Comedy
"Tidbits"
Horror Movies
Horror movies are commonplace nowadays. Finally, right?? Me too. Me too. But lately, I've caught myself getting a little spoiled. I've caught myself complaining about incredulous plot lines, non-relevant dialogue, camera angles...
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Then it dawned on me the crap I used to watch. Basically, all you needed was an unsuspecting group of young people and a bad guy willing to hack them up.
Sometimes they were hacked up at a campground.
Sometimes they were hacked up in their dreams.
Sometimes they were hacked up on Valentines Day.
And sometimes on Halloween.
(Laid these lines out like this after I discovered the unintended rhyme.)
Often overheard between horror enthusiast friends back then were things like, "Hey did you see the preview for that new one?! He puts their heads in baskets!" Easy to please. Supply and demand, I guess.
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And the quality. Even the best studios put out stuff that would be questionable as "found footage" today.
HDenial
Does anybody remember the switch from old tube TVs to High Definition flat screens? It happened really quickly. Prior to HD, you could make out general colors...a person or two, but that was about it. Didn't matter if it was Brad Pitt or Artie Lang after contracting shingles, all you could tell was that there was some sort of human male on the screen. The dialogue had to carry the rest of the load. (Not a jab at Artie.)
Then, all of a sudden, I was watching a "Friends" episode, and I found myself counting the little bumps on Rachel's nipples. That was fantastic. But when she moved out of frame, I realized it appeared like I was looking directly at them! (The other actors, not Rachel's nipples.) It was as if I was gazing out the window watching them tape the show in a studio setup in my backyard! Convenient for sure, but unnerving. I think this is about the time that Fear Factor went off the air. We could bear the contestants eating bull penis and spinal cord until we could see the veins and count the vertebrae. Bye, bye.
There's no real joke here. I'm just still traumatized by the picture clarity. Trying to work through it. Once tech puts us inside the action with perfected VR and Holographics, I'm just going to have to bow out.
Oldtime Generic Food
We did not live through a depression. So, I complain with a nod to our ancestors who would slap me for my entitlement. (nod) That said, I do have some thoughts. Specifically, about generic foods. I can only imagine the story behind the black and white labels and packaging. - It must've been that the customers were screaming at the grocers over about five decades for lower prices. "Give us cheaper stuff!" The grocers, already surviving on a knife's edge, said, "Fine! You want cheaper?!" And they called their suppliers demanding cheaper products. The suppliers, already surviving on a knife's edge, said, "Fine you want cheaper?!" And they ordered a new line of products which consisted of the worst of the regular products, left out in the sun for a week, and then packaged in black and white labels with block lettering.
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The black and white labels were ultimately a middle finger to the shoppers' demands. "We'll give you cheap! But we'll make sure everyone knows you're buying it, so a stigma develops, and people return to the regular priced stuff!" Unfortunately, some of our mothers passed the middle fingers down to us kids by masking the generic as regular. I remember the first time I opened generic peanut butter with a regular label taped to it. "Mom, all I see is oil..." "You have to stir it, honey." (stirring) "Umm, it turned into...juice?" "Oh stop. It did not. Put it in the freezer." I looked sadly down at my pieces of bread slathered with grape jelly and put the peanut butter away. *Also, just for anyone unaware, making instant potatoes with powdered milk should be a felony. It's spackle.