Did you spend your summers playing “out back” in homemade costumes? Did you make up games to play that involved combining sports equipment from multiple sports? Did you write a script and act out your own version of Star Wars and record it on your parents 8mm camera? If you answered yes to any of these, then you probably grew up without the internet.
Today’s great example comes from Paul Soupiset:
Thirty years ago this summer, a cinematic tour-de-force hit the big screen. The year was 1979 and the country’s science fiction psyche was sandwiched in the liminal space between the first and second Star Wars releases. America needed more. And we gave them Laser Wars.
In the back yard / backlot of our childhood home in San Antonio, my brother Mark and I grabbed my grandfather’s Bell & Howell Super8mm movie camera, wrote a script, cast neighborhood friends, created paper-plate flying saucers, and tin-foil constellations. We had just turned 10 years old, and we were ready for the fame and fortune a space movie would bring our way.
To get the full experience, go to his blog and watch the video. To enhance the experience, it might be helpful to get a big glass of KoolAid and drink until you have a red mustache. Enjoy.
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May 24, 2009 at 12:07 pm
lauren
I was thinking about this just recently as I was telling my coworkers stories of growing up with water moccasins and snapping turtles and jumping off a floating refrigerator door into a mysteriously murky pond that hid in a forbidden field behind barbed-wire fencing. I wouldn’t trade being dared to run across thin ice and falling into the creek, up to my waist in numbing water, for any number of hours surfing the net or even playing video games (unless, of course, it was NES Duck Hunt with a boxy gun that only works half the time).
May 24, 2009 at 6:47 pm
jill.
where i grew up it was crawdads at the spillway and home run derby on the tennis courts. and it was atari. and we produced newscasts in basements, variety shows in HAPPY JOE’S and choregraphed videos to THE JETS. with the humidity the last few days, i smelled Lake Storey and really wished i was watching lightening bugs in illinois.