The Hunt For Fotomat Video

Film-to-Tape Transfer Service VHS
Fotomat (1980)
This tape was on the donation wall at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater snack bar last month.  I've gone through a lot of VHS tapes over the years, but this is the first time I've come across one of these labels, so I had to look it up.

Fotomat, who is best known for their film developing drive-thru kiosks, offered their customers a film-to-tape transfer service in the late 70's and early 80's.  You could drop off 8mm, 16mm, 35mm, or Super 8 film which the company would transfer to either a VHS or Beta tape.  The could also scan your 35mm photo slides and produce a slideshow of still images on a tape.  This service wasn't cheap.  I wasn't able to find a full price list, but their pamphlet gives an example of "your 15 minute sound movie transferred to a Beta cassette for less than $45, including the cassette".  Apparently, whatever was originally transferred to this tape when it left Fotomat wasn't worth the money because someone decided to tape over it with the 1990 blockbuster The Hunt For Red October.

Obsolete From The Start

Sega Genesis 32X
Sega (1994)
The 32-bit addition to the Sega Genesis was released in North America thirty years ago today.

The main thing that I remember from its release was all of the sex jokes that they made in their advertisements.  I'm not sure if they thought this would make teenage boys want to run out and buy one, but I was 14 years old at the time and the only affect it had on me was a chuckle and an eye roll.  They cost $159 when they were first released.  That's roughly the equivalent of $335 today, and the game library didn't come close to justify spending that kind of money.

The 32X was doomed to fail.  The next generation Sega Saturn console had already been announced by the time this thing hit store shelves, and it was competing directly with both the Saturn and Playstation at retail by September the following year.  No one that I knew wanted a 32X because it was understood that it was going to be obsolete in less than a year.  Only 40 games came out for it before Sega pulled the plug, and most of them were no better than their Genesis counterparts which did not require an extra piece of hardware to run.

I picked one up two years after it was released, but only because it was being sold at a fraction of its original price.  I was a cashier at the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Hazleton when I was 16 years old.  They made you take a full hour for lunch in those days, so I used to kill time by going to the electronics department to play the Playstation demo unit that they had set up.  One day, I noticed that they had a pile of Sega 32X consoles on clearance for $30, so I figured what the hell and grabbed one.  The only game that I ever had for it was the Star Wars Arcade cartridge that came with the machine.  A new game back then usually cost between $30 and $50 bucks and Star Wars Arcade was a lot of fun, so it was worth it at the clearance price.

Yo Adrian...

Teriyaki Balboa
Righteous Felon Craft Jerky
This would have been an awesome name for a wrestling gimmick.  I'm picturing Yujiro Takahashi in Rocky's trunks and robe coming out to the ring to a cover of Gonna Fly Now played on a shamisen.

There Is No Hiding Place

Building The Perfect Beast
Don Henley (1984)
The second solo album from Eagles vocalist Don Henley turns forty years old today.  It went triple platinum and produced four singles that hit the Top 40 in the Billboard Hot 100.  The songs that seem to have gotten the most radio play from this record are The Boys Of Summer and All She Wants To Do Is Dance.  They're both excellent, but my favorite song on the album is its 9th track, Sunset Grill.

The song's namesake and inspiration was an actual restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles called the Sunset Grill.  It was owned and operated by Joe Froehlich from 1957 to 1997.  This is the man that Don Henley is referring to when he sings about "an old man from the old world" who "calls his customers by name".

In 2013, co-songwriter Danny Kortchmar went into greater detail about the inspiration of the song during an interview with Carl Wiser of Songfacts.

Sunset Grill is a real hamburger place on Sunset Boulevard that Don used to go to. He admired the fact that the same family and the same people had run it for many years, and that the burgers were made with love - they were everything he liked about American society. So he used that Sunset Grill as a metaphor for what he liked, what he thought was great about society. And then he also used it to describe what he didn't like, which is plenty.

Sunset Grill
Don Henley (1984)

Let's go down to the Sunset Grill

We can watch the working girls go by

Watch the basket people walk around and mumble

Stare out at the auburn sky

There's an old man there from the old world

To him, it's all the same

Calls all his customers by name

Down at the Sunset Grill

You see a lot more meanness in the city

It's the kind that eats you up inside

Hard to come away with anything that feels like dignity

Hard to get home with any pride

These days a man makes you somethin'

And you never see his face

But there is no hiding place

Down at the Sunset Grill

Respectable little murders pay

They get more respectable every day

Don't worry, girl

I'm gonna stick by you

And someday soon

We're gonna get in that car

And get outta here

Let's go down to the Sunset Grill

Watch the working girls go by

Watch the basket people walk around and mumble

Gaze out at the auburn sky

Maybe we'll leave come springtime

Meanwhile, have another beer

What would we do without all these jerks anyway?

