X-Entertainment's Christmas Season & Advent Calendar, 2008.

07/06/2008: X-E’s ‘08 Summer Megaparty: Laundromonster.

In the early 1970s, the Federal Trade Commission issued a “Care Labeling Rule” which mandated that all articles of clothing for sale had to include an instruction label for proper cleaning. I suppose that most of us spend our lives taking little things like this for granted, but it’s true: The world once dwelled in befuddlement, not knowing what the fuck to do with silk.

Anyway, the FTC was evidently quite proud of the millions of dry-clean-only shirts that they saved from unspeakable horrors, and they wanted to let the world know. The only conceivable way to do this was with a public service announcement. So, they bought a little ad time to christen this dawn of a new era when all prior confusion over how to wash slacks CEASED to exist.

Had their public service announcement been even borderline sane, our story would end there. But it wasn’t borderline sane. It was beautiful, but it definitely wasn’t sane. Of all the misguided pitch meetings over the course of history that I would’ve love to been a fly on the wall for, none come close to this. How it is possible that someone persuaded the Federal Trade Commission to spread the word of their “Care Labeling Rule” with a public service announcement starring Frankenstein’s Monster?

Clearly the work of the manipulative Senator Palpatine. In the twenty-second spot (I assume they left ten seconds open for potential future tags by local sponsors, so after you watched Frankestein flip the fuck out over laundry, you’d be invited to come meet him at Al’s Steak and Tires on Route 28)….I’ve lost my train of thought.

In the twenty-second spot, Frankenstein’s Monster yells at Igor for neglecting to read the “new care labels” and ruining yet another load of laundry. This particular version of Frankenstein’s Monster is so over-the-top hilarious that it took me a few views to even notice how piss poor the Igor was. Like Nick Tortelli in a toga.

I totally dig the fact that the FTC smoked triple-laced crack cocaine before picking a TV script from a pile of several candidates, but it’s just so odd to see official government business handled with such a light touch. Then again, we’re just talking about shirt labels, here.

Actually, the classic movie monsters had a huge, huge resurgence in the early ’70s. Pretty much every boy’s toy on the market had something to do with Dracula or our friendly laundry addict. If the target demo for this PSA was the youth of the nation, I guess it almost maybe hypothetically made sense. But what did ten-year-olds care about clothing labels?

Click here to watch the PSA!

I hate Sunday nights. They make me want to kill everyone.

Not to rub it in for anyone, but Sunday night is the best night of the week when you’re a teacher in the summertime - especially when you can watch something new involving Frankenstein.

When I read the title I was like “laundywhaaat?”
Then I read everything else and I was all “oh”.

Josh, I understand that was the screening feedback for Martin Lawrence’s Runteldat used in its TV ads.

Why is Igor answering to the Monster? Did he already kill Doc Frankenstein for not reading the labels, too? That adds a much spookier element to this commercial… Doc is probably just lying on the ground, all mashed and dead wearing pink socks that were once white.

I can’t get the movie to work. I’m effin’ pissed. now I REALLY hate Sundays.

I used to hate Sunday nights as a kid because of school, but since I don’t work normal hours and school isn’t in session, I rarely have that same feeling of dread for the next day.

I can’t imagine a world without those obtrusive cleaning tags, but I like when people ask me at my job how they should wash certain things. Apparently monsters were not enough to get people to read the tags.

I hate sunday nights, too. Except when I’m OFF ON MONDAY. Which I am. I feel like i really want to start rocking, but we drove all day and are too tired to rock. What to do???

Maybe I’m alone in this, but I really wouldn’t know what to do with my pants without a care label. You know, if my pants got dirty. I’m pretty decent at zipping and buttoning.

That ad reminded me of a Halloween commercial for the Pumpkin Knife and/or the Pumpkin light. It was the type of thing that had a list of stores at the end (Walgreen’s, Eckerd, Shop-Ko…) where you could get it. Can anybody verify/find this for me?

I concur with the last part. Sunday evenings tend to be the worst. Add on the fact I’m watching Black Dahlia, which makes like no sense and stars people bad at acting.

