We all do! But what can you do, you’re an uneducated slob with a horrible streak of agoraphobia! Well, luckily, so is Sally Struthers, and she has used her massive star power to bring you the ICS, or International Correspondence School! Jealous of all your friends who went to Harvard? Feel intimidated by their fancy degrees in medicine and philosophy? Well, there are a million doctors, but never a man with an Air Conditioner Repair/Florist degree around when you need em! Parents telling you to stop jerking off and go back to school? Well, now you can shut them up by majoring in High School with a minor in Gun Repair, while still playing Nintendo all morning! And if they still give you lip, well, good luck to them when their guns break and they can’t shoot criminals. Enjoy these classic Sally Struthers commercials from 1991 of all years, and yes phone number still works! (Its a sex line now!)
Mario is a short pudgy weakling. He runs around the Mushroom Kingdom completely vulnerable to all the enemies rushing to kill him. The only advantage he has is his shoes. Apparently his shoes are spiked with needles laced with cyanide, and can murder any foe who doesn’t have a spike sticking out of their head. Now, in a world as dangerous as the Mushroom Kingdom, it would be awfully pointless for Mario to try and survive if he didn’t have a little help. Lucky for him, there are many magical power-ups to be found to protect Mario’s fragile mortality. So without further ado, here are the top ten Power-Ups to be found in the world of Mario.
#10- The Magic Mushroom- Its the first power-up Mario ever encounters, (not counting the hammer in Donkey Kong). The mushroom makes Mario twice his normal size, and also able to withstand a violent attack without dying. When I was a kid, I always thought the Mushroom made Mario his normal adult self, as if his small pudgy starting point was the effect of some kind of Koopa Kurse or something. But the reality is, the small Mario is the real Mario. Assuming Mario has normal human height of about 5 foot 8 inches, the mushroom makes him over ten feet tall! That in turn makes you realize that these goombas and koopa troopers are the size of regular people…scary! The reason this mushroom is ranked low on the list is because despite its usefulness, its the most plentiful power-up, and therefore the most boring to encounter. (more…)
I love Biggie Smalls. Because I’m an intellectual white guy from Brooklyn, of course I can’t help but compare him to Bob Dylan. Both were poets, soothsayers, shamans, uncompromising truth speakers, but more then all that, artists of endless talent. But unlike Bob, Biggie was gunned down when he was only 24 years old. An absolute travesty. Biggie was a genius, and his early demise was a massive hit to youth culture. His universal appeal, his perfect flow, and his unflinching need to speak truth to power, could have risen him to untold heights of cultural and even political significance. With all that said, all we are left with is a taste of his magic, a mere glimmer of his ability to effortlessly achieve these things.
I’m a New Yorker. I happen to work right by the World Trade Center. I’ve walked by it nearly everyday for the past 3 years. Biggie too, was a New Yorker, one of the greatest New Yorkers ever, and on September 11th, I always think of his immortal line from “Juicy,” “Now I’m in the limelight cause I rhyme tight, time to get paid, blow up like the World Trade…” The line of course was a reference to the 93 bombing, but given Biggie’s ability to so frequently hit the truth on insane levels of profundity, its no surprise that a throwaway line such as this would resonate so deeply years later in one of his most personal and vulnerable songs. So here it is, on 9/11/10, Biggie’s “Juicy,” one of the greatest songs about the man, and about New York City.
When I was growing up, one of my earliest memories was my parents bringing home a huge new stereo from Sony in 1989 that had a magical boxy CD player. Today, CDs are cheap, hold low amounts of data, and are generally outdated since the advent of DVDs, Blu-Rays, and iPods. But back then, CDs and their players were expensive, futuristic, and had that incredible rainbow glow. Its hard to explain the awe we all felt in the golden age of CD technology, but luckily youtube has captured said awe via old technology commercials that glamorized these futuristic discs and devices…ENJOY…
VIDEO 1, Pioneer’s Incredible 6 disc CD changer. This video is incredible. Not only will Pioneer’s 6 disc system play your musical fantasies forever, you’ll be able to dance on neon lit pools of water with futuristic space witches!
