Things you're nostalgic for

Drive-in movie theaters. Even going to the few that are still open nowadays is not the same. The lack of the tinny monophonic speakers and the cheesy rolling stock ads during the intermission among the chief reasons.

Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883!

i'm nostalgic for: "five hours of summer, once a week"

Doodles

The smell of sea water and surf wax. The Jesus and Mary Chain. Old shitty tvs with the channel dials that often got things like the Tetris game over screen imprinted on them. Lots of things really, but these really get to me.

edited 16th Mar '11 5:39:44 PM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

My TV had Super Mario Brothers imprinted on it.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

The very first computer I had  ^*

had Solitaire burned into the monitor. It was a DOS version of Solitaire, and the monitor only had two colors- black, and orangish-yellow.

edited 16th Mar '11 8:30:15 PM by EnglishIvy

Flying toasters.

^ Afterdark! Awesome.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

16-bit video games.

Saturday morning cartoons.

The luminiferous aether.

no one will notice that I changed this

I agree about the Saturday morning cartoons.

AC:NL Dream Address: 5200-2582-5967

They're still around, they're just husks now, as the networks don't care about them anymore because they are small-change and probably only still exist to protect stations' licenses.

Cream buns, free time, brown-and-orange decor, bees and not having an ever-present sense of impending doom.

edited 18th Mar '11 8:52:23 AM by InverurieJones

'All he needs is for somebody to throw handgrenades at him for the rest of his life...'

When I was a teenager, there was this great party house; it was a rambling one-step-from-total-collapse 9 bedroom house just off the freeway. The landlord lived in New Zealand and didn't care what happened to it, and the six people who lived there were intent on throwing the best damn parties the world had seen.

I don't know if they succeeded, but I'm certain they came damn close. The place was called Freak Manor, and it lived up to its name.

Every saturday night, from 1997 til 2005, there was a party. There was drinking, dancing, loud music, nudity, public sex, and silliness...all the things that make life grand. Highlights included...

• One night, we were playing Clench-A-Wench (an SCA game involving a lot of kissing) in the backyard. After much silly kissing with tongues, the game wound down and all the female players were hanging out, each daring the other to flash Interstate 5 (which was less than 20 feet away). Finally, one of the more strapping wenches yelled out "Y'all are a bunch of pussies!" And jumped up onto the fence, shaking her tits for the motorists. The other 12, not to be outdone, joined her. The sight of thirteen women baring their breasts for random freeway-goers was quite awesome for a 17-year old.
• There was a Drive-In movie theater across the street (since closed; its a parking lot now) and one of the activities for the exceptionally daring was to streak it at midnight. Yes, that's right; a bunch of pale Northwesterners running around the lot stripped to their Doc Martens, screaming "WOOPWOOPWOOPWOOOOOOP!" I never partook, but I recall sitting up on the roof, toking on a joint and watching the shenanigans. One time, a particularly inebriated member of the "streak platoon" missed the driveway and plunged headlong into the blackberry hedge that surrounded the property. It took half the night to get him out.
• One time, a guy named "Burnout" (never did catch his real name) decided to do firebreathing; he had a can of white gas and a bottle of vodka, to wash the taste of white gas out of his mouth. The display was awesome enough, but when he started forgetting which was which and not noticing, we were all quite impressed. He passed out in the lawn, clutching both the can of white gas and the (now-empty) bottle of Smirnoff. "Burnout" indeed.
• We got free movies, because someone jacked a speaker from the Drive-In and figured out which frequency it operated on. We'd sit up on the roof, drink Whidbey's Liqueur (which they no longer make), smoke bowls and watch films. If there wasn't nudity and dancing to entertain us already, of course.

There are other stories, but I've told most of the really Crazy Awesome ones. (Most of my good tales happened there). But the best part about that house was not the craziness but the safety. Sure, we did things that probably could have gotten us hurt, arrested, or possibly deported. But a 16 year old girl could fall asleep on the couch without fear, and a bunch of hairy missing-link looking motherfuckers would be falling all over themselves to get her a blanket and make sure she was okay. Crazy is available at any frat house in the country. Safe, you find that in church.

Seldom do you find both in the same place.

