Tag Archives: pointless nostalgia

Pointless Nostalgia Video

Pointless Nostalgia Video Presents: Harvey’s Bristol Cream

I believe that hate, like love, is within all of us, and that we have a need to hate as much as we have a need to love. It can be a cleansing, cathartic emotion, as long as it is expressed in a healthy, non-violent fashion.

Assuming this is true, why do we hate certain things? Is it nature or nurture? Would you hate the same things you hate if you were born in Morocco, or Bavaria, or Upper Mongolia?

I can’t answer that for certain. My gut feeling is that there are certain things I would not hate if I came from a different background, simply because I wouldn’t care about them. My vitriol for Chipper Jones and Roger Clemens would probably be diminished if I was born in Sri Lanka and had no interest in baseball.

But there are other things I am certain I would hate no matter what, because they are so eminently hateable, they transcend culture, race, and creed. I shall discuss one of them today.

First, some background: The 1980s gave us many, many bad things, one of which was the proliferation of Wine Product. Not wine, but not not-wine, either. This led in turn to the Wine Product commercial, which came in varying shades of horrible.

For instance, the Bruce Willis Seagram’s ads, made at the height of his popularity and ubiquity. I hesitate to even call them bad because, as is the case with pretty much everything he’s ever done, Bruce seems so self-conscious of his own smug brand of douchery. His every smirk silently communicates, I know this is all bullshit. I almost have to admire him.

These ads, however, are not the focus of this post (and probably deserve their own analysis, which we may get to at a future date). The commercial I have in mind belongs to a different category of Wine Product, the kind that actually tried to masquerade as wine.

Back in the 80s, you still couldn’t advertise straight-up, non-beer booze on TV. But you could run ads for this type of alcoholic beverage. The kind of cheap, wine-esque swill you still see in supermarkets and bodegas.

The affordability of these products was never emphasized in any way. In fact, the bottlers went to great lengths to insist that their stuff was enjoyed by jet setting glitterati. Remember, this was the same era as Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, when people actually watched a show that did nothing but remind them how many wonderful things they could never have. (Jesus, the 80s were gross.)

A prime example: This ad for Riunite, in which rich young things ski down the slopes grabbing bottles of Riunite as they slalom, on their way to a mountaintop barbecue.

Even as a kid, ads like this angered me. There was something so venal about trying to sell something so cheap (in several senses of the word) as a ticket to affluence to the poor slobs who could afford no better. And in retrospect, it seems even more gross, as the 80s were the decade when the American working class took its last gasp before a slow extinction.

But this Riunite commercial isn’t the object of my hatred. There was one ad that stood out, one that filled me with an absolute, undying, white hot hatred I still have to this day. 

Truth be told, I couldn’t even remember what product this was for, until I tweeted about it yesterday and received a link from WFMU’s own Evan “Funk” Davies (who can be heard tonight and every Wednesday at 9pm). Turns out, it was a commercial for Harvey’s Bristol Cream, and it is every bit as infuriating as I remember.

There are many, many things to hate about this ad. The jingle is terrible. The weird, contrapuntal spoken word duet part in the middle of said jingle (“upper crrrrusty!”) is nauseating. And the guests at the party look like a second grader’s idea of Rich Fancy People. But what really pushes my feelings into the realm of Super Hate is the last line, and the Patrick Bateman-esque bastard who says it, in his fake Pierce Brosnan accent.

The last line of this ad has rung in my head for the last 20+ years. Just hearing it is like a boxing bell, making me jump up with my fists clenched, ready to start swinging. If I ever found the man who uttered it–or better yet, the ad wizard who wrote it–I would pummel this man with all my might, and I would not stop until someone pulled me off him.

Here it is, folks. Brace yourselves.

“Your palace or mine.” Ugh. Go die, Anonymous Smug Guy.

Füd, Pointless Nostalgia

The World’s Best Snack Food, Extended

cheezit.jpgCheez-Its are the world’s best snack food. It’s been proven by science. You may have a different opinion about this, but your opinion is wrong.

