I'm Tony. I'm Eric. We are the sons of San Fernando. But we've been friends for over 40 years. And grew up together in the San Fernando Valley. These are the stories of our experiences as adventurous Gen X latchkey slackers from back in the day. And don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button so you don't miss an episode. They're just abbreviating it, you know what? The younger generation, they abbreviate everything.
You are so old. They abbreviate everything. Everything's down to like, they use that contraction. Can I tell you what I have beef with? Please. I have beef with acronyms, speaking of abbreviations. I hate acronyms. Just say the fucking word, just say the term, say the thing. Acronyms make me feel like I'm in a cult. Yeah. I mean, you fuck acronyms. They make you feel like you're in the cult. A cult not the cult. The cult's good. A cult's bad. Okay. I'm, I follow.
In definite article cult is good. In definite article cult is bad. A cult, D cult. Yeah. Wow, going deep. I'm going grammar. I'm going all full grammar. You're FG. I'm going Kelsey Grammar. You're going Frasier. Thank you. I'm going full Kelsey Grammar on your ass. Yeah. No. I don't even know what our topic is. I have no idea what this subject is that we're talking about. Well, it's actually Frasier. It's TV. Oh right. We're talking about television. But
it's not television in terms of shows. It's actually in terms of the types of... Do you remember the television you had when you were a child? I didn't own a television when I was a child. My parents did. CRT, that's what they were called. Cathode ray tube. Yeah, they were chunky in the rear. They had big asses and they were heavier than she is. They may have only been, okay, so what size, well okay, screen size. How big was yours? How big was yours
growing up? In our living room when I was a kid, we maybe had a 20, 18 inch, maybe like an 18 inch TV. Right. It was small. It was small. It was not. But so the they were like all wood framed. It had like a veneer. It had a wood veneer on the outside. It was like it was a console. It was a piece of furniture. And then there were dials. Yeah, okay. They had knobs. They had an on off knob that was a clunk off a pole to turn on. I didn't have a pole. Mine
had a turn to turn on. Okay, we had a pole. We had a boom to turn on and a push to turn off. Okay, so ours was a potentiometer that you pull that you turned with a click. And then once it turned on, it was now the volume. We have that later on. And then we had two dials, right? Two dials. You had UHF and VHF. And VHF. Unbelievable. And how many channels do we have on the upper knob? Well, you had two, well, at least in Los Angeles, we had
two, four. What, that's not 13 because there was stuff in between that we didn't have. There was no three. Right. There was no three. You know what three was. When you plugged in your Atari, you picked it up on channel 3. Because there was no signal. Because it was modulated. Right, it was a modulated signal. But the knob still had 13 positions. You just didn't get... Okay, we had channel 2. Yeah, stop with the positions, because we weren't getting anything
on those channels. 2, 4, 5, no 6, 7, 9, 11, and 13. That's 7 channels. We had 7 total possibilities. Except for UHF. Except for UHF. PBS. No, UHF had some good shit. What did we have on UHF? We had Sesame Street. We had- Oh, that's right, yeah. We had the electric company. PBS was on UHF? PBS, PBS was on UHF, yeah. All of the free shit. But nowadays, you've got- No commercials. Netflix, you've got fucking- Oh, nowadays is bullshit. Amazon, you've got all that shit.
You had a billion fucking things to watch. Back then, you didn't have much- You get crippled by the options. Now, I sit down with Zoe on the couch, we're like, what do we wanna watch? And it's like, it's so much anxiety. And by the way, if you wanted to change the channel, it was work. You had to get up. You had to get your ass up. And go turn the fucking knob. But here's the thing, you and I, we were the remote controls, because our fathers would
send us to the television to change. Well, my dad would first send me to the kitchen and make him another whiskey and water. Did your dad drink whiskey and water? Oh yeah. Yeah, I made some good whiskey waters. Interesting. Would you make them for him? Oh yeah. Yeah. I would never sip the booze. You didn't sip the booze? I wasn't a booze sipper, no. Wow, he would ask you to make his booze for him? Yeah, when I was like three. I'm a booze-sipper.
