I Come From A Planet A Long Way From Here

I found this little guy at the bottom of a tote when I was packing up Christmas decorations last year.  It's a keychain that my grandmother gave me when I was a teenager.  Grandma could be a handful, but she was a generous woman with a good heart.  She knew that I liked aliens, so when she found something with an alien head, she's get it and put it away for me to give to me for Christmas, or my birthday, or just because she thought that I'd like it.

This also reminded me of one of my favorite Christmas songs.  It's not one that I hear on the radio too often, but it's has an ethereal and soothing sound that stops me in my tracks every time I hear it.  It was released by Chris de Burgh in 1975.  The singer/songwriter is probably best known for The Lady In Red and Don't Pay The Ferryman, but I think this is the song of his that I like the best.

A Spaceman Came Traveling

Chris de Burgh (1975)

A spaceman came traveling on his ship from afar

Twas light years of time since his mission did start

And over a village he halted his craft

And it hung in the sky like a star, just like a star

He followed a light and came down to a shed

Where a mother and child were lying there on a bed

A bright light of silver shone round his head

And he had the face of an angel, and they were afraid

Then the stranger spoke, he said "Do not fear

I come from a planet a long way from here

And I bring a message for mankind to hear,"

And suddenly the sweetest music filled the air

And it went

La la la la la la la la la la la

Peace and goodwill to all men, and love for the child

This lovely music went trembling through the ground

And many were wakened on hearing that sound

And travelers on the road, the village they found

By the light of that ship in the sky, which shone all round

And just before dawn at the paling of the sky

The stranger returned and said "Now I must fly

When two thousand years of your time has gone by

This song will begin once again, to a baby's cry"

And it was

La la la la la la la la la la la

Peace and goodwill to all men, and love for the child

Oh, the whole world is waiting

Waiting to hear the song again

There are thousands standing on the edge of the world

And a star is moving somewhere

Yuletide In The Shire

Yuletide In The Shire
Everstar (2003)
This is my favorite Christmas album.  I picked it up during Musikfest 2008 at a Celtic shop called Donegal Square, along with a few other similar CDs, and my wife and I have listened to it every holiday season ever since.

There's not a lot of information online about the recording artists.  The only thing I can find for sure is that they released one other album called Enchanted Journey in the same year.  The website for the label, Sequoia Records, is still online, but it's just a placeholder page with a message that the site is closed for maintenance, along with a few links to listen to the music that they have produced on various streaming services.

Yuletide In The Shire is available to stream on YouTube, Spotify, Amazon, Pandora, and many other sources.  It's a very mellow and peaceful holiday listening experience that I hope you enjoy as much as I do.

More From The Toy Store In The Mall

Black Friday Circular
KayBee Toys (1990)
This advertisement for a sale that began on the day after Thanksgiving 35 years ago was shared on Twitter by Dinosaur Dracula.  Check out the early draft of box art from Super Mario Bros 3.

Santa Shops At The Mall Toy Store

Kay-Bee Dear Santa Sale
KayBee Toys (1989)
This advertisement for a sale that ended on this day in 1989 was shared on Instagram by Dinosaur Dracula.  I was nine years old when this flier was publishes so I was into pretty much all of this stuff except Cabbage Patch Kids.

The Only Important Thing These Days Is Rhythm And Melody

Prisencolinensinainciusol
Adriano Celentano (1972)
On this day in 1972, a song that was written by composer Adriano Celentano and performed by he and his wife, Claudia Mori, was released in Italy.  It would go on to chart in their native country, as well as Belgium, West Germany, and The Netherlands.

If you're having a difficult time understanding the lyrics, there's a pretty good reason for that.  He's not singing in English or in Italian.  The entire song is gibberish sung with an American accent.

ps: if you caught the Big Audio Dynamite reference in the title, you're my kind of people.

Spooky Season At Zayre

October Sales Circular
Zayre (1987)
This page from a Zayre sales circular was shared by Dinosaur Dracula last month.

The highlight for me is the ad at the bottom left corner for Friday The 13th, Deadly Friend, Fright Night, The Believer, A Nightmare On Elm Street 3, and Halloween on VHS for $16.99.

