ALFONSO RIBEIRO

NOW
Alfonso Ribeiro (now 38) is best known for playing preppy rich kid Carlton Banks on the hit TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, especially with audiences outside of the US. The show, fronted by rapper/actor Will Smith, ended back in 1996. Since then Alfonso has appeared in another TV sit-com fronted by a rapper, this time LL Cool J in In The House. Here he played a character very similar to Carlton (Maxwell Stanton) from 1995-1999. Continue reading “ALFONSO RIBEIRO” »

THE MYSTERIOUS CITIES OF GOLD

Here are my memories of The Mysterious Cities of Gold: Continue reading “THE MYSTERIOUS CITIES OF GOLD” »

FIVE FAVE OLD SCHOOL HORROR FLICKS

With Halloween approaching, it got me thinking about how the classic horror film doesn’t really exist anymore. I haven’t seen the latest Brit flick Demons Never Die yet, but haven’t heard great things about it to be honest.

Alas, gone are the days when it used to be a proper event whenever a scary movie was about to drop in the cinema. From Nightmare on Elm Street and its sequels, Friday 13th and Child’s Play, it was enough to get everyone (old and young) excited at the prospect of being scared sh**less all in the name of entertainment!

To this day a lot of the classic horrors are a lot more frightening that the newer ones, even with the advent of the Internet, HD, improved 3D, GGI and other technologies. For me the best flicks from this genre were either the ones which were just damn right disgustingly gruesome or the ones that weren’t that scary but had a good enough storyline to keep you entertained and cause the odd heart jump in all the right places. And if you were lucky you got both.

So, in saying that…I Miss The Old School take a look at the the top five old school horror flicks (in our humble opinion of course) of all time… ‘Of all time!’ *Kanye voice*

Continue reading “FIVE FAVE OLD SCHOOL HORROR FLICKS” »

SLUSH PUPPIES

Ask the Glee kids how it feels to receive a fresh cold Slushie to the face, and they’ll more than likely stop believing and lose hold of that non brain freeze feeling. Continue reading “SLUSH PUPPIES” »

LISA LISA & CULT JAM – I WONDER IF I TAKE U HOME

One of my favourite songs of all time period is Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam’s I Wonder If I Take You Home. Whenever I hear it, it instantly takes me back to my childhood. I still remember hearing it for the first time in 1985 while on a school trip at the final day disco! And it still remains a tune which gets rinsed in the clubs till this day. And is a staple tune, during summer barbecues!
Continue reading “LISA LISA & CULT JAM – I WONDER IF I TAKE U HOME” »

MISEDUCATION OF LAURYN HILL REVISITED

Who didn’t love this album???? *crickets* Even though Lauryn Hill has seems to have left this part of her behind long ago, like us she still likes to reminisce. Check out this Reebok Classics interview special on the classic album!

And before you duck out to go over to Youtube to reminisce further, we’ve saved you the trouble…

THE KRYPTON FACTOR

The Krypton Factor had nothing to do with the Perodic Table or Superman. It was a fantastic gameshow that ran from 1977 to 1995 on primetime ITV. Continue reading “THE KRYPTON FACTOR” »

GLADIATORS

Before X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, before even Stephen Mulhern’s Animals Do The Funniest Things, Saturday nights on ITV were ruled by one show – Gladiators. Continue reading “GLADIATORS” »

RUBIK’S CUBE

Did you know that the Rubik’s Cube was invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik?

He sounds like he’d be fun at a dinner party doesn’t he? Well he wasn’t – he was probably in the corner twisting a white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow box around instead of commenting politely on the pavlova.

In the 80s, EVERYONE had a Rubik’s Cube, whether you wanted one or not. It was the law.

For anyone not around in the 80s, it was a small plastic puzzle with 54 different coloured blocks making up a six sided cube. To win, you had to make each of the six sides the same colour by rotating each face.

SOUNDS EASY RIGHT?

Well, did you ALSO know there are exactly 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 permutations of the Rubik’s Cube – that’s approximately forty-three quintillion.

And this is a present they gave to ten-year-olds. That’s the equivalent of being a forty-three quintillion piece jigsaw – and at least you get a pretty picture of a dinosaur when you finish that. With the Rubik’s Cube, all you got was a cube with six coloured sides – completely useless except for throwing at the cat.

To me, this was just a gift designed to make you feel stupid, angry and bored – in exactly that order – then go back to watching your Ghostbusters VHS.

Anyone who told you they could complete the Rubik’s Cube was lying. Nobody could do the Rubik’s Cube – unless they did it the way I did: peel off all the coloured stickers and re-stick them so all the sides match up. Then take it into the playground the next day and look smug.

(One man who could do it was Feliks Zemdegs, who holds the world record for completing the cube in 6.65 seconds)

An even easier way to solve the cube was merely to twist off the smaller individual cubes, then shove them back on in the correct order. I reckon I could do that in 6 seconds. EAT THAT FELIKS ZEMDEGS.

Poor Professor Rubik could never quite match the success of his multi-coloured cube – but I did own his follow up, Rubik’s Magic. Bored of squares, he’d come up with an exciting new innovation – circles. Basically you wibble-wobbled connected titles around ‘til you made a picture of a circle. This one was more annoying than the Cube because there was no way of dismantling it and cheating.

(BONUS FACT: Yuxan Wang holds the world record for completing Rubik’s Magic in 0.71 seconds.)

The Cube, however, remains an iconic image of the 80s. Every household really did have one, even though 99 per cent of them would just use it as a paperweight. Somehow Prof Ernő managed to convince the world to buy his useless plastic puzzle even though few had the brains to solve it. Now that’s real genius.

By Luke Chilton

DANGERMOUSE

These days there’s something quite laughable about a small white mouse fighting crime, with an eye patch and a hamster side kick in a creased suit. But back in the early 80s, this secret agent duo kicked Batman and Robin’s ass, and were top of the class in coolness and ratings.

I was born in 1984; making me the grand old age of 26. However, Danger Mouse hit our screens three years before, meaning I was a tad 2000 and late in missing the start of this cartoon caper. But all I had to do was play catch up and ask my folks to pop in the video cassettes of their hay days; back when shoulder pads were actually meant to be in dresses, and way before Boy George painted his neck black. Continue reading “DANGERMOUSE” »

Next Page »