Mighty Taco and Terrapin Station Ads During "Off Beat Cinema"
If you're night owl enough on your weekends, you probably know by now that "Off Beat Cinema" is often terrible, but usually deliberately so--the films are usually chosen because they're campy drek; that's what late night movie programming is supposed to be about. The fact that "OBC" hasn't really seemed to film a new one in several years is eclipsed by the consistent, laughable charm of the randomness of its ads. Mighty Taco and Terrapin Station clearly understand which (large) niche of their consuming public to whom they're reaching out, and every commercial is a tribute to 3am Stone-Gloriousness.
Who cares if, while you are watching, with two foot gravity bong ensconced lovingly in lap, and bag of day-old Cheetos and its dust staining your fingers into what Patton Oswalt once called the Failure Claw, you can't actually MAKE a run to either Might Dog or 'the Station' (both are closed at that hour)? The seed has been planted in your subconscious self once you are awake at some time during the daylight hours (likely well after noon).
This marketing genius was fully realized some years back, just before the Christmas Holiday of either 2005 or 2006 (the memory is suitably hazy on detail). "OBC" was airing the spectacularly awful Mexican production of that Santa Claus movie whose title always escapes everyone (no, not the legendarily terrible Santa Claus vs. the Martians, the OTHER one). My roommate John and myself were passing a bowl in his bedroom, high as kites, when Mighty Taco aired an obvious reference to its target audience, lettering aglow in oil-projection psychideliciousness. Terrapin Station made a nod to the holidays on its commercial break, with a big shot of Jerry Garcia as Santa.
"They really know who's watching right now," John remarked while still trying to hold his last inhale in his lungs.
That was probably one of the very last times I got truly stoned to the bejeezus, and I remember laughing my ass off into the night at that terrible, terrible movie, and those wonderful, wonderful ads. It is now one of my fondest memories (if fuzzy) of living in that apartment.
author's note--"Off Beat Cinema" has found itself syndicated across the nation over the years. I'm told they often leave the commercials in there (would depend on the market airing, I'd imagine); a nod to the transplants from Buffalo who've scattered across the wind to places like the DC area, Florida, Pacific Northwest, et al). Also, for the record, Mighty Taco has become as another Buffalo restaurant that'll FedEx menu items to places outside their normal purveyence. A B'lo pot-head still demands a certain kind of junk food, I guess, no matter where they now live.
Thursday, June 09, 2011
Monday, June 06, 2011
The Simplest Pleasures
It seems to me, when you get a little older you come to realize the inevitability of the fact that most of us don’t really spend our lives up to all that much importance. Really, when you think of it, most of our lives could be broken down to half a dozen or so “significant” events or matters, most of them only really pertaining to our own lives, or to the lives of a handful of people who traveled through life alongside us, or maybe just in our periphery.
Realization of our genuine level of triviality in the greater workings of the universe is usually the cause for what philosophers tend to call ‘the Existential Crisis’ -- the despair in the truth that our being is ultimately purposeless and unimportant. Most existentialists would have told you that the solution winds up merely being: “Find what’s important to you, and make it as important to you for as long as it lasts.” In other words, mis amigos, we’ve got to find our own way.
That’s not the point of this essay, really. I’m not here to wax overly philosophic here. My point is to identify the fact that, in our oh so unimportant, ultimately somewhat pathetic little lives, what so often gives our lives a semblance of mystique winds up, often, being a collection of very small, rather insignificant seeming things.
In other words, life is built on very simple pleasures, the cohesion of which may make up a happy life, as long as we can treasure them appropriately enough.
These are a small collection of my simplest pleasures, the ones that make me feel like getting up in the morning, or the ones that help me rest a little easier when it’s time to fall asleep. Or maybe just the ones which make me squeeze my stress ball a little less when I’m at work.
Glen Park, by the Falls, Late Spring
I prefer it just before it’s gotten hot and humid in the park, and every step winds up being an exercise in suffocation, if it’s possible. The falls by Glen Park is where Williamsville got its start, and some of my favourite things in life (as you’ll see in this list) are places or things where the profoundness of the history of things can be felt best. This small expanse of Ellicott Creek is where the water transgresses the epochal Onandoga escarpment, a geological phenomenon that stretches back to the last ice age. In the early 19th century, settlers used the falls to build a mill that still stands. What you have in a couple square thousand feet is a few dozen millenia of natural and human history.
