It was a good analogy as far as I’m concerned…
Ok. That’s cleared up. If your talking passion. I see very few people under 25 nowadays that seem to have a passion for anything but their iPhone and Twitter. I think it’s a general trend in society. As we get more and more distractions from the simpler things, like modeling, the expectation of instant gratification becomes more prevalent. I see it in my Daughter sometimes. The kids today just don’t seem to be very patient compared to my generation. Modeling requires patience with a capitol P.
[dto:]
Yes, I have heard about the increasing in poaching. I haven’t hunted in years. Most of it because I don’t get around very well anymore, but that is something I wish I could still do. Man I miss the taste of Venison. The kids today would be in serious trouble if anything ever happened and society collapsed. The few of us who knew how to hunt and raise crops would have to sit and watch as they vainly tried to text starbucks for a delivery order of Latte and a lox bagel…
I really feel that our modern technology (like most things in life) has become too much of a good thing. It has managed to brew up a whole generation which are almost totally dependent on it. What would modern kids do if you took away their cell, mp3 player, TV, notebook, and video games?
I could NOT AGREE MORE with this statement!!!
I go to the LHS and before I even know it, I’m walking out with like, $40-50 worth of paint and simple, basic supplies… It’s ridiculous.
And the sizes of everything is getting smaller. Tamiya’s paint cans give you enough to paint like, one model these days. Remember the big jars? Just a memory these days…[:'(]
Build models…
My Daughter has ADHD. And she was lucky that they caught it when they did. We used to live in another school district. In that district, she was doing horribly in school. Then we saw a show about ADHD on TV and realized that every description they gave of symptoms fit our Daughter. Never able to stay on task, flighty, and she had to be doing something at all times.
We took her down to a clinic in our area which deal with ADHD in children. They started her on very low doses of medication. Within 2 weeks we got a note from her teacher saying that her grades were improving dramatically. Now she is a solid A/B student and has taken up art. She does play computer games for a limited amount of time each day that she wants to as long as her chores and homework are done. She took up art a little after she went on her medication and has been winning ribbons at a regional competition she enters every year. We are very proud of her, but we know that she is liable to be taking her low dose meds for a long time. Most kids grown out of it at some point.
Another girl in her school we know has it much worse than Marissa. She has to take a higher dose of meds than Marissa and she is kind of tired at the end of the school day. But you would never know that Marissa had a problem.
I am afraid she got it from my end of the Gene Pool. I had Hyperactivity disorder when I was a kid. I didn’t have the Attention Deficit problem part of it though and it actually helped me stay ahead of the other kids at school. But the problem I had was slowing down enough to do a model without trying to rush it and ending up with a melted plastic mess. lol.
Rich
… and along with that dependence on technology comes a lessening of creative/free thinking, not only is there instant gratification, we don’t have to think too much about it. (Sort of related - I was at a local fast-food place a few years ago when the line came to a screeching halt when somebody ordered a salad. The problem?? “The guy who makes the salads isn’t here tonight…” How bloody difficult is it to make a salad for someone!?
You and I have the same problem. Except I have to make do with under $20 every few months… My wife did let me spend $25 once last year, but that was for that huge Forbidden Planet C57D Space Cruiser kit Morpheus puts out. Open box, but parts still sealed in bags and complete. That puppy can go for over $100 plus shipping, so I sucked up like I have never sucked up before. LMAO. Seriously, yes it’s expensive. Everything is expensive nowadays. I can no longer see a kit in a store or even at a yard sale and just snag it. I have to plan my purchase a month or so in advance at least. Then there is a two week suck up period to get the wifey to let me, and a few days to try not too guilty about it. Then I have to plan on what it will cost on supplies. Glue, Paint etc. I have to go to my paints bin and make sure I have the correct colors and hope they haven’t gone bad. (I wish to heck that Testor’s would use plastic instead of cardboard to seal their bottles. Regular and Model masters, the paper seals in the caps always disintegrate and the paint goes bad.) I’m disabled which mean I spend all day, just about every day sitting here with little or nothing to do. So modeling is the only thing that keeps me sane. Otherwise I don’t think I would be doing it anymore.
