Category Archives: Pointless Nostalgia Video

Baseball, Pointless Nostalgia Video

21 Seasons of Joe Buck’s Fox Promos

Friday night brings us the start of the American League Championship Series. This means Friday night also brings us the return of Joe Buck to the airwaves.

Since 1996, Buck has been the voice of MLB’s postseason on Fox. When I think of Buck—and I think of him often—I don’t hear him calling a game-winning home run or series-clinching strikeout. For my money, the most indelible audio memory of Joe Buck is him being forced to read promos for Fox programming. And I do mean forced, because his android-like delivery of said promos suggests there is someone offscreen with a gun pointed at his head.

As baseball’s playoffs coincide with TV’s traditional season premiere season, Fox has always used its coverage of those playoffs as a vehicle to promote its brand new or soon-to-return shows. Each year Joe Buck has led these broadcasts as their lead play-by-play man—which he has since the last time Ross Perot ran for president—he has had to break away from the exciting playoff action to tell us all about these impending debuts. He knows as well as the anxious baseball fan watching at home that the vast majority of these shows will disappear without a trace three weeks after their birth. He also knows that even the “hits” he’s had to flog are either depressing monuments to fabricated culture (American Idol) or testaments of America’s disturbing flirtation with fascism (24). At least I like to believe Buck recognizes this task as the joyless death march it is, since he reads these announcements in tones that make Mike Francesa’s ad recitations sound like Marlon Brando.

In tribute to this autumn tradition, I’ve assembled a supercut containing Joe Buck promos from every postseason he’s been on the air so far, 1996-2016. You will hear and see him flog programs that I guarantee you have no memory of unless you personally apeared in them (and even then, you might struggle to come up with a name). You will also hear him blame Fred Savage for a power outage and linger a little too long on the charms of Zooey Deschanel. It is a testament to Buck’s dedication that, even when mooning over a pretty young actress, he still sounds as if he gobbled a fistful of Xanax.

Enjoy?

Pointless Nostalgia Video, Videocracy

Internet Gauntlet Answered: Heinz Homestyle Gravy

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Almost a year ago, I threw down an Internet Gauntlet demanding to see the original version of a Heinz Homestyle Gravy commercial from the mid-80s. As you may recall–look, I know you don’t, but just say you do–there were several instances of this ad on the web, but not the original, long-form, unexpurgated version that I remember my grandfather loving so much.

How do I know? Because I could tell there were a few subtle differences between the original and the harshly edited variation that later polluted the airwaves. Either they reshot the thing or they used a different take. In the later version, the old man mugs a bit more, and addresses his sad lament (“oh no…”) directly to the camera. But in the majestic original, he keeps laughing to himself even as he realizes he just pissed off his old battle axe of a wife and will probably get a rolling pin on the dome for his insolence.

I couldn’t have been older than 10 when these ads first aired, and yet I remember being mad when they switched them up. Why? Because I recognized the comedic superiority of the first version, and because I was a really weird kid. I thought we’ve been through this already, jeez.

And yet, when I asked for the original version from you, the internet, I received not one response. Not one! You should all hang your heads in shame, you cowards.

And you should now raise your heads to witness this!

That’s right, some brave American patriot has posted the original Heinz Homestyle Gravy commercial! Tell me the delivery employed in this ad does not make it a million times better than that cheap hack job remake. You can’t tell me that, because it is not true and you are not a liar. Also, I now realize that the old man went on to play Louis CK’s agent in an episode of Louie. You know, the one where he was forced into playing a cop in a Matthew Broderick movie. Amazing how these things come back around.

I think I’m gonna go lie down for a while.

Pointless Nostalgia Video

McDonald’s: The Old Hotness

As I’ve written many times (and will no doubt write many times more), I enjoy watching old VHS tapes in my collection because they provide time-capsule-like snapshots of a certain era. You get a glimpse of what folks were obsessed with back then–or what their corporate overlords DEMANDED they be obsessed with.

Prime example: McDonald’s. Being the unstoppable behemoth they are, advertising is virtually pointless for them. Unless they’re introducing a new product or promoting a sale, there’s really no way for them to increase McDonalds awareness, or no reason to, either.

Problem is, McDonalds has an advertising budget that dwarfs the GDP of several African nations, and them bucks gotta be spent somewhere! So sometimes they devote said bucks to idiosyncratic campaigns whose aims aren’t exactly clear when the commercials first air, and become progressively dimmer with the passing of time. For instance, I have many McDonalds ads from the mid-80s in my YouTube collection that involve people dancing. Not just a few steps, either. I’m talking like Busby Berkeley showstoppers. Did anybody want to see this 25 years ago? I doubt it, but these ads look a hundred times weirder now.

But that’s a subject for another time (or never; never works, too). This is all a lead in to tell you that I was recently reminded of an odd ad campaign McDonalds ran in my youth. (What reminded me? My brain, because it hates me.) They had several commercials in which the HOTNESS of their food was heavily emphasized. Me, I think heat is an assumed quality of all food, non-gazpacho edition. But for some reason, circa 1985, McDonalds was all like NO, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. OUR FOOD IS REALLY REALLY HOT AND THIS IS A CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION. It seems ironic in retrospect, considering they were eventually sued for almost burning someone’s face off with coffee.

My efforts to find out exactly why McDonalds did this (i.e., googling) have been fruitless. The only theory I have is that these debuted around the same time as Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” ads. So perhaps this was McDonalds reaction to Wendy’s needling of the size of their meat. “Oh yeah, you think your burgers are bigger? Well, ours are hotter. Take that, assholes.”

So that you may be as baffled as I, here are a few humble examples.

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