Greetings, Creepozoids!!

I know, I know… I told you all that last week would be the last installment of “The Don Remembers” for 2010.  But, reception to last week’s finale was so good that I just had to offer up one more.

And also I’m trying to prep for Horrorfind this weekend and needed to be able to whip up something quick and easy.

So, uno mas…

Back in the seventies and eighties, kids didn’t need much of an excuse to run around the house (or outside) in their underwear.  It was a simpler time – a time right before razor blades were found in candy, before creepy vans pulled up with creepier guys offering candy, before Diff’rent Strokes had that special episode with the Maytag Repairman wanting to share Dudley’s…candy.

While it didn’t take much to get our prepubescent selves out of our suffocating outer garments, coming up with a specific reason to entice us to do so didn’t hurt, either.

Introducing Underoos!

Underoos came about in the late seventies.  Marketed by Fruit of the Loom, Underoos were billed as “Underwear that’s FUN to wear!”  In order to make good on that promise, Underoos bought the licensing rights to several different, pop-culturally relevant (at the time) companies – including Star Wars, Marvel and DC.  That’s right – like MEGO was able to do just a couple of years earlier for their eight inch action figure line, Underoos managed to get both of the big comic companies to play.

The result?  If ever there was an understatement to a five year old, that tagline would be it.  They weren’t just FUN to wear, they were heckafrikkin’AWESOME to wear!

You see, the hook that made each set a must-have was that each combination of shirt and underpants guaranteed that you were dressing up as the character.  Liked Superman? The Superman Underoos were comprised of a shirt with his chest logo on blue while the underpants were the same color as his trunks.  Just grab a red towel from your mom’s linen closet, and you were now ol’s Supes himself.  Each pack of Underoos was literally an affordable superhero costume for you to wear year round.

I still remember my very first set of Underoos – Robin, the Boy Wonder.  I remember opening that package with an excited glee and getting those suckers on immediately.  Then, it was off to fight imaginary crime while I wore that yellow towel (it was the seventies – they had yellow towels) around my neck with pride.  The Joker?  The Penguin?  No match for my acrobatic, crime-fighting skills.  The Riddler?  His enigmatic word problems were child’s play (see, cause I was a child… get it?) to this masked avenger.  Hours of amusement, all based around a shirt and a pair of underpants.  That was all I needed.

Over the next few years, my collection of Underoos grew – Superman, Batman, Spider-Man… leading up to the crème de la crème – Boba Fett.  That was the golden goose, my friend.  Running around, collecting prices on heads while the chest plate of the galaxy’s most infamous bounty hunter adorned my young torso…

I just realized what that reminds me of.  Underoos were for me what the Red Ryder BB Gun was for Ralphie in the film A Christmas Story – except that it was cheaper and less hassle to get a t-shirt and a pair of underpants.  Plus, more variety to choose from when it came time to play in your imagination than with the Red Ryder.  Also?  Less likely to end up with a damaged or missing vision orb from two pieces of fabric.  Otherwise, the endgame was exactly the same – suit up and go adventuring until dinner.

Fruit of the Loom still puts Underoos out nowadays.  Unfortunately, they pale in comparison to the classic stuff of yore – instead of becoming your favorite characters, most of them just feature said character on the shirt.  Guess it’s just another example of how the stuff we love from Nostalgialand never comes back the same way we remember them.

Also?  They don’t fit anymore.  These things are riding up something fierce right now.

The Don… wants to apologize for that visual above.

Greetings, Choppers!!

The end of summer is upon us!  And with the changing of the seasonal guard, so does my summer series prepare to exit, stage right.

But, I wanted to end “The Don Remembers” with a bang.  Or at least, with a lame crazy stunt no one will notice.  So, as my final offering to you all, I will be going… live!

Well, not really.

What I will be doing is spending this installment on my couch, watching that awesome love letter to those who lived the eighties – Hot Tub Time Machine.  During the course of my film viewing, I will be doing a regular commentary – highlighting each bit of eighties nostalgia I come across and sharing my own, brief thoughts on it.  As I do so, I will also time stamp each comment, so that anyone who wishes to do so can follow along on their own.

Yeah, like that would happen.

So without further ado…  I present to you Hot Tub Time Machine…

Oh, and it’s the unrated version (more nudity for me!)…

Okay… here we go:

00:01:30  The dog’s name is Bono.  Like the lead singer of U2.  Once upon a time, he was just an Irish lead singer in a great band in the eighties.  Now…

00:02:36  John Cusack is in the house!!!  Literally, he just walked into his house.  One of the pioneers of eighties teen comedies.  This man has managed to still have a great career.  One of my all-time favorite actors.

00:04:47  Firebird Trans-Am!!!  One of the finest automobiles of the 1980s.  Introduced in the seventies by Smokey and the Bandit, the Trans-Am became an icon throughout the early to mid-eighties.  Not, my favorite, however.  That distinction would go to K.I.T.T. a year or two later.

00:05:01  Mötley Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home”!  One of the greatest ballads to come out of the eighties from a hair metal band.  I frikkin’ love this song.

00:10:43  Just realized… John Cusack always seems to play characters that get dumped.

00:12:45  Clark Duke just referenced Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.  That movie scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid.

