I don’t usually share videos, but found this one so on-the-mark (and so damned amusing) that I just had to (tip of the hat to Usually Barefoot blog):
Sadly, YouTube and Vimeo have turned off embedding on the Louis CK video, but you can see it here at YouTube.
And yes, as a charter member of Geezer Copywriter’s Collective, I see myself on both sides of this one, including the whiny, unappreciative bit. I am shamed.
Comments 46
Tom, that was simply too good! Thanks for sharing!
I usually find this comic a wee bit too vulgar for me (I know. Hard to imagine), but I was crying from laughing so hard.
I especially liked remembering how much I also hated dialing numbers with a lot of zeros.
Yours in the CRONE & Geezer Copywriters Collective.
You know, normally I don’t comment on blogs (just not my thing) but I’ve been sharing this video with EVERYONE since I saw it here, and we’ve all been laughing hysterically.
I love the “You’re sitting in a chair, in the SKY!”
Just makes me think of how much we take for granted. Like the fact that I’m laying in bed, typing up this comment because I have a laptop. Hey, guess what? I don’t have to take the paper out of this when I’m done typing, fold it up, and mail it off to you! I just click “post”, and my comment is seen by the world.
Frickin’ neat if you ask me. :)
@Roberta: I remember getting fingertip burn trying to speed rotary dial phone numbers with lots of nines and zeros. Yep – them Old Days were filled with hazards.
@Cherilyn: Handy for sure – but I think being always connected carries its own risks, perhaps even worse than fingertip burn…
Wow. Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou SO MUCH for posting this. It made my year.
(Not sure how pathetic that is or not)
That is hilarious and so true! Thank you so much for sharing! I will share it with all my students!
Yes, technology is wasted on the new generation, but then so is youth! Sometimes I wish I could go back.
Tom, thanks for posting this. I’m gonna share it with others.
AMAZINGLY FUNNY!! “You’re sitting in a CHAIR in the SKY!” And so fabulously true. Love it love it love it. :)
What is this guest’s name?
So true………. this made my day!
Amen…
He’s a riot and hit the nail on the head with the present generation. His name is Louis CK.
Oh, Men!!! This is soooo true. I just loved it.
Thanks for sharing!
He is soooo right! I am amazed all the time at the wonders we have available to us and at the number of people who can’t appreciate them.
Thanks for sharing. This is incredibly insightful and a complete blow to the head. Isn’t reality what you make of it? Love it.
Before I watched it I was ready to resent the guy for being another “back in my day, we were tough” type of curmudgeon, and he is, but it was very funny and very poignant.
As for me, to keep myself amazed and to appreciate what we have, I try to see things through the eyes of Tom Sawyer (as someone from the early-mid 1800s.)
To put things in perceptive, matches just came out around that time and they were extremely dangerous, often lighting by themselves.
Although I have been using computers for almost thirty years, I’m still awestruck every time I turn my on.
I remember typing copies 4 at a time with carbon paper in order to fill the weekend ‘logs’ at my first radio station job. Not a small feat when 2 or 3 sponsors bought 100 or so saturation spots. It made for better radio, because who can word the same stuff exactly the same 100 times. Still enjoy the tactile feel of handling actual papers. just can’t help it.
Updike fans (like me) shouldn’t miss the Feb 9 & 16 issue of The New Yorker, a beautiful tribute to their long-time writer.
I agree; this could have been an irritating rant, but instead, the comedian did a great job.
And carbon paper remains the stuff of nightmares for me. My first copy jobs were written on a typewriter, and while I wouldn’t go back to that (ever), I will say there was something very, very committal about putting real ink on real paper.
THAT’s ” GREAT ”
I love this guy. He said what needs to be said! I loved rotary phones and party lines. That’s how you kept up on what was going on in the neighborhood without going outside! Hope this guy keeps talking!
Love this fella’. He’s right on target. I go back much farther….to the partyline with an individual ring for each household in the farming community. It is a different world, different life now. Can’t imagine what our grandchildren will see. Thanks for sharing!
Absolutely spot on ! How blase we are about the wonder and the miracle of it all.
Please tell me who these two guys are (apologise if it is obvious to you – I am English and in Brussels, Belgium right now so “suffering” culture lag !).
Cheryl: The host of the show is Conan O’Brien, and someone said the comedian was named Louis CK.
How true! We miss so much in the “here and now”; I really miss the rotary phones, and my mom would never have the kind that hung on the wall in the kitchen!!! I’d give anything to “go back” and do it all over again the right way…..there are so many things we take for granted! I want a cell phone that is just that….no picture e-mails, no texting, just open it and talk.
Loved the comedian; I too was raised with partylines and different rings for each household. I am especially blown away that I can read a note from Cheryl in UK that was written just a few hours ago!!
she is in Belgium, and I am in California!! USA.! Now THAT’S amazing…
So true! Remember party lines and tall TV antenaes, black and white TV’s, mid-sized cars like Ramblers that always got 36 mpg on regular, Freeways being 70mph, police being polite and you being respectable right back, nobody ever thought of spray painting anything but a model car, TV trays were for TV dinners which had real meat, a kid actually earned an allowance and school money, kids could work in the strawberry fields picking and buy their own toys, teachers could actually paddle your behind for disrespecting them, any adult in the neiborhood was incharge of any kid on his or her property, personal lawsuits were never and murder was less than that, wife beaters, pediphilesand rapist were known by the community in which they lived and they community sometimes with the aid of the police took care of the problem, once a person was convicted of a “BAD” crime, they were never allowed back in the community, houses were never locked, cars were never locked, and kids played outside until dark!
