I have two Sears catalogs from pivotal years. The highlights of 1986 are up now, and can be enjoyed HERE.

     
 

For the first time, we could record shows and pause them while we went to the bathroom! Here are some obscure shows, and a collection of commercials. GO HERE.

     
 

Lots of cigarettes. Lots of cigarettes. And booze! Starting at the end of 2020, HERE.

     
 

This site has computer ads and game ads, as well as a few recollections on the tech culture at the time. Available in 2023, and then you can go HERE.

 

 

     
 

If you think I'm going to try to assemble a definitive 80s music site, you have more faith in me than I realized, and I appreciate it. Some music things HERE.

   

 

 
 

 

Yes, it was awesome.

Also, terrifying! Any minute now, nuclear war. Oh, and by the way, sex is fatal now. That said, it was everything you remember, or everything you heard, and so much less.

Of all the decades in the Project, this is the one I know start to finish, and the only one I can personally endorse. This involves a lot of myopia and personal retconning, and a cheerful disregard for accepted narratives. The site, as usual, relies on pop culture to tell the story, and hence is the most unreliable narrator available. But think of it like a story told in a smoky bar with streetlights slanting through the venetian blinds. That sounds rather 40s, I know - but it was also very 80s, and we loved it, because it seemed as if we were back to one important basic lesson: the classics weren't dead. We could bring them back to life at the same time we made up new ideas, and it all fit together. America was BACK! Also nuclear dread and deadly STDs, but you got your win and you got your wang.

The site is relatively new, and ongoing. Most updates arrived in 2020 and 2021. I might add something from time to time and not tell anyone.

Lileks
08.05.20