VIDEO #2, The king of CD technology was obviously Sony, and their ads displayed the joy, spirit of community, and love that the power of CDs could bring. Here is an especially cheesy ad that reminds us that, “Nothing captures the power of music, like a CD, and nothing unleashes it, like a Sony.”
VIDEO #3, Did you know that Hitachi’s laser bay system challenged you from distinguishing live music from recorded music in your own living room? I can’t tell you how many times I’d wake up to the sound of music in my house and think that Pearl Jam was downstairs visiting my home, only to discover my older sister was just playing one of their CDs. Also, the idea of having a laser bay somewhere in your home was awesome.
VIDEO #4, Of course you can’t talk about CDs, without talking about their super cousins, the CD-ROM. CD-ROM’s finally let computers play awesome music, games, and videos. Check out Gateway’s incredibly strange video where the world’s greatest dad bestows upon his daughter a standard rig at a budget price. The best part comes when the girl asks the dad, “But what are you gonna use daddy?” Of course dad then proceeds to wordlessly strut through his magical neon pink lit room filled with the most awesome gear available.
Wendy’s rules. When it comes to fast food, I always opt for Wendy’s if I can. The square hamburgers, the fresh buns, the crispy nuggets, the hot chili on a cold winter day…nothing beats Wendy’s. The real question is, how? How is Wendy’s so good and fresh tasting when all other fast food places taste artificial and bland? I always thought it was Wendy herself, tirelessly experimenting with flavors and secret grilling methods…it turns out the REAL answer is Wendy’s excellent training videos that transforms regular employees into rock stars! Little known fact, Wendy’s co founder Dave Thomas wrote and produced all of these songs, and that’s no lie Jack!
VIDEO # 1, Hot Drinks, where we learn the serious difference between brewing regular and de-caf coffee…
VIDEO #2- Cold Drinks, a groundbreaking rap song exploring the difficulties of controlling foam in the auto soft drink machines.
VIDEO # 3- Got to Serve the Drinks, ok, people, you’re just not getting it! I thought the first two videos taught you everything about serving drinks, but I was wrong, and for the LOVE OF GOD, DON’T FORGET THE CHILI BOWLS!
VIDEO # 4, Chili can be served with cheese, frostys come in four sizes, don’t serve expired milk, and cookies should never be broken!
I can’t think of 3 things form the 90s more iconic than the dazzling, 16-bit glory of the SNES, the exciting, alternative taste of Pepsi, and the bone crushing power of ultra athlete, Bo Jackson. The question is, what would happen if you put all three together? Would aliens come down to Earth? Would the city of Atlantis rise from the watery depths? Would Cindy Crawford’s mole fall off? Scientists have speculated for years, but don’t you know it, a meeting DID occur between these three titans of 90s iconography, and it went a little bit like this…
To coincide with the release of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World this Friday, game developer Ubisoft has released a retro styled brawler featuring the Scott Pilgrim character on a mission to defeat his girlfriend’s 7 evil boyfriends.
What’s not to like here? The 8-bit pixel art looks beautiful, the music (by Anamanaguchi) sounds bit-tastic, and it’s available for download on Playstation 3 (soon to be released on X-Box) at the low price of $10.
Everybody’s catching World Cup fever, but what do you do when you can’t play soccer?? Play Nintendo soccer! There’s a simplistic beauty in these 8-bit images. Just look at that neon green grass, the teams of soccer player clones, and the pixelated ball with five black dots. If you have an NES, I recommend snatching Nintendo Soccer on eBay for $5. Go France!
I wonder if its just me, but video game commercials from the 1980s still sell me the future better then any modern video game advertisement. Take a look at these ads for the classic Sega Master System. There was something so amazingly other-worldly and awe inspiring about these things. I love the glowing graph paper style motif going on in the whole thing.
My parents never bought me any video game systems, but when I was six or seven years old, my family had these friends we’d visit on Long Island somewhere, and they had a Sega Master System with all the accessories, and like 100 games. I had never seen anything like it. Whenever we went over, it was like stepping into one of these commercials, especially because I only had access to that stuff for an hour or two.
I love this last ad, here we learn about the Master System’s amazing features like scrolling backgrounds, 64 colors (not bits), and digital sounds! And what’s that? Holy shit, 3d video games??? This ad is so awesome that I want all this stuff right now…in 2010!!!
