When TV was good

Listen kids.
TV used to be good.

TV commercials , back in the day, were more memorable than any sitcom or "reality" show or "talent" show (quotations are intentional) that is on nowadays.

TV commercials were so good that they are still memorable today
They were so good that some products had more than one memorable hook....no pun intended.

Take tuna fish...that's right, I said tuna fish.

Recognize this guy?



Sure you do. That's Charlie the Tuna.

Charlie thought that his sophistication, style, and charm made him the perfect tuna for Star Kist tuna.
As a kid I think I thought Charlie was always drunk...and it seemed ok.
The commercial always ended with a hook being dropped under water in front of Charlie. On the hook was a note that said SORRY CHARLIE....
...and then the narrator would say, "Sorry Charlie, Star Kist doesn't want a tuna with good taste...Star Kist wants a tuna that tastes good".

Genius.

...and Charlie always took this as bad news. Apparently Charlie had some sort of death wish. Why the desire to end up in a can, put on a grocery shelf, and ultimately mixed with some mayo, spread between two slices of bread and end up in some kid's school lunchbox I'll never know. Or even worse, fed to the cat.

Then again, you could Ask any mermaid you happened to see, What's the best tuna?"
Apparently she would reply, "Chicken of the Sea".


Except if I saw this mermaid in the sea, I might mistake her for the Sea Monkey Mom. ..and what I'd want to ask her is "Were those humans in the ad somehow transformed into the sea monkey family, and if so, what do you miss more, you no longer having a vagina or your husband no longer having a penis?"


See the resemblance?

Let's not forget the meat by product category.
Oscar Mayer had two winners for two different products.

Hot dogs



By the way, this photo was taken on I-295 in Maine after the last snow storm. What the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile was doing in Maine in the middle of February I'll never know. Ain't a lot of cookouts happening in Maine in February. Just sayin'.

Where was I? Ahh, the slogan...

Oh, I’d love to be an Oscar Mayer Wiener….. That is what I’d truly like to be….. ‘Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener….. Everyone would be in love with me!

Really?

That would never work today. I don't know how it worked then.
Ain't the double entendre a wonderful thing?

The other was lunch meat

How about this kid? Cute, huh?


Here was his big moment...

Oscar Mayer brainwashed an entire generation into thinking that baloney was spelled B-O-L-O-G-N-A.

Which, of course, was just wrong.

By the way, this little boy made it big a second time as an adult...does he look familiar to you ?...


Unfortunately it wasn't as Ronald Macdonald..it was as Captain Crook.

Ultimately he met his demise when he got busted for drug trafficking. Maybe you read about it. He, the Hamburglar, and Grimace were busted digging a tunnel from McDonaldland to Tijuana. It was Officer Big Macs biggest bust to date. The pardon from Mayor McCheese never came.

Jeez, there's so many more...
"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature" Turns out Mother Nature was quite a biotch.

Calgon's "Ancient Chinese Secret"...which I'm not sure was the true ancient Chinese secret



"Please don't squeeze the Charmin" uttered by the eternally creepy Mr. Whipple



"I can't believe I ate the whole thing"...unfortunately uttered (at least to himself) by Pompatus of Pete far to often. Same company did "Try it you'll like it", which, also unfortunately Pompatus of Pete did far too often with far too many things when he was a young lad.



"Is it live or is it Memorex"? It was obviously Memorex, oh and for my readers under thirty, this is probably the most obsolete reference of them all. It was for cassette tapes, by the way. Ask your parents about the broken glass. Trust me, they'll remember



That's it for now.

I have to go reach out and touch someone.

Peace. (now that's the best slogan of all)

Double secret probation....

..welcome to the road to nowhere.

Pretty cool.

Speaking of shaking...were you a Coleco or a Mattel man?

Do you remember these?

    

I, personally, owned and preferred the Coleco, on the left.

However the Mattel was the standard bearer for handheld games. Close my eyes and I can still hear the beeps and tweets that emanated from this little device. This was the scourge of study hall teachers everywhere when I was in Junior High. I think I just read that there was now an app that recreated that Mattel model for your phone or ipad. Even technology likes to go old school.

