1947: Parking In Cars With Boys

I love the public domain (and archive.org) because it allows me to find delectable web gems, such as this video of a 1947 educational film, on how to be popular.

I have always been fascinated with what life was like in America in that post WW2 period. I especially love it when people from that generation write to me to point out just how wrong I am to assume that before google, wikipedia, and the ipod, everyone just sat around in caves scratching themselves and throwing poop at one another.

My favorite year in American history is, of course, 1955 - the Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series, "Oklahoma!" came out on 70mm film, 12-year old Bobby Fischer played in his first USCF tournament, "Songs By Tom Lehrer" was released on double EP, and two IBM 650s were installed in the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University. 1955 is also significant in that it marks the birth of Steve Jobs, thus setting into motion the sequence of events that eventually brought us OSX, iTunes, and the orgasmically beautiful 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro.

Anyway, this video was lots of fun, and you should go check it out. However, it took me a little while to get the "parking in cars with boys" bit. I have never heard that expression, and I think it's a very sweet way of putting it.