Rich
Depends on the type of salad…
Uhh, garden salads was all they were doing at that point! And after talking to a buddy that used to work at (something that rhymes with “Bendy’s”), I was informed that there are PICTURES for all those items at the prep counters…
You’ve just summed up one of the biggest dillemas facing the human species - the fact that our culture (all that technology stuff) has insulated us further and further from our biology. Consider that as recently as 10,000 years ago, ALL humans lived as hunters and gatherers. Today, it is less than 1/10th of 1%. And yet, should some global technological catastrophe happen, it would be these people most likely to survive… That is why I tell my students that the worst mistake humans ever made was agriculture… but that is a discussion for another thread. [8-|]
When my wife decides to go get me paint and/or glue at the local HobbyTown USA, she comes home and the first words out of her are "The damn prices went up again… She hands me a small bag with a couple of jars of Model Master enamel and maybe a can or so of Spray and then stocks off into the other room. I look at the receipt and almost have another heart attack on the spot. And then the guilt starts. Now I am of Italian decent, and she is (get this) German and Irish; and you could put her in a guilt trip contest against a group of 50 Italian and 50 Jewish grandmothers acting in unison, and she would win by a landslide… What’s more, she would have the group feeling guilty about competing with her…
I only use Tamiya for Acrylics. For enamels I use Model Master, unless I need a rare color that they don’t make. When I started modeling, there was just Testors white cap 1/4oz bottles and the same size of Pactra. The cans were 3oz, and didn’t come in a lot of colors back then. Tamiya and the other brands were impossible to get. Tools and other supplies like glue were less back then. You had a few limited choices for Glue. Notox which was this lemony smelling nasty stuff that melted everything plastic, Testors blue and red label tube glues. and Testors Liquid. Which you had to be unbelievably careful with since it had the consistency of alcohol, and spattered in your eye really easily.
If I remember, the tube glues were about $0.79 and the liquid was like $1.25. Paint was about $0.89 for jars and $2.25 for cans. The average price of a decent 1/48 kit was about $6.00 to $20.00 depending on the kit.
Yes stuff is way way more expensive, but given the limited demand nowadays, I am surprised it is not more expensive.
Yeh Manny, but that would entail actually going into a store and buying something in person, then going home with it, having to actually open the plastic wrap (that part could be a deal breaker for some of the more lethargic ones), and then put it together with their own two hands…lol
Pastime evolution accelerated big time with technology that lead to many over-stimulated activities. As someone who once did spend hours playing video games, I can attest to the awful “brain dead” feeling after a gaming session and wanting more. Today’s games are not the Atari 2600 of the 80’s and immerse players deeply into the game like nothing else can. The addictiveness of trying to get to the next level can be compared to crack. Google “WOW” and see how players have stayed up for over 48 hours straight playing. The epiphany that ended my video game playing was when I did reach the conclusion of a very tough game. What was there to celebrate or enjoy in the aftermath? I sat in front of the computer laboring for hours upon end with nothing to show and nothing gained in respect to skills or knowledge. Since my playing days, games have evolved to literally never end and are only stopped playing when the next improved version is released.
Another one of the lures I can identify with video games compared to modeling is simplicity. To play a game, I just turn on, play, and when done, turn off. With modeling, my biggest gripe was preparation and clean up; especially when I did not have a dedicated work area. Modeling can also be overwhelming to a prospective hobbyist once they discover that to get a model to look like it does on the box, you not only need to develop the skill, but acquire many supplemental supplies/equipment.
But the best presentation of the sign of the times in respect to today’s culture was a British TV show, James May’s “Toy Story” and the episode “Airfix” that aired on BBC America. The plot of the show was to build a 1:1 Spitfire from parts created exactly like the kit, sprues and all. The subplot was to get school aged kids to participate, but to ensure they were up tot the task, the host introduced them to the hobby and put them through a mini model building “boot camp”. The kids initial reactions and response to building the kits explains it all.
Exactly my point. Kids today don’t have to do much physically and even less thinking. Now let me pose a question…
When I was growing up, electronic calculators didn’t drop below the $100 mark until I was in Jr. High. What would a school in that time period do if they caught a kid sitting in math class with a calculator? In my school, they would have gotten enough detention time to paint the Great Wall of China, and probably a three day to a week suspension as well.
Now my 14 year old is in 7th. Grade now. At the beginning of the school year, she brought home a list of supplies the school said we needed to get for her, other than basics like Paper and Pencils (What the heck are we paying tax money for…), one item caught my attention. AA Texas Instruments scientific calculator. They REQUIRED that she have it in math class! This is probably the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Luckily I make sure Marissa keeps up on her manual skills by helping me with kits and even doing a small one or two of her own.
I am really worried about when it gets to the point that the kids in Jr. High and High School now get out into the world. They are liable to come out as brainless, self absorbed, narcissistic twits who can’t even do long division in their heads without a calculator.
