15 posts tagged “vox hunt”

When we first got our VCR, the only movie we had for it was Star Wars. My cousin came out from New Jersey to stay with us and we spent a good chunk of his visit watching Star Wars over and over again. By his count, we watched it 24 times. By the time he left, I knew I wanted to be either an intergalactic smuggler or a droid when I grew up.

Over the years, our collection grew, and Star Wars continued to find its way into the VCR until it was worn out. Rather than buy a new one, we resorted to taping it off of network TV, which was what all the cool kids did in those days, except my dad wasn't there to man the clicker so I was in charge of editing out the commercials. Alas, I was at that point unprepared for the position given to me, and more than a few commercials found their way onto the tape. And since it was the 80s, this led to disastrous results.

See, the movie fit onto a 90 minute VHS tape, provided you don't tape the commercials. With my ill-advised inclusion of the likes of Doublemint Gum (Double, Double Your Refreshment!), Pound Puppies (A Special Kind of Love), and Burger King (Aren't You Hungry for Burger King Now?) I did not have enough space left on the tape for the climactic Battle of Yavin, wherein a small one-man fighter used a force-guided proton torpedo to totally explode the Death Star.

Right around the time Porkins went to that big space station in the sky (the Death Star), the tape started rewinding. It took a few seconds for me to realize what had happened, so I sprang to action and popped in the nearest VHS tape to try to catch the rest of the film. I also may have wasted a couple of seconds trying to summon the tape to my hands using the Force. Still, I was able to pop in the next tape and get it running seconds before Han came from out of nowhere to send Vader into a tailspin and open a tab of owed favors for Luke. I taped the rest of the movie, right through the commercial for Campbell's Soup (Campbell's Soup is good food) after the end credits. Mission accomplished, I hit the rewind button, and the tape kept going and going and going. I realized that the last five minutes of Star Wars were saved following Garfield's Halloween/Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving/The Muppets Christmas. So now, in addition to covering three months of holidays, it also had the end of Star Wars.

Such a tape is worthless. Seriously. Let's say you want to watch Star Wars. In order to watch it with minimal interruption, you first have to put in Garfield/Charlie Brown/Muppets End-of-year Holiday Extravaganza, reset the counter to zero, and fast forward to 9378, where the end of Star Wars begins. Then you switch tapes, watch Star Wars, manually fast forward through the commercials and remove the tape after Porkins buys the farm. Then you switch back again to watch the Death Star blow up and Chewie totally get gypped out of getting a medal, probably because he'll rip your arms out of your sockets if you try to put something around his neck, and then Campbell's Soup (It's the one with the exasperated noodle salesman who's all, Rigatoni, Tortellini, Spaghetti, why the hell do people want all these noodles?). Then you rewind both tapes. That was the simplest way to watch Star Wars.

So neither of those tapes got a lot of viewing. A lot of the other VHS tapes were brought out again and again, and Star Wa/80's Kid Holidays/rs ended up at the bottom of the pile alongside Mr. Mom and Swiss Family Robinson.

And I would see those movies, down at the bottom of the shelf, and I felt sorry for them, so I took them out and watched them, and often made my siblings watch them, not because I liked Mr. Mom or that I enjoyed being reminded of my non-Jedi abilities in running the video recorded, but because I don't like to see anyone left out. Call it Velveteen Rabbit syndrome. I wanted those tapes to know they were loved, so I sat through them. Bit it was primarily to let them have their chance at the top of the stack.

That's why I pick William Henry Harrison. He served only 31 days, and his biggest presidential accomplishment was probably helping people figure out what to do if a president only serves 31 days. He's not going to be on anyone's list of president with the greatest impact, and I feel sorry for him. Way to go, Tippecanoe. And Tyler, too.

And maybe it is kind of a stretch to go from picking an inconsequential president to recounting my recording of Star Wars on the VCR. But frankly, it's kind of a stretch to go from the 220th anniversary of Washington's inauguration to picking a president, so I don't feel so bad.

By the way, spoilers!

Cella's are chocolate-covered cherries marketed by Tootsie Roll Industries.They are heavenly, and a Christmas without them would be like Arbor day -- joyless. No other chocolate covered cherry comes close to the delightful blend of flavors present in a Cella's. The cherry part makes them a fruit.

I do not get paid by Tootsie Roll Industries, although I would not turn them down if they offered. 

I get a lot of mileage out of this picture.

It's really Cracklin' Oat Bran, but I don't have a picture of it. But I promise you, I would buy tons of a cereal called Cella-Os.

I get a headache from not wearing a hat in the sun and getting my head sunburned. It's like a headache that lasts three or four days.

And because I know everyone loves to hear cute kid stories, here's a relevant cute story about my kid.

Aaron wanted to go downstairs (He's got a bunch of blocks down there that he likes to play with, and I had been running up and down the stairs with laundry). He's just recently gotten over his fear of going down the stairs and is eager to check things out down there. He told me so several times. Several times. "Daddy, let's go downstairs. Let's go downstairs, daddy. Daddy, downstairs. Let's go downstairs. Daddy, let's go downstairs. Downstairs, daddy," he suggested. Then he suggested it again. Several times.

Jenna said, "You are being very insistent. Do you know what insistent means?"

Aaron considered the question for a moment, then made a guess. "It means you get a headache?"

He's perceptive. I'll give him that.

I was all set to write this entry lipogrammatically, because that's one of those things I like to do sometimes, but then I realized that I was talking about a progressively lipogrammatic epistolary, and if I wanted to get that across, I'd either have to misspell those words or or not use them or write the whole thing without the letter J or the letter Q and that's just silly.

Round Trip is awesome. First you read the book normally, then halfway through, you turn the book upside down, and read it that way. All the pictures mean something different when they're upside down! Few books made the kind of impact on my childhood that this one did. For months afterwards, I was turning books upside down looking for the rest of the story.

Apparently, it is also a Reading Rainbow book, so that's pretty cool, too. I don't know if there are any secret messages if you watch the program upside down, or backwards, or whatever (high as twice go, can I sky the in butterfly), but LeVar Burton seems like the kind of name you'd try to read backwards. Of course, Not Rub Ravel doesn't mean much unless people keep pressing up against your Bolero CDs.

The point is, I dekil siht koob.