00:13:54  Crispin Glover!!  Marty McFly’s dad as a bellhop!  From one time travel movie to another.  Turns out, he was cast for this film for just that reason.  Well, one of the reasons.  And it appears he’s doing a variation of “Hey you, get your damn hands off her!”

00:17:15  The hot tub looks like it’s filled with Michelob, a popular beer in the eighties.

00:18:37  Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. masks.  Once upon a time in the eighties, that was our President and Vice, respectively.  Reaganomics!!  Remember when Patrick Swayze robbed banks wearing presidents’ masks in Point Break?

00:19:46  Ah, the ski resort.  A common backdrop in eighties comedies.  South Park did a great parody of that trope a couple of seasons ago.

00:20:12  Fluorescent colors!!!  Man, who thought that was acceptable to wear??

00:20:27  Another Crüe song – “Kick-Start My Heart”.  Crüe was king of the hair bands…

00:21:21  Enter the staple of all eighties coming-of-age comedies – the bully.  Two of them, in fact.  Usually in a position of authority, and usually full of douchebaggery.

00:21:31  Speaking of douchbags… “Hey, look – it’s the douchebag from Karate Kid III.”  What an awful film, sullying what were two great predecessors.

00:22:02  OMG – fur boots.  Run for your life.  We have finally captured and killed bigfoot, and made him into footwear.

00:22:08 Eighties overload in 3-2-1 (Contact)…

00:22:10  More bright colors!  And an eighties tune I hear playing in the background that I can’t remember the name of.  I fail.  Commentary over.

00:22:18  Acid-wash jeans.  I owned a couple of these… I’m afraid to admit.

00:22:21  Ah… those weird sunglasses that looked like open blinds…  Never had a pair.  Even I thought they looked stupid, and impractical.

00:22:29  Giant, portable phones.  Only the rich had them because the “plans” were so expensive.  The crappy spin-off That 80s Show tried to do this same gag.  It failed.

00:22:37  “I want my two dollars!”  A direct quote and homage to the aforementioned Better Off Dead, just as Cusack in onscreen.  Love it.  Great movie.  The original line comes from a paperboy who is… a tad overzealous about getting paid for his deliveries…

00:22:40  S-S-S-S, A-A-A-A, F-F-F-F, E-E-E-E, T-T-T-T, Y-Y-Y-Y… “The Safety Dance”!  Love this song.  Great eighties staple.

00:22:45  Jheri curl and smoking in public establishments.  Two tastes that go great together.  No, they don’t.

00:22:50  David Bowie does a promo bumper for MTV… “I want my MTV!”  So, do I, Jareth… So do I…

00:22:53  The Bill Cosby sweater…  The Cosby Show was actually pretty funny.  And a cigarette machine.  No carding required…

00:22:57  Too hot for the hot tub!!

00:22:59  Miami Vice – Popular cop show for its time… and a fashion trendsetter.  That’s partly where all the bright colors came from.  Thanks, Don Johnson.

00:23:03  Poison – another hair metal band from the eighties.  The debate was always which was better – them or Crüe.  I was always for Crüe.

00:23:07  Madonna on the cover of SPIN magazine… back when she was hot and I wanted her badly… In the background, a CHOOSE LIFE T-shirt, popularized by George Michael when he was in the band WHAM!  There are a lot of CAPITALIZED WORDS in this comment.

00:23:10  ALF!!!  (More capitalizations.)  I loved that show.  Was so pissed when NBC cancelled it right after a major cliffhanger.  It would not be the first or last time they did that crap.

00:23:15  Reagan again… trying to talk his way out of something…

00:23:19  Super Mario Bros.!!!!  One of the greatest arcade games of all time!  That was my joint!  Was one of the first hits to come out of the video game fallout of 1983…

00:23:20  The Cuban Missile Crisis… I think.  My history isn’t up to snuff.  I know, shame on me.

00:23:21  Cyndi Lauper.  Strange, fun, and sexy in her own way…  Love her music… and Pete Townshend during his solo days from The Who…

00:23:22  Col. Oliver North… had a shredding party… while Adam Ant sung about “Goody Two-Shoes”.

00:23:23  The old Apple II computers… everyone at school seemed to have one… but me.  I eventually got a Commodore 64.

00:23:24  Sony Walkman!  I had that exact color and model.  I’m actually glad we got out of the cassette era.

00:23:27  Nu Shooz – “I Can’t Wait”.  One of my favorite eighties songs of all time.

00:23:35  Legwarmers.  I actually never got the reason for these.

00:23:37  “Where’s the Beef?”  Classic slogan for Wendy’s.  That old lady was a hoot when she would spout that line.  She’s dead now.  (Ooh!  Too soon?)

00:23:41  Michael Jackson – before the charges, before the color change… he was just about the music.  I love “Thriller”.

00:24:10  Whew!  That was a a lot of stuff…

00:24:55  “Eddie Lives” T-shirt from Iron Maiden, Fishbone T-shirt… one of these bands I actually listened to.  And an old school tape recorder…  Ah, the stuff we would record on those things.

00:25:15  1986… I was eleven and in the sixth grade…

00:25:27  Timecop – not a bad Jean-Claude Van Damme flick.  Creative time travel ideas.

00:25:40  A mullet, a feathered hairstyle, and a hi-top fade walk into a bathroom…I wore two out of three of these.

00:26:27  Cocaine – the drug of the eighties.

