Comments on: Comments on 17810

Post number 17810

drezdn — Thu, 13 Jun 2002 23:07:28 -0800

Where do products go when they die? The thrill of walking down the aisle at the odds-and-ends store to find the weirdest items. The best one? Edible Worms.

By: skallas

skallas — Thu, 13 Jun 2002 23:15:55 -0800

Nothing like dated circa 1994 gen-x humor to make me stop reading after the first couple paragraphs. Luckily you can just visit American Surplus and Science here.

By: rcade

rcade — Thu, 13 Jun 2002 23:36:14 -0800

I don't get the insulting references to 1994 as the year in which everyone else's sense of humor stopped developing, Skallas. What new trends in comedy are us dated Gen-X codgers missing out on, exactly? I look around me and see nothing but sly, self-deprecating, Lettermanesque ironic wackiness from all generations. Have the Gen-Y and Gen-Z kiddies been secretly reviving slapstick and vaudeville or something? Incidentally, you can buy Larvets edible worms at several online food stores. I don't think I'd want to get them at a dollar store. They wouldn't be fresh.

By: skallas

skallas — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 00:01:52 -0800

I don't get the insulting references to 1994 as the year in which everyone else's sense of humor stopped developing, Skallas. I never said humor stopped developing, but the x-entertainment type of humor passed its expiration date long ago. Transformers related nostalgia, irrelgular junk as cool, kitsch as hip, Norm McDonald-esque humor, et al have simply been done to death. X-entertainment, to me, is the epitome of recycling nostalgia for us gen-x'ers. There's this off-putting attitude of perpetuly living in one's childhood which makes this feel even more irrelevant and dated. Granted, satire, kitsch, and shameless nostalgia belong to no generation, but this site reeks of it to the point of being unbearable. YMMV, of course. Yeah I have my fair share of kitshy junk, comics, and books typical of a 20 something, but that doesn't mean I have to like a site that's soaking in it. FWIW, I picked 1994 because its has a nice ring to it and it was the year Reality Bites came out, which was one of the first movies to bring the slacker stereotype into the mainstream.

By: krisjohn

krisjohn — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 00:58:20 -0800

Aren't we up to GEN-e now...? Was there ever really a GEN-Z?

By: johnny novak

johnny novak — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 02:14:31 -0800

Gen X, the very term seems so lame now, so last century. I'm glad I got a good job when I did and can now afford to shop for Esquivel albums on E Bay.

By: elphTeq

elphTeq — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 02:31:18 -0800

which was one of the first movies to bring the slacker stereotype into the mainstream Is that because the media told you so? I remember that's what "they" tried to tell me :P This link was a damn awesome adventure of surreal materialistic discovery, and i enjoyed the ride. Don't see how gen-x could be linked to it other than it involving childlike glee, though. Nice find, drezdn.

By: emf

emf — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 03:28:00 -0800

Looking back, I think he just took pity on me for being the only person dumb enough to buy dried up slime balls. I think he's funny.

By: rory

rory — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 04:30:38 -0800

Hang on, skallas. So it's 'dated gen-x humor' to write in an amused tone about this stuff, but okay to visit the store's site and be amused by it directly? Treating 'irregular junk as cool' is tired, so we should just treat it as... well, junk? "Here, visit this site and have a look at this junk! Seriously, folks, it's just junk, and there's nothing funny about it. God knows how they make a living selling it. And by the way, if you do happen to find any of it funny, for God's sake don't write about it. No one under the age of thirty is allowed to find anything amusing that we thought was funny first."

By: rcade

rcade — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 05:33:43 -0800

There's this off-putting attitude of perpetuly living in one's childhood which makes this feel even more irrelevant and dated. I can agree with you there, as long as there's room to appreciate one of the geniuses of the form. There are times it feels like every Gen Xer in the U.S. stopped developing new interests at age 14.

By: NortonDC

NortonDC — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 06:02:23 -0800

"Gen X" was always supposed to be a lame term, an allusion to the inability to really peg that generation with a fitting label, a condition that suits me just fine. A leave my Transformers alone, dammit!

By: mkultra

mkultra — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 07:35:22 -0800

OK, someone please tell me the Coke II part was a joke right, about them thinking it's a new product? Please? Because if not, then (a) they're so NOT Gen-X, and (b) it makes me feel really old that there are people who don't remember the Coke II debacle. I still can't get over people who didn't see Star Wars (the original) in the theater...

By: GriffX

GriffX — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 07:48:19 -0800

I like Matt and X-E. He's no seanbaby, but then who is?

By: thebigpoop

thebigpoop — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 08:21:00 -0800

Just because no one else will hit this hard-hitting topic straight on, I wanted to add another useless tidbit: this is the coolest store. My mom took me there in 7th Grade to buy prisms for my science project. I came home with five jars of "goop," two 50 cent speakers to wire into my Fisher Price record player (which made it sound worse, go figure), and this metal thing that an older me can only describe as a nipple torture device. Don't think I ever finished that science project, and my nipples have been thanking me ever since.

By: @homer

@homer — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 08:34:15 -0800

We used to call this place the science center back when it was hidden away on Northwest Highway. It was just about the coolest place for a kid with little money and a lot of imagination. Walking through the aisles (except the one with all the glass items!) with the wood floor creaking. Our grandfather would drive us and he would get so pissed after an hour or so of us looking at each and every little thing in the store. Then the store moved to it's neew location on Milwaukee and it was never the same. More regular (read non-nerdy) folks started coming in and the store had less little goofy stuff and started having more ready made junk products. We were able to capture the feeling of wonder once again when we visited the AS&S store in one of the southern suburbs but I've heard it has since been shut down.

By: Hackworth

Hackworth — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 08:47:38 -0800

...Dutifully ingnoring all previous comments... I fucking love it. I wanna go there, now. and write my own web-page thing about it on the inter-net. fun.