Free-For-All Friday Thread #7!
Time for this week’s Free-For-All Friday Thread, where you’re free to discuss whatever you want in the comments!
Tell us about your week! Review a new movie! Review an old movie! Gush about your favorite store brand soda! Pitch strangers on some weird video game! It doesn’t matter, so long as you have fun. We have a great crew here!
Today was crazy in a good way. If you missed it, me and Jay premiered the first-ever Purple Stuff Podcast minisode, a new series of shorter shows that will let us bring you along on our many spooky Halloween adventures. Check it out! We review Halloween candles!
…and then at night, I drove for several hours to locate this year’s Monster Cereals. More about them over the weekend.
For a little background noise, here’s the soundtrack to The Wraith, from 1986. As I mentioned on the main site earlier this week, that movie is my new favorite thing, and its awesome soundtrack is a big part of why.
I’m sure it loses something without the film’s awesomely cheesy scenes to add weight, but it’s still full of great tracks.
Happy Free-For-All Friday!
Yet More Tales from the Darkside!
Here’s another pair of Tales from the Darkside episodes, because it’s that kinda night:
“My Ghostwriter – The Vampire”
“Florence Bravo”
I still consider this series the “mascot” of Dino Drac After Dark, which is ironic since any posts about it are doomed to get low amounts of reader interest. I’LL TURN ALL OF YOU INTO FANS. YOU JUST WAIT AND SEE.
But nah, the thing is, even *I* know that this is a “you had to be there” situation. Newer viewers are gonna embrace the select few great episodes and discard the rest, but for someone like me, there’s literally no “bad” episode of Tales from the Darkside.
It’s all about the mood they create and the memories they muster. I can’t hear that opening music without picturing my childhood bedroom and its junky television, or those long, empty weekends, when shows like this acted like surrogate friends.
Late Night Commercials from ’86!
Here’s another batch of late night TV commercials, this time from 1986:
Most of the commercials are dreadfully boring, but that’s the point!
I loved staying up late for as long as I’ve been alive, so ads like these — mostly promoting local businesses that could only afford to advertise during off-hours — take me back to the days when staying up past 2AM made me feel like I was getting away with murder.
Only in the wee hours could I putz around in my bedroom (my favorite pastime) without fear of being called upon for any chores, errands or other to-dos.
It’s weird: When you’re a kid, you have so much free time, but very little of it is actively “yours.” Imagine a ten-year-old boy telling everyone in a busy house not to bother him for 3-4 hours. It didn’t really work that way.
So, god bless those old late nights. Commercials like these scored ‘em.
Red Lobster Commercials!
Hey! If you didn’t catch it on the main page, there’s a new episode of The Purple Stuff Podcast! Go listen to us gab about cool cars.
Here’s a small collection of old Red Lobster commercials. No reason.
Well, maybe there’s a little reason.
When I was tiny, Red Lobster was the fanciest restaurant my parents ever dragged me to. Not really, of course, but it sure felt like it.
There weren’t nearly as many chain restaurants back then. In fact, we didn’t even have a local Red Lobster. Going there meant driving over big scary bridges into Jersey.
This was back when Red Lobster really pushed its nautical theme in all sorts of gaudy ways. The restaurant we went to had random “fishing junk” all over it. I was a stranger in a strange world, but I loved that world.
My favorite part was the lobster tank, which was on clear display right near the entrance. (In retrospect, I have no idea how it lasted there for so long. It couldn’t have been convenient for anyone working in the kitchen.)
I guess I must’ve known that those lobsters were going to end up as dinner, but I viewed them more as potential pets. It helped that I loathed seafood as a kid and wouldn’t touch anything that had even the slightest hint of the sea.
I still hold Red Lobster in such high esteem because of those “fancy” childhood visits, even if I objectively realize that it’s only barely on the level of Applebee’s. I’ll never turn down an invite to go there, even if that only happens once every five years.