Hilarious! I am a “throw it all together and let God sort ‘em out” kind of clothes cleaner. And when it comes to ironing….ugh, don’t get me started! If the wrinkles can’t come out in the dewrinkle section of the dryer, fuggedabout it!
As to Sundays, they completely suck. Which is the reason I spend every last moment on the net pretending it’s not over…yet….

Wow….that was rather different. I don’t think I have ever seen an overacting Frankenstein before. Just when I thought I had seen it all…..thanks Matt!

Sunday nights are the worst, mostly because I have gotten up too late Sunday morning to be tired at any sort of reasonable hour. But they do seem to be the only night of the week that I am doing nothing, other than lurking around here and other sites while sipping some sort of drink that I hope with have a sedative effect as opposed to a stimulating one. That part of Sundays is kinda nice.

Igor looks like Phil Collins in that ad. The Frankenstein looks like the “Munsters Today” version.

That Frankenstein’s Monster looks disturbingly similiar to my uncle Terry. Except more purple.

Frankenstein doin laundry? AWESOME ! =D Thank you for informing me about this Matt ! =) As for Sundays, I like em myself! Sunday is by FAR the laziest and most energy draining day for me, for some reason. But that’s why I like em.

I hate THIS Sunday night because I have a 6:00am call time tomorrow that I am not looking forward to.

I’m sittin here drinking a Pacifico Clara beer from Mexico when I should be studying.

I pretty much have two laundry groups, darks/reds, lights/whites/not red. That’s all ya need. The dry clean only stuff I wash in delicate and hang dry. I’m not paying $2.49 each time I want to wear my dress.

Great PSA! People just didn’t give a f@%k in the 70’s, did they? This might explain why I was born…

What was with this weekend and its lack of blog reading? I know sundays suck, but I’ve had one of my worst days since I started the blog.

Normally, Sunday nights don’t bother me, but I have to work early tomorrow. I wouldn’t mind working early tomorrow if I worked early all the time, but every other week but this one, I work in the afternoons. I wish the store would make up it’s mind.

Ok, that PSA was…strange. And not just because of the bad Universal Horror monsters, either. Only in the 70s would they have Frankenstein shilling for new shirt labels.

I wonder if that’s Vincent Schiavelli in that costume. Frankenstein sounds suspiciously like Lane Meyer’s geometry teacher from Better Off Dead.

I haven’t hated Sunday nights in a while, but I haven’t had employment in a while either.

I’m an unemployed bum right now, so Sundays really suck. You may be thinking “Wait, how can they suck, you don’t have to get up to do anything the next day?”

Well, I have a rule. On the Weekends, no worrying about job-related stuff. What that means is that late Sunday nights are spent worrying about what I’m going to be doing tomorrow: the same old depressing search on the internet, followed by several hours of feeling like crap because I feel like I should be doing something, even though I’m really just waiting for a few people to call me back. Sigh….

On the subject of Laundry: I do what my mother told me. Put everything together and put it on cold wash and cold rinse. No worrying about colors bleeding, and no worrying about clothes shrinking.

I do, however, take dress shirts to the cleaners. And sometimes pants. And my suits/tuxedo. But yeah, everything else is cold/cold wash.

Good post, Matt! I had no idea that’s how clothing labels started! If that’s the case, how did people ever wash their laundry before the 1970s?

Amen Clockwork: most everyone else I know is miserable because they have to go back to work tomorrow after a 3 day weekend; I don’t go to work until the end of the month

Sunday nights are bittersweet. I hate the next day, yet I enjoy the last lingering moments of free time.

Tonight isn’t the same, however. I don’t have anything to do this week, so today I jumped in the car with my best friend, and drove for awhile just to get out of town. We ended up in San Antonio. I’m typing this a block away from the Alamo. It’s kind of exciting.

Why aren’t the PSAs for the new digital TV transition like this? That would be way better.

I quite fancy laundromats. I remember one particularly revelatory afternoon spent curled up by the warmth of the machines, listening to Our Lady Peace’s Clumsy, for what felt like forever.

