are you ready for some 3D football?

saw this article yesterday, which immediately conjured images of the last 3D experience the NFL offered us- the craptacular halftime extravaganza "bebop bamboozled". amazingly, i couldn't find video of this masterpiece online, so the only reference i can direct you to is a snippet in the wikipedia article about super bowl XXIII.

remember it well, because superbowl XXIII was the first time anything like a finkbowl occurred- had a bunch of high school friends over to the old fink estate on LI for the game, and we all shared in the pageantry of "bebop bamboozled" together. for some strange reason, i kept the official coca-cola 3D glasses from the event until just a year or two and as recently as last year saw them lying around somewhere. maybe the NFL will give me some kind of credit on new glasses if i can produce the old ones.

ooh, that smell

rediscovered one of my favorite smells of childhood- the smell of the halloween candy bag. not the halloween night, fresh-from-the-hunt smell, but rather the week-after, three-pounds-of-candy-sitting-in-the-plastic-bag smell. it's totally different than the smell that you'd get when you opened a bag of snack-size kit kats, or sniffed your own yet-doled-out halloween candy bowl. the week-old candy bag smell has the perfect dilutions of peanut butter and chocolate and twizzler and plastic wrap all mixed together, giving it its own aromatic uniqueness. it is a scent that is so tantalizingly pleasing, one could argue that the scent itself is what drives confusion into the minds of the candy chooser.

like any good thing, however, it can be overdone. after about 3 reese's cups and a mini 100 grand bar, the tantalization begins to morph into nausea. but as long as you keep the temptation of the milky way midnights from pushing you over the edge, the smell of that bag is pure olfactory bliss.

pass the can

another fleeting memory of days gone by popped into my head the other day. not sure why i was thinking of it, but i had this great memory of the summer theater fundraising campaign for the will rogers institute.

there was a time, probably when i was about 13 or 14, that i would ride my bike to the mall with a friend or two and see a movie almost weekly during the summer. the multiplex at the mall participated in the fundraising campaign, which involved a trailer starring usually one or two a-list celebs of the day telling the story of will rogers and his eponymous institute. the trailer would end with the celeb shaking a coffee can emblazoned with the will rogers logo and announcing that ushers would now be passing the cans. house lights would come up again for a few minutes while people dug for change and passed the cans, then dimmed again once the collection was over so the movie could start.

apparently this is still done, as the website attests. while i don't go to the movies nearly as much anymore, it's been quite a while since i've seen the will rogers promo. anybody else remember these, or seen one in the past 10 years?

please, please don't say "forking"

so, i rolled over sometime early this AM and was knocking knees with my beloved (get your minds out of the gutter- that's not a euphemism for anything- our knees truly were hitting), and i started wondering, what's the opposite of "spooning"?

traditional spooning involves both parties facing the same direction, so there are actually two alternatives- both parties facing each other, or facing away from each other. do either of those positions have a colloquialism?

(this post didn't start out to be a reminiscing, but thinking about neologisms has triggered memories of sniglets and rich hall and hbo's NNTN- a far cry from the colbert report, to be sure.)

once upon a time...

some of the many things that pass through my head on a daily basis are memories of some pretty random items, events and encounters that may or may not have any relation to my current situation. i don't want this to become a pretentious trip down memory lane, but i thought it would be fun to share some of these things and maybe generate a little discussion.

today's reminiscence came up when noticing that for the first time in dover, gas is $4.00/gallon. i of course wasn't driving during the gas crisis of the 70's, but i do distinctly remember the odd days/even days gas thing, and the long lines at the gas stations. i realize that setup was due to shortage and not pricing, but could you just imagine what a supply problem would do to the current situation? chaos.

my favorite memory of the gas crisis though was a line from "good times", courtesy of jj "dyn-o-mite" walker. either florida or james were threatening to kick jj's deadbeat butt out of the apartment, and when jj realized he'd have to use the gas station bathroom if he lived on the street, he announced in horror that would mean he'd only be able to pee on odd numbered days. now THAT's comedy!