In the 1990’s movie Beautiful Girls, one of the characters is showing his friends around the restaurant he just opened. He says something like, “We’ve got a full bar, lots of seating, we’ve got apps…”
“Apps?”
“Appetizers.”
“Oh.”
Funny to think that 20 years ago, ‘apps’ had to be explained as ‘appetizers,’ when today it would mean something else entirely.
+1
Used to work with a guy whose wife was from Okinawa (and she was always reluctant to say she was Japanese). He swore his wife was better with an abacus than he was with a calculator…and he was a pretty sharp guy.
I betcha it was POLICE STORY.
One scene in The Parallax View is pretty shocking these days. Warren Beatty is following someone who gets on a plane, so he climbs a fence, sneaks onto the runway and onto the plane.
After they have taken off, the stewardess approaches him, writes down the fake name he gives her into a legal pad, asks him if he’s flying Round Trip, and then says something like “That’ll be $73.”
I don’t remember enough of the old cop shows to take a guess, but it was around the same era. I tried searching on YouTube for the scene, and the police cars in the show looked familiar so I figured it was that one.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
Found a post on another forum where someone mentioned it It was Police Story. The actor Don Meredith did it.
In the apartment when Fred McMurray finishes getting his shoes shined he flips the colored shoe shine boy (actually a man) a tip!
Okay … he tips the guy who shines his shoes (and also happens to be black). So? :dubious:
What was he supposed to do? Pat him on the head? Toss him a slice of watermelon? 
When I was in fifth or sixth grade, I used to go with my dad to get our shoes shined at a place downtown. The guy who did it was black, and we always tipped him, even though I’m sure he was paid to be there anyway. It was his job, fer chrissakes!
I’ve never heard of anyone who provides a service (and is good at it) not being pleased when someone gives him (or her) a gratuity.
Not surprising. I’ve worked with abacuses too (until recently, they were ubiquitous in Russia), and I know they’re really fast!
I don’t think that was quite what Chin’s line was intended to convey, though. 
Hand it to him. :smack: I think the operative word in yesanything’s post is “flipped.” Sheldrake flipped or tossed the shoeshine man his tip rather than handing it to him.
So? He caught it, didn’t he? :dubious:
This is a sign of disrespect?
I’d argue so; why exactly won’t Sheldrake let his hand near the shoeshine man’s hand?
Even if it’s not disrespectful, it’s definitely dated, which is the topic of this thread.:smack: When was the last time you saw someone (a) tip a server of any kind with only a coin, and (b) do so by throwing it at them? 
To tell the truth, I’ve never really given the matter much thought.
Back in 1960, though, a 50 cent piece was worth at least $2.50 in today’s money, so tipping with a coin wasn’t exactly cheap.
The first one that came to mind was the ending - in fact, pretty much the entire premise - of the Peanuts special Charlie Brown’s All-Stars, where Charlie Brown decides not to accept sponsorship for his team into a “better” league because…
No Girls (or dogs) Allowed - which was a firm (as in, “Your choice: don’t let any girls into your league, or don’t bother sending a team to the tournament that leads to the Little League World Series”) regulation in Little League until 1974
Speaking of Bell-Bottom Paranoia, pretty much anything to do with the phone system in Three Days of the Condor is just wonderfully dated. Really, anything where it takes time to trace a call and someone can defeat a trace by hanging up really fast is indicative of either ancient technology or ancient minds, with the latter being more in evidence these days than the former.
Speaking of, there’s some interesting and historical information about payphone phreaking in the 1995 cinematic classic Hackers, when Razor and Blade teach you how to trick payphones into thinking you’ve deposited money by recording the sounds played in the handset when you deposit coins and playing them back into the mouthpiece later. Aside from the fact payphones in and of themselves are indicative of a previous epoch, that specific trick was likely all but obsolete by the time the film came out, and is certainly useless today.
There’s actually an interesting scene in the original version of Black Christmas where they show how they traced calls, albeit with very dated equipment.
And once I thought about that, I began to think about how dated the premise of the original BC was – the main heroine is pregnant, but adamant that she wants to have an abortion. She even breaks up with her boyfriend because he wants her to keep it and for the two of them to get married. You would NEVER see that plot-line in a movie today, especially with the main character with whom the audience are meant to identify with and root for.
I was a camp counsellor for years. Young people today are very anti-abortion which is surprising.
When I was in college, I needed a good calculator, so my dad bought me one. We set up some test problems, and I worked them with the calculator and he with his slide rule. He beat me to the answers every time. He was GOOD with that thing!
Selective effect- the people born today are the children of people who didn’t abort them?