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

Cold enough for ya ?

This is Three Dog Night

...and this is the day after a three dog night



A three dog night means it was cold people.
It's been cold here lately..and by cold I mean COLD.

Biting...bitter...glacial...numbing...penetrating...Siberian...piercing.

Friggin' cold.



The last few mornings have been colder than the temperature in my freezer. Or yours
Think about that.

It's the kind of cold where people do things like bring a pot of boiling water outside, chuck it up into the air, and it turns into snow. Instantly. Oh, and they film themselves doing it. Like this.

That's just stupid. That's more stupid than the people that cook an egg on the sidewalk in the Summer...or maybe almost as stupid. I don't know. You decide.

I'll take that over easy. Hold the dirt.

Back to the cold...

So, add that colder than your freezer temp and let's add in some wind.

That's when it gets good (and I mean in a bad way).

That's when we can start talking about wind chill.

That's not how cold it IS..that's how cold it FEELS.

(as you can see theis blog is directed at all the non Mainers that read this. If you're from Maine, like me, you learn about wind chill before you go to kindergarten. For everyone else, I'm not so sure).

The wind chill the last three days..

22 below zero

12 below zero

4 below zero

Let that sink in for a minute.....

I feel kind of guilty because as I write this the current wind chill is all the way up to 6. Yes 6. That's four less than ten. It can get 25 degrees warmer and water would still freeze....and I'm thinking it's warm out.

The cold has obviously affected my ability to reason.

I saw this guy hitch hiking the other day

This gentleman knocked on my front door and asked to spend the night on the couch the other night because it was so cold.

So I let him in.

Next morning he left without saying goodbye, but before he left he apparently peed all over my floor.

I'll never do that again.

Normally I'll just start the car, turn the defroster on, let the car run for a few minutes, and I don't have to scrape the ice of the windshield.

I said normally.

Hasn't seemed to bother my cat much though.

Ok...enough of this.

Oh. one more thing...

just how cold is a witches tit?

Peace out.

Are you ready for some football?

Well, are you?


Not me.
Not so much.

...and before you go any further, for those of you who only know me as pompatus of pete, rest assured this is being written by an able bodied American male whose testosterone levels have checked out to be acceptable. I know this to be true.

I got the inspiration for this post whilst making a salad for today's game. That's right a salad.
...with tofu

.


(I can see legions of people defriending me on facebook as I type this..and I expect many more by the time I'm done with this).

At least it was extra firm...not that that will get any of them back......

Maybe that's why.

Big game today....the home team New England Patriots are playing the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC title game in about two hours. Winner of this game goes to the Super Bowl.

That's very important. Isn't it?

I'll watch it.
..but I won't watch all of it.

Maybe it's because I'm not a fan of either team. I'll root for the Patsies since they are the local squad...and it's good for business. On the side I do a little work in the grocery industry. Did you know that the grocery store goes nuts during the football playoffs ?

They do.



Yeah, that's Andy Warhol buying Campbell's soup.
Sorry about that.

Maybe it's beacause my team isn't playing anymore.


That's my team.

That's a picture of the 1972 Miami Dolphins.
..Sorry, the UNDEFEATED 1972 Miami Dolphins.
Left to right that's Jim Kiick, Larry Csonka, and Mercury Morris.

Those were some football players.

This...

...not so much.

Maybe it's because I already know I'm going to miss the most important game of the year...the game of all games...the most important thing ever...the Super Bowl.


I know this because I already know I'll be travelling on Super Bowl Sunday (see how important it is? It even has a day named after it).

I'll be in a plane. My plane takes off at 6:30 on Feb. 3rd.
What time is kickoff for the Super Bowl?

What date is the Super Bowl?


That's right.

I'll be flying home from a vacation with the Mouse (capital M).


That's actually a picture of me at work the next day with a Mickey Mouse hangover.

..or perhaps I'll look more like this...



Because, you see, it will be my first day back from vacation...and my plane lands at midnight..and it's Monday.

I have to get a different travel agent.

...although he did get me those great tickets to the zoo....


Enough for now.

Got to get some vacuuming done so I don't feel guilty about sitting in front of the TV for the next three hours.

Go Patsies !

Pete comes clean

I used to own the album that this song was on.

Seriously.

A few questions...
How did the drummer and keyboardist get in this band? Was it because they didn't have any chest hair, just like their "funkier" band mates? How did they even meet? I don't see them running in the same circles, let alone being in the same band. One of their Dads must have been their manager.
Did the lead singer with the skull cap really get kicked out of the Village People for being "too gay"?
and most importantly...
...why did I own this album?

I wasn't a total loser. I swear. That year I also bought Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, My Aim is True by Elvis Costello, Aja by Steely Dan, News of the World by Queen, and Slowhand by Eric Clapton.

Oh.
And Saturday Night Fever.


Loser.

I remember jumping on the Disco Sucks bandwagon later that year. Those two albums of mine met their demise by some sort of incendiary device in the backyard of Danny Brown. Danny lived across the street from me. He moved there that year from Sheepshead Bay NY. Danny's father was a marine. Danny's older sister joined the Marines. After school Danny joined the Marines. I've out lived Danny.

God bless him...and all the others that fought with him that I did not know.

OK, back at it,

Maybe I can blame it on 1977 being a very strange year.

They discovered rings around Uranus.
(Hope that made you smile half as much as it did while I typed it. If it didn't go back and read it again. Slowly this time. There. See?)


I went to see the debut of Star Wars. First showing. That, my friends, was a big deal to this 13 year old boy. I rode my bike down the highway to get to the Maine Mall Cinemas. I'm sure I did the same thing to go see Close Encounters of the Third Kind... and the King Kong remake... and Rocky.
Well not Rocky. My Mom took me to see that.




Might have been one of the times the State Police pulled over to tell me that no bikes were allowed on the highway. Didn't matter to me. How else was I supposed to get to the Mall to meet my friends at the clock in the middle of the Mall at an agreed upon time so that we could hang out for the day that was set up by calling each other on our touch tone wall phones?



At least I had graduated to a ten speed by then. It had a speedometer/odometer on it. Oh, and a light.

            
Christ.

I went on a road trip with family friends to Cooperstown NY that year. Baseball Hall of Fame. On the way we went to the Bronx Zoo. They were still looking for the Son of Sam at the time. I know that because I remember hearing in on the car radio whilst I was on his home turf. Scared me a bit knowing I was so close to the most infamous killer I had ever heard of. In my entire life. For some reason I can picture hearing this while it was just "the kids" in the car. No adults. At night. We were vey close to being killed execution style ourselves. I just knew it.



...but then again, maybe not.

Elvis died. I remember where I was when I heard about it. I was in a car on Pennsylvania Ave in South Portland Maine. We had just got back from Canobie Lake Park in Salem New Hampshire. My Mom was going to see him the next night in concert in Portland Maine. The thing I remember as much about Elvis' death that day was getting in a mirror maze at Canobie that I couldn't get out of. Helplessly trapped.

I'm not sure which event scarred me for life more, the King's death or that goddamned mirrored maze.


It doesn't look quite as daunting now, does it?
....just the same, Homey don't play 'dat anymore.

Reggie Jackson hit three homeruns in one game to lead the Yankees to a World Series championship against the Dodgers.

Yawn.


1977 was my first year of Junior High.


Good times. Tough times. Wouldn't have given them up for anything, nor would I want to relive them.

Unfortunately I will when my youngest hits junior high next year.

Ain't life grand?

One last thing, contrary to popular belief, I did not have a Farrah Fawcett poster in my locker that first year of junior high.

I had it over my bed.



Stop it.

Much love.

..and remember..
May the force be with you.