#i don't know what he expected picking Eddie as his minion | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lizardsfromspace · 1 year

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I've referenced things sounding like "boomer poems" several times but I don't think that's as universal a reference as I think, but once upon a time the dominant mode of expression for boomers online were interminable nostalgia poems and not memes where the Minions express fascist leanings. I found a lot of these on the old Snopes Glurge boards but sadly those are gone & a lot of these gone with it

Let's take a look at an exemplar of the form, preserved by this glorious Web 1.0 website (and some thoughts on the genre at the end)

Long ago and far away, in a land that time forgot, Before the days of Dylan , or the dawn of Camelot. There lived a race of innocents, and they were you and me,

"Race" is a interesting choice of word here. I also like that this is very specifically 1950s nostalgia and excludes even early 60s nostalgia, even the parts of the 60s that were still the 50s culturally (aka the American Graffiti years)

For Ike was in the White House in that land where we were born, Where navels were for oranges, and Peyton Place was porn.

"Navels were for oranges" Nobody had belly buttons until that bastard LBJ

We longed for love and romance, and waited for our Prince, Eddie Fisher married Liz, and no one's seen him since.

One gender was expected to get married as soon as possible in a more limited social circle than now, a situation that never once went awry!

We longed for love and romance, and waited for our Prince, Eddie Fisher married Liz, and no one's seen him since.

Because his career was destroyed over marrying his dead friend's widow, Elizabeth Taylor (I didn't know who that was, I had to look him up)

Only girls wore earrings then, and 3 was one too many, And only boys wore flat-top cuts, except for Jean McKinney.

We strictly enforced gender standards and we had no choice but to like it!

I have no idea who Jean McKinney is. Searching for "Jean McKinney 1950s" just turns up this poem???

And only in our wildest dreams did we expect to see A boy named George with Lipstick, in the Land That Made Me, Me.

Boy George is a fearful icon of gender fuckery to older people, which makes him becoming a vocal transphobe who makes pronoun jokes even more depressing. Sorry if you found out that way. Also he once kidnapped someone and handcuffed him to a radiator for two days. ...sorry if you found out that way

We fell for Frankie Avalon, Annette was oh, so nice, And when they made a movie, they never made it twice..

We didn't have a Star Trek Five, or Psycho Two and Three, Or Rocky-Rambo Twenty in the Land That Made Me, Me.

I love these lines bc for one they aren't true. 1950s cinema was rife with remakes, extremely long series, and actors who played the same character in the same plots over and over. They made seven movies about a talking mule named Francis (not to ding Francis the Talking Mule, not to ding anything starring Donald O'Connor, who firmly Rules Actually).

But also it's funny that the bankrupt, formulaic era here is the 1980s. Which is now subject to identical nostalgia only now it's people sitting in front of posters for The Fly and Friday The 13th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan bemoaning that Hollywood used to have ideas man, not all these remakes and sequels today

Miss Kitty had a heart of gold, and Chester had a limp, And Reagan was a Democrat whose co-star was a chimp.

The 1950s were great bc of a Western show that mostly ran in the 60s that had a character who was all but said to be running a brothel

We had a Mr. Wizard, but not a Mr. T, And Oprah couldn't talk yet, in the Land That Made Me, Me.

Oof! Oh boy! Oh yikes! Oh, oh boy! Oh boy! Oh, dear! Oh, man!

I don't think these lines mean...that, but also could've, uh, been more thoughtful about what celebs they picked to say weren't around back then

"Oprah couldn't talk yet" Because she was six, or because if she tried to have a show, she'd uhhhhhhhhhhhhh

We had our share of heroes, we never thought they'd go, At least not Bobby Darin, or Marilyn Monroe. For youth was still eternal, and life was yet to be, And Elvis was forever in the Land That Made Me, Me

Bobby Darin was chronically ill his entire life, and his knowledge that he would die young from his illness was the main motivator of his entire music career, but fair on the rest. In the 1950s, some famous people died young, unlike every other decade

We'd never seen the rock band that was Grateful to be Dead, And Airplanes weren't named Jefferson, and Zeppelins were not Led.

*groan*

And Beatles lived in gardens then, and Monkeys lived in trees, Madonna was Mary in the Land That Made Me, Me.

*GROAN*

We'd never heard of microwaves, or telephones in cars, And babies might be bottle-fed, but they weren't grown in jars.

Something else that identifies this as clearly written in or about the 80s is the jab at test tube babies, part of a full fledged moral panic then. A time where people would sincerely tell parents of children conceived by IVF that their children were abominations born without souls

And pumping iron got wrinkles out, and 'gay' meant fancy-free, And dorms were never co-Ed in the Land That Made Me, Me.

Apparently the 50s were the last decade where "gay" usually meant "happy" instead of "gay", though it did also mean "gay"

Also, *groan*

We hadn't seen enough of jets to talk about the lag, And microchips were what was left at the bottom of the bag.

Tbh I don't actually mind the reminder that, for people of the time, casual air travel was still so new, so seemingly miraculous that all the minor inconveniences wrought by it being a routine thing didn't even occur to people

But also, *groan*

And hardware was a box of nails, and bytes came from a flea, And rocket ships were fiction in the Land That Made Me, Me.

Rocket ships were a fantasy detailed every week on Walt Disney's TV show by a scientist with suspiciously few stated qualifications & a thick German accent

T-Birds came with portholes, and side shows came with freaks, And bathing suits came big enough to cover both your cheeks.

We used to goggle at disabled people in carnivals and cover our entire ass when swimming, unlike now

And Coke came just in bottles, and skirts below the knee, And Castro came to power near the Land That Made Me, Me.

I really didn't expect one of these boomer nostalgia poems to include nostalgia for Castro's revolution. Viva la revolución, comrade

We had no Crest with Fluoride, we had no Hill Street Blues, We had no patterned pantyhose or Lipton herbal tea Or prime-time ads for those dysfunctions in the Land That Made Me, Me.

Not here for bemoaning toothpaste polluting our precious bodily fluids but honestly a world without boner pill commercials is tempting

There were no golden arches, no Perrier to chill, And fish were not called Wanda, and cats were not called Bill

Perrier was introduced in 1898, but I also love the specific jibes that fish weren't called Wanda back then. What a weird pop culture property to single out and what a weird way to single it out

And middle-aged was 35 and old was forty-three, And ancient were our parents in the Land That Made Me, Me.

We all ate lead paint and were forcibly sent off to die in wars and we LIKED IT!!!

If you didn't grow up in the fifties, You missed the greatest time in history,

...gender, race, and sexuality permitting!

This is a mild one but there were some much more haughty ones I should try and dig up. I thought these were hilarious when I was like 16.

I think what this exposes is how often nostalgia is nostalgia for being a child. People get lost in the weeds and think their childhood was special for when it happened, but if they're lucky and grew up in a stable situation, people tend to remember the same things about childhood regardless of when it happened. Nostalgia for a specific time becomes a problem when they assume nobody born after, or before, can have something similar, that the modern world took away everything special, but...they're still kids. Their childhood won't look like yours, but twenty, thirty years from now, they'll remember it the same way you do.

The greatest time to grow up is a irrelevant question, because the greatest time to be a kid wasn't great because of the time. It was great because you were a kid

Really can't overemphasize that a lot of these aren't so gentle and are in full "back in my day we RODE IN THE BACK OF THE PICKUP TRUCK and NONE OF US EVER DIED!!! Pansies!!!!" mode

#incredible #nostalgia

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