How long ago was 1994?

Apologize for the picture quality - something else that tells us just how long ago this was:

18 years. What is the picture of? I don't see a picture of any quality:)

Funny clip. Time is passing so fast that we forget that the Internet is such a recent development.

Ah, 1994. Real bookstores everywhere that sold, well, real books. No glut of eBooks and information of questionable validity on sites and encyclopedias contributed to or created by ten year olds. The information highway was limited to libraries and bookstores that were as welcoming as a leisurely country road where no running was allowed--a veritable orchard filled with exotic fruit from all corners of the world that could be taken from each tree (free at the local library, and for a rational price at the local new and used bookstore). Today progress has condemned the dated orchards with their meandering country lanes to build an information superhighway of unlimited lanes with no speed limit, no rules of the road and almost no orchards save for a few rest areas with comfy couches, good expensive coffee and very few fruit trees. We race at hypersonic speeds as nearly the entire knowledge of the world passes us in a blur. We can access most of it free--including more books than anyone could ever read--or want to. Then we wonder why we have a tough time selling our books--or even getting them noticed.

No, I don't want to go back to 1994 and no I am not giving back my Internet access which I've had since before there was a WWW in 1992 as a lowly assistant professor with university access in the days before browsers and before Windows. I've never looked back. But there is a price for progress. When I find those quaint bookstores with new and used books where I can spend a whole day happily browsing for bargains new and old, invariably buying books I did not know existed or did not think I would find, a part of me wants to stay there. There is no substitute for fruit picked right from the tree. It bears no comparison to bushels of free or cut rate stuff delivered to your door or flying through your windows vying for your attention, free for the taking, as you jet down the modern information superhighway.

alice wrote:

18 years. What is the picture of? I don't see a picture of any quality:)

Alice, did you watch the clip? Click on the arrow.

I don't have a clip or an arrow:)

Borders in downtown Seattle was a wonderful place. I used to go there
to eat and browse books. A very pleasant memory.

The most amazing thing to me about that clip is that Katie Couric is still around. I never got her "talent."

I like her.

Not enough liked her to keep her gig on the Nightly News. Of course, I don't know who watches the nightly news anyhow, anymore, lol.

I liked 1994, it was the start of the whole crazy internet stock era. My kids' college accounts were funded then. Any adult with disposable income at that time has no excuse for not amassing a decent nest egg for whatever purpose -money was falling from the sky, you just had to have enough initiative to learn how to pick it up. Don't know that we'll ever see anything like that again.

Katie has a new afternoon talk show. She's being advertised as the new Oprah. I don't know, I tried it one afternoon for about 5 minutes, but then, I stopped watching Oprah a while ago, so maybe.

Quote :

Katie has a new afternoon talk show.

Yeah, it's curious to me why her bosses keep propping her up. But then, I can't figure out why anyone watches The View either, so I'm not the best analyst here. lol

Have you tried The Chew?

The Chew, lol. Just googled it -nah, not interested in a cooking show. I do like Pawn Stars. It's the only show I watch these days.

I watch the old shows.

OK, I'll confess; I still watch General Hospital.

The Big Valley, Six Million Dollar Man, The Fall Guy, The Virginian, Columbo, Mannix, Matlock.

GH is still running, actually. It's about the only soap left.

Right now, it's all about seeing dead people.

Everybody thought Robin was killed in a fire at the hospital, but it was a trick, somebody kidnapped her and is holding her prisoner.

Her mother Anna had just come back to the show. There was a time when everyone thought Anna was dead, too - blown up in a boat fire, but she turned up a bit later in All My Children's Pine Valley and spent a few years there. She's been popping in to Port Charles (that's GH) off and on. Then one of her former, believed-dead-twice husbands, Duke Lavery, came back again. (after the first time, he showed up with a new face, claiming he'd had plastic surgery after being in a Turkish prison for several years, until a mobster's daughter killed him off again), only this time it wasn't really Duke; it was the master criminal and spy, Cesar Faison, who had stalked Anna for almost a year until he died in an explosion - only he didn't die either. He was sent to a Turkish prison, where he met Duke Lavery and hatched a plan that is just now coming to fruition. [It seems that the second Duke was an imposter who had never had surgery at all, he just escaped and pretended to be Duke, who was actually still languishing in that prison when Faison joined him] But Luke, who had fallen in love with Anna after she came back just before Robin "died," had left PC to find Robin's father, Scorpio (who everybody once thought had died in the boat explosion with his then wife, Anna), after Anna found out Luke had lied to him (Scorpio). So she broke up with Luke because of his lies. But by the time Luke found Scorpio, he(Luke) was arrested and put in that same Turkish prison, where he decided to stay and work undercover while Scorpio went back to Port Charles to save Anna from Faison, who managed to whisk Anna away to Switzerland (where he was holding Robin prisoner, which is when we find out that it wasn't Jerry Jax who had her after all, and it was Faison's henchman who blew up Jerry's boat and helped to thwart Jax's plan to poison the Port Charles water supply - another related GH storyline.)

However, Scorpio joined forces with John McBain, who had left Llanview, Pennsylvania along with Todd Manning and his daughter Starr, about the same time that their soap, One Life to Live was cancelled. Scorpio and McBain followed them(Anna and Faison/Duke), and found them in time to expose Faison's dastardly plot. Anna is about to find out that her daughter, Robin is still alive, and I imagine they will also learn that Duke and Luke are as well, and all will be home in time for Christmas, since that's the way it works in soap plots - GH plots, anyway.

No wonder this is the only one left - on ABC at least. I understand a couple are still running on CBS.

My daughters got me started on this freakish obsession while they were still in high school. I don't have time to watch it every day, but it's usually pretty easy to catch up if I check in for an hour in the mid-afternoon once or twice a week.

It was easier to quit smoking.

So, now you know.

Annie

Dear Annie and Alice,

I used to watch the afternoon movie that came on at 1 o'clock. It was always old lovelies like Bette Davis, Ida Lupino, Joan Crawford, and Fred Astaire, and some too old for this mind to remember tonight. I looked forward to it every day. Folded the laundry and watched the shows.

Perhaps it is time I look those shows up again. I imagine they will be on channel 10. There was the horror shows, too. Mr. Paul Bearer.....Ah, those were great.

Thanks for the memories of day time tv. I will search it out.

In a way, they are a comfort to me this day. Looking back upon times before the high tech and digital mayhem.

Love,

Betty