🇺🇸 Hot Pepper

Sharing nostalgia, classic TV, music, and moments that shaped generations. Aviation enthusiast. Horse lover. Keeping things positive on X.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

In 1975, Kojak was the star.

One year later, Sylvester Stallone was Rocky.

Stallone showed up on Kojak in My Brother, My Enemy, playing Detective Rick Daly.

Nothing unusual about that. He was an actor trying to make it in Hollywood and taking the roles he could get.

Except Stallone had something else going on.

He had written a little movie called Rocky.

It arrived in 1976.

Suddenly, the guy who had been guest-starring on Kojak was Rocky Balboa.

The movie became the highest-grossing film of the year and earned ten Academy Award nominations, including two for Stallone himself.

One year.

That's how fast Hollywood can change.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

Music has a ridiculous memory.

A few notes from an old song and suddenly I know exactly where I was, who I was with, and what year it was.

Ask me what I had for dinner Friday and we're going to need witnesses.

That's the thing about the music we grew up with.

Three minutes of a song can bring back a memory you haven't thought about in forty years.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

May God surround you with His love today.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

Your Sunday mission:

Smile at a stranger today and confuse them.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

Talk about opening a time capsule from your childhood.

That's Young Sheldon for me.

I binge-watched the series and spent half of it saying, "Oh my gosh, I remember that!"

The furniture. The old TV. The VCR tapes.

The telephone hanging on the wall with a cord long enough to reach ten rooms away.

I grew up in Texas in the 80s and early 90s, so sometimes it felt less like watching a TV show and more like someone raided my childhood.

And then there's the music.

A song starts playing and suddenly I'm right back there.

The cast is great, the show is genuinely funny, and the writers absolutely hit this one out of the park.

If you haven't seen it, put it on your watchlist.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

Before Styx was filling arenas, they were crammed into rented station wagons with their equipment strapped to the roof.

This immediately reminded me of riding in a station wagon with my four sisters.

"Don't touch me."

"Mom, she touched me."

Tommy Shaw joined Styx in 1975, and on one trip he recalled brothers Chuck and John Panozzo arguing from different rows.

Then they started kicking the seats between them.

Meanwhile, Tommy's the new guy.

Nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide.

A few years later, Styx was filling arenas.

But first, they were one "Don't make me pull this car over" away from being my family.

And yes, I looked for a picture of Styx with the station wagon.

No luck.

I found this one instead.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

Imagine being the person who fired Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds in the same year.

Universal Studios actually did it in 1959.

According to Burt Reynolds, the studio had a few problems with Clint.

His Adam's apple stuck out too far.

He talked too slow.

And he had a chipped tooth.

Burt's problem was simpler.

He couldn't act.

Burt later joked that Clint was the one in real trouble because Burt could learn to act, but Clint wasn't getting rid of that Adam's apple.

Universal really nailed those two evaluations.

Not.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

Tom Selleck once played a private investigator who drove Jim Rockford absolutely crazy.

In 1978, Selleck showed up on The Rockford Files as Lance White, a handsome, cheerful private eye who seemed to do everything right.

Everyone loved Lance.

Jim Rockford couldn't stand him.

Off screen was a very different story. Selleck had enormous respect for James Garner and later described him as both a mentor and a friend.

Selleck was so good as Lance that they brought him back in 1979.

Then came 1980.

A Ferrari. A Hawaiian shirt. A mustache.

And a private investigator named Thomas Magnum.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

That's not hair. That's architecture.

Can we talk about how much hairspray and teasing went into this one photo?

Judging by this picture, the 1960s had one rule for hair:

When you think it's high, it's not high enough.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

Apparently, being a Hollywood heartthrob wasn't enough for this legend.

Most of us knew Patrick Swayze from Dirty Dancing, Road House, Red Dawn, Point Break, and Ghost.

But the guy seriously didn't know when to stop collecting talents.

He was a licensed pilot who loved flying and raised and showed Arabian horses.

He trained seriously in ballet, worked professionally as a dancer, and even spent a year performing on ice as Disney's Prince Charming.

Because why not add figure skating to the list?

And then there was the music.

He co-wrote and sang "She's Like the Wind," which became a Top 10 hit.

Aviation, horses, and figure skating are all pretty big deals in our house, so I especially loved discovering those parts of his story.

He was one seriously talented man.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

When you're bored during your own concert you order takeout.

At least that's what Rick Wakeman did.

During Yes's "Tales from Topographic Oceans" tour in the 1970s, Wakeman had long stretches during the performance where he had little or nothing to play.

So his keyboard tech went out and came back with Indian takeout.

DoorDash, 1970s style.

Not backstage.

Onstage.

Wakeman spread dinner across his keyboards, grabbed a pint of beer, and started eating while the rest of the band kept playing.

And because apparently this wasn't strange enough, bassist Chris Squire reportedly wandered over and helped himself to a poppadom.

Imagine paying to see one of the biggest progressive rock bands in the world and looking over to find the keyboard player having dinner.

Rick Wakeman saw no reason to wait until after the show.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

Any man who can play progressive rock surrounded by seventeen keyboards while apparently thinking, "I could go for a curry," deserves some respect. 😂

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

"Be still, and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

Don Johnson made one phone call that helped change the course of Bruce Willis' career.

Before Moonlighting and Die Hard, Willis was a struggling actor bartending in New York, where the two became friends.

When Miami Vice was casting in 1984, Johnson recommended Willis and told the casting director she needed to bring him in to read.

She did.

Willis got the role.

A year later, Moonlighting made him a star.

They eventually shared the screen again on Nash Bridges.

More than forty years after meeting in New York, Johnson still calls Willis one of his best friends.

I'd say that phone call worked out pretty well.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

"You've got to remember that these are
just simple farmers...

You know, morons."

If you've seen Blazing Saddles, you probably remember this scene.

I showed this short scene to my teen daughter.

She heard that line and, without hesitation, stated, "That describes about 90% of the boys in my grade."

I had no rebuttal.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

Some bands were huge in the 1970s and somehow still don't get talked about enough today.

Ballroom Blitz, Fox on the Run, Little Willy.

They could do glam rock, hard rock, incredible harmonies, and some seriously loud guitars.

Then in 1978 came Love Is Like Oxygen, their final major international hit and one of my favorites.

For a band with that many great songs, they deserve a lot more attention than they get today.

And I'm guessing quite a few of you already know exactly who I'm talking about.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

Cisco knows exactly how selfies work.

[🇺🇸Hot Pepper @Hot_Pepper76]

It's a beautiful morning, all right.

And what better way to start the day than with this great one from 1968 by The Rascals.

They even dressed for the occasion. Bright colors everywhere. I love it.

I hope your day is a good one.