This is the candy that we all wanted to find in our bag after we were finished trick or treating... except maybe for the Smarties, which had about the same flavor as the packets of sugar on the table at the Blue Comet.  Also, I still say that Reese's Peanut Butter Cups tasted better when they came in a paper wrapper.

The Count Dracula Chocolate Flavored Candy at the top left of this part of the ad is the kind of thing that savvy kids would trade to their friends for their old boring Hershey and Snickers bars.  The package may be awesome, but they didn't usually taste very good.

Once in a while, there would be a seasonal goodie that you didn't want to give up, like these Alma Skull Crushers which oozed strawberry blood when you bit into them.  I don't think these are still sold in stores in the United States, but I was able to find them for sale on UK eBay and other online retailers under the name Hannah's Skull Crushers.

I was more of a rubber mask kid when it came to Halloween, but makeup was always a solid option.

These cardboard wall hangings sold for a buck and a half back in the 80's,  My grandmother used to wait and buy things like this when they went on sale after the holiday to put away for next year.  These old decorations are considerably more expensive when you can find them on eBay, especially if they're in good condition.

The last thing that caught my eye were these Halloween pinatas.  I can't say I ever remember seeing pinatas out for a Halloween party when I was a kid.  The witch in the center is giving off Viola Swamp vibes.

When The World Is Running Down...

Zenyatta Mondatta
The Police (1980)
The third studio album from The Police is turning forty five years old today.  Practically every song on this record was a hit, including Don't Stand So Close To Me, Driven To Tears, Canary In A Coal Mine, and Man In A Suitcase.

My favorite one of all, and probably my favorite song that the band ever put out, is the third song on the album.  When I listened to this song in my 20's and 30's, it reminded me of Roland describing Mid-World in The Dark Tower by saying that "the world has moved on".  When the pandemic began, and the effects of global climate change became harder to ignore in the years after the pandemic, it started to remind me of our world because all we can really do is make the best of what's still around.

When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What's Still Around

The Police (1980)

Turn on my VCR

Same one I've had for years

James Brown on the Tami show

Same tape I've had for years

I sit in my old car

Same one I've had for years

Old battery's running down

It ran for years and years

Turn on the radio

The static hurts my ears

Tell me, where would I go?

I ain't been out in years

Turn on the stereo

It's played for years and years

An Otis Redding song

It's all I own

When the world is running down

You make the best of what's still around

When the world is running down

You make the best of what's still around

Plug in my MCI

To exercise my brain

Make records on my own

Can't go out in the rain

Pick up the telephone

I've listened here for years

No one to talk to me

I've listened here for years

When the world is running down

You make the best of what's still around

When the world is running down

You make the best of what's still around

When I feel lonely here

Don't waste my time with tears

I run Deep Throat again

It ran for years and years

Don't like the food I eat

The cans are running out

Same food for years and years

I hate the food I eat

When the world is running down

You make the best of what's still around

When the world is running down

You make the best of what's still around

Frightful Fun

Halloween Body Stickers
Mello Smello (90's)
These were scanned and shared by Dinosaur Dracula earlier this year.

Where The Sun Light Don't Shine

I'm not really sure where this Halloween witch came from.  It's possible that we picked it up form a flea market, but I don't remember buying it.  It's more likely that my grandmother made it when I was a kid, but I don't remember seeing it.  Maybe she manifested in our attic all by herself.  Who knows.

Wherever she came from, she's a pretty groovy decoration and we try to find a place to put her this time of the year.  It's made pretty well, with fabric for the hat and the dress and doll hair on her head.  She's also surprisingly heavy.

The witch's body is a bottle of Sun Light dish soap that's filled with sand.  The copywrite on the bottle is from 1992.  Whether this was made by my grandmother or by a flea market vendor, this little witch has been haunting people's homes at Halloween for 33 years.

The Night The Lights Went Out At Hersker

Cinema & Drafthouse
West Hazleton, PA  (2003-2025)
The last of the eight original theaters in Hazleton and West Hazleton has shown its final film.  It was announced that the owners of Cinema & Drafthouse on Broad Street has sold the building, which I'm told is going to be converted into a church.  Just what this town needs... another church... as if there aren't enough abandoned churches within walking distance of this theater.

It opened as the Hersker Theatre in 1915.  It was a single screen theater with around 300 seats and it showed silent films for about fifteen years before they showed their first "talkie" film.