Not those blasphemous alternate flavors, though, like ranch and barbecue. Please, don’t insult the Cheez-Its legacy by even mentioning those in the same breath with real, original Cheez-Its. Those “improvements” are like hanging a velvet clown painting in the Taj Mahal, or sticking truck nutz onto the back of a Lamborghini. Perfection needs no enhancements, and Cheez-Its are perfection.

Like most deeply held beliefs, this conviction was bequeathed to me by my forefathers. My grampa wasa Cheez-Its fanatic. He liked nothing better on a lazy Sunday than to sit in his recliner, eat Cheez-Its, and watch golf. He always had an ENORMOUS box of Cheez-Its that seemed like it was half my size.

Since he lived next door to me, I was provided ample opportunities to invite myself over and partake of this bounty. My mom didn’t really have snacks in the house (for either nutritional or economic reasons, I’m not sure), so Grampa’s house was like an island of snacking anarchy. All I had to do was ask once, and I had carte blanche to dip into his Cheez-Its supply any time I wanted.

And if there was a family party at his house, which there often was, forget it. The Cheez-Its would just be out there in huge Tupperware bowls. I didn’t even have to ask permission to gorge myself! It was an orgy of unnaturally orange indulgence.

I even dipped Cheez-Its in Coke once, just to see how they would taste. The verdict: slightly sweet and soggy. I could fill a book with the crimes against food I committed at these family get-togethers, once all the pretzels and chips and soda and dips were laid out. Don’t judge me. It was an experimental era, a time of tumultuous change…

You know how awesome Cheez-Its are? They barely advertise. Once in a blue moon, you will see a commercial for Cheez-Its, or a page in a magazine. Why? They don’t need to advertise. Why would you need to run a 30-second spot for HEAVEN ITSELF?!

That may be why the Cheez-It box has remained virtually unchanged all these years. The color scheme is the same, the font is the same, even the little Cheez-It mosaic in the background is the same. If ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and there’s nothing broken about Cheez-Its.

One item has been altered since I was a kid, however. The back of the box used to have several delightful suggestions about how you could spice up an ordinary meal with Cheez-Its. Drop them in your tomato soup! Place them lovingly next to a sandwich, or maybe even put them in your sandwich!

But the most intriguing suggestion called for using Cheez-Its to bread chicken cutlets. They even showed a picture of a chicken cutlet, radioactive orange, with jagged peaks of ex-crackers protruding from its surface.

This seemed like a no-brainer to me. I loved chicken cutlets and I loved Cheez-Its. Deductive reasoning dictates that I would double-plus love Cheez-Its-covered chicken cutlets. Unfortunately, my mother was not keen on the idea, and lacking any cooking ability of my own, the experiment went unconsummated.

Then, last week, The Wife texted me at work to say we were having chicken cutlets for dinner. This is a common item in the Meal Rotation (mainly because we can cut them up and tell The Baby they’re chicken nuggets), but for whatever reason, the mention of “cutlets” brought back Proustian memories of the back of the Cheez-Its box.

ME: OOOH! Can you make chicken cutlets with Cheez-Its, like you used to see on the back of the box?

WIFE: ….Why?

ME: Because I always wanted to try it.

WIFE: If you can find me a recipe, sure.

This inspired a wild google chase, trying to find said recipe. But the internets gave me nothing. Nothing! A lot of people apparently make fried chicken with Cheez-Its, but that’s not what I was looking for. Fried chicken?! You people must be mad! Your quest is crazy and mine is not for many complicated reasons I can’t get into just now!

So I emailed The Wife and told her to just forget this crazy scheme, but when I got home, she had actually done it! She’d made chicken cutlets with Cheez-Its breading, and there they sat, glowing on the kitchen countertop, finally ready to be eaten. It was a moment that, subconsciously, I’d been waiting for my entire life.