Recently, the house was demolished; I'm told they're going to put a gas station there. It saddened me, as a great thing was lost. But then, the spirit that sustained it has long been missing from geek culture.

So. Darryl, Ross, Tamara, Derick, And the other residents of Freak Manor, I salute you. All except Martin. You, sir, failed to rock.

Salud!

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

This one is nostalgic for

• Old computer games (which won't even run on today's PC without emulation)that had scary pixels, great text and no annoying 3d
• A Dn D. Don't get me wrong, I won't want to play anything that clumsy and illogical again, but still...
• Books with yellowed pages
• Heavy bronze nutcracker shaped like a playful wolf
• Playing dominoes
• Soviet movies and animation
• Eating hematogen in kindergardten (although now that this one knows what is this thing, she would be squicked)
• Old computer games related magazines that had more text than pictures
• Medieval weaponry
• Horses in everyday use

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

Dangerous playground equipment. Remember the days of metal slides that would sear the back of your legs in the summer? Creaky wooden Big Toys with splinters and nothing but gravel to cushion your fall? Wobbly merry-go-rounds with concrete pads, where you'd get half a dozen kids riding it with ten pushing, only to have some kid trip and knock a tooth out or whack his head on the concrete?

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

I still play on that stuff, DG.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

I too miss home-cooked meals and morning cartoons, they sure aint what they was.

@Morven, I also miss the trains but more specifically the view on the way to anywhere as you'd inevitably see many fields of horses, sheep and cows which in turn made me nostalgic for the countryside.

"There's more evil in the charts then an Al-Qaida suggestion box" - Bill Bailey

I miss places like Discovery Zone. There was this one I went to as a kid; it wasn't Discovery Zone, but it was similar. It was a giant building with almost nothing in it but a massive series of tubes that you ran around in all day. Gawd, I miss places like that. But I guess I miss fitting in places like that.

This place called Club Kids where I live. It had all these fun games, but it was mostly known for this huge obstacle course type thing that had ball pits, slides, a ton of tubes, and a bunch of other cool things. That was the place to have your kids birthday party. It was so cool. But now, it's been closed for years.

edited 25th Mar '11 1:00:54 PM by nekoalexa

AC:NL Dream Address: 5200-2582-5967

I used to go to gymnastics lessons as a child. Somewhere in this place there existed a pool filled with foam that you could practice diving into. Jumping into said pool was amazing. That pool was the coolest thing ever as a child.

Foam pools and pools make me smile.

The beach and surfing. Times were good back then. Well they felt good. I just didn't know about how much of a dick my dad was. Still those were fun times and I still think he looks cool when he surfs. Everyone does. That movie Surfs Up makes me cry buckets. We used to watch surf documentaries together and I thought that surfers were amazing and that my dad was the coolest dude. Then he let me down one too many times and eventually quit surfing all together. He gave up on his dream. Sort of like the main character and his idol. Except my idol didn't become cool again.

The surfing scenes in Lilo And Stitch get me as well.

edited 25th Mar '11 1:06:47 PM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

That reminds me of surfing with my buddies back in high school. We weren't very good, and we all tried to fit the "look" of surfers.

Good times, that.

I've been stuck in desert towns for years. Far from the beach. No one I know ever wants to go back. Not even just for a trip. So I'll have to get going on a trip on my own one of these days.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

I'm not much for the beach during the summer daytime — too damn hot, and I sunburn like crazy thanks to being English and Irish — but evenings are another matter, and winter's another matter. I'd hate to be far from the sea.

A brighter future for a darker age.

I'm nostalgic for being excited about snow. Actually if I was a little kid I would be just as angry and rage-y about snow happening in the end of March, but at least i would have had fun snow days. As it is snow, snow makes me want to stab something.

Emperor Wu liked cake, but not exploding cake!

And for some reason that post conjured the late-90s Nick Jr in my mind.

The smell of the Underground in London. We used to go every year, but it's dwindled to every other year for my parents, and less so for me since I have limited paid vacation. Nevertheless, if I concentrate hard enough I can feel that breeze blowing a sweet smell of... something... to me it smells like ozone and wilting flowers when a train approaches a station.

edited 14th Apr '11 9:31:31 PM by Bur

i. hear. a. sound.