The theater was expanded to 600 seats and remodeled in an Art Deco style in 1938.  It was renamed the Key Theatre which it operated as for over thirty years before it reverted back to its original Hersker Theatre name after its second remodeling in 1969.

Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA  (September 28, 1987)

Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA  (July 23, 1985)

It remained in operation under the Hersker Theatre for about twenty years, and it's this stage of its life that I came here for the first time.  In fact, this is the first place that I ever saw a movie on the big screen in a theater when my grandfather brought me here to see The Black Cauldron not long after my fifth birthday.

Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA  (January 6, 1988)

Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA  (March 7, 1987)

The Hersker family sold the theater in the late 80's, after which time it briefly operated under the names Majestic Theatre and Casino Theater West until it reverted back to the Key Theatre name in 1992 for the third time in the venue's history.

Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA  (September 29, 1996)

Times Leader - Wilkes Barre, PA  (July 13, 1997)

Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA  (July 12, 1997)

The third and final run as the Key Theatre lasted from 1992 to 2003, and it's this era that I remember best.  It remained a single screen theater and they mostly handled second run films.  In other words, they screened films that had already finished their run at larger theaters and chains, but had not yet appeared on cable television or on the shelves of video rental stores.

There were two things about The Key that made me fall in love with the place.  First, it was about two blocks away from my grandparents house where I lived when I was a teenager, so I could walk there in less than five minutes.  If that wasn't cool enough, all tickets to all screenings were only a dollar.  There were even days that they only charged a dollar for popcorn, soda, or candy.  You really couldn't go wrong.  I saw so many movies here that I couldn't even begin to list them all.

Sadly, the business model of running a movie theater at dollar store prices wasn't sustainable.  The Key closed in 2003 and was sold to new owners.  They renamed the theater to Cinema & Drafthouse and changed the business model to a hybrid movie theater and restaurant.

We saw several movies at the Cinema & Drafthouse over the years, but if I'm being completely honest, I wasn't happy with the changes at all.  Obviously, they couldn't keep it as a dollar house and turn a profit, but they didn't have to rip the seats out of a historic theater and turn it into something that looked and felt like a lecture hall from a community college.

I'm also not an especially big fan of the "dinner and a movie" hybrid concept.  When I go to see a movie, I don't want to be distracted by servers who sometimes walk directly in front of you, and I really don't want to hear the sounds of people eating and drinking.  On the other side of this, when I go to a restaurant, I want to talk with my dinner companions and not be distracted by a screen.  Combining these two concepts into a single business results in a movie watching experience that is inferior to practically every other theater, and a restaurant that is inferior to practically every other restaurant.  I'm sure that there's a way to make this concept work, like maybe a lower level that serves as the restaurant floor and a balcony that has traditional theater seating for folks who just want to watch the film, but the side of this property wouldn't allow for something like that.

Even if they were to stumble on the right balance of an optimal theater and restaurant experience, the simple fact is that I don't always want to get something to eat when I go out to a movie.  There have been quite a few times when they were showing a movie that I would have definitely gone to see if it was just a movie theater, but I wasn't hungry, so I didn't go.  Naturally, the people who run the place will tell you that you don't have to order food, but then why go here at all instead of the Regal Cinema that's less than two miles away?

If the food was really good, it could have potentially made me overlook the things that I didn't love about this place, but it was just kind of... meh.  Nothing that I've eaten there was bad, but it wasn't especially good either.  If the same food was served at a roadside diner, it would be the kind of place that I'd visit once just to take in the ambiance and never go back.

Despite my gripes about the Cinema & Drafthouse, there were definitely some positive things about the place.  First of all, it was the perfect for screening smaller projects that had local appeal, like the Angela Park documentary that we saw here in 2017.  It was also a pretty great venue for sports, and it was where I saw the Eagles win their first Super Bowl the following year.  They also were a great spot for stand-up comedy, and it became an annual Thanksgiving Eve tradition to see Raymond The Amish Comic here with my dad.

So now, after 23 years in operation as the Cinema & Drafthouse and after over a century of showing movies on the big screen in West Hazleton, PA, the little single screen theater on Broad Street has closed its doors.

