Remember ordering books and magazines from the Scholastic Book Club? This a small, digest-sized magazine from 1977, so I was twelve when I ordered it. Anything good inside? Oh, my, yes. First, a moving look at the world of customized vans (the images below can be clicked for bigger/readable):
And a profile of OJ Simpson featuring a hunky glamor shot of OJ looking unconvincing as an African tribesman in Roots:
I clicked for the larger versions, and what I suspected was true. The bicentennial van was a VW bus, which is the only non-American vehicle in the group as far as I can tell.
It's important to remember the positive images of O.J. without irony. Some day, we will tell young people about the heroic Tiger Woods and they will say "Ewwww!"
Wow, shades of a more comfortable time. Words like "Tricked up" feel like counterculture filtered through an 'adult' lens; like the Great Society, we felt good about it without knowing why but it clearly safe. Scholastic Book Club was this nerds connection to the world.
Somewhere in my collection, I have an old copy of Penthouse magazine with a Dingo boots ad starring OJ. He's sitting there with his legs apart and he has three legs, all wearing Dingos. You want it?
A friend of mine who teaches history was showing Roots to her high school students, and when Kunta Kinte runs afoul of O.J., one of her students yelled out "Run, Geordi! He's got a knife!"
8 comments:
Holy crap. I remember that article about customized vans.
I clicked for the larger versions, and what I suspected was true. The bicentennial van was a VW bus, which is the only non-American vehicle in the group as far as I can tell.
It's important to remember the positive images of O.J. without irony. Some day, we will tell young people about the heroic Tiger Woods and they will say "Ewwww!"
Wow, shades of a more comfortable time. Words like "Tricked up" feel like counterculture filtered through an 'adult' lens; like the Great Society, we felt good about it without knowing why but it clearly safe. Scholastic Book Club was this nerds connection to the world.
Somewhere in my collection, I have an old copy of Penthouse magazine with a Dingo boots ad starring OJ. He's sitting there with his legs apart and he has three legs, all wearing Dingos.
You want it?
I loved Scholastic book club. Books, comic books, posters and, of course, Supermag. Some of the posters are still up in my parent's garage.
the look in OJ's should have been fair warning
A friend of mine who teaches history was showing Roots to her high school students, and when Kunta Kinte runs afoul of O.J., one of her students yelled out "Run, Geordi! He's got a knife!"
I had a subscription to Dynamite -- it had more pictures, less words.
Post a Comment