Besides, all our friends are here

Down at the Sunset Grill

Back To Babuni's

Babuni's Table
Brodheadsville, PA
We discovered this place when we met our friends here for dinner over the summer, and I've wanted to come back ever since so that I could try their Reuben.  My dad saw the pictures that I posted of the Warsaw Royal Dinner that I had last time and wanted to check the place out too, so we headed back to Babuni's Table yesterday for dinner.

There's actually two different Reuben sandwiches on the menu.  I had the regular hot Reuben sandwich, which was made with hot corn beef topped with Swiss cheese, Polish Sauerkraut, and Russian dressing on toasted rye bread.  The other one was the Babuni Kielbasa Reuben, which is grilled kielbasa with sauerkraut, melted Polish cheese, and spicy Polish mustard on toasted rye bread.  If we ever get back here, I'm going to try that one.

My dad and wife both had the Warsaw Royal Dinner, which looked just as good as when I had it in July, and we all had blueberry and sweet cheese pierogies for dessert.  They were served with chocolate ice cream and topped with a cream sauce with powdered sugar and a chocolate syrup drizzle.  I don't think I've ever had dessert pierogies before this weekend, and I was pleasantly surprised.  The sweet cheese ones were especially tasty.

The Million Dollar Whopper

Million Dollar Whopper Contest
Burger King (2024)
My favorite fast food chain from the time that I was a child to today has been Burger King.  This weekend, they kicked off the second phase in one of the coolest promotions that I've seen in a long time.

In February, the fast food chain announced a contest in which you could submit your idea to win a million dollars by submitting your idea for a specialty Whopper sandwich.  Submissions were collected throughout the year, and three finalists have been selected.  All three are available to purchase at Burger King now, and the winning Whopper will be determined by customers who vote for their favorite.

The first of the three finalists is the Fried Pickle Ranch Whopper, which is topped with lettuce, fried pickles, bacon, Swiss cheese, and a creamy pickle ranch sauce.  They've also made the fried pickles available as a Pickle Fries side dish separate from the burger.

 

The second suitor (because "Suitor #2" sounds like a bathroom code) is the Mexican Street Corn Whopper.  This is made with lettuce, tomato, tortilla strips, spicy queso, and a creamy street corn spread.

The final contestant is the Maple Bourbon BBQ Whopper, which has crispy onions and jalapenos, smoky maple candied bacon, and American cheese topped with a maple bourbon barbecue sauce.

I had to try all three of them, and I wanted to try them at the same time so that I could have a fair comparison and choose my favorite.  Now I can eat three Whoppers in a sitting, which should come as no surprise to anyone who's seen how much weight I've put on since college, but I'm trying to be a little more sensible with my food choices to drop a few pounds.  With that in mind, my wife and I hit up the Burger King in Lehighton on the way home from the Slatington Marketplace, and we ordered one of each of the new burgers and split them.  Eating one and a half Whoppers has got to be healthier than eating three, right?

All three Whoppers were very tasty and worth trying.  The fried pickles gave the Fried Pickle Ranch Whopper an interesting flavor, but as someone who loves pickles, I was a little disappointed that it didn't have a stronger dill flavor.  The spicy queso and crunchy tortilla strips made for a surprisingly excellent combined flavor on the Mexican Street Corn Whopper.  Even if it doesn't win, Burger King should consider keeping that spicy queso sauce in their kitchens because it'd be an excellent way to upsell customers who want to add a little cheese and spice to anything on their menu.

Having said that, the whole idea of this promotion is to pick a winner, and my wife and I were both in agreement on which one of the three was the best:

The Maple Bourbon BBQ Whopper is one of the best fast food burgers I've ever had.  It's a perfect combination of sweet and savory, and the crispy onions and jalapenos give it a little zing that was just right.  All three burgers are good enough to go back and get again, but this one is the only one of the three that I'd go out of my way to find if it wasn't right down the street.

If I were handing out Olympic medals to all three contestants, the Mexican Street Corn Whopper would get the silver, and the Fried Pickle Ranch Whopper would get the bronze.  If you had your eye on Fried Pickle Ranch as the one you wanted to try, take my ranking of it last with a grain of salt because I'm not a big fan of ranch dressing in general.

I'm not sure how long they're going to have all three of these burgers available to purchase in stores, but the ability to vote for your favorite one ends on December 5th.  I believe that the winner is going to remain on their menu for a bit longer, but I'd imagine the other two aren't going to stick around too much longer after the first week of December.  If you want to try them, I'd recommend going sooner than later.

Kudos to Burger King for coming up with a hell of a fun promotion.  This would make an excellent annual tradition to get customers to keep coming back during the Christmas shopping season.

