I remember this day quite well, believe it or not. What I failed to recall would be which Super Bowl teams played (Washington v. the LA Raiders) and the events I’m writing about were really on the 22nd, we just chose to celebrate the anniversary today. Or maybe two days after people had the first Macintoshes in their hands. It doesn’t matter! The cool stuff I can bring up accurately:
- I spent the weekend hanging out with my friend Kelly Houts (yes, a dude).
- The weather was gorgeous because Houston had rebounded long ago from the terrible deep freeze around Christmas.
- We threw eggs at the front door of some other kid’s apartment since he was a bully who pestered us at Clear Creek HS.
- The highlight was going to see Genesis at the Summit! The latter was replaced by the Toyota Center for the Rockets and concerts. I think grifter Joel Osteen made it into his “church.”
- Phil Collins then didn’t feel well enough so they put the show off to the next day.
However, the main event everyone goes on and on about was the Apple commercial during the game. It was the famous cinematic 1984 scene directed by Ridley Scott promoting the new Macintosh. Aired only twice. Of course, once during the Super Bowl and sometime I have no idea about. In order to be eligible for an award, I think the Cleos, a broadcast ad must run at least two times. Now it’s shown way more often in parodies (Futurama readily comes to mind, Fortnite, Republicans claiming all Dems are Big Brother and the best one is a localized furniture store), documentaries and Jobs had is digitally modified to have the lady runner wearing an iPod.
I didn’t give it any thought. I was 15 and contrary to my nerd credentials/status, I was not into computers, unless they were used for games or a glorified typewriter. When I did see the first Macs (what they’d be known as), I wasn’t impressed. They resembled toys more than actual computers. The little 9″ (22-23 cm) display, frequent demonstrations using the bundled MacPaint over MacWrite and this weird thing called a mouse. I’ve bored you all many times before on how my opinion was changed about them in 1988 and really by then Apple found a way to really sell them as a solution in publishing. It was genius! For a mere $10,000 USD in ’88 values (over $25K now), you could have a serious operation with a couple Macs and a LaserWriter II. The ‘difference’ for the money would be the software (QuarkXpress or ick, PageMaker), a couple physical hard drives and licensing some decent fonts as your audience will quickly find your usage of Times and Helvetica pedestrian. It sounds like expensive. Trust me, it was a bargain. The gear preceding it was at least three times as much so many smaller operations were dependent on service bureaus or the side hustles of local newspapers.
Today, we celebrated how far the Mac has come in the last 40 years; I know it has, when I go to places with free Wi-Fi, I see at least a third to half of the portables are Apple, not Dell or the other counter-intuitive Windows-based. Not sure why Jennifer’s family prefers to do computer-stuff the harder way. As part of the celebrations, many came dressed in their best Eighties attire. Given how many I work alongside weren’t even born yet, I knew most were going to the usual exaggerations Hollywood gives to tell dumb people, LOOK! IT’S THE EIGHTIES! Me, as the picture above shows, I went with what I would’ve dressed like then. The one item you can’t see are my shoes and here’s the weirdest part, not Chucks but Vans. Due to a couple loopholes in Strake Jesuit’s dress code, Vans were allowed so I had them until they became impossible to replace in North Dakota. I returned to Chucks for the rest of my life. The current Vans are from my Weird Al costume and they’re also my fat lazy guy shoes around the house. Even on days off from school, my wardrobe mostly had shirts with collars. Another remnant from parochial institutions. Although I was a pubbie 40 years ago, I had to outgrow the clothes I owned until I could receive new stuff and it didn’t happen…I was thrown back into Catholic prison by the Fall. Mills and Z don’t know how good they have it too. Unique T-shirts weren’t very common then. I recall many were just a solid color. Concert shirts were still 3/4 sleeve-esque softball style. If there was a design, more often it was practically an ad for beer, cigarettes, car parts or a short-lived fad/joke: “Where’s the beef?” readily comes to mind.
I had to add a Traveller book for the final touch. My idiot parents confiscated all my D&D books, they remain stupid enough to believe the Satanic Panic. I got to keep all the Sci-Fi crap oddly. What better book to have in the photo than High Guard! So there you go, a too accurate take on what I looked like 40 years ago today…minus the beard, 120 pounds and all the black hair dye growing out. I was as I am now, a pantie dropper!