our music. Bottom line, just because I don’t care something (e.g. rap) doesn’t make it bad.

Oh yes, and let’s stop bragging about how we walked to school in the snow up-hill, both ways. Yes, we didn’t wear bike helmets or seatbelts. Yes, it is a miracle we survived childhood. But this doesn’t make us superior. The kids today have their own challenges, as a quick read of the news will show.

I was 12 in 1959. Pop culture mostly sucked except for Mad and Tom Lehrer. Come to think of it pop culture has always sucked, mostly.

The fact that 2007 is “vintage” makes me feel old. But I suppose I’m old, because Ferris Bueller’s Day Off meets this criteria for me

I prefer the pop music from 10-15 years before I was born . . .

I was 12 when Elvis released “Heartbreak Hotel.” Which sorta changed everything. So I’m satisfied Mr. Bolling has it right.

Pop culture preferences are one thing, but the sad thing is when the emotional and intellectual peak of a person’s life occurred when they were in high school.I wonder if Ruben will someday share with us when his favorite music came out, and how old HE was?!

If you were 12 in 1987, you must be torn. Both “The Princess Bride” and “Space Balls” were released that year. The former was funny then and it’s funny now, while the latter was never, ever, ever, ever funny.

Mel Brooks’s original “The Producers” came out. It was the only thing that could improve on “It’s Mad Mad Mad Mad World.”

This strip harks back to discussions among science fiction fans in days of yore as to when the Golden Age of Science Fiction had really occurred — was it in the late 19th century, or maybe the 1920s? The 30s? 40s? 50s? 60s? A quotation from Peter Scott Graham seemed to settle it: “The Golden Age of Science Fiction is twelve.” The idea is that most people’s awareness of the world (including sf and other pop culture) explodes so exponentially at around that age that the pleasures and fascinations they discover then seem mind-blowingly miraculous. And, no doubt, some of them are!

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/10/14/golden-age/

In movies I’ve got “Star Wars” and “Eraserhead,” which tracks (although I didn’t see “Eraserhead” until I was a few years older).

In albums I’ve got “Rumours” and “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.”

Yep, it’s true…

I would say 13 not 12, at least for me. I was always a late bloomer.

2009 wasn’t a bad year for movies, and music

I’m glad to finally see some confirmation that it is, indeed, all about me.

I’ve long suspected it, as one song from my wonder years after another was paraded in ads on TV that played the ‘hook’ over and over till I was sick of it. And it was all about me.

Huh.

I dont like how accurate this is…

Yes, it was a simpler, more innocent time.

When? Well, when you were simpler and more innocent, of course. Or the way you imagine things before you were born.