Coffee and Book, Plus People Watching equals happiness
Maybe it’s the (failed) writer in me, but observation of the human condition, particularly the act of interaction, is one of my favourite pastimes. The irony is often in the fact that I usually care little for people, yet I’m compelled to find how they behave fascinating.
A trip to the coffee shop (preferably a cold caffeinated beverage over a hot one lately), with a book that’s really got me interested (my favourite of late has been Bret ‘the Hitman’ Hart’s autobiography), and a solid two hours of accompanied people watching is often all I need to make my day worth getting up for. Sometimes they’re hilarious (without knowing it), sometimes, just annoying. Always worthwhile, if for no other reason, for me, to follow the cadences of how real people talk to each other; to garner how regular people frame the things that are important in their lives with each other; to listen to the trivialities and simple pleasures that have made their own insignificant lives feel somewhat less pathetic. And then sometimes I write what they say down to put in a another book I’ll never finish…HA!
A Freshly Poured, Favourite Beer
Do I have to explain this one all that much? The head cascading and then settling, that frothy cap from the tap stem melting back into the amber evanescence? The sweat on the frosty glass that begins just after it’s poured on a hot day? The first sip, when the bouquet of the hops (if it’s a fucking GOOD beer, mind you) envelops your nose and lips?
‘Nuph said.
Thursday Night Shows
Thursday night is still my one night where I make an appointment to settle in and actually watch television for a designated block of hours. Mind you, I still watch a lot of TV on plenty of other days and nights. But ever since the fucking ‘Cosby Show’ I think, Thursday has been the one consistent night in my life where I have had to set aside at least two hours of my week to just watch TV. Of course, back in my early twenties it was punctuated by trips to eat wings afterward, and drink beers all the way through. Then in 2000, along came ‘Survivor’ and the Survivor Drinking Game, which led to the ‘ER’ Drinking Game in ‘02. Thursdays were never really the same after that. Nowadays, even when I watch TV alone, Thursdays have a personal sort of appeal. I have never really been disappointed in an episode of ‘The Office’ (though some have) and almost never turned off ‘30 Rock’ since there is, without fail, at least one, really, really laugh out loud moment. I miss ‘ER’ now, and still bemoan there is no drama in the 10pm slot as historied as Thursday’s. But I’ll still be there. For at least a couple of hours.
Sunday Funnies on the Couch
I used to be a hardcore sleeper-inner on weekends, even beyond my twenties. The last couple of years, my girlfriend’s dog has changed all that, but I’ve found a strange new pleasure in spending the morning in the robe, while the sun is still coming up, with a glass of juice, the politicos rambling in the background on TV, and the newspaper on the couch. The punctuation to that morning is a return to the childhood ritual of the Sunday funnies. When I was a kid, Sunday meant getting up early for church, pancakes on the griddle, and Sunday Funnies at the dining room table, especially, as a teenager, to read ‘Bloom County‘ and ‘Calvin and Hobbes‘, to make fun of how cheesy ‘Peanuts’ had gotten, and to develop a late-stage fascination with ‘Prince Valiant’.
Nowadays, Berke Breathed and Bill Waterson left the syndicated comics world behind, Charles Schulz is passed on, but the syndicate had the werewithal to re-print ‘Peanuts’ in the era when it still combined its ‘60s sense of alienation with its more sentimental influences (Schulz was nothing if not an outsider seeking something in which to find sentiment). I read ‘Pearls Before Swine’ because it’s the one comic that has the edgy sense of self-hatred to know and make fun of all the things gone wrong with its own medium. And now I make fun of ‘Funky Winkerbean’ for the fact that it was never anything but cheesy, and now it’s just cloyingly nostalgic cheesy. I finally understand ‘Doonesbury’ enough to laugh out loud at it sometimes, and I silently despise myself for the pretentious square that I’ve become for that fact. And I have managed to re-invigorate my love for ‘Prince Valiant’ perhaps because it’s the one thing that feels unchanged (even though it’s written and drawn by different people), and that makes me feel 13 years old again, if only for 48 seconds.
