Pagers, telext machines, fax machines are all intermediary devices, clunky, awkward amphibians in the evolution of things, barely straddling any era or period of time.
I include fax machines because I FUCKING HATE fax machines. Fax machines are the most evil things every invented.
Anyway, another intermediary thing, was the laser disc. Laser discs are these huge, fucking HUGE discs that store as much information as a HUGE compact disc. People swear by its superior quality, but fuck that. It was too fucking huge.
When I was a high school kid, there were these places where you could rent rooms that had laser disc machines and we'd watch movies. Actually, we'd watch porn.
The only reason for us kids to go to stupid laser disc shops was to watch porn. Mostly tame three star ones, there were some hardcore shit. My preference, though, was with softcore porn.
I wasn't really into LD, but there were times when a few of us would rent a room for 12 people and after 5 minutes, we'd turn around and see over 40 kids have joined us.
The quality of softcore porn from the '80s and '90s have dropped in the States. The reason is that since porn moved from cinemas to the home videos, using VHS, there was no reason for any production value, acting or even a cohesive storyline.
People just wanted to masturbate in the privacy of their own homes. Porn drove the adoption and flourishing of VHS as well as VCR technology, hence forcing ALL other media to adopt the standard. Therefore, we can safely surmise that wanking pushed the envelope of technology forward.
When you put your smartphone to the side of your face, remember that a throbbing dick had a hand in putting it there.
The softcore porn of the '80s and '90s sucked really bad that even local productions (which were mostly NOT porn) seemed Kubrickian or Spielbergese in comparison.
I remember watching a scene where a guy was riding a motorcycle. It was obviously in a studio, which could be in a warehouse in Nebraska or some shit, and to simulate an accident, he simply got off the bike.
He didn't fall off it, he didn't jiggle it around, they just had him get off the bike, which was still a stationary Harley and did not fall down or anything despite sound effects suggesting a huge crash.
Then there was this softcore fare where they had some budget thrown at a car exploding. Cool, right? NO. Bam! Rhetorical question, dipshit!
They showed a stationary car, obviously a discarded shell they found at a garbage site somewhere, and it just exploded into an unimpressive ball of flames. Unimpressive because the budget perhaps covered only half a tank of gasoline.
And then, they showed these people - obviously dressed in cheap rented tux and wedding dresses, on a square picnic mat by the roadside, nursing their non-explosive related injuries.
With no explanation as to the cause of the accident, the motivations of the characters, their secret superhero origins or whatever conflict we were supposed to follow, they started making out. Bloodied and all, on a square picnic mat, by the roadside, with a half-burning car behind them.
I was like, what the fuck, man, let's play Caligula again.
Anyway, talking of stupid porn intros, this must be the worst:
Hollywood and their sex industry often take liberties with physics and logic, but to smash a tennis ball so it would be embedded on someone's face would also require the face to be smashed into lasagna.
And last time I checked, even porn stars knew that the lungs are not connected to the vagina, and that a trauma to the head does not necessarily require CPR. On the vagina.
The reaction of the actors were also extremely bad and is only slightly better than Keanu Reeves.
Yeah, I am glad to see Laser Discs going the way of telext machines and pagers. And I hope all copies of those stupid porn only existed as LD.
Finding some familiar stuff on YouTube, though, makes me kind of suspicious. Somewhere, someone is transferring these horrifying films into a more modern format and despite LD's age and stupidity, it was and still is a digital medium. Meaning converting it into watchable video would be easier than a Betamax or VHS.
I fear that one day we shall see these porn again. I just wish that I'll be dead before that happens.