and send me in there, go get me some Jim Beam and water. No, no, he didn't drink. Your dad did not speak like that, by the way. Never. Completely opposite of that. Would your dad ever sound like that? And he didn't drink Jim Beam either. What did he drink? He was early times. Early times, wow. Early times, he was an early times whiskey drinker. But I digress. You do digress. But the TVs. You also cross dress, which is nice. Only on Thursdays. But
there were big pieces of furniture, our TVs. Yeah. The the speakers were built in and not very good. So shit. Hey, but that's how we watched wide And why would CoSale? Yeah, what in the wild world? sports is going on here I I love those TVs because they were immovable furniture pieces. They weighed eight billion fucking pounds. Once they were- It's like they had their own gravity. They had their own ecosystems and atmospheres. Once they got moved into the house by like
17 movers, you couldn't just- No. Honey, we need to move the TV a little bit to the- No, they were fixtures. Honey, we can't do it. It's too goddamn heavy. They were installed. in your living room and that was it. It was like if you wanted to move Stonehenge, you couldn't do it. We also had a console stereo that was a piece of furniture as well. Okay, so this thing. It was in our entryway. This thing was, we had the same idea. Eight feet long. Probably
eight, seven, eight feet long. Two built-in speakers, stereo speakers. On either side. Sliders, sliding covers of the speakers. Okay, we had those, we had those. We didn't have sliding covers on the speakers, but on the top, it was like a wooden top. and it would lift up on hinges. With a pneumatic little holder thing that would push it up, yeah. And then you would have the turntable. Yeah. And we only had. No, no, we, I think we had 45, 33 and
a third and 78. And we also had, did you also have the auto dropper? So you put multiple records on. Multiple records and it would drop. When it would go to the next, it would lift up, the arm would lift up, go back, it would drop the next record, and the arm would go back. But most importantly, it did have a place for you to plug in headphones. Oh, it did. Because when I was younger. Right, ours did too. And I was listening when Prince put out.
1999, Purple Rain. I had a single. Should I just keep guessing? Sure. Well, okay, no, I'll let you guess. Okay. What single? Little Red Corvette. Would I have to listen on headphones? Um, uh, darling Nikki. Bingo. I had Darling Nikki on a B-side of a 45 on my parents giant 8,000 pound console stereo. That's cool. Yeah, that I had to listen to it on headphones because they heard me listen to Darling Nikki. You had it on a single? Yeah, a single, I had it on
a 45. You didn't have the full LP? No, I had a 40 fucking five of Darling Nikki. The Purple Rain? It was on Purple Rain, why didn't you have the whole LP? I probably didn't have the whole LP. It's the greatest album of all time. But I was listening to Prince on this giant piece of furniture, but everything back then was in it. Piece of furniture. It was, it was huge. I know, we had the same thing. Everything was so much bigger back in those days. Yeah,
but the screen, so our TVs were huge, but the screen on the TV was tiny. It was 18 inches, it was ridiculous. Yeah, and then, oh my God, it just made me think of like early, early on, these days on our phones we have. you know, we can shoot video. Yeah, it was good. And we can shoot 4K. Yeah, and it's good. What did we shoot on back there? What did our parents shoot? The camcorder. Oh, Super 8, Super 8, Super 8. Super 8, that had no sound. With the
flat, with the light. My dad, did your dad have the light that was the surface of the sun? The sun gun. It, by the way. Is that what they're called? Yeah, Sun Gun. Well, it's what we call it, the Sun Gun. But they raided the Sun Gun in candle power. They really, that was it. How many candles? That's so medieval. My dad had one that was eight billion candle power. So imagine it's the Wibblesman household. Christmas Day. Christmas Day in the two story house.
