One of the first things I do in one of my classes is to show that scene to my students, and I pause right as they put the paper to their noses. I often have older students in my classes who laugh at that, and I ask if anyone knows what this refers to. If so, I tell them that is one way to know how old they are. The number of students who recognize ditto sheets (which is what we called them) has gone down year by year.
Speaking of celebrity references, I re-watched The Muppet Movie recently, a film that came out the year before I was born. I later realized I didn’t recognize many of the celebrity cameos until I looked up the movie on IMDB. I think Steve Martin and Mel Brooks are the only ones I immediately recognized.
I suspect the movie UHF will need explaining for younger people soon, if it doesn’t already. Since the switch to digital broadcasting how many people remember the old VHF and UHF bands, and the independent, local TV stations that usually lived high up on the UHF dial? Even not that long after the movie came out most of those stations had become Fox, UPN, or WB affiliates.
There have been numerous bits about old antenna TVs, with the indoor rabbit ears and roof top antennas also. I remember my kids asking what those things on top of houses were. Long after cable took over there were plenty of roof top antennas that were never taken down. I also had to tell my kids about the old days when you had to get up and walk across the room if you wanted to changed the channel on the TV.
I actually take note of all the rooftop antennas in the neighborhood when I go for a walk. That is one obvious sign that this is an older neighborhood.
Coming soon, stock scene for a creepy old abandoned house: it has a TV antenna …
Come to think of it, in the early seasons of The Simpsons wasn’t the family’s TV portrayed as having a coat hanger for an antenna?
0001 Cemetery Lane
With some sets I had, sometimes you had to stand at a particular spot in the living room to get reception.
Married with Children had their running gag about everybody getting into Fox viewing position.
And how many of them will recognize either The Beverley Hillbillies, or Money For Nothing.
As I recall, many of the gags in UHF referenced TV shows or commercials that would have been known to a late 1980s audience. Now I really need to rewatch that movie.
Reminds me of this old Peanuts gag:
What’s yellow, and sticky, and ice skates?
Peggy Phlegm.
What’s yellow, and sticky, and shoots a rifle really fast?
Mucus McCain
How to they fill up the Olympic pool in Munich?
Mark Spitz.
What’s yellow and sticky, carries a doctor’s bag, and slides across the operating room floor?
Mucus Welby, M. D.
In the fifties - “Say it - it’s your nickel”
I was listening to the Travis Tritt song “Here’s a Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares” and it got me wondering if that would make any sense to kids these days.
I know my husband has absolutely stymied some of his child clients with “broken record” so it seems plausible they would have never heard of payphones.
I doubt kids would understand:
A Polish immigrant jumps on a garbage truck and says ‘fly me to Havana’.
We were rich Okies, we had two mattresses on top of our car
They also wouldn’t get the reference in the Simpsons parody of CSI: Miami, where Horatio Caine says “Maybe he reached out … and killed someone!”
Never heard the phrase “Dropped a quarter on him” to mean ratting someone out to the police. Maybe just once did I hear any reference to a pay phone based on a quarter even though it went up from a dime well before payphones became extinct. I imagine they only cost a nickel some time in the past but it wouldn’t be useful to distinguish a pay phone call that way because everything cost a nickel back then.