awesome: Book-It!
Dude. I loved this when I was a kid. Loved it. You remember it. The program's aims were to get kids to read, whereupon some exalted genius decided to reward particularly impressive levels of literacy with Pizza Hut personal pans. If I could meet the man (or woman) who came up with this particularly brilliant method of crossover marketing, by God, I'd shake his or her hand. Nothing beat the feeling of making my mom load up the Subaru just because I had a coupon. Nobody could take away that greasy, ill-prepared pepperoni goodness away from my grubby little fingers... I read The Mouse and the Motorcycle, motherfucker! It's just crazy that programs like this, originally designed to make children better themselves, probably had a much larger effect on the tidal wave of obesity that is currently lapping at the shores of America. Whoops! Anyways, I credit this program for my childhood love of reading, which culminated in me setting the Thousand Oaks Library record for books read during the summer reading program for my age group in the late 80's or early 90's (Editor's Note: was also not hooking up with girls at this time, either).
sucks: slap-bracelets
Let me first state unequivocally that I never owned one of these. They were for chicks. I just thought I would point out one of the toys I fondly remember for being a rampant killing machine. Even though I'm sure the number of documented wrist cuts with these items were infinitesimally small, much like with Jack-in-the-Box's E-Coli outbreak in the early 90's, I'll always have that association. These toys managed to not only suck, but were like a magnet for useful veins and arteries. I suppose, at the very least, they created such a caustic situation that someone felt compelled to make this drawing. In fact, you could probably say that the hand these bracelets had in cutting probably paved the way for the modern Emo movement. Thanks a lot, you bastards.
awesome/sucks: pogs
Hell yeah, I love pogs. Well kinda. Fact of the matter is I wasn't very good at them. The cool thing about pogs was you could collect them, there were a bunch of cool designs on them, and if your parents were rich, you had an unending pool of slammers from which to choose. I remember playing these out on the schoolyard and the competitive adrenaline rush that would come from vanquishing an opponent and hauling in your spoils. In many ways, you could probably see with a high degree of accuracy that those experiences would help pave the way for an unhealthy gambling problem which would lead to degenerate activities like betting on this weekend's NFL Pro Bowl. Don't judge me!
I will say that pogs also sucked from a couple angles. First of all, this was a game that taught kids at an early age that life's unfair and sometimes you just lose all your shit. Like training wheels for Lotto scratchers. Nothing was worse than getting your ass handed to you in a crazy-ass game of pogs and then having to sulk into your local baseball card shop to re-up. Pathetic. Also, when you think of it... pogs were fuckin' cheap! So cheap! Where did those bastards get off charging so much for those G.D. things! Seriously, the profit margins on those things had to have been like 23423%. If anything, I'm just mad my 8-year old brain wasn't able to put together a viable product and/or marketing scheme.
awesome vid of the day:
Thanks to Erio for passing this along. Note to all that, although not graphic, the content here is DEFINITELY not safe for work. Unless you work at a gay bathhouse. If so, carry on!
awesome vid of the day (2):
Happy Birthday, Rick.
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