Scary isn’t it. I think it’s more in what we do with technology. We have this vast computing power at our disposal and what are we doing with it…? We are building devices that let kids blow up virtual people controlled by other kids across the world. We are building little gizmos that allow our kids to carry around a couple of thousand MP3 files. And we are wasting a huge percentage of the economy on “Virtual Goods” on sites like Facebook. If we took all of the worlds existing computer power and channeled it into something productive all at once, we would probably have a cure for cancer in a day and faster than light travel a day after that.
Face it. Without technology, 90% of the population would starve or freeze to death (in the northern climes). We put way way too much faith in technology. There needs to be some point where we say… Enough… And put our efforts into something really useful. Like teaching kids how to hunt and fish and farm, and survive for the day the big freeze comes. lol
I never saw that show, but now I am going to try and see it. I think it’s not just our over technological society, but attitudes of people, especially some parents. Example. A few weeks back I was watching House Hunters with my wife. Now for those of you unfamiliar with the show, it is about some spoiled yuppie couple or family looking to buy their third or fourth home, and hunting through three houses that 99% of us could never afford. In the particular episode I am speaking of, this couple and their 3 children were leaving this beautiful victorian house because “The house isn’t big enough for their computer and video game room”. This was a 6 bedroom VICTORIAN. It was huge. But apparently they wanted to put more equipment in the computer room. Now I live in a mobile home. My career was in the computer and internet field until I was disabled, and we do have three systems. My system is the biggest in the house. I do some 3D computer modeling in addition to plastic modeling so it is a very powerful 4 core system. My Wife has a dual core system which was mine until I built this one. Still fairly mid level. She needs it because she is in school going for a bachelors in medical office management and technology. My Daughter has an older system that has gone through both myself and my wife. It’s a dual core and is suitable for the simple games she plays, none of which are online, and her school work. We also have a small laptop I had to get Deb (the wifey) for the times when she needs to bring it to school with her.
We have to make due with what space we have. We only have twwo small bedrooms and my Daughter’s room is so small that we need to keep her system out in the living room with her mom’s. So I know how much space is absolutely required for a system.
When I see someone beocheeing because they have to push their systems 6" closer together and they are giving up what I would consider my dream house, tit makes me want to hurl. They eventually bought this larger new construction butt ugly house that had absolutely no character and looked like the inside of a shopping mall.
The point of all this is that when I see people making life altering decisions because they feel a need to based on a very very trivial aspect of technology, I know the world is going to the basement in a hand basket…
Rich
Wow.
In terms of modeling being expensive…it’s all relative. Next to golf, next to working on cars, heck, next to gardening and yard supplies, it’s pretty inexpensive. I spend less on modeling in a month than I do on the one night my wife and I get out and away from the kids each month.
I don’t think the kits are all that expensive, if you’re careful. I recently threw down around $50 for a Tasca Sherman, but outside of that, the overwhelming majority of kits I’ve purchased have been less than $25. And that’s not just Revellogram repops. Tamiya, Accurate Miniatures, Hasegawa, Zvezda, AFV Club…
Supplies are more expensive than in the past, but so’s everything else. I remember back in 1999 when the price of gas jumped from around $0.93 to $1.43 and thought it was ridiculous. Nowadays when it sometimes drops under $2.75 I think it’s a steal. 20 oz. soft drinks are now $1.49. A few years ago they were $1.09. The problem is that, unless you’re in the upper 5% of the income curve, wages have stayed pretty much flat for the last decade. And now things like broadband and a cell phone plan are pretty much mandatory to keep pace with the world…
In terms of today’s kids, I think y’all are being way too hard on them. Every generation looks at succeeding generations and sees a bunch of listless, good-for-nothing kids. This has been happening since there were people. We tend to look back with rose-colored glasses. Not to mention the innocence of childhood. Changing technology means changing attention-getters. I’m 30 - I grew up when video games first went really mainstream - played the heck out of them, too. I’d even credit some of them with getting me even more into modeling (hello Aces of the Pacific!). But…I developed interests and hobbies outside of video games. And you know what, over time, so did every one of my friends. Of my circle of friends growing up, I’ve got several who work on cars (and not changing the oil…like full drivetrain replacements). I’ve got one who’s become a hardcore foodie. Another who’s big into the homebrewing scene. Another builds robots. Another builds kayaks.
I have no doubt that today’s kids will wind up the same way. The internet and video games and technology are all fantastic, and have their place, but there’s a certain, in-built yearning to do something with our hands. It’s why I came back to modeling. And it’s why today’s kids will find their hobbies in time.
Manny? I think it is time to bestow a 229 badge.