Matt: My email to you bounced. Phooey. I’d like to send you the kool aid, so could you email me your mailing address to hope dot thames at comcast dot net

I missed a lot of the mega party. I had a crazy weekend and wasn’t online. Yesterday I wanted to come on and check it out, but I needed a recovery day!

I hate Sundays too…My husband gets mad every Sunday b/c about noon I say “Man I am so excited to work tomorrow…” thus ruining the whole day for him…

Cameron T., I am intrigued by the idea of an unemployed guy with a tuxedo to clean. Are you like one of those James Bonds?

RevHah!, no, I just have a tuxedo left over from my college Men’s Choir days that gets use occasionally in weddings or concerts. No James Bonding here!

Listen to the noise that Igor makes as he’s dumping the laundry into the cauldron. I can only assume it is written as, ‘uugghheeeooo’.

Holy shit! Was that Brian Thompson? I haven’t seen that guy since the movie Cobra.

That was quite the label commercial but I get the sense Matt is already drifting from summer to Halloween. Stay with us Matt.
Also have you ever reviewed any of the tv network new season promo videos from the 80’s? It that sentence did not make sense I’m talking about those videos where ABC or NBC would have some song about how great their network is peppered with people from their shows singing and dancing along. I can’t get enough of those and would find it amazing if one of the networks would have the guts to do one now.

I don’t so much mind Sundays. My job requires me to work what seems to be every day available to work, so every night is kinda like Sunday night to me. I’m stuck in a “Groundhog Day” kind of cycle.

But I’m on maternity leave in 3 days!!:) So there is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel

Sunday is by far the worst day of the week. I was pissed off at Saturday for a while too but now we’re cool again. On Sundays there’s never anything to do, all the stores close early, and if you have weekends off there’s that awful dread of going back to work the next day.

Also, when I was a kid I had to get up early on Sundays and go to church in the morning and in the evening too. That got pretty old after a while.

“triple laced crack cocaine” - I’d say that was a fair assumption on your part Matt. I don’t even know how to describe my reaction to this…gotta love old PSAs. Do I owe all my thanks to Frankenstein’s monster for proper fabric care?

I don’t really have much to add, except I have really been enjoying Summer Megaparty so far! It never fails to get in me in a summer-y mood.

Any chance of a possible review of Burger King’s new “healthy” kids meal… saw a sign for it the other day . I guess it’s a Dixie cup full of macaroni and cheese, a milk, and an envelope of french fry-shaped apple slices. I dunno, I just can’t see many kids begging mom to pull over to BK for apple slices.

Jon
The “healthy” meals are for parents who hate their kids and want them to have scarred childhoods.

I agree. What’s more fucking horrible than taking your kid to McDonalds and ordering them apple slices? You got apples at home!

They just make those healthy kids meals so governmeent and parent groups will be quiet. And yes,I agree, going to BK for apple slices seems like a waste of time. While fast food isn’t exactly the healthiest thing in the world for you, it only becomes TRUELY horrible for you if you make a regular diet out of it.

Did they change the formula for fast food because it seems like kids are a lot bigger than when I was a kid. And I would have been pissed if my mom took me to BK and I would have to get apples b/c lord knows I would never willingly choose them.

Gah, I am so disgusted by our recent “lets make everything healthy” trend. I think getting mac and cheese and apple slices at BK would have singlehandedly destroyed my childhood.

To be healthy all you really have to do is include fruits and vegetables in your diet. And exercise too of course. Just don’t eat at places like BK too often. That’s the key, moderation.

When I was younger I didn’t really eat a lot of junky stuff due to personal preference and I was a pretty big kid.

Now I do eat a lot of fast food and don’t exercise and people tell me I’m too thin.
Metabolism is a mysterious genie.

Mystie: i did my part in keeping our fancy and sophisticated lemon slices in soda club going today at Penn Station.. - also, in a moment of irony, i thought a saw an unexplained twin of you there.. - i figured the only way to test their credibility was a pop culture quiz.. and thought about going up and asking her what color Captain Planet’s mullet was but decided against it..

