Friday, August 10, 2012

Welcome to the Cut Out Bin: Hormel Frank N Stuff.



Ok, some of you may be grossed out by this.
Back in the day, (which according to Dane Cook was a Wednesday) The think tank known as Hormel released a product on the unwitting public known as the Frankenweenie!! (nothing to do with Tim Burton's short film nor the upcoming feature film of the same name).

I'm kidding.  It should have been called that, though.

It was the named "Frank N Stuff", which was a hot dog stuffed with their semi-toxic beef pudding known as "Chili". I use the term Chili here loosely.

Obviously, I have no photographs of the packaging save for a video screen shot since there won't be, God willing,  any collectors of the packaging.   As it was in the cooler section of your local grocery store and was sold the same way as all hot dogs, in a thick plastic shrink wrap, there shouldn't be.  I thought I'd be able to dig up some marketing material from days gone by, but alas, no go.

But, thanks to the miracle of YouTube, there's this:






Ew.




Tuesday, August 7, 2012

The Cut-Out Bin Volume One

There was so much cool stuff when I was only a lad (Oingo Boingo reference intended complete and full), and most of it's gone now. Some things you can read, listen to, collect, even eat. I'll start with the latterest. (I am fully aware as a writer of some aptitude, that latterest, is indeed, not a word.)

The Cut-Out Bin is a flashback to that.....

I like chocolate. I like caramel. Who wouldn't like the combination of both, with so much of them that they are in a measurable quantity, and just for giggles, braided? It happened. It did.

In England, Snickers is currently called Marathon. Poor Sods never knew.

I think this thing was two feet long or something, never the kind of thing that you can finish in one sitting. I mourn for it's loss,

and while I'm at it, I mourn for the loss of the Forever Yours bar for my poor sainted mother. She loved those things.....


Nowadays it's known as the Milky Way Dark, but there's no telling her that......

I love you, Mom.

I Hate This Movie!!




"That movie sucked. I hate that movie!" -- My girlfriend, Frani.

Now, Frani is exceedingly sweet, open minded, and very understanding. For her to scowl at a television screen and let a just-finished motion picture have it like that, is a rarity. It must have been awful.

So here, I go....I don't usually negatively review anything, but there's been a line crossed here.

Being a bit of a cinephile, I've seen a ton of movies. Not so many these last few years, but in the past. It takes a LOT for me to hate a movie. A lot. I can find something redeemable in almost anything. (Almost, is most certainly a key term in that cluster of words.) That being said, every once in a Bleu Cheese a piece of tripe floats by that makes me almost as angry as Waldorf Salad or Dexter from The Offspring.

Enter "The Time Traveler's Wife". Time travel movies defy logic as part of their very existence, obviously. There's no exception here. But when it happens here, it's so muddy, that you find yourself looking at the person you're viewing the film with, (lucky me in this case, the breathtaking Frani) and saying "The What Who?"

You don't know thanks to the terrible plotline, which version of the Time Traveler (Eric Bana) you're watching. All of the characters in this flick are terribly underwritten anyway, so you don't care when it ventures into tear-jerker territory. Now, before you go all "He's a guy, he doesn't get it!", I happen to enjoy the occasional "Chick Flick", (hate that term), and I knew that's what this was before watching it.

It doesn't excuse it.

I didn't like any version of the people in this movie, past, present, or future, and that dooms a flick. It's hard to root for people you don't like. Eric Bana is about as enjoyable to watch as a slow growing headache. Rachel McAdams, the put-upon wife of a man who time travels on accident when stressed out, ( I know, What the Hell? Wouldn't most of us like to go somewhere far away when life becomes a crapstorm?) acts so belligerent half the time, it's hard to empathize with her. She knew Bana did this.....

The movie becomes a muddy mess that doesn't make a whole lot of sense from the get-go, so I found myself just grieving for the loss of time I spent watching it.

Well, I did get to cuddle with my girl while watching it, so I guess it was actually a very good viewing experience. But still, this movie has to go.....really.....if some version of me could travel back in time and erase it, I would...

Yuck.