Caffe Europa and the Infinite Pizza

Caffe Europa
Laurel Mall - Hazleton, PA

This place has been in business in the Laurel Mall for nearly 20 years and they're still one of the best places in town to stop for a coffee or a slice of pizza.

Caffe Europa is our go-to spot when my wife and I are going to see two movies at the Regal Theater outside the mall when we have a little time to kill between movies.  These pictures were taken on Monday after we had seen Venom: The Last Dance as we were waiting for the next screening of Heretic.

There's plenty of seating here, and the place has an aesthetic that makes me think of what a pizza parlor from a mid 90's Smashing Pumpkins video might look like.  The pizza oven with the blue swirls and the star and moon remind me of the Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness album every time I see it.

 

I had two slices of pepperoni and sausage pizza, and my wife had two slices of three cheese pizza, which is one of the pies that they make without sauce.  Both were delicious.

Ship 'Em Out. They'll Never Notice.

Los Angeles Dodgers T-Shirt
Fanatics (2024)
Earlier this week, baseball fan and Reddit user sulej shared this photo of a championship t-shirt that they recently purchased from Fanatics.  The shirt was designed to commemorate the 2024 World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers with the signatures of each player on their World Series roster printed around the Commissioner's Trophy on the back of the shirt.  Eagle-eyed fans are likely to have already spotted the problem here.  If you haven't, perhaps this will help.

This is the shirt that Fanatics released last year to commemorate the 2023 World Series Champions, the Texas Rangers.  It's not the same exact style shirt, but it shares some features in common, including the Commissioner's Trophy and images of the player's signatures on the back of the shirt.

Let's take a closer look at those signatures.

Did you catch it yet?

Here, maybe a side-by-side comparison might help.

 

The Aroldis Chapman signature at the top right hand corner is a dead giveaway.  He's bounced around the league quite a bit since he made his MLB debut in 2010 with time spent on the Cincinnati Reds, New York Yankees, Chicago Cubs, Kansas City Royals and Texas Rangers before signing a one year contract to pitch out of the Pittsburg Pirates bullpen in 2024.  He had a decent year for a 36 year old reliever, and he even passed Billy Wagner to have the most career strikeouts for a left-handed relief pitcher in baseball history.

One thing Mr. Chapman did not do is play for the Los Angeles Dodgers.  To the best of my knowledge, none of the players whose signature appears on the Dodgers shirt ever played for them, but they definitely didn't in 2024.  Fanatics just went ahead and re-used all of the signature images from last year's Rangers shirt when they designed the Dodgers shirt.

This would be an embarrassing mistake if it happened to any other company, but I'll be shocked if Fanatics will even notice.  After all, they're the same company that approved this design for an Oakland Athletics hat a few months ago.

The official hat of John Fisher

Time Sure Does Fly, Doesn't It

Here
Miramax (2024)
This movie is not going to be for everyone.  It's the kind of film that I expect most people are either going to love or hate without too much in between.  It has been getting destroyed by most of the critics and audience reviews so far.  It's a shame to see that, but I'm not surprised.

I loved this movie, but it wasn't until around the halfway point that it started to win me over.  If you're patient and stick with it, I think it can win you over too.

Here is based on a 2014 graphic novel of the same name.  It takes place at a fixed spot in New Jersey and shifts through time to show what is happening at this exact location over the years.  Try to imagine an invisible movie camera that cannot be seen or felt in one particular location filming everything that comes into its field of vision for thousands of years before the footage is collected and turned into a video scrapbook which is presented to you out of order.  That's what this movie is.  It shifts between the time of the dinosaurs, to the days when Native American tribes still dominated the continent, to the days of the Revolutionary War, to the days of the Spanish Flu, to the 1940's during World War II, and then through the rest of the 20th century and into the 21'st, to the time of the Covid-19 Pandemic, to the present.  For most of this time, the fixed location is the living room of a home, but the story goes back to the time before the home was built.

The main story involves the Young family.  Al and Rose buy the home when Al is discharged at the end of the second World War.  They have three children, the oldest of whom is a son named Richard (Tom Hanks), who is the star of the film and who starts a family of his own.

There's no getting around the fact that this film is very gimmicky.  The fixed camera doesn't budge an inch until the credits are about to roll.  It continually jumps forwards and backwards in time, with transitions that occur in a way that reminded me a bit of the old picture-in-picture feature that became common in televisions in the 90's.  You'll be watching a scene of something taking place in the 1940's, and then a box will appear in which everything inside the box is from the late 1700's, or the 2020's.  Each of the stories from separate time periods are linear for the most part, so the time jumps take you to an entirely different era.  It's a bit jarring at first, and I probably haven't done the best job in explaining it, but it'll make more sense when you see it.

