I haven’t posted anything in years. This is largely due to being extremely busy at work and exhausted when I get home, but I have to give a little credit to the dirty martini, which I’ve finally mastered to the point where I bolt home every night like a good little alcoholic so I can break out the fancy bar equipment and pour myself something salty. It’s basically become my daily reward for surviving life without incident.
My other current vice? Scratch-off Lotto cards. I can’t stop. It’s a sickness. There’s a kiosk on the street by my office which I formerly only utilized as a place to swipe free matches, but now I’m going there day after day with the hopes of finally achieving my destiny of being a “Win For Life” champion. And I’m not just talking about that $2-per-play $1000/week bullshit, either. I go for the $5000/week. Sometimes, I empty my wallet and commit the mortal sin of purchasing a TWENTY DOLLAR SCRATCH-OFF LOTTO CARD, all for a card-worn marquee reading “$10000 A Week For Life!” It’s gotta stop. I know it does. I know I can’t keep this up. In a few months, it’s going to get to the point where I have to pawn my sneakers just to make the rent, and even then, who’s to say I won’t take my sneaker money straight to the nearest bagel shop/Lotto center? HELP MEEEEE
You shouldn’t have to suffer as I sort this mess out, so here’s a look back at two old commercials that struck me as interesting. Content lite!
When I wrote that review of V: The Original Mini-Series a long while back, I mentioned that the extent of my childhood exposure to the lore was being absolutely petrified of its associated television commercials. This one is a good example. I remember being more specifically afraid of the promos for V’s eventually-introduced television series, but this one, for the second mini-series, highlights the “why” all the same: Creepy music, screaming innocents and gratuitous shots of SCARY RED LIZARD EYES!
I was blessed with having a television in my bedroom since a young age; at times, that blessing was a curse. V: The Series came out in 1984, which would’ve made me all of five-years-old. But let’s assume that syndication delays pushed those ads all the way to 1987. I was still young enough to be a big baby, and watching television past a certain hour was always a bit of a gamble. In title and base imagery, V was just ambiguous enough to be the scariest thing ever. Had I actually grown a set and made myself sit through just a single episode, I would’ve realized how plainly not scary it was. To tell you the truth, I’m kind of glad I didn’t. In a weird way, it was fun to imagine what kind of horrors the show boasted. I pictured lots of people being eaten and things jumping out of corners. Finding out that it was more about Marc Singer striking foxy poses would’ve been disappointing.
When The Wonder Years made it to weekday reruns, there were all sorts of commercials that I’d see every afternoon. They got me to watch the show. Every memory I have of The Wonder Years is an afterschool one; I very rarely if ever bothered with the prime time first-runs. This goofy promo focused on the loves of Kevin Arnold’s life, and even though she’s not in the ad, my mind wanders to psycho ex Becky Slater, and that one episode where Kevin asked her to go steady at the ice rink.
That turned out to be a fool’s game for Kevin, but it impressed me enough to spend a few years believing that ice skating rinks were a romantic hotspot. In junior high, we had a full-day school trip to one over in Jersey, and my awkward ass filled up with futile theories that that would be the day I became a man. I don’t think I had any particular crushes at the time, but anything that breathed would’ve sufficed.
Course, my Kevin Arnold-inspired plot had one fatal flaw: I could not ice skate. I tried, for about thirty seconds, and fell four or five times in that span. Defeated and dejected, I resigned myself to playing that WWF Superstars arcade game with all of the other nerdy losers who couldn’t ice skate. Everybody beat me. God, that day really sucked.
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You know, I liked the John Larquette Show. I was a huge fan of Night Court, and I liked how snide Laroquette’s character was.
On one episode, he explained how he came to own a little sign he posted in his office. It said, “This is A Dark Ride” in creepy Baskerville Old Face (for my fellow font nerds out there). I always wanted a sign like that.