What Makes Buffalo Great:

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.