00:27:20  The Terminator – James Cameron’s first admitted flick.  One of the best sci-fi/horror films out there.

00:28:03  Enter Chevy Chase.  He had a great career in the eighties… well, at first.  Luckily, this movie and the show Community have finally brought him back from obscurity.  Now, if only we could get Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy back, too.

00:31:06  AIDS.  ‘Nuff said.

00:32:48  “What You Need” by INXS.  I used to think it was pronounced The Ink-sez.

00:33:34  Wine coolers… the alcoholic beverage of the eighties.

00:35:49  “Modern Love” by David Bowie.  I liked some of his stuff, but really didn’t get into his music until much later.

00:36:56  Look at all the eighties cars…

00:37:04  Synthesizer!  I keep saying – we need to bring synthesizers back into music.

00:37:12  Keytar!  This goes double for the Keytar.

00:37:50  Jordans… a shoe that I never owned by a basketball star that I never watched play.

00:38:45  “Push It” by Salt n Pepa… not really my bag.

00:40:00  Denim skirts… those have actually come back.  I kind of like them on the ladies.

00:42:30  So much great music in this flick – “Obsession”, by Animotion.  Another one of my favorite songs from that decade.  I remember roller skating to that song.

00:44:03  “I Wanna Know What Love Is”, by Foreigner.  I love me some Foreigner…

00:48:48  Rocky IV, Rambo III, Red Dawn.  The testosterone in this room is overwhelming.

00:48:49  Yep.  People used to wear their polos with the collars up.  Embarrassing.

00:48:58  “Wolverines!!”

00:49:19  21 Jump Street.  I loved that show.  Aired on the fledgling Fox network and launched the career of Johnny Depp.

00:50:05  Break-up notes SUCKED.

00:51:11  More Crüe – “Keep Your Eye On the Money”.  I think Crüe is the main sponsor of this film.

00:51:23  Manimal.  Eighties show about a guy who could turn into animals.  I never liked it.  I loved Automan, about a guy created from the computer.

00:51:36  Denver vs. Cleveland.  I never watched sports as a kid.  Still don’t.  Sci-Fi/Fantasy all the way.  If it doesn’t have a plot, I’m not interested.

00:51:53  Cutting Crew – “I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight”.  I’ve always been a ballad man, and this is one of my favorites.

00:52:26  Break-up poetry.  I was a hopeless romantic in high school.  I wrote a lot if this stuff.  Still have some of it somewhere.  Man, is it awful.

00:54:51  “Let me ask you something McFly.”  From William F-ing Zabka, the guy who made a short-lived career out of playing douchebags in movies like The Karate Kid and Back to School God-bless his douchebaggery ways…

00:55:13  “Bring it on, Spader.”  That would be a reference to James Spader, another actor who played creepy characters in eighties flicks.

00:58:50  “True” by Spandau Ballet plays during a scene that’s a throwback to the final scene in Sixteen Candles with Molly Ringwald – the eighties’ go-to girl for a red head sweetheart.  Man, I hate the song “True”.

01:01:55  Ugh.  Tiger striped pants.  More horrors in eighties fashion.

01:03:29  The punk rock movement and shoulder pads for women’s clothing – two things that do not go together.

01:05:10  The permed, overdone hair the chicks are sporting is outrageous… and I still like it.

01:06:48  Butchering a George Michael song… not cool…

01:06:54  But, doing a Rick Springfield song right…  Too bad the other guy with the word “spring” in his name got the better career.

01:07:22  OOH!  I spy a Back to School poster!  How meta!  And a Last American Virgin poster – the most depressing teen comedy of the eighties.

01:08:06  Another riff on Back to the Future – Nick bringing the future of music to the youth of the past… works out better for him than for Marty.

01:11:06  Crimped hair.  Wow.

01:16:45  Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines in a movie about ballet dancers… and effort to send a message about the Cold War… in a non-manly fashion.

01:30:23  Winding down with The Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”.  Same as it ever was.

01:32:45  And… in what is a complete departure from eighties time travel flicks – the characters don’t actually just face their issues and learn a valuable lesson while coming to grips with their situation, leaving it as it is.  No, these guys ACTUALLY DO THE COOL THING AND CHANGE THE FUTURE FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT.  Oh, and learn a lesson, too.

01:33:21  And now, we end this long commentary with a slightly altered version of the music video from Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home”.  Love this song.

And that about wraps it up for this lengthy, final installment of “The Don Remembers”.  I actually managed to stretch an hour and forty-five minute movie to a three hour writing exercise, and I prolly missed a bunch of stuff.  Still, it was a blast.  My apologies for putting you all to sleep, and I’ll meet you all back here next week with a return to form for “The Office of the Don”!  Goodnight!

The Don is on his way… he’s on his wayeee…  Bed, sweet bed…

Greetings, Poopsmiths!!

We’re already over the halfway mark in August, which means this summer series is almost at an end (unless I hear voices erupt from the crickets out there to demand I keep this going in some form).  With that in mind, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t go out without talking about one of my favorite animation companies – Rankin/Bass.  These guys helped get me through my entire childhood.  And they managed to accomplish that feat in more than one style.

