Sunday, January 4, 2009

That Old Car's Worth Money!




Well, I've spent the day reading the manual on this Epson hoobajoob I got for Christmas and I finally have it hooked up but for a USB cord. I have a Chicago Police dispatch bag filled with all kinds of plugs and cords and disks, and I spent a good hour looking for it, turns out it was behind books on my bookshelf. Where I put it so, one, it would be out of the way of my new (as of July) bookshelf, and two, it would be in a place I'd remember. Well, yea, I'd remember...after an hour of searching not just my room and closet, but the dreaded crawlspace of doom. I've been typing this as I let the video load, this is a commercial that has been playing continuously in the Chicago area since 1976, in English, Spanish, and Polish. Once upon a time I had the Sun-Times article on this but it is now gone into the erff, so I don't know the name of the poor schlub who sold his old car that was worth money. He worked as a driver for Victory and was paid a flat fee of something like fifty bucks. Everything about the commercial is so dated, the leather watch/wristband (did Hercules wear a watch?) on the guy, his bell bottoms, and its always a pleasure to see our bungalows in the background. The guy mentioned in the news article that he didn't mind not getting any more dough from the commercial and he's close to sixty now, still driving a truck, and its just such an oddity here. Not on frame of the commercial has changed, and on some stations, the colors are all washed out. Well, that's my report for tonight. You get to watch a cool Chicago commercial and I got to write while it loaded. At least I know I'm not the only one to lose something by putting it someplace that was put in the most obvious place to begin with. Now where are my reading glasses? Oh...

4 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

I suffer that all the time, trying to find something that I placed somewhere obvious.

James Robert Smith said...

Here's what's really weird about that video:

1:That the phone number has not changed.

2: That the business is still around! The average life-span of a small or family-owned business is less than ten years.

When I lived in Georgia, I'd encounter really old ads like that--so old that the original shots were all washed out from film to video transfer. But nothing to compare with your local champ.

Lost stuff--it gets worse as I get older.

Anonymous said...

Wayne, go see the Mindy book -- I finally scanned it!

Love,
Peg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/traderpegs/sets/72157612115537979/

Capcom said...

Heheh, it's like those faded creepy commercials that they used to show at the drive-ins! X-D

Weird, I was fixating on Daniel Farady today and made a post about him. :-o