You know that you're old school if you can....

...remember when movie theaters only had one screen.

 

... are the oldest one in the bar, other than the mother of the owner -- who doesn't seem to do anything other than clean out the ashtrays.

 

This only goes back about 20 years, but does anyone remember when the Financial News Network became FNN/Score after 7 p.m.? And at 11:30 they had "Time Out for Trivia" hosted by Todd Donahoe, who I think was a sports anchor in Los Angeles and had a cameo role in "Blue Chips." People would call in with their answers, and if they didn't even venture a guess, Donahoe would call them a "Bonehead." I was thoroughly entertained by Donahoe's sarcasm with the callers. However, as I recall, the whole FNN/Score thing was very short-lived, unfortunately. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

 

Back in the late '80s/early '90s when cable networks started multiplying like rabbits many cable systems split a single channel between two networks. For several years in Dallas VH1 was available from 7am-7pm at which time it became The Comedy Channel. This was also back when VH1 was pretty much an adult contemporary video channel.

 

Remember Zips?

 

I loved Time Out For Trivia. If a guy got a question wrong, Donahoe would pull some keys out of his pocket and tell the guy that a correct answer would have won him a Corvette or something. One of the prizes was a Dirt Devil which he loved because it didn't weigh much and "it does the job the big boys do". I'm felling tremendous, I might add.

FNN also had a weekly show called Ring Rap with Hugh LeMay which in the pre-internet days was a must for boxing fans who couldn't find results of fights.

 

If you remember tuning into Channel 56 (Orange County) to watch Wally George (Rebecca DeMornay's dad) and his talk show.

999-5000!

 

Huggy, yes, he was. A very young Michael Richards. If I remember correctly, he copied Chevy Chase for his entrance and made a habit of falling down stairs. Fridays was a bad SNL ripoff but ABC (I think it was) felt like it needed to do something to compete with SNL. Of course, it never did.

 

The cast of Fridays also featured Melanie Chartoff, who, if I recall correctly, was one of George's girlfriends on Seinfield (either the one where he eats the eclair out of the garbage or the one where he goes to the kids birthday party and knocks everyone out of the way escaping the fire).

 

... remember when there were only two fast-food restaurants: McDonald's and Burger Chef.

... remember the cartoon "Wacky Racers" on Saturday mornings with characters such as Peter Perfect, Penelope Pitstop and the villain Dick Dasterly (and his dog Muttley).

... remember when Saturday afternoons in the winter meant the Pro Bowlers Tour with Chris Schenkel and Billy Welu (before Nelson Burton Jr.).

... remember hurrying home from school to watch Speed Racer.

May this thread live forever!

 

I know this is kind of late in the thread to be responding to this - but during my senior year in high school it was a requirement to take government and economics.  After economics every other day or so a friend of mine would go home and grab all the basebll equipment he had from playing over the years and bring it to the field in my neighborhood, and believe it or not, we usually had enough people come out to play from that economics class on a regular basis - including the teacher!

It was especially great to see him play because had been to a couple of Tigers fantasy camps and always wore the uniform they gave him out there.  He could throw a knuckleball.  It was great.

 

I'm definitely not as old as most of the people on this board, but I felt I had to make some sort of contribution.

When I saw the mention of Dick Dasterly and Muttley, I was instantly sent back to my childhood, watching "The Laffalympics" ... I think that was what it was called.

It was where they had all the various Hanna-Barbara characters split into three teams I think, and one of the teams was made up entirely of villains, so they would always cheat, but then invariably lose at the end.

If I ever saw a Laffalympics compilation on DVD, I'm pretty sure I'd buy it in a heartbeat.