Pop some pop culture under your tree

Need a holiday gift? How about giving a childhood friend Brian Bellmont's and my two pop-culture books? The perfect present for the best pal who buried your Barbie out back, or fought with you over Shrinky Dinks, or shared a Marathon bar with you.

The books are "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," and "The Totally Sweet '90s," and I'd love for you to buy one or both.

I do have a masters degree in Royalology

The Oakland Tribune quotes me about the Royal Wedding. Mentions the book. This is exactly what we'd love to do more of -- be spokespeople about the pop culture of the 1970s and 1980s as it relates to today.

Win $240 worth of Six Million Dollar Man DVDs

Win $240 worth of Six Million Dollar Man DVDs!

Enter our first-ever contest at GenXtinct--aren't you just dying to see this old show again?

Self-plug

Still hyping our book blog, GenXtinct.com, and its associated Facebook page and Twitter account.

Think of them all as a retro news blog. We post entries about retro memories but also try to include news stories as people and things from the 1970s and 1980s make news, from David Cassidy's DUI to endless movie remakes of our childhood movies. We're your breaking-news site for old news made new.

Seven months till book publication!

Be our friend?

We have a Facebook page for the upcoming book (is 2011 "upcoming"? still seems so far away!).

Anyway, it's at http://www.facebook.com/genxtinct and it's really turning into a fun little community! If you're on FB, try us out, won't you? I guess you don't "become a fan" any more...you just "like" us, a la Sally Field. Anyway, we'd love to see you there!

"But I'm still an embryo...with a long, long way to go..."

These lyrics could ONLY be from the 1970s. They are so Seventies it HURTS.

Read through my picks, and share your own at GenXtinct.

This one just might be my all-time fave.

Captain and Tennille, "Muskrat Love"
"Nibbling on bacon, chewin' on cheese / Sammy says to Susie "Honey, would you please be my missus?" / And she says yes With her kisses."

"Now poppin' and lockin' is a new way of talkin'..."

Join us over at Gen Xtinct to discuss song lyrics that could ONLY be from the 1980s. (Tomorrow: The 1970s!)

More recent posts from GenXtinct:

Choose Your Own Adventure books!

The Red Hand Gang!

Sugary cereals of the 1980s!

Foil-wrapped heaven

Who remembers when Ding Dongs were wrapped in foil? ME ME ME ME! Share your Ding Dong memories (King Dons? What was up with THAT?) and watch a classic commercial at GenXtinct.

You can also follow GenXtinct on Twitter!

Earworm alert! Earworm alert!

Aaugh! I watched the LifeSavers commercial Brian posted on our GenXtinct blog for Funky Food Friday, and now the jingle is stuck in my head FOREVER.

Liiiiiffffffe Saaaaaverrrrsssssssssss...a part of livvvvving! And then during "living," they start up the beginning again, like it's going to be a round. A terrible, permanent, eternal round. The kind of round Satan makes you sing IN HELL.

Plugging the book

Time for my occasional self-link...

The pop-culture book I'm writing with Brian Bellmont will come out in 2011!

In the meantime, you can follow our retro 70s and 80s blog at GenXtinct.com, follow us on Twitter (I'm there solo, too), and become a fan of GenXtinct on Facebook.

We'd love to have you join the fun!

PCJM: THE BOOK! (Well, kind of...)

So I've got some big news to share, definitely the biggest since Miss Kelly arrived.

I SOLD A BOOK!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's not my book alone--I'm co-writing it with college pal Brian Bellmont, a fellow pop-culture junkie and all around great guy. But it is loosely based on one of the most popular elements of 10 years of PCJM -- the longing for retro food, toys and other items that we've lost somewhere along the way. The book is scheduled to be published in the summer of 2011 from Penguin Books' Perigee imprint.

We will now pause for another line of
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Brian and I will offer up snappy summaries of the tastes, toys, and trends that raised a generation, and where possible, we'll trace what happened to those things over the years. Pudding Pops were yanked from our freezers, then returned in different form. Pepsi Light vanished, but that doesn't mean Pepsi gave up trying to hawk lemon-flavored cola. Farrell's is making a comeback. "Schoolhouse Rock" published new videos just this year. Doritos has tried coming out with a zillion different flavors using "Taco" in the name, none of which are the Original Taco Doritos people still crave. You get the picture.

Our original book title was "Gen X-tinct: The Lost Tastes, Toys and Trends that Raised a Generation," but that probably won't be the title in the end. But that IS the title of our Web site for the book (genxtinct.com).

It's more than just a promo site, we've turned it into a blog linking to news and fun sites about the same kind of retro topics we're writing about in the book, and will update it regularly (not just saying that!).


If you like PCJM, you'll probably like Gen X-tinct. Please bookmark the new blog, and follow GenXtinct on Twitter. And if there's a topic you'd like to see in the book, suggest it in the GenXtinct.com comments, we're still open to ideas! (How the heck did I not know about Freezy Freakies until someone suggested it last week? Somehow I missed 'em when Matt wrote about them.)

This is my dream, and I couldn't have gotten this far without the support of everyone who's ever read PCJM, liked it, laughed, and passed the link along. I hope you'll keep reading PCJM (which is not going away!) and will now add Gen Xtinct to your reading list, and that someday I can sign a book for you.

Thanks so much,

Gael