In the “olden” days, commercials were catchy
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user Kroelleboelle.
We were talking about memorable commercials when I began quoting all the jingles I could remember. Problem was, they were all from the ’60s and ’70s.
In 1965, for instance, when the Ford Mustang first appeared, there was a radio ad that went: “Margie, Margie, Margie got a Mustang!”
If memory serves me correctly, the Sonny and Cher song “The Beat Goes On” was originally a jingle for a Pontiac TV commercial.
Coca-Cola commercials always featured catchy songs or slogans: “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” was one; “Things go better with Coke,” was another, as was “Have a Coke and a smile.”
It seems inconceivable now, but cigarettes were heavily advertised on TV. I remember one that went, “A silly millimeter longer, 101!” for a brand of cigarettes that were 101 millimeters in length.
Most notorious was a Winston commercial that went: “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.” Grammarians howled over that one, asserting the slogan should have been, “Winston tastes good, AS a cigarette should.” We kids finished the verse thusly: “No filter, no flavor, just cotton-picking paper.”
Then there was The Swinger, an inexpensive Polaroid instant camera. Its jingle went something like this: “It’s the Swinger, Polaroid Swinger. It’s only a camera. It’s almost alive; it’s only nineteen dollars, and ninety-five. Pick it up. It says ‘yes.’ Take the shot. Pull it out. Peel it off.” The Swinger was a huge improvement over my Kodak box camera.
In North Dakota we frequently saw TV commercials for Hamms beer, with a jingle sung by cartoon Indians that would flunk today’s PC tests: “From the land of sky blue water. Hamms (is) the beer, the refreshingest.”
Most laughable by today’s standards were the coffee commercials. They followed a script as predictable as a soap opera: Husband tastes wife’s coffee and scowls. Then husband makes snarky remark. Wife feels deep shame, humiliation. Wife switches to a new brand of coffee. Husband tries new coffee, smiles. Wife basks in husband’s approval. A variation was that the husband would taste some OTHER woman’s coffee and prefer it over his wife’s, who would then beat feet to the grocery store to buy the same brand lest she lose her husband.
The latest wire weirdness: From the Associated Press: A heifer got loose at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and ran kicking into a group of schoolchildren on a field trip Friday, injuring 10 youngsters and an adult.
Can you say “Detroit Iron”? This Saturday will find my camera and me at the American Business Women’s Association’s Coastal Classic Car Show at Manufacturer’s Outlet Center at the foot of Brooks Bridge. Do these old battle cruisers bring back memories: Mom and Dad’s ’59 Mercury that was vandalized by trick-or-treaters, and the ’65 Mustang with “four on the floor.” Come see what horsepower was all about.
Words that should be words: This week’s suggestion is “buzzacks,” as in: People in phone marts who walk around picking up display phones and listening to dial tones even when the know the phones are not connected.
This column was originally published in the Feb. 26, 1997 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, Ello and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image courtesy of Raw Pixel.
When I walk into my living room these days, I no longer see the Big Empty. I see a proper home.
I own the same cat-ripped furniture, the same TV from the Permian, the same Salvation Army coffee table.
But there, swirling lazily from the ceiling is a spanking new Hunter fan.
Ah, what a miracle it is to own a ceiling fan. How did I live all these years without one? I’ll tell you: I didn’t. A ceiling fan is the line that separates life from mere existence.
It took the guys only a few minutes to do the installation, a job that would have dragged on for years had I tried it – plus I would have blown up the entire townhouse complex, or hooked up the fan to the garbage disposal, or had it flying around south Fort Walton Beach like a prop from a Japanese UFO movie.
Now, with the flick of a switch, I have “Casablanca.”
Another advantage: It scares the hell out of the cats.
They think it’s a pterodactyl about to scoop them up for dinner. They slink around the edges of the room, staring balefully at those big, walnut-colored paddles, growling low in the throat, with malevolent Dr. Ceiling Fan’s Inviso Electro Rays standing their fur on end. It’s pretty hilarious.
But I expect my true appreciation of the fan will bloom this spring, when I delay the annual christening of the AC – and those three-figure power bills. How shall I spend the saving? Probably on cat psychiatry bills.
For now, the fan is a welcome interruption in the Big Empty of the living room ceiling, and a sanctuary from cloying and clawing kitties.
Come to think of it, that upstairs bedroom can get pretty stuffy in the afternoon. …
Happy belated Valentine’s Day: In addition to my “hard-copy” Valentines, I received my first batch of Virtual Valentines off the Internet, which were very cool. More cool than very, they forced me to go looking for, download, and install software that would allow the computer to PLAY MUSIC. The Valentines crooned and we all swooned.
The cyberknowledge curve is lower than dirt around here, but we have our moments.
Even more wire weirdness: This from the Associated Press: “Toymakers at Lego are upset that a Polish artist used their donated building blocks to make model concentration camps, complete with gas chambers and chimneys. Zhignew Libera’s exhibit at a Copenhagen gallery consists of seven box sets bearing the Lego logo and photos of what the famed plastic bricks can build: not model planes or skyscrapers this time, but detention barracks with helmeted guards and skeletons.”
S.O.C.K.S., a no-kill cat shelter headquartered on Racetrack Road, is sponsoring a craft show March 15 at the Niceville Recreation Center from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. All you crafters who want to enter a table should call either Vana Gilliland at 862-4213, or Sara DeMonbrum at 863-1432.