I can't help but to wonder what this place could have been if it had turned into a retro cinema like The Mahoning or The Gap back in 2003.  The current cinema culture has shown that people will travel across the country, or even around the world, to see a classic film on 35mm, particularly when it's screened in a historic venue.  The Mahoning and The Gap also show that a retro cinema theater doesn't need to be in a big city to be successful, as Lehighton and Wind Gap are are no larger than West Hazleton, and they're less accessible to travelers than the Cinema & Drafthouse which is just a few miles off of I-81.  There are also places like The Colonial Theater in Phoenixville which show that an entire downtown culture can spring up around a theater that shows classic films if it's done right.

It's depressing to think about what this place could have been and what it's going to be now that it has been sold; another lost opportunity for the Hazleton area.

There's One Winner And No Finish Line

The Long Walk
Lionsgate (2025)
This movie is based on Stephen King's first novel which he wrote as a college freshman, although it wasn't published until 1979.  It's one of my favorite works of dystopian fiction, but I didn't think it was the kind of story that would work well as a film.  I'm very glad to be wrong.  Francis Lawrence knocked it out of the park!

The Pool On The Roof Must Have A Leak

Hackers

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
Tonight's movie was a digital presentation of a mid 90's classic that put Angelina Jolie and Matthew Lillard on the map, Hackers.

Hackers premiered when I was fifteen years old.  The internet was in its infancy as a consumer product at the time, and its growing role in the world seemed to spark a wave of action, sci-fi, and horror films that were centered around the dark side of technology.  The best of these, in my view, was The Matrix, but it came at the end of a decade that included The Net, Johnny Mnemonic, Strange Days, The Thirteenth Floor, Virtuosity, The Lawnmower Man and its sequel, and I'm sure many others that I've forgotten about.  Hackers kind of got lost in the shuffle for me, so tonight was my first time seeing it.  Based on nothing other than my memory of the poster and the VHS box art, I expected it to be kind of cheese, and I suppose that some parts of it are, but it's a lot better than I thought it was going to be.

Bleed All Over 'Em... Let 'Em Know You're There.

Sports Slob-Tacular: The Bad News Bears / Slap Shot

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA

I've been advocating for a sports movie weekend to anyone who will listen as long as I've been going to the Mahoning.  We got one this year, and it was a hell of a double feature.  I really hope that this becomes an annual.

First up was the 1976 baseball classic The Bad News Bears.  This movie is a product of its time.  If they were to remake it in 2025, it couldn't be anything at all like the original.  Could you imagine some of Tanner Boyle's lines in a modern movie?  Although it's the furthest thing in the world from being politically correct by modern standards, it's an absolute classic and a must-see for any baseball fan.  I saw it for the first time when I was about the age of the younger kids on the Bears, and it's a movie that I've never forgotten.

 

The second film is another time capsule of the late seventies, the 1977 ice hockey classic Slap Shot.  I watched this for the first time during the pandemic.  At first, I didn't really get what all the hype was about, but it landed with me this time.  I've come to learn that I really struggle with movies when I watch them at home.  I allow myself to get distracted by too many things, and I end up missing a lot of the dialogue.  Seeing it on 35mm on the big screen helped me to appreciate this movie for the comedic masterpiece that it is.

The secret feature was a baseball-themed comedy from the mid 90's.  I don't want to say too much about it, but I saw it on the big screen for the first time during its original theatrical run.  I was living in South Florida and playing baseball at the time, so I absolutely loved it.  Seeing it again on the big screen was a real treat, and I'm happy to say that it still holds up over thirty years later.

Let's Take A Trip To Gorezo's Fungeon

Luther's Mid-Fright Marathon
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

Hayden Hall and his gang were back at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater tonight to celebrate their series Luther's Mid-Fright Snacks.  It's a hell of a lot of fun, but it's difficult to describe.  Thankfully, they're all available to stream on YouTube for free, so you can have a look for yourself.

But there's nothing quite like having a few gummies and seeing it on the big screen under the stars.

Next up was Hayden's feature film, Pizza Party Massacre.

 

Pizza Party Massacre premiered at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater last September.  It's entirely shot on VHS and features Virgil in a small role.  This movie is about as low budget indy as it gets, and like the Mid Fright Snack series, it's a hell of a lot of fun!