Yeah. And we're coming from upstairs, right? The kids are coming, we got our robes on. And he's like, hold on. He's like, wait a second. And he's got the super eight and it's like. And the super eight was a little reel of like tape. Oh absolutely, yeah. It was like a round. Film. It's a reel of film. Grainy as fuck, no sound. And it did make that. Sound. But you
had to get some light on. That was pretty good. So dad had the. The. The sun gun. and he would turn the sun gun on and the reason it was called the sun gun is because immediately you are fucking blinded. Yeah, it was unreal. The brightness level is beyond. I remember being like five years old at the top of the stairs on Christmas morning and dad's like, oh, it's, you know, you see the Christmas tree is all lit up at the bottom of the stairs. Like, here, I'm ready
to come down. Dad's, wait a second. I'm going to shoot. And then blammo. Yeah, well. He hits you with a. A billion lumens and you can't see and you're falling down the stairs head over heels over ass because and then and then you're blind and then you're trying to open presents and you're squinting you're still blind because you're still blind i'm still blind to this day and you still got the sun gun now 50 years later here's the thing i think that they did
damage our vision my retina is permanently scarred from the fucking sun guns speaking of things that were corded yeah like had a connect to it. The remote. I will never, the remote, I will never, you were the first. You know what I'm gonna talk about. The VHS player. No, the beta, you had the Betamax, right? No, I had a VHS. Was it VHS? I didn't have beta, I had Betamax. It was a top loader. Yeah, you had a top loader. It was at you, and the buttons
were on the front and they were push down lever buttons. Push down lever buttons. They weren't push inners, they were push downers. You would put your tape in and Sham it down. Sham it down. And sham, shamone. You would sham, you know, by the way, Michael Jackson did not make up the shamone. Did I have it told you this? No. Mavis Staples. Stavis Maples. But who invented the sham? Wow. I don't know, but that's a great product. I gotta get me some Sham Wows. I love
the Sham Wows. It really does what it says it does. Totally does, it's an amazing product. I want them right now. It's got wow in it. Why don't I have a shitload of Sham Wows? Well, I need to take a break and go order some of those right now. I know, because I'm gonna forget. All right, what were we talking about? We were on- Oh, the VHS player. Who are the VHS? Top Loader. Top Loader and your VHS player. Like Kurt Loader, same era. Same era. Did you
just V? MTV, yeah. Kurt Loder, MTV News. He was so stoic. He kind of had like a stick up his butt. He was no Tabitha Soren. No. He was no Martha Quinn or Mark Goodman. Or Alan Rickman. He was not a VJ. No, Alan. Alan? Curry. Adam Curry. He had a big mane of hair. Very good. There were a lot, and Nina Blackwood. Oh, Nina Blackwood was great with the voice. She had like that, like she smoked a thousand packs of cigarettes and then Martha Quinn was like
the really like bubbly cutie. The cutie, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we would- Mark Goodman had my hair. He borrowed your hair? Like- Yeah, it was my hair and also very similar to Brian May's hair. That's right. Kind of very, very similar. Puffy lard, but puffy lard, puffy lard, large, but that was, that was one of the things we would tape on the VHS back in high school was puppy lard ass. Yeah. PLA. Yeah. Hey, PLA. I'm over it now, but yeah, they did.
You're not over it. No, it still upsets me when I hear it. You still go to therapy. Puppy lard ass. Yeah. But LA. We would record, at least I would record my early VHS tapes. I would record MTV. Oh, of course. Because MTV was about out in 81. We had, from the 70s. an entire episode of Saturnet Live from the 70s that we recorded with our VHS player. But the corded remote was the best because they had the corded remote on the thing. We didn't have that. It
was like two feet long. It wasn't long enough to sit on the couch and you were like, how do you, what does a remote if you have to like sit in front of the TV? Yeah, I wore it out with purple rain, I can tell you right now. She's rewinding. You wore what out? Oh, the remote, sorry. Oh man. Yeah, I don't know how we had like a very early version of a VHS,
