Son of Svengoolie

Happy Halloween! I can barely remember what I was for Halloween most year. I know I was Darth Vader in one of those cheap plastic costumes one year. My dad made me a really cool viking shield one year and I used it a couple years in a row. Beyond that, I have no recollection of any of my costumes. So instead, here's The Son Of Svengoolie who was a local TV host who aired old horror and B movies on Saturday afternoons. In particular, this is the opening to the one time when they aired a 3D movie. I think we had to go to the A&P to get the glasses. Maybe they were in the Trib though.

Omnibot 2000

During my early teens, I got an Omnibot 2000 for Christmas or my birthday. I was 2 foot high robot made by Tomy that could be controlled by a remote or programmed with a cassette tape to do all sorts of mundane things. It was all kinds of awesome until the battery died. I couldn't find a commercial for my model but here's the commercial for the next version which is a little shorter and shinier.

Don Gato

Mrs. Cibald (sp?) had a few songs she liked to make us sing over and over again year after year (This Old Hammer, Shoo Fly, etc...) but Don Gato was our favorite. I'm not sure if we ever sang it in concert but from 1st - 5th grade we sang it in class a few times every year.

Our version was a little more uptempo than this...



But not as hard core as this...

Holy Priceless Collection of Etruscan Snoods!

I used to *LOVE* the old Adam West Batman series. For a long time, that's what Batman was to me. Even now, I'll still watch it if it's on and don't understand the shame that fanboys feel when they think about it. It was pretty cheesy and over the top. This was probably its finest hour.

Misfits of Science

So Bruce Springsteen has been tapped for the half time show at the Superbowl next year and everyone is debating what he should play. I think it would be totally cool if he did Dancing in the Dark and at the end of the song, pulled Courtney Cox up on stage to dance with him just like in the video. It's not like she's got anything else going on right now. I think her FX show was canceled. Maybe the two people who remember it will update Misfits of Science for her. I think I was 13 or 14 when this show aired. I was just getting into comics and thought this was cool because it was as close to an X-Men television show as I was going to get for the next 10 years.

Automan

There's something magical about that age when you're old enough to stay up a little late but too young to be going out on your own on a Friday night. Pretty much that meant that you stayed up watching crappy TV shows. This was one of them. It was about a dude who could turn into a car. I think it was inspired by Knight Rider a little bit and there's definitely some Tron thrown in there as well. Of course it wasn't nearly as good as either of them but I was 10ish so what did I know about quality? I'd watch anything with a talking car in it.

E.T.

Forget that this movie is a classic and that I saw it more than a few times in the theater. When it was rereleased a few years ago on DVD, there was a lot of drama over the fact that Spielberg went back and took all the guns out of the movie replacing them with walkie talkies. That didn't bother me at all. What bothered me was the removal of the best line in the movie (at 6:49). Also, this was filmed during that brief time period when playing D&D was cool.

Shogun Warriors

What kid wouldn't want giant fighting robots? These things were awesome but my mom would never get me one. I think Tony had a couple though so I still got to play with them.

Lamest Toy Ever: Yo Ball

I'll admit that I couldn't get a yo yo to come back up the string until I was in high school. This toy was made for losers like me and was insanely popular for a month or two while I was in third grade. This commercial seems to be from a later period though.

Hard Hat Mack

Back in Jr. High we got our first computer, an Apple IIe. I had played around with them at school a little bit and we used to pass around copies of games on old 5 1/4 floppies. Cannonball Blitz was the first but I couldn't find anything about it on Youtube. Hard Hat Mack was the 2nd game we traded back and forth. It was a Donkey Kong clone but a little faster and (I thought) a lot more fun.

