Rich Mintz  

I know I’m not the first person to stumble across YouTube Time Machine, an indexed repository of nostalgic content (really, any short clip that can easily be tied to a year). And I know that using this kind of tool, it’s easy to descend into a substance-free metaverse of mashups and memories that consumes hours or days of your life. So be careful. But play with it anyway. It’s more fun, and more interesting, and more emotionally resonant, than you might expect.

As a little preview of the kinds of gems you’ll find, here, from 1973, is Bette Midler performing on the UJA-Federation of New York Telethon:

I think I’m readdicted to satellite radio (that didn’t take long, did it?). It’s a whole new ballgame now that my iPhone, combined with the docking speakers that are already strategically placed around my life, can play satellite radio anytime I feel like it.* Sure is easier than hauling that boom box around in the car, like I did in 2002!

In honor of my new addictions, here’s a musical gem turned up for me by the inspired programmers at Sirius XM: “Indiana Wants Me” (1970), a Canadian #1 and American #5 hit, by R. Dean Taylor.

*Some of my docking speakers aren’t compatible with iPhone 4. Fortunately, they’re the crappy ones I already hated…

And now, because I can, some Herbie Rides Again action. God, these Disney movies from the 1960s and 1970s movies were well made — well cast, well acted (with good-natured actors just short of caricature), well shot, visually rich, fun for people of all ages, and completely devoid of anything nasty or unwholesome (which doesn’t mean devoid of humor or villainy, both of which are in evidence throughout). And Ye Chicken Tournament Jousting Today! There is so little in popular culture nowadays that feels like this. And the scenery! They’re worth watching just for the backdrops, usually of a clean and tidy California (here it’s San Francisco) that isn’t around anymore.

You know the movie Freaky Friday? With Jodie Foster and John Astin and Barbara Harris and Dick Van Patten and a passel of other B-listers from the 60s and 70s? (I’m talking about the real Freaky Friday (1976), not the superfluous remake with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan.)

Well, here’s a fun fact: the baseball game near the end of the movie was filmed in Encino Park, across from my elementary school — on the very same baseball diamond where we once played a “students vs. teachers” softball game when I was in the sixth grade — which was, incidentally, right about the same time the movie was made. In fact, if you squint, in one scene you can see my school across the street.

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Also filmed in and around Encino Park: parts of Where Have All the People Gone (1974), an unjustly forgotten low-rent sci-fi flick.

Incidentally, while Googling for that, I found this gem (click for more), courtesy of Encino realtors Marsia and Eugene Powers: