Back in the saddle

After a long hiatus, we're back with Episode 20 of *Gen X Perspective*! In this 17-minute reintroduction, I dive into a bit of nostalgia, sharing memories of my early Star Wars collecting days and how those moments shaped me. Now, I'm bringing that passion forward with the launch of my new venture, GenX Sabers (https://www.genxsabers.com), where we're all about bringing high-quality lightsabers and cosplay items to a new generation of fans. Join me for a quick catch-up and a look at how the journey's evolved from the past to the present!

Transcript

intro: 0:13

It's hard to speak your mind these days. Voicing your opinion is tough in a climate where you're either seen as an ultra conservative or a bleeding heart liberal. But what about our perspective? What about the Gen X perspective? Hi, I'm Tony, a latchkey kid from the 80s and 90s. Now I'm in my 40s, wearing cargo shorts, collecting Star Wars figures and reminiscing about the days before my first cell phone. The Gen X perspective is for us, caught somewhere in between boomers and millennials, where we see things a bit differently. I'm tired of staying silent. It's time to rant, discuss, unload and debate. Join Tony and his guests as they tackle the topics of pop culture, sports, religion and, yes, even politics. If life's a Rubik's Cube, we've got the experience to tackle it. Welcome to the Gen X perspective with Tony Randazzo,