In addition to this, most of the performances are a bit over-the-top.  It's not done to a ridiculous degree, but it reminded me more of the kind of acting you'd see on stage than in a movie.  To add to all of this, the filmmakers used an AI called Metaphysic Live to show Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as their younger selves.

This is all a hell of a lot to ask an audience to accept, but if you're able to resist the urge to nit-pick at the structure and allow this film to tell you the story that it has to tell in the way that it wants to tell it, its a powerful experience that reminds the viewer that life is short, time flies, and we're all flawed people who have a lot more in common than we think that we do.

The Last Man Standing

Jimmy's Quick Lunch
East Broad Street - Hazleton, PA
Most of the restaurants in my hometown that I went to when I was a child in the 80's and a teenager in the 90's are long gone.  Coney Island closed in 1995 after 73 years in operation.  Knotty Pine closed in 2010, which was coincidentally also in its 73rd year in operation.  Carmen's Family Restaurant was sold in 2007 and closed soon after.  The Blue Comet closed in 2011 after over fifty years in business and has sat abandoned ever since.  The Beltway Diner burned down in 2018.  Two Guys From Italy, Amore's, Rosie's Space, The Copper Kettle, and many others that I remember from growing up in Hazleton are now just a memory.

There are a few restaurants from the 80's and 90's that remain in business today like Eli's, Booty's Place, Top Of The 80's, and a few pizza parlors, but Jimmy's Quick Lunch has a different atmosphere.  It's a feeling that wasn't unique in the 20th century with dozens of mom & pop diners to be found throughout the area, but it's the last of its kind in Hazleton today.

Jimmy's is the only place where I can get a bite to eat and still feel like I'm in the Hazleton that I grew up in.  It looks mostly the same, with the exception of the clear booth dividers that were put up during the pandemic.  It smells mostly the same, with the exception of the absence of cigarette smoke which was so pervasive in town when I was growing up that I didn't notice it at all until it was gone.  It sounds exactly the same, which is a big part of the charm that this place has for me.  Most importantly, the food still tastes the same.  Sitting down to have a meal here is an immersive experience that, for someone who grew up in this town in the 20th century, feels a bit like stepping back in time.

 

The main attraction that has kept people coming back to Jimmy's Quick Lunch for 86 years is the Jimmy Dog.  It's a Coney Island style chili dog topped with their family chili recipe, mustard, and minced onions.  It's not the only thing on their menu, but it's the food that just about everyone from the area will immediately think of if you mention the name of the restaurant.

My dinner of choice at Jimmy's is usually a Farmer's Iced Tea with a cheeseburger, two Jimmy Dogs, and a cup of rice pudding with whipped cream for dessert.  I'm tempted to try something else from their menu every time I come here, and I have strayed on a few occasions (the breakfasts here are outstanding), but more often than not, I end up sticking with my old favorites.

Playing Bob Ross Monopoly With Jar Jar Binks

Heretic
A24 (2024)
Did you ever want to see Hugh Grant whip out a copy of Bob Ross Monopoly and do an impersonation of Jar Jar Binks in an effort to terrorize two young Mormon girls?  If so, the latest horror/suspense flick from A24 is for you.

Heretic is the story of two young women who are working as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  They have an appointment to visit the home of an intellectual Englishman, and as the poster suggests, this meeting goes horribly wrong.

This movie starts out strong and kept me on the edge of my seat for the first half, but it went off the rails a bit at the middle of the film and didn't stick the landing.  I'm hesitant to go into any further detail as to why I feel this way because it's a film that's worth seeing and I don't want to spoil anything, but I will say that it's a good film that had the potential to be great if it didn't go over-the-top in the second half.

I'm Glad We Didn't Eat This Fine Family

Venom: The Last Dance
Sony Pictures (2024)
This wasn't bad, but I liked the first two movies in the Venom Trilogy more than this one.  I'm sure that I would be able to appreciate the story more if I were more familiar with the comic books.  I had a bit of a difficult time keeping up when it came to the multiple symbiotes, but it was done well enough that it was still enjoyable with my only background knowledge coming from what I could remember from the first two Venom films.

The Devil's Favorite Dealer

Cokane
JCW (2024)
It has been many years since I've kept up with independent wrestling and even longer since I've been a part of the Juggalo scene, but this is too good not to mention.  Someone is wrestling in a black and white Kane mask and ring gear.  At first glance, I thought that this was a character that presented an alternate reality version of The Big Red Machine if he joined the nWo, but that's not what's going on here.  The real gimmick is so much better.

Yup... his name is Cokane.

This wrestler ends his matches by pulling out a bag of "mysterious white powder" which allows him to hulk up and deliver his finishing move, the Coke Slam.