but there weren't a lot around at that time. And it seemed like that was gonna put who was like, oh VHS players are gonna put movie theaters out of business, nobody's gonna go see movies anymore because you can rent them, where are you gonna rent them? At the video house, that was the other thing that happened is going to rent videotapes, man. Oh man, and I worked at that, I worked at that. You worked at Music Plus. Music Plus, we rented videotape rentals
were like the biggest fucking business. Everybody's renting them. It was great. We would go get a giant thing of red vines, you know, microwave popcorn. Yeah, and some Milk Duds. And rent 16 candles. Yeah. On VHS. On VHS, yeah. And then you would leave the VHS in your car on a hot summer day and it would melt. Un-rewound. Be kind, rewind. I mean, come on. We had those signs all over the store. Was that the M? Was that the M plus
logo? Be kind, rewind? Because people would bring it back to you. And then you'd have to rewind it. We'd have to stick in the rewind or gsss No, they were slow as fuck. That's why we said be kind rewind. Ours was so slow too, because who wanted to do that? He's like we gotta return. Dude, I you could never get those things back on time. That's why tapes That's why tape you had to go you had to roll it back That's why we thought when laser discs
came out that was gonna be the shit. That was garbage. No, it was garbage No, who bought fucking? I never had I didn't know anybody with laser dicks laser dicks I don't know anyone by the laser dick That sounds like the coolest thing ever. Laser dick. By the way, my buddy Frank, he's got a laser dick. I gotta meet Frank. Yeah, but I don't think women would be interested in the laser dick, Frank. I think he might be right. I think it might be right. It's more
men talking about the laser dick. But later on, after the Super 8 video recorders our parents had, I remember you had. What was the video, the camcorder you had that we used for everything? First we had the one with the full sized VHS tape that went in that you put on your shoulder that weighed 6,000 pounds. It was like a professional... It looked professional, but it wasn't professional. But it had that look, too. It looked like you were in, you know, Groundhog Day, what's his
name? But then you graduated one that had the smaller tapes. Yeah, the little mini-8s. High-8s. We shot every... We shot... Stop motion animation. We did a bunch of stop motion animation on a grease board, that was fun. We never stopped. Everything we did, we had to shoot and capture on video. Like it was the biggest thing back... There was a lot of lip syncing. Back in the 80s, we did that. Everything we did, we had to capture. Well, cause it was like, it was
a thing. It was like, we have this option now to make these home movies in a way. I remember we did like a lot of stop motion. We're like, we're on the bikes and like shooting basketball. They were good, they were not bad. Yeah. They were not good. No, no, but they weren't, they weren't bad. They weren't, they were maybe bad. But they were big and, like, everything was big. But then the little ones were better. And then it wasn't until the 90s that they got
the actual, straight to the hard drive inside of the... Yeah, that was, but then, I don't know. It was more fun when we had the big clunky ones. It's crazy because I just bought one of those to shoot some video footage of Zoe's rehearsals and it's like from the two, it's not even from the 90s, it's from like the early, it's not even the early 2000s, it's like 2009. Okay, the early aughts, the late aughts of the 2000s. And it's a Sony Handycam, which is the
top of the line stuff. And I just bought one, it was like 150, not even, it was 80 bucks that I got it off of eBay. And so I took a bunch of footage with this thing to see what it looked like, because I was trying to create a kind of grainy or weird or, it is garbage. The footage is so bad. I mean, if you want it to look bad, that's what you've got, but it's so bad. We were talking about video, but. If we go back to audio for a moment. Yes, cassette tapes.
Sony Walkman. I have two. I preempted you. You got it. You have Sony Walkman? No, I'm just saying that was the shit. Sony Walkman. I never had a Sony, I had a fake Walkman. I had a Sanyo. Oh yes, Sanyos, right. And then I did get a Sony with the one with the orange headphone. You did? Yes. Oh, I never had one of those. I had to get one of my own. Ah, I never had one of those. I saved up my money from mowing the lawn Trim or blowing them all in the mo.
