Ah, the 1970s. Such a bizarre time. If you missed them (either because you were too young or too high), here's an easy way to get a better feel for the "Me Decade":

Back in the 1970s there was this fellow named Uri Geller. Uri was a former Israeli paratrooper who had a little trick: he could bend spoons. Not with his hands, oh no, but with his mind.

Geller could also read minds (sort of, it involved picturing what someone was about to draw), stop and restart watches, and — we assume — do other sorts of tortuous things to various household items that were minding their own business and certainly didn't deserve to be molested in that way.

Ordinarily, a fellow of this sort would be confined to working the children's magic circuit or pandering around Quincy Market for change from college students. But in the 1970s, oh no, this was a legitimate phenomenon!

Geller appeared on multiple programs — including The Tonight Show — and (we can't make this stuff up) was even studied by the Stanford Research Institute to better understand his paranormal powers (results were inconclusive. Shocker).

That's right, in the 1970s having mystical mental abilities given to you by aliens (abilities that could mystically be recreated by every magician with a rabbit and a deck of cards) didn't make you a crackpot, it made you a STAR.

Yup. That pretty much says it all, doesn't it?

Verdict: Sadly, a Jew.

February 5, 2010