The double-surnamed animation company started back in 1964.  Their first attempt was a Christmas special for NBC about the famous red-nosed reindeer Rudolph.  Using an animation style that they would become most noted for over the next twenty years – stop-motion animation – Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer became an instant holiday classic, and Christmas specials like this one would become Rankin/Bass’s bread and butter for the next two decades.

Over the course of those two decades, Rankin/Bass produced over thirty seasonal specials, covering other holidays as well as Christmas.  While most were in the stop-motion variety, they would occasionally throw in a traditional cel-animated special as well.  But no matter what the style, Rankin/Bass specials always pulled in some of the grade-A talent of the time for voice-over work, like Mickey Rooney, Fred Astaire, Burl Ives, and Andy Griffith.

As a young boy growing up, Christmas didn’t fully begin until the networks started showing Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph, or ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.  Sure, Charlie Brown is probably considered the king of Christmas cartoon fare, but surely the R/B stuff was part of the royal court.  And in some ways, they’ve even surpassed the Blockheaded One – A Charlie Brown Christmas airs once, maybe twice on CBS every year.  Rankin/Bass specials?  They get twenty-five days devoted to them every year on ABC Family.  Who’s the blockhead now?

Oh, right.

Now, while most other animation companies would be content to cater to one specific niche where children are concerned, Rankin/Bass did the unthinkable.  In 1985, right around the time they produced their last Christmas special, the cartoon-makers with a forward slash in their name changed tactics and decided to aim towards the “impressionable ten to fifteen year olds who loved action/adventure and would pester their parents to buy them any toy featured in a cartoon” demographic.

And so, Thundercats was born.

I just so happened to be at the very beginning of that demographic at the time.  So guess what?  Yup – first thing I did when I came home from school each day was plaster myself to the living room floor to watch the adventures of a small group of anthropomorphic, feline humanoids try to survive on a futuristic earth after fleeing their doomed home world of Thundera.

Along with He-Man and Transformers, Thundercats completed the trifecta of animated action/adventure in my ten year old life.  Homework?  What homework?  Who had time for solving math equations, writing book reports, or figuring out why gravity pulled you down when the forces of good and evil were in constant struggle three times a day.

Did I say three times?  I meant four.

Because just when I thought my pre-pubescent life already had enough excitement to take the edge off of starting to discover girls, those geniuses running that cartoon company that sounded like a smelly fish had struck gold again.  Taking the exact same formula that made Thundercats such a huge hit, Rankin/Bass modified the ingredients – setting it primarily in space and making the humanoids birdlike instead – and gave it a similarly-structured moniker.

And so, Silverhawks was born.

Let’s be honest – it was a blatent rip-off of Thundercats.  Almost all of the voice cast from the first series was carried over to do voices for the new series.  The characters and situations they found themselves in were very similar to what came before.  And the big bad – Mon-starr, had a transformation sequence – with spell chant! – almost exactly like his Thundercat counterpart Mumm-Ra.

Of course, none of this mattered.  My pre-ADD-discovery brain latched onto this new offering with spirited glee.

It wouldn’t be long after Silverhawks debuted, however, that the house that Arthur and Jules built would start to run aground.  By the late eighties, this powerhouse of animation that had managed to persist like a juggernaut over the course of twenty years was finally starting to lose steam.  So, of course, the only solution was to triplicate the same exact formula that made them a hit twice before, only this time it was – gasp – underwater!  And once again, the name was just a smoosh-up of what animal they were combined with some other random word.  It was like they weren’t even trying anymore at this point.

And so, Tigersharks was crapped out of Satan’s rectum.

The sound that immediately followed was the death knell for Rankin/Bass.  Tigersharks, thanks mostly to the fact that no one ever really heard of the show, much less watched it, met a quick and painless death.  Sadly, Thundercats and Silverhawks followed suit right around the same time, and just like that – a wonderful animation company went the way of your favorite uncle who just happened to drink a little too much sometimes.

Despite their unfortunate demise those many years ago, Rankin/Bass is still around.  Revived at the beginning of the new millennium, they are currently owned by Warner Bros. – who do the company proud by making horrible sequels to their holiday classics.  In the meantime, at least we still get to see the fruits of studio lowercase today – between the aforementioned re-airing of all their Christmas specials on ABC Family to having the entire Thundercats series on DVD (and occasionally on Cartoon Network).  Even the first season of Silverhawks made it to DVD.  Unfortunately, it’s the only season out to date due to poor sales.  But, that can only mean good news:

At least Tigersharks will never see the light of day again.

The Don feels the magic, hears the roar… crap – it’s the other kind of cougar.

Greetings, Soggies!!

Alright.  This is the part of the show where I remember something that almost no one has ever heard of (of course, sometimes folks surprise me).

In the mid-eighties, during the height of Indiana Jones fever, it seemed like every studio in Hollywood had to make some kind of “treasure-hunting adventurer”-style film.  Romancing the Stone.  King Solomon’s Mines.  Firewalker. Even television tried to capitalize on the success of Raiders in the early eighties with shows like Bring ‘Em Back Alive and Tales of the Gold Monkey.

Now, somewhere in the midst of all of those movies and shows that actually formed a blip on the “treasure-hunter” radar, there’s this one little gem of a turd that sneaked in under the door… so much so that to this day I am one of the few people that even knows of its existence:

Jake Speed.