In 8th grade, tired of taking woodshop for the millionth time, Jim and I persuaded our assistant principal (later Lisa's boss in Wilmette) to create a computer programming class for us. Mike Daley caught wind of it and joined us. The librarian pulled the class out of a book and would hand us lessons to work on each day in basic and then go back into the library to do whatever it is she did. Most days, when we'd finish out lessons early, we'd play games. Since these were illegal copies, they weren't too happy when they caught kids with the discs. One day, we were all playing and Mike and I heard the librarian coming in. We quit out of the game as she walked in the door but Jim didn't notice and kept hammering away at the keyboard as she stood behind him. I'm pretty sure that disc was confiscated and we monitored more closely from that point on.

My mom probably still knows the librarian's name or has lunch with her every month and is mortally embarrassed that I'm admitting to this on line.

Our First VCR: Darby O'Gill and the Little People

Featuring a young Sean Connery of all people.

Our First VCR: A Walt Disney Christmas

This was a compilation tape of a few Disney animated Christmas shorts. It got played over and over even though Christmas was really over already. For some reason I have vivid memories of the first segment which is presented here.

Our First VCR: Tron

I don't think I ever got the chance to see this in the theater but we rented the crap out of it way back when.

Our First VCR: Old Yeller

I had 3 younger sisters so we were on a bit of a Disney kick. Here's Old Yeller in 5 seconds. I don't remember it ending this way.

Our First VCR: Pete's Dragon

For Christmas of 1982 (I think) we got our first VCR and spent the next two weeks renting 3 or 4 movies a day from Video Hotline. Some we rented more than a few times.









Here's a bonus video. I'm including it because the description on YouTube read, "Recorded on February 20, 2008 using a Flip Video camcorder. No Copyright Infridgement." and that made me laugh.

Lancelot Link and the Evolution Revolution

Back in Jr. High, channel 50 started showing reruns of Lancelot Link Secret Chimp in the morning before school. I was instantly hooked and how could I not be when the show was James Bond with monkeys? At the end of each episode, LL would play a number with his band, The Evolution Revolution.

She's Having A Baby

When I was in high school, John Hughes came to town again to direct She's Having a Baby and filmed the wedding scene in our church. This is the same church where I went to Sunday School, was confirmed, married, and where Grace was baptized as well. My youth group leader took me over one day before a meeting and I got to meet Hughes (chain smoker) and sit in Kevin Bacon's chair while no one was looking.

Santa's Village

We didn't go here as often as we did Kiddieland and I remember the car ride being excruciatingly long even though I probably spend more time in the car going to Games Night now.

Best Cartoon Ever Part 2

Many many years later, Warner Bros. brought Chuck Jones back into the fold to create new Looney Toons cartoons. One of them was a sequel to One Froggy Evening entitled Another Froggy Evening. It's not as good but it;s still a kick to see Michigan J. back in action. I don't think it was ever released theatrically (it appears on the Space Jam dvd for some reason) but I did manage to see it at a Chuck Jones appearance at the Warner Bros. Store Gallery in Water Tower when Lisa met a guy at a wedding who worked for them and got us some free passes. You weren't allowed to go anywhere near Chuck Jones unless you were buying an original piece of animation art (no cericels) so I got to look at him from afar but they were running the cartoon on a giant screen every half hour or so and we stuck around to see it a couple of times at least.

A few years later, I met Roger Ebert at a book signing and rather than ask him a good question, I asked him how he felt about being immortalized in a Chuck Jones cartoon. He didn't even know it existed.

Best Cartoon Ever

Aside from being a classic Warner Bros. short and considered by many to be one of, if not the best, cartoon ever, this is one of those many times where Tony and I came to appreciate something completely separate from each other only to discover our mutual admiration for it at a later date.

Normally, I wouldn't write such a long run on sentence but that would make my mom happy.

Kiddieland

We took Grace here for the first time a couple months ago. I have a feeling we'll be making many trips in the future.

The Minaquabats

The family used to travel up to Cardinals Manitowish Lodge on Trout Lake every summer and we'd always catch a Minaquabats show while we were there. Woodruff, WI is also home to the world's largest penny.

Best Toy Ever