Late at night in a snow storm?
Private and safe as can be I would say. Against the law both then and now, but unlikely to get caught.
How is it pronounced now? I think I pronounce it that way, but I tend to over-enunciate.
I bought a new black and white tv in 1990. It was all I could afford.
We don’t? what’s different?
Nowadays if you are into rap, it’s “fiddy cent”.
And what size was it?
I believe my original point stands: that the term “color TV” would have been redundant in 1985, as full-sized black and white TVs were no longer being manufactured by then, and black and white sets would have been a small subset of all televisions sold.
Thus, one would be more likely to understand “TV” to refer to a color TV, and to state “black and white TV” if your set was not like most of the rest that were around.
My point is supported by this Wikipedia article:
Are you joking, or is that a whoosh?
My mother wanted to buy a B&W set sometime around 1983, and the only ones available were 13". The set came with a standard plug, but also an adapter so you could hook it up to a battery.
By me, as well. I won a set in a raffle for some charity that was a “storm” TV/radio. It had a plug, but also ran on six D batteries. It had a 6" B&W screen. It was meant for keeping in touch with emergency info when the power went out. This was around 2000. A color TV would have been twice as big, and the resolution would have been poorer, because reception is usually poor in the conditions that knock out the power.
We used it about six times when we went into the basement during tornado warnings. It doesn’t get reception anymore because of the switch to digital.
In nineteen hundred and seventy-five,
all the people rose from the countryside,
locked together hand in hand all through this unsteady land,
to move against you government man do ya’ understand,
Jefferson Airplane, War Movie
Dated not only in the fact that no revolution occurred in 1975, but also by the fact that, when this came out (1971), the idea of a mass uprising against the US “government man” was a left-wing fantasy, rather than a right-wing one.
I don’t think he is joking or that it is a whoosh. I want to know too. What did Julius Henry mean when he implied that “we” pronounce “fifty cents” differently now from how it was pronounced when “King of the Road” was a hit? Was that some sort of joke?
You and DChord568 seem very determined to disbelieve everyone else’s testimony that black and white TV sets were still being widely bought and used in Britain in the early 1980s. What about the fact that, as late as 2000, about 212,000 households in Britain had black-and-white-only TV licences, and there were still 13,202 households with such licences at the beginning of 2013? (Thanks to Erdosain for the link, from a different thread.) Note that color television arrived a lot later in Britain than it did in America, and a colour licence was (and remains) a lot more expensive than a black and white one.
OK, going by CheshireKat’s post, it was a (very feeble) joke. It hardly ought to be amazing that neither Achren nor I got it.
If “everybody else” is making this statement about TV purchases in the UK in this thread, I must have missed it. Can you link me to the posts in this thread that state this? (And let’s remember that “Money for Nothing” was released in 1985.)
I will grant that I’m more familiar with the situation in the US than in the UK. However, the quote I posted earlier (mistakenly linking to the wrong page; it’s actually here) does not reference a country. It simply states:
As for:
Your last clause may provide some insight into this. Another article I read said that, because of the price difference in licenses, it’s believed that a significant number of UK residents report that they have black and white sets when in fact they own color ones, and that they do so to avoid playing the higher licensing fee. In the absence of enforcement (which would after all involve a government official knocking on your door and demanding an inspection), they can get away with this.
Beyond this, the figures you cite prove nothing in terms of when the alleged black and white sets were purchased. There will always be those who will cling to older technology until it absolutely just stops working. Nor do these figures give any indication that — contrary to the quote I cited — full-sized black and white television sets were still being manufactured and purchased in 1985. (I’ve acknowledged that portable sets still were.)
Rikki don’t lose that number
You don’t wanna call nobody else
Send it off in a letter to yourself
Wouldn’t it make more sense to store it in my cell phone?
OK. Regarding the Dire Straits song, and the mention of color TVs: they are talking about moving them. Maybe it is worth mentioning that you are moving a color TV, because color TVs were always bigger than B&W TVs with the same size screen, and even a 19" color TV was a PITA to move.
My husband and I once were given someone’s old SD 32" TV, and had to move it from the car to the lobby, into the elevator, and into our apartment, then hoist it onto our TV table. It was a bitch and a half. I don’t know exactly how heavy it was, but it compared to the easy chair was also moved into the same apartment.
An HD, flatscreen TV is not that big a deal to move. We now have a 32" flatscreen that I can carry under one arm. I could probably carry a 36" by myself, but I’d need two hands because of the size. My husband is a lot taller than I am, and he might be able to carry it one-handed.
So I submit that the mention of a TV as something difficult to move in the first place, is dated.
Also, regarding the US/UK difference in color and B&W, it may be there is a demand for B&W in the UK simply because of the licensing price. In the US, there is almost zero demand for them, because they are no longer cheaper, no longer more portable, and no longer use less power than color TVs. I have never seen a B&W TV for sale that gets digital reception through an antenna. Googling “buy black and white TV” brings up exclusively UK sites. The only US sites are questions sites where people are asking if you can still buy them.
For US listeners, mentioning that a TV is in color is practically redundant. It does, in fact, further date the song for US listeners. I realize the Dire Straits are a UK band, but that doesn’t change the fact that they have a huge US following-- or had, at the height of their popularity.
RE: Fifty cent, when we moved to North Carolina in 1972, I noticed that all the locals used cent rather than cents. My classmates brought “fifteen cent” for milk. I think it’s been a regional phrase for a long time.
The joke is that the song is actually dated because you cannot get a room, even a room at the Y overnight, for 50 cents anymore, so the song is dated because of the price of the room. Julius Henry, however, has made what I thought was an hilarious reference to the rapper 50 Cent, whose name is pronounced “Fiddy Cent,” by pretending to misunderstand the reason the song is dated. If you are not familiar with Mr. Cent, however, you will not get the joke.
Apologies to everyone who thought it was funny before you sat through my pedantic explanation.
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.*
Neil Young-“After the Gold Rush”
A friend of mine who has this song in his repertoire changes the repeat to something like “And it’s still got us on the run/In the 21st century.”
In The Summertime by Mungo Jerry has the thing about “have a drink have a drive, go out and see what you can find”. Drinking and driving was not exactly excused in those days, but it wasn’t the big deal it is now. I think it was usually a slap on the wrist unless you caused a horrible accident. I have seen some people claim the line, “if her daddy’s rich, take her out for a meal, if her daddy’s poor, just do what you feel” is saying it’s okay to rape a poor girl. I don’t think that’s what they were going for- I think they were going for, “if her family doesn’t have money, skip the pretense of it being anything more than a hookup”. Which is considered a pretty sleazy notion these days, since pointing out class distinctions isn’t as acceptable as it used to be.
*Now I’m going down to Jimmy’s bar
Like a thousand other times
With an appetite for poison
And a suitcase full of dimes
And I’ll wait there by the payphone
With one hundred other guys
With those sorry hung-up teardrops in our eyes*
“Hung Up On You” - Fountains of Wayne
(not written all that long ago, but pay phone references automatically sound dated)
*Going down the old mine
With a transistor radio *
“Brown Eyed Girl”- Van Morrison