The film came out in 1986.  I have no idea if it even made a theatrical release.  All I do know is that it was on heavy rotation on Showtime around that time.  And I watched the hell out of it.  Written, produced, and starring some guy named Wayne Crawford in the title role, this movie was truly a love letter to himself… that just happened to have a couple of fun sequences and a neat thirties-style roadster with machine guns to fit in with the whole “cool vehicles” theme that was also going on in the eighties.

The movie is about a woman named Margaret whose sister is kidnapped while in Paris by a bunch of white slavers.  Her grandfather, who is a huge fan of the heroes of dime store, pulp novels, suggests she recruit one of them – Jake Speed.  Balking at the idea that her grandfather would even believe that these characters are real, Margaret finds herself face to face with Jake and his partner (I don’t mean that kind) Desmond.  Turns out, these guys really go on adventures, and then write about them to pay for more adventures.  From there, the trio go after the slavers, headed up by an awesome, scenery-chewing John Hurt.

I remember stopping to catch this every time it was on.  Not particularly well done, especially compared to its better, theatrically-run brethren.  But, it had its cheesy charms.  Jake had a special shotgun he called “The Kid”.  This weapon had two special properties that all guns had in the eighties – unlimited ammo and the ability to destroy practically anything with one shot.  Then of course, there was that car.  I would grin with delight every time the side panels opened up and the machine guns came out, blazing down everyone in sight.

Now, the film had two major things going for it as far as I was concerned back then – the aforementioned John Hurt and Karen Kopins.  John Hurt is the main (and maybe the only) reason to watch this movie.  He plays the evil villain so over the top you can tell he’s just having fun cashing a paycheck.  But, he’s so much fun to watch.  Sadly, I wanted to provide a clip of Hurt having a scenery sandwich, but it looks like the movie is so bad that everyone is too embarrassed to even post a clip on You Tube.

Now, the reason why Karen Kopins was such a draw for me in regards to this movie is because I had a huge crush on her.  My long distance love affair with Miss Kopins began with a little film called Once Bitten.  In it, she played the girlfriend of Jim Carrey’s character (yes – that Jim Carrey), who was being turned into a vampire.  The cute, little bob haircut and the girl next door persona had me hooked.  And here she was in Jake Speed, playing a very similar character.

Oh and did I mention that about two-thirds of the way through the film she ends up in her underwear?  For a preteen, that’s a big deal.

Many years later, I still have a guilty-pleasure love for this flick.  The movie hasn’t come out on DVD (nor do I ever expect it to), but I did manage to get it on VHS for about five bucks several years ago in a Wal-Mart bargain bin.  It’s one of the few VHS tapes I still own despite the fact that almost all of my movie and TV collection now resides on DVD or Blu.

And as far as I’m concerned, it’s still worth every penny of that five bucks I spent.

The Don doesn’t chew scenery… he swallows it whole.

Greetings, Penguin Blackbelts!!

My schedule from this past weekend all the way to this coming weekend leaves me with little time to do much, so this week’s installment of the summer nostalgia series will be short and sweet, which is apropos considering that it’s about a candy product that I have vast amounts of love for.   And if the title of this week’s “Remembers” hasn’t already given it away, I’m talking about that glorious confection that put Reeses’s Peanut Butter Cups to shame – PB Max.

Created in 1990, PB Max took the whole “you got your chocolate in my peanut butter” to a whole new level.  Instead of a processed-looking filler of brown paste, this candy bar seemed to include the same stuff you would knife or spoon out of a jar.  Slap that on a whole-grain cookie, combine it with peanuts and oats, and then wrap it all up in chocolate seduction and you found yourself with a square-shaped slice of euphoria.  And these things weren’t small, either.  Despite being less rectangular than their competition, PB Max bars didn’t suffer for it in the size department.  As you can tell from the picture above, those things were quite big.  Now imagine that packed with the ingredients I mentioned above.  Now salivate.

I loved the hell out of these things when they were still available.  They were the reason that Snickers bars and I didn’t speak for a long time (don’t worry – we reconciled some time later).  I simply could not resist these little buggers.  If I was ever in a grocery or convenience store and my eyes caught sight of a PB Max, I would usually mow down whoever was in my way to grab a couple.

Unfortunately, this incredible concoction obviously created by a wizard saw a short shelf life.  Halfway into the nineties, PB Max bars disappeared forever.  The reason?  According to the book The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars, the Mars family hated peanut butter.

Seriously.

So, thanks to communism (because honestly, communism has to be at the root of every evil – right?), the Mars company succeeded in their nefarious scheme of halting production of a candy bar that would have made Gandhi give up his crusade just so he could sit and ponder the wonders of the universe that were obviously contained within its chocolate coating.  At the very least, it prevented us mere mortals the chance to enjoy a delicious treat that gives Reese’s a run for its money.

And I cry.  Every night.

Still, all hope is not lost.  If you have a friend – like I do – and he is ambitious enough to look at the commercial, as well as check Wikipedia for the ingredients – like mine did – then you just may find yourself living in a shotgun shack gifted with the blessing of homemade PB Maxes, which are literally the next best thing.

And to help you get started, here’s the commercial so you can bask in the warm love of the PB Max:

However, getting a friend is up to you.

The Don is a portly ballerina.

Greetings, Anawanna Campers!!