Classic Wrestling Clips on YouTube
Too often is the case that I have to admit this guilty pleasure I have, this obsession with old school sports entertainment, but I’m a die-hard junkie wrestling historian at this point in my life, my book shelves and book piles (of numerous location and drift) dotted with an assortment of biographies, histories and autobiographies on wrestlers and wrestling promotions from yore. My DVD library is also pretty stocked full of box sets and documentaries. But the hunger still goeth unquenched at times. Or, more simply, sometimes I just want to find that Harley Race vs. Terry Funk match in Toronto--the one where Harley Race won the NWA World Heavyweight title from Funk by submission, a match end that had never happened before in NWA history (the promoters back in the day didn’t like titles changing hands that way because they thought it made the loser look extra bad, and they’d never get decent money on any rematch to follow). Not surprisingly, YouTube prevails at stocking random (sometimes very low-quality) footage from some of the randomest moments in wrestling history, whether it be some obscure promo interview by Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler during a stint in Georgia Championship Wrestling, or the finale to the epic match between Dynamite Kid and Tiger Mask in Tokyo. Yes, you will find it on YouTube. God Bless ‘Em.
Spotting the Wind Turbines from the Thruway
Statistically speaking, Buffalo boosters will tell you that the Buffalo area has more sunny days than most places in the Eastern U.S. I dunno if that is quite accurate (I can verify that, during the summer, we have more clear days than anywhere else in the Northeast--but year ‘round, sunny, or the whole east is another thing). That said, clear enough days for visibility to reach more than a few miles seems pretty less than average in these parts. So a day clear enough where you can spot the lake shore’s grand wind turbines spinning from the I-90 is a pretty remarkable one. From the same vantage (especially the higher spots passing over the CSX and Norfolk Southern rail yards on the east side), it’s remarkable enough to spot the historic Central Terminal’s profile in the distance (in reality, it’s only a couple miles away, if even that). But those really good days, when the turbines are spotted, spinning away against the blue backdrop behind, are those momentary glimpses where I can feel my place in the world. I don’t explain why, it’s just the way my romantic notions drift for some reason.
Walking Elmwood on a Saturday
There used to be a time I wandered around Elmwood so much it wasn’t even anything to remark about at all, especially when I was still in school, and often as not, just getting back to your parking spot from classes involved some amount of traversing ‘the strip’. Nowadays, it’s usually only once or twice a month (if that) I’m in the neighborhood. But there is an oddly comforting element to being in the Elmwood Village, with girlfriend in tow, basking in the bohemian city element, getting to browse the boutiques, maybe grab a caffeinated beverage (or stronger), or even a bite to eat. It is still easily the most vibrant and dynamic place in the entire city (although Hertel could truly compete if they added one or two things to their element). A Saturday without work, a good pair of walking shoes, and my city. That’s enough to fill a couple hours of happiness.
Learning Some Odd / New Bit of Info of my Town
Again, like Glen Falls, I think this has to do with the profoundness of the history of the place. Mind you, anyone who’s developed a love affair with the place they’re from and have lived--no matter how complicated that affair can get--often have accumulated little bits of trivia about it. I am one such sucker. One who has walked the rather unremarkable confines of the Old Ebenezer Cemetery on West Seneca’s Main Street, pondering the empty center area which folklore claims to be sight of a cursed home (folklore also claims the graveyard is haunted, even though it‘s in the middle of such a humdrum suburban landscape, it seems hard to imagine). I’ve also wandered around the Park Meadow neighborhood just east of Elmwood in search of the exact spot McKinley was shot over a hundred years ago, traversed the east end of Delaware Park to find the location of the hundreds of buried War of 1812 soldiers who succumbed while encamped on the old Flint Hill site. And I found myself giddy learning of the misguided Fenian movement, conspiring in the Old First Ward to “invade” Canada on behalf (somehow) of Irish independence. Our town is loaded with great, gorgeous quirks, and all it takes is a little turning over of some long ignored stones.
Realization of our genuine level of triviality in the greater workings of the universe is usually the cause for what philosophers tend to call ‘the Existential Crisis’ -- the despair in the truth that our being is ultimately purposeless and unimportant. Most existentialists would have told you that the solution winds up merely being: “Find what’s important to you, and make it as important to you for as long as it lasts.” In other words, mis amigos, we’ve got to find our own way.
That’s not the point of this essay, really. I’m not here to wax overly philosophic here. My point is to identify the fact that, in our oh so unimportant, ultimately somewhat pathetic little lives, what so often gives our lives a semblance of mystique winds up, often, being a collection of very small, rather insignificant seeming things.
In other words, life is built on very simple pleasures, the cohesion of which may make up a happy life, as long as we can treasure them appropriately enough.