Tony Randazzo: 1:08

Hello. How's everybody doing today? This is a little rough here. We'll work our way through this and see what we can do here. So been a minute or two since I've published anything or done a podcast, just like my intro said, in my 40s, and now I'm in my 50s. So with that being said, Well, I'm older, but I'm still a Gen Xer, and I'm still mildly annoyed at mildly annoying things, mostly people in general, I guess so with that being what it is, I guess let's move on to bigger, better and funner things. So took a couple years off little hiatus. Wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with the old podcast. It's time to get back involved and start doing some other things in my life, this being one of them. So, long story short, pandemic, craziness, all that stuff happened, obviously, now we're heading strong into a presidential election that ends, and thank God two days just about over this mess, not that it's gonna make it any better. But you know, hey, one could only hope, at least then I don't have to watch all the ads on television at least as much. So, yeah, that was been a crazy couple years that I haven't been talking much. Podcast has been growing. People have been listening, which is really great. I'd like to thank everybody out there that has been listening to the episodes that I had published a few years back. I'm hopeful to maybe reach out to old Jason Lowey and see if he wants to jump back in with me and talk about random things, about random times and random stuff. But we'll see what happens. I haven't talked to him yet, but we'll see what he wants to do. Maybe he wants to jump back in and do it. Maybe doesn't. We'll see it'll be fun either way. So what I really wanted to talk about other than kind of reintroducing myself as a Gen Xer that's 52 years old, kind of right in the middle of midlife crisis, we'll call it. Over the last, I don't know, 10 years or so, I've kind of been on this crusade of reconnecting with nostalgia and things that remind me of when I was a kid, better times, no bills, all that kind of stuff. And I landed on, well, like a lot of men my age, sci fi, specifically Star Wars. So I've been collecting Star Wars figures from the A New Hope Empire Strikes Back Return of the Jedi primarily, although I'm not a hater on the other movies or what's happening that's out there that's new now and exciting and fun. You know what I really connected with as a kid? So I've gone down this rabbit hole over a number of years and started buying every used toy and dusty bin I can find. Now, I'm not one of those collectors that is on the holy grail hunt of everything in original packaging. I want to be able to touch this stuff and play with it. So I'm kind of the we'll call it the poor man's version of a collection. Although this stuff is not cheap, holy smokes. Even the used, beat up, half broken, got to figure out how to put it back together. Stuff you still pay a pretty penny for nowadays. So for whatever that's worth it's become quite a collection that I will share at some point on YouTube. What that looks like, which is turned into quite a pile of things. Now that's just one of many things. My wife collects records. We were both very much into the. Rock music, heavy metal scene back in the 80s and 90s. So records have started being collected in the home as well. So we have a pile of those in music and basically remembering all things when we were younger and having a lot more fun. Well, a different fun. We'll call it carefree fun, teenager fun. I don't know what you want to call it, but it is what it is. Now I'm still on the Forever hunt of figuring out my inner nerd or child, whatever you want to call it, and my nephew, about a year ago, introduced me to modern versions of the toy light saber that I had as a kid, which was the handle, which was a flashlight with 2d batteries in it, and you flick your wrist, and the blade extended out, and you turn the flashlight, ie lightsaber, on, and it would turn a color, and you'd bash the hell out of your friends till it broke, and then it would go in the garbage, and Mom and Dad would yell at you for breaking your new toy. Well, they're not quite like that anymore. For anybody that hasn't paid any attention to that, which I wasn't, they have gotten crazy, advanced, just like everything in our worlds, you know, I remember a rotary telephone, and now we carry a computer in our pocket. That's, you know, can, you know, man, the space shuttle, whatever. And so these lightsabers, they're made out of aluminum. They got computer chips in them. The blades have hundreds of LEDs in them that can do a million different things. They have speakers in them. They sound just like real lightsabers. The light in them moves. They're motion activated. So when you move the sword around, it makes the noise that it does in the movies, and they're all these crazy things. And he introduced me to those a couple years ago, a year and a half, two years ago, and I'm like, Well, hey, that's really cool. Whatever. You know, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to it. And then earlier this summer or late last fall, it kind of came up in conversation again. My nephews at the time, he was 14 years old, and the local comic con was kind of on the radar for the summertime. And he said, you know, Uncle Tony, I want to go get a new lightsaber, you know. And they these other ones. Can do all these other things. And, you know, he spent, I don't know, it was probably 80 bucks on the one he had, which is a big chunk of money. And then there's these other ones that go up from there all the way up to fully custom made by somebody here in the US, handmade $1,000 lightsabers, although and everything in between, really. So there's a couple companies out there that make these things, and they land between the 205 $100 price range ish, and they can do all this really cool stuff that I had mentioned. So I was going to be taking him to the local comic con. So I figured, Well, if he's going to spend that kind of money, I better do a little bit of research and understand what these things are. So I started researching, and then I found a couple YouTube channels where primarily they talk about lightsabers. One is the Force Awakens. OB dad, Kenobi, I'm gonna blame him directly for starting this obsession that now that I have did some more research, and then I went and I bought a lightsaber. Luke Skywalker got it in the mail, and they're drop shipped, so they take a couple weeks to get here from Old China and plug this thing in, plug the blade in, turned it on, and was absolutely mesmerized at what this thing could do. My wife just kind of shook her head when she saw this thing me screwing around in the living room telling me not to hit the fan, of course. And it was pretty crazy. So make a long story short, I went and bought another one star killer, which those of you that know was a video game that came out in the 90s. Never made a movie about it. There were some books written. Got starkillers lightsaber, which is probably my favorite still, and and then Comic Con came and we went, and he bought another lightsaber, and I bought a third lightsaber. I bought an $80 one more. For dueling and spinning. It's all smooth. It's easier to hold. It's not a replica version. It's kind of a more of a modern version. And started playing with that. Long story short, we're now in the fall, in November, and about a week ago, I launched a new website called Gen X sabers.com I am now selling lightsabers online through an online store again, Gen X sabers.com little shameless plug, and I'm selling these things. I absolutely fell in love with them. I mean, they brought back. Every time I turn one on, I feel like I'm 14 again, and that reminds me of Star Wars and Luke Skywalker, Darth, Vader, I mean Obi Wan Kenobi and the fights and the sounds and and just hearkening back, or bringing back, that feeling of when we were kids and we weren't worried about bills and politics and getting old and doctors visits and your eyes are going, yeah, don't get me started on the cheaters I got to carry with me now and all this other stuff. It's just more of a fun time to get back to being a kid. Now, part of my podcast, Gen X perspective is not only about the nostalgia stuff, it's also about my perspective on all things, ie, politics, food, getting old, etc. So in the vein of that, not to get too crazy about too many different subjects, I decided that self care was going to start being important. We're going to talk more about that probably last next week. But, um, yeah, having to take care of yourself. What the hell, man. I mean, you know, back when you were a kid, you were pretty indestructible, and now you do one wrong thing and it never freaking fixes itself. I mean, it's a total, absolute disaster and a mess. So now, getting older, taking care of oneself with a regimen of pills and doctors and garbage that I'm not a fan of, I decided to start working on getting healthier and um, and changing that perspective on things. So I've managed to get my blood pressure meds actually cut in half by losing weight, eating healthier, doing better things. Eyesight is not going to get any better. Unfortunately, that's on a slow decline, and my my hearing from coming from that heavy metal generation. Now that's pretty much on the decline as well in my 50s. And I do have a set of hearing aids, which I don't wear like I'm supposed to. I could still hear pretty good, as long as I'm not in big crowds and it gets a little hard to hear what the hell is going on. But you know, hey, again, getting old sucks, and it's just been a really crazy time with in the vein of all of that and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with this podcast, it was important For me to make it valuable and still entertaining. I'm not a heavy hitting news reporter, or there's enough of that out there, enough negativity, enough politics, enough partisan gross. Not enough people getting along, too many people fighting. Our country's kind of in upheaval. In some people's eyes, it's totally horrible. In other people's eyes, they're just ignoring it and moving on, which is what I try to do as much as I can. It gets a little tough when you own a business and interest rates are through the freaking roof. But you know, hey, again, totally different subject. The moral of the story, I suppose, is to find things that you love and enjoy and don't forget to enjoy them. Play like you're a kid, laugh like nobody's watching, enjoy yourself and have a good time. Now, I'm going to keep this one short and sweet. This is more of a kind of getting back out there, so about 15 minutes long here. I just wanted to say Gen X perspective is back. I'm going to put this out there to the world. I'd love for hear from you. The website is still up and running. Facebook is still there, Instagram, etc. I haven't been very active on those pages, but I will be in the coming weeks. And just wanted to kind of reintroduce myself and say. That it's good to be back and fun to be talking. And maybe we can get some guests here and try to get old Jason Lowey back on on the hook, see if he wants to do something with it, and we'll go from there. So again, thank you all so much for listening and supporting me over all these years, as the channel has kind of grown with the episodes that I have out there, I figured it was time for a new one. So you'll be hearing from me here in the next week or so. And have a great week. Enjoy that presidential election, and we'll talk soon. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. Thanks for listening to the Gen X perspective with Tony Randazzo, where we see things a bit differently. Let's get social. Find us on Facebook by searching Gen X perspective, Twitter at Gen X underscore podcast and on Instagram at Gen X perspective. You can also find us online at Gen X perspective.com and reach out to Tony directly at Tony at Gen X perspective.com too. Maybe you can talk strategy on how to beat Super Mario Brothers three. Don't forget to subscribe to the Gen X perspective wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for listening. You.