The fun and colorful eighties had already bore witness to several unique and awesome innovations by the time the decade started to wind down in preparation for the drab and angsty nineties.  By the time we reached the twilight years of the era famous for hair bands, half-hour long, animated commercials for toys, and the conclusion of the original Star Wars trilogy, another fantastic invention came into being – one that fit in perfectly with the polychromatic decade – thermal color changing!  And when it comes to cool, color changing items, there are two that immediately spring to mind:

Hypercolor T-shirts and Color Changer Hot Wheels!

Both creations came about during the mid to late eighties and functioned based on a simple, yet complex concept – when the item was at room temperature or cooler, it was one color.  But, when you applied heat or in some way increased the temperature of the item, it would change colors!

I seem to recall that the Hot Wheels vehicles were the first color changing products I owned growing up.  By that time I was in my early teens, and my Matchbox and Hot Wheels collecting had significantly waned and been replaced by my action figure collecting.  But these things were different.  After seeing the commercial for a toy car that changed its hue under cold or hot water, I knew I had to have one.  Once acquired, I spent quite a bit of time… not playing with them.  No, instead I got way too mesmerized by the pure sorcery on display as continuously ran them under an alternating warm and cold tap – an act that, out of context, may appear as though I was trying to pry spy secrets from their die-cast lips.  Of course, it wouldn’t be long before I either “broke” them, got bored with the fact that there actually wasn’t a little wizard in the paint schemes making the greens turn yellow and the purples turn red, or discovered something els– ooh, Real Ghostbusters action figures!!

Hypercolor T’s on the other hand… those things mattered for a little while longer.  See, as is the case with any new fashion trend based out of pop culture – you weren’t cool unless you owned one.  Of course, in my case I wasn’t even cool when I owned one.  Que sera sera, I guess.  All the way into the locker.  Sadly, I couldn’t see the color change while I was stuffed in there.

Aside from a revisit to the emotional scars of my youth, Hypercolor shirts were frikkin’ awesome!  Not as reliant on that life fluid that pours out of faucets, all you had to do was put your hand or another warm object on the fabric – and the outline of that object would remain for seconds in a different color on the shirt.  Of course, after the initial wave of awe over this mystical garment wore off, there was only one way teenaged owners of said shirts could put this innovation to any use.

If you said “Probably something obscene”, you would be correct.

It would not be out of the realm of possibility to see sixteen and seventeen year old girls running down the halls with light blue hand prints over their budding buxoms on their purple Hypercolor T-shirts.  Nor, would it be inconceivable to imagine some young dude getting on the school bus with an intentionally oversized Hypercolor top – just so that he could plant a couple of yellow hands on his otherwise green-clad derriere.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen – teen creativity at work.  And just think – those folks have become us, and we are now running the country.

Or writing silly nostalgic pieces for geek culture web sites.

The Don can change colors as well.  Just make him laugh while he’s scarfing down a bag of Doritos.

Greetings, Warriors!!

There are two things that immediately spring to mind when I think about the Fester’s Quest game that came out for the NES back in the late eighties:

“Man, that was a great game!”

and

“$#*&@%#!!”

Released in 1989 by Sunsoft, Fester’s Quest was this little hidden gem of a game amongst the rest of the NES titles that came out that year.  Featuring an overhead layout (with a few scattered, first-person, dungeon crawl-like areas) and utilizing gameplay mechanics similar to the game Blaster Master, you controlled Uncle Fester as he ran around town trying to save it from and alien invasion.

While the gameplay was fun and the environment was visually stimulating, the game itself was quite – to put it mildly – challenging.

Between clunky movement and shooting mechanics, frequent and sometimes hard to avoid weapon degrade drops mixed in with the upgrade drops, and enemies that would pop up almost everywhere way too often, this game would frequently get very frustrating.  Yet, for some reason, I couldn’t stop playing it.  Thrown controllers aside (pun intended), I still enjoyed every minute of this game.  For me, at that young age, Fester’s Quest was different and inventive.  Plus, the fact that it was based on what was then a twenty-five year old, black and white television show impressed me.

Though I never actually owned Fester’s Quest, this cartridge has the distinction of being one of the few titles I rented repeatedly (well, as long as my parents had no problems paying for the rental and driving me to and from the rental place).  The first time I rented it, I remember picking up this title and the first Ducktales game.  I found myself enjoying both so much that I had a hard time choosing between the two to play.  I think the quirkiness and eccentricities of Fester’s Quest is what made it stand out for me, though, as well as what made it a constant on my video game rental list.

Before finishing this article, I decided to play it again just to see how it holds up.  It’s not as difficult as I remember, but it still can get frustrating as hell.  Part of the problem is the damn gun upgrades.  Until you upgrade to the best gun in the game, your projectiles tend to do some kind of wonky zig-zag or loop-de-loops as they head towards their target.  This can prove to be somewhat anger-inducing when you are in close quarters with some nasty alien varmints and your gun blasts keep getting stopped by the local shrubbery.  But you know what?  I still enjoyed the hell out of the game.  In fact, it took me at least an hour to get back to this article, I was having so much fun.

So, is Fester’s Quest as good as I remember?  Yup.  In fact, I’m going back to play it some more.

“$#*&@%#!!”

There goes another controller.