This week’s word that should be a word: “burgacide,” as in: When a hamburger can’t take any more torture and hurls itself through the grill into the coals.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, Ello and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image courtesy of ph by way of a Creative Commons license.
Odds and ends from here and there:
Universal Bingo is sponsoring S.O.C.K.S. (Save Our Cats and Kittens), a no-kill kitty shelter, on Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. Universal is next to Kinfolks on Racetrack Road.
Get this: It’s 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning. I’m lying in bed, savoring my sleep-in time. The phone rings.
It’s somebody calling for a service group, wanting a donation. They ask me how I am.
“I’m in bed,” I answer tartly. “It’s Saturday. Eight in the morning.”
“Oh, well I’ll be brief,” the lady says and launches into her sales pitch.
Click.
More wire weirdness: The Associated Press reported that a Russian man in the Crimean village of Verkhnesadovoye, believed his neighbor to be a witch, walked next door, whacked her over the head with a hammer (What, no sickle?), dragged her to a nearby vineyard and burned her at the stake. The man was arrested.
After that, who knows? Maybe he ran for the School Board.
What’s with the doofs crying about Bill Campbell’s “Jewish defense contractors” quip?
All he said was the defense budget had so much pork in that Jewish defense contractors felt badly about bidding on contracts.
Hello? Does the world J-O-K-E ring any bells? Sheesh.
I got a letter last week from a woman who said I once referred to the “homosexual lifestyle” as “exotic.” (Actually, I referred to a friend of mine, who was gay, as “exotic.” Plus, I’ve never known what the term “homosexual lifestyle” means. Do all gay people live the same?)
The woman wrote to warn me that the Bible doesn’t approve of homosexuality, and that practitioners are doomed to an eternity as Satan’s Charcoal Briquettes.
Sorry lady.
Your religion may hate gay people, but I’d wager God feels differently. Spare me the venom.
Confidential to the person who spiked all the Alternative Lifestyle books at the Destin Books-A-Million with Bible quotations scribbled on Post-It Notes: Hear that flushing sound? Bye bye, notes.
I have in my hot little hands the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook “73 Years of All-Time Favorites.” As editor of the Food section I expect to put it to use.
We don’t have a “food” editor per se, a person who knows a lot about cooking. I’ve joked in the past I could burn water.
But with this book, even I might create something worthy of eating. And not by the royal food-taster!
Jerome and Norma Capusan called with a question: How do you cook those pear-like fruits that grow on the prickly pear cactus? Give ’em a call at 651-6903. Call me too. We Food editors need to know this stuff.
Here’s this week’s installment of words that should be words: “aqualibrium,” the point where the stream of drinking fountain water is at its perfect height, thus relieving the drinker from (a) having to suck the nozzle, and (b) squirting herself in the eye.
This column was originally published in the Feb. 12, 1997 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, Ello and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image courtesy of the Look and Learn History Picture Archive by way of a Creative Commons search.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – Thousands of Muslims ransacked churches, banks, shops and cars Thursday after a Chinese Christian trader reportedly insulted Islam by complaining about loud evening prayers, police and witnesses said.
I have never understood why people kill for God.
The ransacking I can understand. Ransacking can be fun, AND profitable, unless you’re the ransackee – most definitely if you didn’t attach the special “ransacking” rider to your insurance policy.
But do people really think God gets his feelings hurt over snarky remarks about the Pepsi Clear in the baptismal? Maybe the tough love God of the Old Testament, who destroyed worlds if you looked at him cross-eyed. But not today’s kinder, gentler God.
Besides, mostly it’s not God who gets skewered, but religion. You know – that thing invented by man. And one man’s Mass is another man’s goat sacrifice – but try explaining that to God’s assassins.
I should talk. My own religious training can best be described as “uncertain.”
We went to church on occasion, not as infrequently as I would have liked. I remember sitting in the pew as a tiny kid, my spine pressed against the hard, cold wood as the minister droned about sin, knowing that soon the candles would ignite all those fancy tablecloths spread across the furniture and then we would have some fun!
Later, Mom and Dad went us to summer church school, where the teachers served us warm Kool-Aid, soft ginger snaps and incomprehensible Bible stories with “lessons” that were totally lost on us kids. What I remember was the white shirt I wore to those sessions. It was starched into a kind of tool of submission. If I dared make a sudden move, it would cut me. Putting on the shirt was an act of contrition. I was sorry every time I did it.
I went many years after that without setting foot in a church, convinced if I did I would spontaneously combust. But the notion of heaven and hell persisted.
Televangelists came and went, endless theistic battles wore on, and while I did not consign religion to the cynical “opiate of the masses” I had little use for it. But now I am more tolerant, and I take that as a sign of growing up. I see religion as a foundation of faith, one I choose not to partake of, myself.
But I remain puzzled by fanatics who kill for God. Can’t God do his own killing? Don’t these people realize that by killing for God, they admit God isn’t as powerful as, say, that god over there? They are falling behind in the God race.
Another thing: I don’t think God cares which football team wins.
Here’s another pseudo-word that ought to be a word: “aquadextrous,” as in possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your toes.
This column was originally published in the Wednesday, Feb. 5, 1997 Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .