Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 86

Oh Oxford, you do get around. Just a bit ago, I was yelling about your Berkeley Exchange and here you are with another state university doing exactly the same thing. Did you think that you would never get caught? Tsk tsk.

Unlike Berkeley, the FSU portal to the University of Oxford's Continuing Education Summer Program has been shut down - all that's left is an International Law exchange. How bittersweet. Oxford, meanwhile, has its own Program portal. The Berkeley Program now has its 2007 course list up. The Berkeley and Oxford courses are similar, and have many of the same instructors, but they aren't the same. How odd.

Oh, and once more for you students in the audience: Don't presume that you can take these courses for credit - check with your adviser before signing up.

"A Vacation from vacationers." Boy, that sounds idyllic. I picture a tiny island with a few rooms; very small, so you can get that privacy. Then I get to the website and I see that the place is humongous. And how do you get away from vacationers? Well, it's because they cater primarily to business retreats and mega-weddings. This means that while most of the guests are off at the powerpoint teleconference or the pre-rehearsal dinner cocktail spread, you get the beach all to yourself. But don't relax too much -- they have a dress code! "Tee-shirts, tank tops, faded jeans, cutoffs and wearing of casual hats is discouraged in the lobby, restaurants or public areas of the resort." I guess that after a nice time at the pool, you have to sneak back to your room through the loading dock, you damn hippie.

Inca Floats had two ads in the 1996 runthrough, here and here. Somehow this ad makes me think that at this point they were a bit more bare bones. They started business in 1976, so perhaps we'll see them just starting out with their "fly to Peru and swim for it" Galapagos package.

Inflatable Dinosaurs! Wow! I was in college in 1986 and I will vouch. These guys were in roughly every other dorm room. (Some of them were in rude positions with each other.) Another bit of nostalgia: The Nature Company! This was a chain store that bridged the gap between the "I only buy little Schmedley toys that teach him something" crowd and environmentally minded New Agers. In other words, lots of:

• Jewelry made out of irregular shaped polished rocks
• Cassettes and CD's of waterfalls and bird noises
• Solar powered gimcracks with labels that explained that their purpose was to teach about pressure or friction or something, but really you bought them because you went to the store stoned and you didn't have near enough money to buy the $400 plasma globe.
• Dinosaur memorabilia.

The Nature Company seems to have gone out of business. Extinct. As I was looking for info, I found my way to this article about how a group called The Dinosaur Society "is dedicated to revealing and correcting inaccuracies in popular dinosaurabilia."

And the society is working with the Nature Company, [founder Don] Lessem says, to improve an inflatable T. Rex. The dinosaur’s not bad, but it says on the box that it could raise itself by its arms--do push-ups, kind of--which is impossible.

The Dinosaur Society seems to have closed up as well. It's extinct too. You can still buy inflatable dinosaurs from here. My last bullet up there originally read "Dinosaur Crap." You can buy that too, but not inflatable. Yet.

Now here's another surprise. Back in the day, Blackhawk films was the big supplier of movies on 8mm film. This is for all those folks who had home movie projectors and wanted to watch something other than Aunt Tillie hanging up the laundry. When home VCRs started being prevalent, Blackhawk switched their stock over to video. This ad looks like the last gasp of that venture. This site seems to be where the stock ended up. Take a look for more details on the history of the company and you can purchase newly struck old films on lovely old Super 8.

And the idea that they felt that the New Yorker readership would be most interested in The Little Rascals, of all things, cracks me up.

I want to see that guy skiing. There are no pictures of him skiing on the website.

I'd tell you more about Sunrise County Canoe Expeditions, but you need a login to see their website.