The Don is creepy and he’s kooky, he’s hairy like a wookiee, he’ll make you wanna pukee…

It isn’t very often that the stars align and a series of unfortunate events occur in tandem and in perfect sync with the Spwug article that I happen to be writing for the week.

This isn’t one of those times.

Still, it’s a pretty fortunate coincidence that the new Predators movie is opening this weekend and the original Predator came out last week on Blu and that I watched it over the weekend and I had planned on writing about the film this week as a part of my “Don Remembers” series.

Wow.  That’s a lot of ands.

But, with the ever-growing excitement I’m feeling over the possibility that a new Predator film written and produced by Robert Rodriguez might actually be good (or at the very least wash the horrible taste of A v P films out of cinegoers mouths), I felt it was only fitting that this week I remember the classic Schwarzenegger flick that started it all.

First, I will go on record and say that I think Predator is hands down the best action film on Arnold’s resume (and holy cow does it look beautiful on Blu – so clean that it looks like a recently-released film).  Don’t get me wrong – I love me some Terminator and T2, and Commando is just way too much fun – but Predator is a nice, intimate sci-fi/action flick that seems to work perfectly on every level.  You’ve got your well-cast, well-balanced team dynamic, with each character played brilliantly by his respective actor and getting a decent amount of development – so when each one dies, you don’t just shrug it off.  Each death carries weight.  You’ve got your humorous one-liners.  You’ve got your straight-up, military mission plot line that about half-way through gets a serious injection of sci-fi/slasher juice in the form of a bad-ass alien who has no qualms with how messy he makes his kills.  That leads me to the fact that film is also loaded up with a decent amount of gore.  Top that all off with the requisite staple of a Schwarzenegger film – Arnie in a one-on-one showdown with the big bad – and you have the final product that should be on regular rotation in every household.

This film actually holds a special significance for me, as it was the very first R-rated flick I got to see in theaters.  It was summer of 1987.  I was twelve and had just finished seventh grade the month before.  One of my best friends, Jeff, and I had already been stoked to see this film for months after all the articles we had read in magazines like Starlog and Fangoria (ah, the days before the internet when all of your cool movie scoops came from sci-fi and horror magazines).  We talked about this movie constantly, in between watching episodes of Thundercats, playing D&D, and our numerous and consistent attempts to catch any glimpse of T&A that we could on MTV or in whatever flick we could catch on a pay channel.

When the film was finally released in June, Jeff got permission from his mom to stay over at my family’s house that weekend.  Convincing my dad to take us wasn’t a difficult task, as he loved a good action flick as much as anyone.  With our tickets in hand, we went into the small theater at our tiny mall in our miniscule town and took our seats – minds ablaze with excitement over what we were about to see unfold across the screen.

An hour and forty minutes later…

Holy crap!  Jeff and I exited that theater, our young minds blown by the spectacle we had just been privy to.  For the next few months, every minute of our lives was infused with Arnie-speak from the film.  Quotes were flying out of our mouths (and in most cases, away from adult ears) faster than Blaine getting eviscerated by a plasma blast.  Every time we went out to play “guns”, we were commandoes up against some alien hunter.  Even our combined G.I. Joe saw an upgrade in adversaries – from hooded used car salesmen to dreadlocked killers with mandibles and active camouflage.  We would be eating, sleeping, and breathing the awesomeness of Predator well for quite awhile…

Then the hormones kicked in, and we noticed girls.  But that’s another memory… and one probably best not shared.

The Don ain’t got time to bleed.  He’s too busy screaming like a girl from the paper cut.

Greetings, Forever Knights!!

By the time I had gotten to that one year and a half of college I took many moons ago, my musical tastes included four different Swedish bands or groups – ABBA (thanks to my Humanities professor’s obscene insistence that any free time in the auditorium had to be filled with the palindromed band’s melodies), Ace of Base (yes, I got sucked into it.  No, I don’t regret it), Yaki Da (produced by one of the members of Ace of Base, but never went anywhere in the US), and Roxette.  Of the four, only one can hold the distinction of being the first and the longest to last, to the point where I still listen to them regularly even to this day – Roxette.

It would be in the late eighties – sometime in 1988 to be exact, that I would hear their first hit single: “The Look”.  A catchy fusion of pop and rock, I would constantly be on the lookout for anywhere this song might get airplay – radio, MTV (back when MTV still played these cool things called “music videos”, some mix tape someone might happen to be playing (back when you could rip songs off of the original media to create your own custom-made life soundtrack without even an batted eyelash from faceless, corporate big-wigs).  The song was the closest I got to rocking out at the time (I know, I was a wuss in junior high… and senior high… and college… and currently as an adult), and I relished every moment when both the male lead and female lead (Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson) would jam together, either with rocking harmonies or while tagging each other on single leads.  By the time their next couple of singles came out (“Dressed for Success and “Listen to Your Heart”), I knew I had to get the album on cassette (back when music was put on magnetic tape).  “Dressed for Success” capture the same energy I liked from “The Look”, while “Listen to Your Heart” appealed to the hopeless romantic I was from seventh grade up to… what time is it right now?

When I finally got that album, I played the hell out of it, memorizing every note and lyric.  It was the first album I owned that didn’t contain a single song that I didn’t like.  I went through batteries on my Walkman like crazy (back when Sony was the top maker of portable music players).  And as is usually customary for an angsty teen who has found his musical muse, I thought ever song was about me.