These are a small collection of my simplest pleasures, the ones that make me feel like getting up in the morning, or the ones that help me rest a little easier when it’s time to fall asleep. Or maybe just the ones which make me squeeze my stress ball a little less when I’m at work.
Glen Park, by the Falls, Late Spring
I prefer it just before it’s gotten hot and humid in the park, and every step winds up being an exercise in suffocation, if it’s possible. The falls by Glen Park is where Williamsville got its start, and some of my favourite things in life (as you’ll see in this list) are places or things where the profoundness of the history of things can be felt best. This small expanse of Ellicott Creek is where the water transgresses the epochal Onandoga escarpment, a geological phenomenon that stretches back to the last ice age. In the early 19th century, settlers used the falls to build a mill that still stands. What you have in a couple square thousand feet is a few dozen millenia of natural and human history.
Coffee and Book, Plus People Watching equals happiness
Maybe it’s the (failed) writer in me, but observation of the human condition, particularly the act of interaction, is one of my favourite pastimes. The irony is often in the fact that I usually care little for people, yet I’m compelled to find how they behave fascinating.
A trip to the coffee shop (preferably a cold caffeinated beverage over a hot one lately), with a book that’s really got me interested (my favourite of late has been Bret ‘the Hitman’ Hart’s autobiography), and a solid two hours of accompanied people watching is often all I need to make my day worth getting up for. Sometimes they’re hilarious (without knowing it), sometimes, just annoying. Always worthwhile, if for no other reason, for me, to follow the cadences of how real people talk to each other; to garner how regular people frame the things that are important in their lives with each other; to listen to the trivialities and simple pleasures that have made their own insignificant lives feel somewhat less pathetic. And then sometimes I write what they say down to put in a another book I’ll never finish…HA!
A Freshly Poured, Favourite Beer
Do I have to explain this one all that much? The head cascading and then settling, that frothy cap from the tap stem melting back into the amber evanescence? The sweat on the frosty glass that begins just after it’s poured on a hot day? The first sip, when the bouquet of the hops (if it’s a fucking GOOD beer, mind you) envelops your nose and lips?
‘Nuph said.
Thursday Night Shows
Thursday night is still my one night where I make an appointment to settle in and actually watch television for a designated block of hours. Mind you, I still watch a lot of TV on plenty of other days and nights. But ever since the fucking ‘Cosby Show’ I think, Thursday has been the one consistent night in my life where I have had to set aside at least two hours of my week to just watch TV. Of course, back in my early twenties it was punctuated by trips to eat wings afterward, and drink beers all the way through. Then in 2000, along came ‘Survivor’ and the Survivor Drinking Game, which led to the ‘ER’ Drinking Game in ‘02. Thursdays were never really the same after that. Nowadays, even when I watch TV alone, Thursdays have a personal sort of appeal. I have never really been disappointed in an episode of ‘The Office’ (though some have) and almost never turned off ‘30 Rock’ since there is, without fail, at least one, really, really laugh out loud moment. I miss ‘ER’ now, and still bemoan there is no drama in the 10pm slot as historied as Thursday’s. But I’ll still be there. For at least a couple of hours.
Sunday Funnies on the Couch
I used to be a hardcore sleeper-inner on weekends, even beyond my twenties. The last couple of years, my girlfriend’s dog has changed all that, but I’ve found a strange new pleasure in spending the morning in the robe, while the sun is still coming up, with a glass of juice, the politicos rambling in the background on TV, and the newspaper on the couch. The punctuation to that morning is a return to the childhood ritual of the Sunday funnies. When I was a kid, Sunday meant getting up early for church, pancakes on the griddle, and Sunday Funnies at the dining room table, especially, as a teenager, to read ‘Bloom County‘ and ‘Calvin and Hobbes‘, to make fun of how cheesy ‘Peanuts’ had gotten, and to develop a late-stage fascination with ‘Prince Valiant’.
Nowadays, Berke Breathed and Bill Waterson left the syndicated comics world behind, Charles Schulz is passed on, but the syndicate had the werewithal to re-print ‘Peanuts’ in the era when it still combined its ‘60s sense of alienation with its more sentimental influences (Schulz was nothing if not an outsider seeking something in which to find sentiment). I read ‘Pearls Before Swine’ because it’s the one comic that has the edgy sense of self-hatred to know and make fun of all the things gone wrong with its own medium. And now I make fun of ‘Funky Winkerbean’ for the fact that it was never anything but cheesy, and now it’s just cloyingly nostalgic cheesy. I finally understand ‘Doonesbury’ enough to laugh out loud at it sometimes, and I silently despise myself for the pretentious square that I’ve become for that fact. And I have managed to re-invigorate my love for ‘Prince Valiant’ perhaps because it’s the one thing that feels unchanged (even though it’s written and drawn by different people), and that makes me feel 13 years old again, if only for 48 seconds.