Bill, you rock, I was thinking the same thing! I currently live in Brian Thompson’s hometown, which is interesting to no one but me!

The worst healthy kids meal I have seen so far…has to be from subway! a sub with a pack of raisins and milk! ewwww…..subway blows anyway, but to add that to it is just adding insult to the injury.

I think that the Frankenstein in the ad was played by that science teacher from Fast Times at Ridgemont High…the one with the frizzy black hair who took them on a field trip to a hospital…and he had the hot wife. Either it was him or Jeffery Tambor. It sounded like it could be either one of those two.

Mr. Vargas, played by Vincent Schiavelli, who was also in the greatest motion picture of all time, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Ugh! That doppleganger again! One of the good ways to tell us apart is to challenge her at DDR. She’s an excellent DDR player while I, however, suck shit.

I love raisins. I get the organic kind because I like wasting money. Though I’ve been really craving a fresh piece of fruit today.

mystie, i often crave fruit when i’m grocery shopping, but once it makes it home, it sits till i throw it away.

i think raisins are only good in cookies, defeating the purpose of the healthy snack, and in that stuff where you mix peanuts and m&m’s and raisins, again, not all that healthy.

LemonWitch: Get ou of here! You live in his townhouse? I am adding him to my “Where Did They Go” posts. Seriously, where did he go?

Completely off topic. I’m not sure if they’ve been doing this for awhile, but WGN is showing 2 hours of ALF.

i think i need to watch more boy movies so that when bill finds out where did they go, i know where they were before that.

although, i was able to recognize iron eagle when it was on a couple weeks ago, all thanks to bill.

Hey no problem, MJ! If I can pass on a little Iron Eagle then my job here on Earth is done. Long live Chappy!

Thanks for the Alf news Adam. I haven’t heard the name Mrs. Aukmonic in 20 years. Seriously, 1988.

I just learned about your site from one of my favourite bloggers Bill…he got me hooked on your “Halloween Countdown” page, and after I finally mopped up all the drool I left in there (it was heaven), I found myself here, in utter amazement, confusion, and glee…A MONSTER-MASH-CLOTHING-CARE-PSA!?!?!?!

That is quite possibly one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen

…in my head I’m picturing what it would’ve been like to have other Monster-themed-PSA’s…like maybe if a menacing Count Dracula had explained that sleeping around leads to STD’s…maybe I would’ve listened…maybe…sigh… (obviously I’m joking about the “I’m a loose-chick who has STD’s” part”…obviously..ahem).

Welcome Romi ! =) Be sure to come by here often! Indeed X-E is a place LIKE NO OTHER !

Welcome Romi. I’m also new here, but i’ve been reading the site for awhile. Even when Matt isn’t doing a daily thing I still check it daily just hoping to catch a trip to some faraway past.

Thanks Ultraman, and yes, I already confirmed with Bill that I am eager to join the cult, this place is just too good to be true

(thank you Bill!)

And Josh, haha, I know exactly what you’re talking about…and to you I say: whatever, if the clear-cutting of Broccoli forests are required to maintain my precious inner-workings, then so be it!…now let’s go build a frickin’ parking lot…lol…

Welcome Aboard Romi, Although I must say, I haven’t ever met anyone who introduces themselves by talking about Dracula warning about STD’s……..It’s fitting that it’s not out of place on this site.

BTW if your looking for some articles to read, I recommend the “Masters of Power Tour” or whatever that was called. Made me laugh my ass off, I still laugh everytime I read the caption about She-Ra.

I remember when I first introduced myself, I talked about dollar store type stores. VERY fitting way to introduce myself I think. =)

Ultraman: as Jester noted, wishing Dracula had done a PSA about STD’s and promiscuity pretty much confirms my weirdness

And thanks Jester, I’ll check out that article when I get the chance (and wow, I loved She-Ra back in the day…I always wanted her to knock boots with He-Man, but then I later realized that…they’re brother and sister???? I still don’t believe that, and I still hope they hook up)

Can someone send me the “Masters of Power Tour” link referenced in Jester’s comment? I couldn’t find it myself, but I’d love to check it out

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