Over the course of the next few years, I would pick up each and every album Roxette put out – Joyride, Tourism, and finally Crash! Boom! Bang! The last one I had to buy twice – the first copy I bought was part of a special music deal that McDonalds had with select bands (back when you could eat McDonalds without thinking about how bad it is for you).  Unfortunately, the version of Crash! that the McD was selling only contained select singles from the full album.  Irritated and jonesing for my fix, I went to my local Camelot Music (back when the store existed), and special ordered the full album.

Sadly, Roxette fell off the radar in the US right after Crash! came out, and I thought that that would be the last release I would ever hear from what became my favorite band of all time.  They sang the soundtrack of my life.  Every note they played, every note they sang, described every high and low I was going through during my young life.  And suddenly, there would be no more.

Well, it turned out that Roxette kind of faded out in general after Crash! But they weren’t down for the count.  It would be another five years after that album, but they came back with a slightly updated sound with Have a Nice Day in 1999.  By that time, I was almost done with my four years of Air Force service, and still kind of a wuss when it came to music.  The new album didn’t make it to the states, unfortunately.  Luckily for me, there was this thing called the internet just starting to make a name of itself (back when most people had to tolerate a series of screeches just to connect through a phone cable).  On a lazy day (which was probably every day), I decided to look up the band I still held a candle for.  And lo and behold, I discovered this new chapter of my soundtrack just beckoning me to order it from their website.

So I did.

It certainly wasn’t the same guitar-pop I was used to.  The band instead offered a more dance mix kind of sound.  I didn’t hate it, but I missed the guitar licks and perfectly blending vocals of the earlier albums.  It would also be the first album that contained a song or two of theirs I didn’t like.  Still, over time I would come to love this album just like all the rest, adding these musical narratives to the growing soundtrack of my life.

One more album would be released by Roxette in 2001 – Room Service.  This album seemed to be the meshing of the two sounds that Roxette had come to embody – dance and pop-rock.  I found myself enjoying this album more than the last, as I felt that the band finally found a perfect balance in their music.

Sadly, that album was the last one we’ve gotten, since Marie Fredriksson fell ill to a brain tumor in 2002, just over a year after the release of Room Service.  When I found out the news, I was hit hard.  The band that seemed to know my heart in and out, the band that I would easily listen to over any other, was hit by such a major blow.  I played their music almost all of the time after I found out, almost as if – in some way – I was sending my best wishes across the ocean to the female half of the band that I also considered my musical soul mate.

Fortunately, the operation Marie had to remove the tumor was a success.  She managed to survive, but did suffer some disabilities.  But despite the impairments, she hasn’t quit making music.  After releasing a couple of solo albums following her recovery over the past couple of years, she and Per made an announcement earlier this year that they were working on some more material together.  Originally, Gessle wouldn’t directly state if it was a new Roxette album, but he left a number of hints.  He has since mentioned that a new single is due out in December, with a new album expected next February.

I still continue to listen to Roxette all the time.  Since their last album, my tastes have expanded a bit, and I have picked up quite a few other favorite bands.  But time and time again, Roxette is always at the core.  If I can’t figure out what I want to listen to – Roxette.  If I’m feeling a particular, emotional high or low that I think only one band can understand – Roxette.  They are the band that has gotten me through most of my entire life.

And come February – if there be a new album, you can guarantee it will be played non-stop for a long time.

The Don loves the sound of crashing guitars.

Greetings, Mads!!

Those of you who grew up during the eighties may remember a little book series put out by a company called Crestwood House that focused on classic monsters from the fifties, sixties, and seventies.  These orange and black little treasures were part of the “Monster Series”, and were some of the most heavily sought-after tomes of my third grade class.

A delightful anthology series, each Monster Series book would focus on a particular movie monster type, be it Frankenstein’s Monster, Godzilla, or Mad Scientists.  And it wouldn’t just cover one iteration of the subject, either – each volume would include every classic appearance of the character, be it silent film, Universal version, Hammer version, or even sequels.  And for a deceptively thin book, each hardcover seemed to overflow with a fountain of information on the monsters we all loved as kids.

My fondest memories of this were again back in third grade.  I remember that my third grade teacher, Mrs. Hopper, was a very kind but very strict Christian woman.  As such, she didn’t like us bringing in anything that seemed evil or un-Christianlike.  So, that meant that the Crestwood House books were verboten in our class.  We could check them out, but they had to remain in our back packs or we couldn’t check them out at all.

That just made them all the more desirable to get ahold of.  We used to sneak them into the back of the room or out by the tree during recess and just go over them cover to cover.  Repeatedly.  There were only six different volumes in our library, but I must have checked each one out at least a hundred times over the course of that school year.

Then, there was the time in fourth grade that I went on a field trip with my gifted class.  The library we went to had new Crestwoods that I had never seen before!  With the new additions added to the growing series list on the back, I was mesmerized by the chance to explore new monsterscapes.  I tried repeatedly to look through them while we were in this foreign elementary library, but I was repeatedly foiled by the fact that we were there for other educational purposes.  But there was only one education I wanted at that point – I wanted to learn more about monsters.

Sadly, I never got to read those other installments.  But, those Monster series books continue to be a part of what makes me the geek I am today – especially my love of monster movies.

The Don is doing the Mash.  The Monster Mash.