Those two beauties were not to be confused with the table top electronic football game.

This was essentially an electronic vibrating pad that had little plastic football players dancing around the field like a bunch of drunken Bart Starrs. I don't think anyone I knew actually played by the rules, for instance there were felt footballs that you could (supposedly) have your quaterback throw and have your kicker boot. That never happened. What happened is that you would spend about an hour lining up your team in the most creative formation you could think of whilst your opponent did the same thing.

Then you'd flip the switch and watch the players seizure their way down the field. If I remember right once a player from the other team vibrated into the player "carrying" the ball, it was considered a tackle.

Take a look.

The last time I played this my team lost 2-0. The other team got a safety on the last play of the game. My team had one yard to go for a touchdown. I spent forty five minutes lining up my team for the winning touchdown. My opponent (Dave Cloutier) did the same. I flipped the switch ready for victory. Instead all eleven of my players vibrated into a scrum in the middle of the field and commenced to work their way backwards 99 yards, all the while protecting the quaterback from being touched by the other team, until we got into our own endzone. This is when they decided to make like Moses and part the Red Sea so that the other team could make the big play. Dave still claims it was his strategy all along.

Oh, and this was just last night.

Geeks.

That's when we broke out the table top hockey game.

This, on the other hand, was all about the skill. You had to push,pull, and rotate the levers to control the players on your team. Compared to this, foosball was for kindergartners. We'd get so animated playing this that we surely dug a few trenches into some kitchen tables.

Ah..good times.

I think that's it for today. I have to return Dave's Merlin game to him today...that is after I figure out the pattern to magic square.

...now where did I put those penlight batteries?

Peace out.

He's no Dan Marino

A little warning...this blog will be about absolutely nothing, sometimes it works, usualy it fails. Horribly.

This one is just me blowing off a little steam.

Here's your chance to pull out before you go any further.



Sorry about that.

...not really.

The title of this blog refers to what my go to reply has been to most anything this week.



I've been using it on facebook, in the doctors office, at work...everywhere. All the time.
Not one person has asked me yet what it means.
Not one.

Here's what it means.

Nothing.

...and know one's questioned it.

Don't you love it?

I used to have a friend growing up that we called Bart Starr. For no reason. That's just what we called him.

Maybe that's its genesis.

Give it a try the next chance you get. Use it casually. Let's see if it has any legs. Maybe it will be the next
"Dy-no-mite"
or
"Here I come to save the day"
or at least
"Yabba dabba doo"


That last one might be a bit of a stretch.

As I write this the STORM OF THE CENTURY is being forecast where I live. (notice the capitalization)
Weathermen are forecasting 24 to 100 million inches of snow. Depends on which expert you listen to.
Either way it been upgraded from a severe winter storm warning to a blizzard warning.
Apparently a blizzard is far worse that a severe winter storm.



I showed it full size so you can all see the enormity of it.

The weathermen are so excited about this that they all have to do their weather reports sitting down.
(If you know what I mean).

Fortunately for them, theres not accountablity in a weather forecast. So you miss the accumulation total by a few dozen inches...predict a sunny day and all you get is rain...miss the temperature forecast by 20 to 30 degrees. Who cares?
If the margin for error was that large for my job I'd look like a friggin' genius...and believe me, I'm no friggin' genius.



There's no way this storm will beat the storm of '78.
 

Those are actual pictures from that storm.
Those are cars abandoned on the highway.
For reals.

No school for a week.

Good times.

No way this storm touches that one.
No way.

Oh, and this storm has a name.
They (who they is I do not know) now name winter storms.

Do you want to know the name of this storm?


Nemo.

No lie.

Doesn't exactly strike fear in your heart now , does it?

What is the world coming to?

Enough of this....I don't have any energy left.

This is me pulling out early, so to speak.

It's been a hard week and I'm plum tuckered out.

Maybe my next blog will be better.

...but I hope not.

Love you all.

...especially Dan Marino