Skip the eight-tracks, man

Here's the word, man! Don't take the $2.99 eight-tracks. They're. like, a total bad trip, man!

Grab the $1.57 LPs instead, man. Righteously cool choice, man!

I mean, that's my trip. You can do what you want, man. It's all groovy.

But I'd go for the LPs, man.

Dig you later.

Death in a box, '60s style

Scientists, in conjunction with cultural historians, today announced the discovery of the likely cause of at least 85 percent of all Parkinson's disease cases in patients under age 55.

Film at 11.

Halo brace at 11:15.

Neural stimulator at 52.

Veni, vidi, geeky

Let us travel back to the early 1960s, when your Mighty Favog was but a sprite . . . and Americans still made stuff.

Sigh.

Don't try this at home

Boy, do I remember Great Shakes.

When I was a kid, I loved Great Shakes. I loved to make Great Shakes.

Except this one time when I didn't put the lid on tight enough. You remember that creepy Tay Zonday viral video on YouTube a few years back?

That wasn't the original "Chocolate Rain."

Why We Bite

In the 1940s, the government propaganda machine revved up to produce the Why We Fight series of films, explaining to ordinary Americans why we were neck deep in the Second World War.

I realize we no longer have the genius of Frank Capra to call upon, but maybe the Ad Council could do something with this old Charles Nelson Reilly commercial to explain to the average Joe how, exactly, we came to be just another banana republic.

Ain't dere no more, except on videotape

There's a fella in Baton Rouge who's hit the mother lode of TV-commercial nostalgia for those of us -- those of us of a certain age -- who grew up in Red Stick.

In other words, this YouTube page is something akin to video meth for Baby Boomers from thereabouts. I mean, Gordon Lloyd McLeod . . . holy crap! I haven't thought about McLeod's appliances in 20 years -- at least.

But there you go! And Goudchaux's, too (where the difference was U). If I have to explain it, you ain't from there, and most likely don't care anyway.

FOR THOSE of you who do care, though, let me present the Baton Rouge edition of Ain't Dere No More, beginning in three . . . two . . . one . . . roll 'em!


PHIL'S! Oysters! (sob)


AMERICAN BANK . . . ain't dere no more. And we ain't Young Americans no more, neither.


ABBY! The only chick who ever gave a guy a buck on a Saturday night. (Hey, it's the '70s . . . I'm supposed to be sexist!)


SIMPLE THINGS, like two in the morning . . . life was simple yesterday. And these Louisiana National Bank ads -- almost 40 years later -- are doin' their best to bring me yesterday.

LNB. My first bank. Sigh.


CAPITAL BANK. Weill/Strother ad agency, before Ray went to D.C., and became a political guru.


WHEN Bon Carré was Bon Marché, and it was THE place to shop.


OBVIOUSLY, Ossie Brown never spied the bodacious tatas on display in this Del Lago commercial, being that the spot presumably aired more than once . . . and the meat market that was orders of magnitude groovier than Smiley's shook its booty for some years to come. That ad probably aired only on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings, when Ossie was safely ensconced in a church pew.

No, the late district attorney was not a Del Lago kind of guy. But every testosterone-crazed high school boy sure as hell wanted to be.


THE GAP wasn't the only thing that was widening here. Go buy yourself an RCA XL-100 color TV and hep' Gordon Lloyd out.


STILL MR. BINGLE gently weeps . . . cause ain't no Goudchaux's . . . or Maison Blanche . . . or that God-awful slash-o-nated thing dere no more.

Well, that's about it for now. I do declare, the only thing that could have improved upon this experience would be going to the videotape of Al Crouch laying a sloppy, wet one on Joni Anderson, Tex Carpenter warning Channel 9 weather watchers about the nefarious "troffaloff" . . . or uncovering complete episodes of The Buckskin Bill Show or Storyland.

Because, boys and girls, Baton Rouge was a zoo. Count Macabre said.

Faster than lightning. Really.

Dear John Cameron Swayze,

Eat your heart out.

Bad beer, funny ad

If it's cheap beer you must drink -- and who isn't in that boat nowadays, right? -- I'm a PBR and Schlitz guy.

Long ago and far away, the old man drank Dixie and Schlitz, and I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree (or whatever cliché you happen to prefer). Then again, if you're falling off the Bud Light tree, I don't know how much solace you can take even from a commercial as funny as this one.

I MEAN, if somebody gave me a case of Bud Light, I reckon I'd drink it, but I'd be bending an elbow and thinking of England. OK, Abita . . . but you get the idea.

So, Budweiser, just so you know, you know? I'll give some virtual airtime to your funny ad for bad beer, but Tokyo Rose used to spin the hottest Western hits in service of Tojo's war machine, too.

And that guy that looks kind of like me? I'll give him a Guinness to put his damn clothes back on.

I'm just sayin'.

What hath SCOTUS wrought?

There is such a thing as too-free speech. Especially when it comes to big business and politics.

With the U.S. Supreme Court allowing corporate America to throw its money behind candidates directly -- as in running campaign advertising -- elections won't become just another opportunity for electing the best Congress money can buy. Nooooooo, elections will become major branding opportunities, too.

We only have to go back to 1948 to see what that looks like. Then, when ABC radio personality Don McNeill was "running" for president, Swift saw it as just another opportunity for (ahem) bringing home the bacon.

We never learn, do we?

I say, I say, I say. . . .

One of these commercials is the real deal.

But the other one is most definitely a comedy bit.


Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out which is which. Because sometimes, when you try to make this stuff up, you find you just can't top reality.

Good luck. This post will self-destruct in five seconds.