What Ever Happened To […] #1025

 

[Welcome back to Bad Joke or–as I’ve been thinking lately–Negativity Friday. First, in other news of the universe, I see that next summer’s “Last Annual” Vol-State Road Race is now COMPLETELY FULL! The projected field will be expanded by nearly triple, and it only took three weeks from the end of the 2013 version to fill up the 2014 version. So I guess, by no popular demand whatsoever, I’ll just have to put in a return engagement. And THAT’s the Bad Joke right there.

[Earlier this week while I was going about my father’s business (i.e., rebuilding his ancient housing ruins so that my inheritance might be sold to some kind of museum), I chanced upon an almost-as-ancient full-color printed flyer from Kodak, or as it said on the back flap: © 2000 Eastman Kodak Company AND also © 2000 Bally Total Fitness Corporation. Apparently the two of them had joined forces in order to market the idea that throwaway single-use cameras could be utilized to visually document the progress of your fitness, especially while being trained by a Bally’s Personal Trainer. What you were supposed to do–as recently as the turn of the century!–is hand the little cardboard camera to your PT, let him or her snap your pic in the gym–what, once a week?–and THEN, after months, FINALLY take the thing in to Walgreens, or whatever, and… what… hope someday your prints would come?
Whoa. Kinda hard to imagine, huh? I’ll bet there’s peeps readin’ this now who never heard of such cameras, such prints, or even… Kodak? All of which now gives rise to the following.]

The Bush the Second Administraction Presents…

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO [throwaway single-use cameras]?

Who among us (who are really into photography and used to have a whole leather satchel full of equipment) used to HATE to have to run big long races carrying all that stuff? If we were heading out West (or East or North or South) to run an exceptionally long and popular ultra, for example, we would just naturally want to capture some of those breathtaking scenes on film. (Remember FILM???) So, because we were seriously NOT in contention of winning anything (and they did allow us boucou hours to finish) we’d either carry the damn Nikon with us or… yup… drive to the nearest drugstore the night before and pick ourselves up one of those nifty little throwaway cardboard cameras.

Right. That’s what I did! So…

What ever happened to throwaway cameras?

Remember how they used to come all pre-packaged inside a box and again inside some stupid “lightproof” film wrapper with the two-thousand-pound-test hermetically sealed pouch-ends that you couldn’t even open with a Bowie knife! Remember *that* junk? You’d be out on the trail, come to a breathtaking place that took your breath away, then suddenly remember your cheap-ass camera at the bottom of your fanny pack. You’d stop, remove the pack, dig deep, extract the camera, and then… spend until the next guy caught you, trying to OPEN the little bastard. But if you did manage, you could hand him your camera, beg for that shot-of-a-lifetime of you standing cliffside with your back to “the scenery,” and then the both of you would waste fifteen more minutes fiddling with the film-advance knob, the “flash” setting, and that stupid plastic shutter.

So whatever happened to–or at–cliffsides? Here’s a thought just thunked: WHAT would be the trail ethics for the guy behind you holding your camera if YOU slipped and fell to your death off the cliff?

Do you think HE’d pay the damn photo-finishing department of Walgreens to actually develop the film afterwards?

I’m guessing he’d just throw away the throwaway right over the cliff after ya. (“Here, buddy. This thing belongs to you. I don’t need to be carrying any extra weight. Besides, I have my own fancy 35MM SLR Pentax. That’s right. I’m serious.”)

What EVER happened to 35MM Single Lens Reflex cameras anyway? Hey, is Pentax still in business?

Kodak?

Walgreens???

Right. I’m wrong. Nowadays you’ve got a damn drugstore on the corner of every block. Hmmm… an entire population threatened by substance abuse, and there’s a Walgreens on every other street. Coincidence? Perhaps not!

Who remembers Rexall? Revco? Eckerd? Phar-Mor? Dart Drug?

But I digress.

In today’s throwaway one-time-use outa-sight/outa-mind society we haplessly find ourselves living in, ALL that throwaway stuff has been thrown away. Half of what you own today will be thrown away. Some of it as early as tomorrow! And just you wait till your parents die and stick you with their house. You will then and there proceed to, yes, throw away EVERYTHING of yours that they–for fear of breaking your little heart all these years–“kept” just for you. In that horde you will find: your toys from infancy; your baseball gloves, bat, and balls from Little League; ALL your freakin’ textbooks from high school; your pressed-between-the-pages prom boutonniere; your high school diploma; your report cards; your playing cards confiscated from the back of study hall (that you wondered whatever happened to); your first car’s license tags (unless you used them for Barkley); and, lordy, who the heck knows what the hell else? Oh. Oh wait. I know what else: your last one-use-only throwaway camera with that ONE remaining shot still on it.

Good luck trying to develop the other eleven.

So here, at last, is whatever the heck happened to those old single-lens spasmodic-reflex single-use plastic-and-cardboard foil-wrapped lightproof (sometimes waterproof!) throwaway cameras: they’re now in your telephone.

That’s right. “Hold the phone” could actually now mean doin’ yourself a “selfie.” You hold your iPhone (or whatever) at arm’s length, face the pinhole, and then click away for any or all of ten thousand highly pixilated digitally scanned images of you versus the scenery.

And now-a-daze, just think: If you back your own self off the cliff, your “camera” will already be with you. In fact, you can take some REEL KEWL pics and even vids of yourself on the way down.

( O_O )

Yours troubly,

The Troubadour
“your frenetic ancient trustless hulking thoroughly caffeinated lute-plucking song-and-dance man who once worked a drug counter as a soda jerk”

Yankee Folly of the Day:
If you do find some of your old prescriptions in the basement of your parents’ house, could you still dart out for the drugs if you also find a Dart Drugs?