But when I took that first bite, I realized that this was a dream that was best left unfulfilled. The food wasn’t bad, just weird. The Cheez-Its and the chicken did not mix. They were not united as one meal, but remained two separate food items. I tasted the Cheez-Its and the meat separately, as if they were two opposite charged magnets that could not touch one another.

And the Cheez-Its half of the equation didn’t come through the cooking process too well. Some of the crust was soggy, other parts slightly charred. It reminded me of The Simpsons where Lisa attempts to make fish sticks. (“They’re burnt on the outside, but still frozen on the inside, so it evens out!”) Since my wife is normally an amazing cook, I knew the blame lay squarely on the ingredients. This was a union that was never meant to be.

I thanked The Wife for giving it a shot and promised I would never make her cook this again. She in turn thanked me for promising that.

The lesson here is that pursuing things you really wanted as a kid is kinda stupid and will inevitably lead to disappointment. Except for that palace of Cheez-Its I plan on building, because that will totally happen and make me happy forever and ever.

Pointless Nostalgia

The Tell-Tale Haircut

rattail.jpgThis weekend, while visiting relatives in New Jersey, I spotted something in the wild I have not seen in many a year. In a supermarket parking lot, I saw a boy about 10 or 11 years old, and he had a rattail. Not a little one either, but a HUGE rattail that extended past his shoulder blades.

I was overcome by a precocious douche-chill.

I had very few deeply held convictions as a child–at least when it came to important stuff. Most kids don’t. Despite how children are portrayed in the media, very, very few of them have strong beliefs about Big Issues. You know those kids you see in TV shows who are committed to saving the environment or organize bake sales to rebuild an historical landmark? They don’t exist.

However, kids do feel strongly about dumb things, like the superiority of one line of toys over a nearly identical one. Or they can be 100 percent convinced that kids from a certain town, or part of a town, or even the other side of the street, are dumber than them. As for Kid-Me, there were a few things I firmly, unequivocally believed in, and one of them was this: If you had a rattail, you were a dirtbag.

One of many reasons why I’ve never understood 80s nostalgia (other than the fact that it was a terrifying time to be a kid) is that the fashions were horrendous. It amazes me that, when confronted by these trends, most people didn’t throw up their hands and say, Are you fucking kidding me? Shoulder pads. Pastel blazers with rolled-up sleeves. Acid-washed jeans. Any one of these items should brand a decade beyond redemption, and yet within a ten-year span, we got all of these things (and worse).

Even among this haystack of horror, the rattail stands out as the fetid pin it is. Because while those other fashion statements were simply awful, the rattail told the whole world that the wearer himself was awful. To me, even as a kid, I thought having a rattail meant you were a bad person liable to do bad things to other people. Because in order to have a rattail, you’d have to want your hair to look like that. And Jesus God Almighty, what normal person would want that?

I’ve held childish biases about certain things and places in my life, as I’m sure we all have. But in my journey through life, I’ve come across actual humans possessing characteristics I formerly mocked. I’ve realized that just because someone comes from Place X or looks like Thing Y, they’re still human. I’ve relinquished the unfair prejudices of my youth.

All but one: The rattail. Because as a kid, I interacted with kids with rattails on a far-too-often basis, and they were invariably dirtbags. The kinda kids who would try to force you to do their homework under threat of violence, or dump a bag of pencil shavings on your head, or key the teacher’s car. Every kid I ever met who had a rattail was a rotten kid, and I will guarantee every single one of them right now is either having lunch at a strip club buffet or doing time for some meth-related offense.

I’ll say the same for the kid I saw in the parking lot in New Jersey. So help me god, he had beady eyes. He looked like he was scanning the ground for rocks, so he could chuck one through someone’s back windshield. He walked like a dirtbag, with his arms bent slightly, Popeye-style, just so he could be ready to punch something at a moment’s notice. He looked like the kind of kid who’s a little too jazzed to dissect frogs in science class.

My question is, Is this just me? Am I just a rattail-ophobe, or is my prejudice justified?