Classic Wrestling Clips on YouTube
Too often is the case that I have to admit this guilty pleasure I have, this obsession with old school sports entertainment, but I’m a die-hard junkie wrestling historian at this point in my life, my book shelves and book piles (of numerous location and drift) dotted with an assortment of biographies, histories and autobiographies on wrestlers and wrestling promotions from yore. My DVD library is also pretty stocked full of box sets and documentaries. But the hunger still goeth unquenched at times. Or, more simply, sometimes I just want to find that Harley Race vs. Terry Funk match in Toronto--the one where Harley Race won the NWA World Heavyweight title from Funk by submission, a match end that had never happened before in NWA history (the promoters back in the day didn’t like titles changing hands that way because they thought it made the loser look extra bad, and they’d never get decent money on any rematch to follow). Not surprisingly, YouTube prevails at stocking random (sometimes very low-quality) footage from some of the randomest moments in wrestling history, whether it be some obscure promo interview by Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler during a stint in Georgia Championship Wrestling, or the finale to the epic match between Dynamite Kid and Tiger Mask in Tokyo. Yes, you will find it on YouTube. God Bless ‘Em.
Spotting the Wind Turbines from the Thruway
Statistically speaking, Buffalo boosters will tell you that the Buffalo area has more sunny days than most places in the Eastern U.S. I dunno if that is quite accurate (I can verify that, during the summer, we have more clear days than anywhere else in the Northeast--but year ‘round, sunny, or the whole east is another thing). That said, clear enough days for visibility to reach more than a few miles seems pretty less than average in these parts. So a day clear enough where you can spot the lake shore’s grand wind turbines spinning from the I-90 is a pretty remarkable one. From the same vantage (especially the higher spots passing over the CSX and Norfolk Southern rail yards on the east side), it’s remarkable enough to spot the historic Central Terminal’s profile in the distance (in reality, it’s only a couple miles away, if even that). But those really good days, when the turbines are spotted, spinning away against the blue backdrop behind, are those momentary glimpses where I can feel my place in the world. I don’t explain why, it’s just the way my romantic notions drift for some reason.
Walking Elmwood on a Saturday
There used to be a time I wandered around Elmwood so much it wasn’t even anything to remark about at all, especially when I was still in school, and often as not, just getting back to your parking spot from classes involved some amount of traversing ‘the strip’. Nowadays, it’s usually only once or twice a month (if that) I’m in the neighborhood. But there is an oddly comforting element to being in the Elmwood Village, with girlfriend in tow, basking in the bohemian city element, getting to browse the boutiques, maybe grab a caffeinated beverage (or stronger), or even a bite to eat. It is still easily the most vibrant and dynamic place in the entire city (although Hertel could truly compete if they added one or two things to their element). A Saturday without work, a good pair of walking shoes, and my city. That’s enough to fill a couple hours of happiness.
Learning Some Odd / New Bit of Info of my Town
Again, like Glen Falls, I think this has to do with the profoundness of the history of the place. Mind you, anyone who’s developed a love affair with the place they’re from and have lived--no matter how complicated that affair can get--often have accumulated little bits of trivia about it. I am one such sucker. One who has walked the rather unremarkable confines of the Old Ebenezer Cemetery on West Seneca’s Main Street, pondering the empty center area which folklore claims to be sight of a cursed home (folklore also claims the graveyard is haunted, even though it‘s in the middle of such a humdrum suburban landscape, it seems hard to imagine). I’ve also wandered around the Park Meadow neighborhood just east of Elmwood in search of the exact spot McKinley was shot over a hundred years ago, traversed the east end of Delaware Park to find the location of the hundreds of buried War of 1812 soldiers who succumbed while encamped on the old Flint Hill site. And I found myself giddy learning of the misguided Fenian movement, conspiring in the Old First Ward to “invade” Canada on behalf (somehow) of Irish independence. Our town is loaded with great, gorgeous quirks, and all it takes is a little turning over of some long ignored stones.
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