The First Hula Hoop craze. 25 million Hula Hoops were sold in the first few months. I think about half of them in my nieghborhood. Yep, little Vickie down the street hooping with 4 at once then daring me to try. Lets just say I wasn't quite that athletic.

Soon after I started Judo lessons at Cahill's Judo academy (Still there and the home of many champions.)to learn to protect myself from local bullies. Unfortunately everyone else there was at least a teenager and all oriental. I was probably 7 and skinny. I think it must have been pretty difficult for the other students to be thrown by me, they'd have had to jump up and do all the work themselves. I do remember laying on the mat and slapping it over and over to toughen my hands and practice slapping for your falls. I didn't beat up those bullies though. Besides the instructor kept saying that I couldn't use anything I learned there on the bullies, cuase It wouldn't be fair.

Skipping forward abit, how many remember who Earl Muntz was? I put a muntz 4 track in my 61 chevy Biscayne. Now you remember 4 tracks right? OK, then how about 8 tracks? I had mine hooked up with a reverb box. I haven't seen a auto reverb box for years. It cost me less than 5 bucks to fill that 20 gallon tank up. 24.9 cents a gallon at the self serve and I thought my mother was crazy to pay 27 cents across the street at Chevron.

A few more years and who remembers the trash-80 or the CoCo? I was running a Radio Shack when we got our first TRS-80 computer. You weren't supposed to sell it because they were so limited in stock. A guy called and was so frustrated that no one would sell him one, only take orders, that he said he'd pick it up anywhere if he could just get it today. I sold him the store demo, and thus began my first experiances with computers.
4K of memory and you used a cassette player to load or save programs you wrote.

The Prince song: party like it's 1999,

I was dreamin' when I wrote this
Forgive me if it goes astray

But when I woke up this mornin'
Coulda sworn it was judgment day

The sky was all purple
There were people runnin' everywhere

Tryin' 2 run from the destruction
U know I didn't even care

'Cuz they say two thousand zero zero party over
Oops out of time
So tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1999

I was dreamin' when I wrote this
So sue me if I go 2 fast

But life is just a party
And parties weren't meant 2 last

War is all around us
My mind says prepare 2 fight

So if I gotta die
I'm gonna listen 2 my body tonight

Yeah, they say two thousand zero zero party over
Oops out of time
So tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1999
Yeah

Lemme tell ya somethin'
If U didn't come 2 party
Don't bother knockin' on my door
I got a lion in my pocket
And baby he's ready 2 roar

Yeah, everybody's got a bomb
We could all die any day
But before I'll let that happen
I'll dance my life away

They say two thousand zero zero party over
Oops out of time
We're runnin' outta time
So tonight we gonna, we gonna (Tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1999)

Sounds like it's about today's news. And 1984 is long since past, Winston Smith hasn't seen anything yet, nothing like what our Dictatorship is planning.

I'll leave you with HAL 9000's words, "It can only be attributable to human error."

Off to party like it's 1999 again, Curiouoso*