After being taught at TCI in Transcona that beat farmers mostly populated Russia, you can imagine my surprise when I woke up on the morning of October 4th in 1957 to discover that, somehow, these peasants had managed to put up a satellite that circled the earth called Sputnik. Wow!
Marshall McLuhan, a Toronto University Professor and brilliant media philosopher, later said, “At the moment of Sputnik, the planet became a global theater in which there are no spectators, only actors.
Marshall was absolutely right because, before that Sputnik moment, most men wore only one drab suit, a matching drab tie, and a bunch of boring white shirts.
However, things changed quickly and drastically because we were all on stage now.
Soon, men were wearing bright-colored dress shirts with flowered ties, Blue Blazers with gold buttons, sports jackets of various colors, and even jewelry.
The shirts got wilder as time passed, and a few guys even went neon.
In my mind, the only downside to all this is that if it’s true that we’re all actors on the world stage now, why are there so many bad ones? (Marshall McLuhan is shown on top.)
COMMENTS
@DougHerman: Those special “out of format” things were always fun. When I was at WRIT/Milwaukee (1970-1971), a couple of times, we did a throw-back weekend where we turned the whole radio station back into 1957 or 1958. WRIT was top 40 all the time and had been since the ’50s, but for those “special” weekends, we hauled out the old playlists and the old WRIT PAMS jingles from back in the day. We had our station voice guy do appropriate intros and so forth. We cranked up the reverb on the jock mic channel and even switched our newscasts over to “Action Central News” with all of the sounders, reverb, and sound effects. We took the traditional “Solid Gold Weekend” oldies programming done by a lot of top 40 stations to the absolute extreme. Enough of us on staff were old enough to remember what it was supposed to sound like. It was a hell of a lot of fun and got some very good audience reaction. (The Element of Hipness)
Geo: Doing that kind of stuff was so much fun, Doug. I remember at WIBC in Indy, we ran a promo saying, “This Friday at 4:00 PM, 10-70 WIBC becomes a thing of the past.” It had the whole town buzzing. Of course, we played nothing oldies all weekend.
@PaulCavenaugh: The lawyers who lie sleep well at night because they have the most expensive mattresses. (Geo’s Daily Life-Liners)
Geo: I hear ya, Paul.
@BuzzBarnett: Hi ya, George! Miss Your Smilin’ Face! Here’s 2023 for Me after months of extreme pain & near paralysis:DIAGNOSIS: A. SYNOVIAL CYST, L4-L5; EXCISION: – FRAGMENTS OF DEGENERATIVE CARTILAGE WITH ASSOCIATED GRANULATION TISSUE. – NEGATIVE FOR MALIGNANCY.COMMENT: Sections show degenerative cartilage and debris with surrounding granulation-type and proliferating fibroblasts. CLINICAL INFORMATION: Prolapsed lumbar intervertebral disc with SCIATICA.”Synovial cyst L4-L5″ – The specimen consists of a 1.4 x 0.8 x 0.7 cm rubbery pink-tan nodule. Jalapeño-sized cyst causing 100% compression on a root nerve, according to Neurosurgeon Jose Santos @ Presbyterian Hospital/ Albuquerque. Took seven months of cryin’ & screamin’ before Surgery. I just Hope for Your continued Healthiness & Happiness!! (Stabbing me)
Geo: Wow! After reading this Buzzy, I almost feel cured. Good luck, my friend.