Yeah, I did whatever I needed to do to get money back in the day the back alley Of the donut shop. I don't know whatever it took blowing the Don. Yeah, low in the mo come on the lawn The walkman was the shit you had your cassette you threw that in and you had your personal
like, you know Do you have an auto reverse? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Don't have to take that thing out flip it over No, no, no auto reverse and then that got replaced by the thing that I probably wore out the most which was in the car we had the Sony Discman when we got to CDs. Oh yeah, those were dumb because it would skip. They would skip all the time and in the car you had to use the cars weren't ready for that technology. So you had to have
the cassette adapter. Remember that? Oh god, that was the worst fucking thing ever. You would stick that cassette thing that had a wire that came out to your disc. Your butthole. If you wired it into your butthole, it was a lot better reception. Right, you could get good reception from your butthole. But if you didn't and you went right into the Sony Discman and you're driving, the Dick's skin, the Dick's man, it would skip like, you'd be driving,
you would hit the slightest little bump of the freeway and it would skip. I know, they were so stupid. And it would go back to the beginning of the fucking song. The Discman was dumb, I think I had it for a short period, I did have one, but they were just so useless because they skipped all the time. You know, CDs were a weird kind of interim thing. It's kind of like laser discs, very similar. I mean, but CDs really did take over for a long time. So
people collect CDs. What kind of lunatic, by the way, is collecting CDs? Like, I totally understand collecting LP vinyl because it's big, you get pictures, you have inserts inside the sleeves. It's got a particular sound to it, the analog sound. It pops, it cracks. It's
warm. It's got an automatic compression. that happens that's very pleasing to our ears but collecting cd what psychopath but i see people doing this why would you do that you know i heard something the other day that actually really rang true about gen x and that is that why we're so angry about music or in general in general but partially about music is because we grew up and we had to buy everything on vinyl and then we And then we bought everything on
CD. Yeah. And then we had bought all the MP3s. Yeah. Oh, right. We had to buy fucking MP3s. We had to buy all that. Oh, that's right. Only to then stream it out. And now we have to stream everything. We've had to buy everything that we wanted to hear like five fucking times. That's true. Yeah. That's fucked up. And Boomers had to buy eight tracks. boomers still have their LP collections on buying. Yeah, you know what? They don't give a shit. They're still
on that. Yeah, they never, yeah. Fuck what assholes they use. All the resources had everything perfect. You know, everything was great for them. They had the fifties. It's those guys are assholes. Giant. I'm, I'm sick of boomers. I'm sick of them. I wish they would all die. Like everybody over a certain age. Like if we could just say, okay, if you're above set, well, I mean, this would include. the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, because they're boomers.
Those guys are boomers. But I will say Mick doesn't carry himself, especially Keith. Keith, maybe Mick does. Charlie Watts did, but he's dead already. So that's a different story. But Keith doesn't carry himself like a boomer. Maybe in some ways. Keith's unique, though. Keith is unique. Do you think Keith ever shot any super eight? Here's the thing. When we were children. We were like, Keith was old. And it was like, oh, Keith Richards, he's not
gonna make it another week. I remember. And then he fell out of a tree. Speaking of the, working back in the days we had vinyl and cassettes. Yeah. I was working at the record store. Keith came in. He never came in. But we- Fell out of a tree. That might've happened. But... We had a Rolling Stones ticket sale for the Steel Wheels Tour in 1989. People lining up outside on the street, sleeping over. And you know why they were lining up in 1989 for the Steel Wheels
Tour? Why? They thought Keith would die. Everybody thought it was the last tour. The last tour. In 1989. I saw it. Coliseum was there. 10th row with Aaron Bronston. It was amazing. Amazing. You know what? Love that show. Guns N' Roses and then before Guns N' Roses was the cult of personality Which McCall it's what's their name living color living color with who sang? Hussain no Who is the singer of living color not in living color that was the TV it was a hairboy What
was his name Cory Glover? I don't know why I know that but that but in 1989 Yeah in the days of cassettes. That was a great tour. We thought the Stones, this is, oh we gotta see the Stones it's gonna be the last thing. There's no way in hell Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are gonna be able to perform beyond 1989. And now it's 2024 and they are 81 years old. And by the way, the Stones, 2050. Guarantee you, they will still be playing. No, they'll be
long dead. No, no, 2050. No, you know why? Why? There are aliens. No, they're, you know, they're boomers. They're just going to use up all of the resources until there's nothing left for the rest of us. This is, this is the thing about the boomers. This is what they do. They use up everything. They use up the booze, the drugs. They did it all. This is why Gen Xers are like, we, I get, I, everything's been done. Yeah. There's nothing for me to do. I want no responsibility.
I take no responsibility for all the bullshit that's going on. I have no interest. I'm not going to run. I'm not going to be civically minded or involved. I'm going to watch you all. We're all kind of really very much anarchists. I think inherently in the Gen X vibe is an anarchist sensibility. I just wish the Boomers would have left us some Ludes. Yeah, Ludes would have been good. Thanks for listening to the Sons of San Fernando. Don't forget to hit that subscribe or follow
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