Speak for yo’self, I’m happy. Did my time living without indoor plumbing, don’t wanna go back. Yes, I did, at two different times in life.
Are these videos on YouTube? My iPhone can’t interpret the vids natively. Thanks Apple!
Let me tell you one about the human flight experience I will never forget.
I was a Hospital Corpsman (Navy) at my 1st duty station at the Naval Medical Center, Portsmouth, Va in summer of 1968. I was working the PM shift in the cardiac care unit. In came an elderly gentleman, a retired Coast Guardsman, with a heart problem. I had the priviledge of getting him settled in and told him I’d see him next AM since I was then going on AM shift duty. Next morning I came in and proceeded giving him his AM care which including changing his bed. I asked him about his career, making conversation, as I was going about my duties. He told me his started out as a lifesaver along the Outer Banks of NC. The Lifesaving Association later became the U.S. Coast Guard service. He was from Nags Head, NC. His daddy was a lighthouse tender. As a boy he recalled helping his dad ferry folks across the Albemarle River to Nags Head, Kitty Hawk, etc.
He remembers one morning loading a bunch of boxes into a boat and ferrying two gentlemen from Ohio across the river to Kitty Hawk. They made several trips ’cause they had lots of stuff, lumber included and odds things like a pair of railroad bars. Over the next week he kept a watch on the gentlemen, helping out when he could as they unpacked their gear, etc, but what amazed him was when they assembled this rail and pully system. Then he told about being on Kitty Hawk when those brothers placed this contraption that looked like a big glider but with rotating propellers on that rail and pulley system. To my amazement, this old fellow, as a boy, was at Kitty Hawk when the Wright Brothers made the first flight in an glider called an aeroplane. He said it was simply astonishing. So, everytime I get on an airplane to take a trip, I recall my touch with history.
@JW – thanks for sharing that. Wow.
Great! This video keeps hanging up and won’t let me watch the whole thing! This is BS!
How sad and true. I love technology, but hate how we take it for granted and sometimes miss the forest for the trees. I SAY I would like to go back to simpler times, but I realize that I quite possibly wouldn’t be able to survive outside the pampered lifestyle we all have grown accustomed to.
I was just thinking about watching old movies on UHF on Saturday mornings (Creature Double Feature) and how few options there were for viewing. Now, I probably view just as many channels, but there are 100s more. It boggles the mind, and makes me a bit distracted. I miss the days of getting up to change the channel, and messing with the antennae.
Great post, and thanks for the laughs. Louis CK is a very funny guy, and he comes from my neck of the woods (Mass.). Good to see him from time to time.
I’m 68 years old and have to resist the urge every day to say to these spoiled idiots “You have no idea what life will be like when they blow up the country and you have to learn to hand write, spell, add & subtract and go for more than an hour without talking/texting someone. I love this Louis guy!
Loved this one…Been there right along with him in the “GOOD OLE DAYS” Whats wrong with our “SPOILED SOCIETY” Today, people are just not appreciative for what we have.
Great stuff! I’m retired and make it point NEVER to be in a hurry. When I respond to an apology for delays with the comment, “No problem. I’m in no hurry!”, I get strange looks and, sometimes, even better service than anticipated.
Will
Hm — I’m caught in the middle, it seems. Early 40s, and I think most of us on either side of 40 are halfway between “WOWIE!” and “Damn it, this thing’s not working perfectly!”
I still get a lift in my throat when I take off in an airplane. I keep thinknig of what daVinci would say. And at the same time, I almost twisted my ipod touch in half when Safari froze up on it this morning. Stupid thing.
If this doesn’t put things in perspective…I don’t know what does!!
Thanks…I needed this.
Think I’ll pass it on to ALL of my students!!
They can watch it on their E (oops) or is it “I” Phones!!
It amazes me how dependent we are on technology. Yesterday I went to a restaurant for lunch and their computers were down so they couldn’t sell me anything! Does the computer cook the food? Can’t they figure out how much I owe the old fashioned way? Pen and paper?
Sooooooooo true!
Louis CK is right on and knows how to convey it! And so are all the posted comments. (Janis early 40s-loved it)
I love my tall TV tower…my TV is free and good enough for me. I do like the new and basic technologies, but, the more stuff one owns, the more it owns you. This country needs to slow down and appreciate for so many reasons (sanity among them).
He hit the NAIL ON THE HEAD!!!!!!!!
On a personal note; I was in the hospital for a craniotomy in 2002, I know, A what? Anyway is was in a coma for 45 days. Thanks to today’s technology, my Neuro was able to bore a couple holes in my head, relieve the pressure. Today, instead of pushing up Daisey’s or being a vegetable myself, I am making films…I no longer take progress for granted….
I was born in 1931 and can remember the phone we had up to and including WW2. The phone WAS on the wall but there was no dial. Instead yo turned a little handle on the side of the box. This reached an operator who connected you to the # you gave her. If the party was home or the line was not busy, you were connected. The line being busy , was not just the person you were calling. but as many as 25 shared those lines. When the phone rang you had to count. Our # was 25 ( 2 long rings and 5 short. If you were polite You didn’t pick up on someone else’s #. The potential was that 24 listeners could be hearing your conversation. I don’t think we have improved that much We now have u-2 or my space on the internet and potentially millions can hear (read) we are saying. So much for progress !!!
Trackbacks & Pingbacks 2
[...] for now, I’ll leave you with this awesome video clip of an interview on Conan O’Brien, thanks to Tom Chandler at The Copywriter Underground! The [...]
[...] This kind of knocks things down a peg. Saw this linked to on Twitter, but I thought I would share. Tagged and categorized as: Everyday , link, video | TrackBack URI [...]
Post a Comment