Apr 9, 2025

Rediscovering The Bomb


The Market: Antiques, Crafts, and Collectibles
Laurel Mall - Hazleton, PA
This store opened in the Laurel Mall in October 2024, but this was my first time stopping by.  It's sort of like Black Diamond or the Slatington Marketplace, but on a much smaller scale.  It's made up of vendors who rent space to display their merchandise, all of which you pay for at a single cash register in the middle of the store.

One of the things that I'm always on the lookout for in places like this are Garbage Pail Kids; specifically the ones that came out when I was a kid in the mid to late 80's.  These are getting pretty hard to find these days.  Topps brought the product line back in 2003, and they've produced dozens of different series over the past twenty years.  The new ones are alright, but I really don't have much interest in collecting these sets other than to buy the occasional sticker, like the ones that spoofed Bryce Harper and Joe Bob Briggs.

One of the vendors had a sign to announce to customers that they had Garbage Pail Kids for sale.  They were kept in three-ring binders in a locked case so I couldn't immediately see what they were, but based on the Funko Pop toys and other merchandise near the sign, I thought that the cards they had were probably from the 2000's.  But, I thought "what the hell" and asked the man at the cash register to unlock the case so that I could take a look at what they had, and I'm very glad that I did.


Not only did they have a good selection of Garbage Pail Kids from the 80's, but many of them were from Series 1 and 2 which I almost never find outside of a card show.  And right there in the center of the first page of the binder of cards was the holy grail: Sticker #8a - Adam Bomb.  It wasn't in gem mint condition, but I've never been picky about that sort of thing.  As long as the card isn't wrecked and the price is fair for the shape that the card is in, I'm in.  This one checked both of those boxes, so for the first time since the six year old me foolishly peeled this sticker and stuck it on the swing set in my grandparents back yard, I am the proud owner of the flagship card in the Garbage Pail Kids series.


I ended up getting these four cards from Series One and about a half dozen others from Series Two.  None of them are in fantastic condition, but you really couldn't beat the price.  The Geeky Gary card was 99 cents. There are ones on eBay right now in worse shape than this one that are selling for over ten bucks.  I don't think I'd ever pay collectors prices for these, but it's kind of fun to try to put together a full set just on what happens to pop up at yard sales, flea markets, and places like this store in the Laurel Mall.

Apr 8, 2025

He-Man And The Pierogie Omelette


The Freeland Diner
Freeland, PA
We watched a documentary on Pennsylvania diners last week, and it inspired us to make a plan to check out a few places that we've never been to before.  The first place on our list was The Freeland Diner.


My wife loves pierogies, so she had the Pierogie Omelette.  She gave me a bite of it, and it was delicious!  I was tempted to order this for myself, but I ended up getting something else that was equally outstanding.


I had the He-Man Breakfast with three eggs over easy, hash browns, scrapple, pancakes, Texas toast with butter and jam, a glass of orange juice, and coffee.  This is the kind of breakfast I could have every day.  We'll definitely be making this place one of our regular spots.

Apr 7, 2025

The Official Beverage Of The Easton Assassin


Larry Holmes Cream Soda
A-Treat (2025)
It doesn't get much more Pennsylvania than an A-Treat soda named after former World Heavyweight Champion Larry Holmes.


This is a pretty darn good cream soda, but I wish they made it in sugar-free.

Apr 6, 2025

Hold The Phone, Ponce de León


The Woman In The Yard
Blumhouse Productions (2025)
The reviews that I've seen for The Woman In The Yard have been pretty brutal, but I didn't think it was bad.  It's probably not going to end up in any of my favorites lists, and I will agree that the trailer looked better than the film ended up being, but I found it to be a decent psychological horror flick overall.  I tend to struggle with movies that have a lot of dream and hallucination scenes where the viewer is left to question what is real and what is in the mind of the characters, but it's not something that they could have changed and kept the story intact.


Death Of A Unicorn
A24 (2025)
I've grown tired of the "horror comedy" sub-genre and think it's long past due for horror films to just be horror films, but I still had fun watching this.  It felt like parts of it were inspired by Ready Or Not and the Jurassic World trilogy, which is definitely not two things that I thought I'd be comparing Death Of A Unicorn to when I saw the trailer.  If you don't go into this expecting it to be a serious horror flick, you have a pretty good chance of enjoying this.

Apr 4, 2025

Introducing The Amazing Rocket Head


Alien Lanes
Guided By Voices (1995)
The first Guided By Voices album to be released on Matador Records, and the band's eighth full length album overall, turns thirty years old today.


I first became aware of Guided By Voices when I was 15 years old.  There was a music store in my town called Gallery Of Sound that kept a box of magazines from previous months that went unsold, and customers were allowed to take anything from that box for free.  You didn't even have to buy anything, but you'd definitely get a dirty look from the old man behind the counter if you just showed up, grabbed an armload of magazines, and then left.  Ask me how I know.

Anyway, some of these magazines came with CDs that had a mix of tracks from different artists that were featured in that month's issue.  One of the songs on one of those CDs that I fell in love with instantly was The Official Ironmen Rally Song by Guided By Voices.  After hearing it for the first time, I wanted to discover more music by the band, and Alien Lanes was my first step into this rabbit hole.  Something about it hits me in just the right way.  Listening to this album feels like the audio equivalent of laying in a pile of blankets with a big cup of coffee on a snowy day where you're not obligated to do anything.

Apr 3, 2025

Let Me Have Just A Little Bit Of Peril


Monty Python and the Holy Grail
EMI Films (1975)
One of the funniest movies of all time is turning fifty years old today.


I don't know where I'd rank Monty Python and the Holy Grail in my list of favorite comedies, but it's definitely in the top ten.  If you've never seen it before, do yourself a favor and set aside 92 minutes of your day to laugh your ass off at the brilliance and creativity of this film.  It's available to stream for free (no subscription needed) on Tubi, Pluto, Plex, and The Roku Channel.

Apr 1, 2025

Eating The Bungo


Bungo Choco Mochi
Orion (2025)
I was tempted to title this entry "...And Bungo Was His Name-O", but I went with this just to see what else comes up in the search results when you Google this post.

This little box of snack cakes was at the Union gas station that I stopped at on the way home from The Gap on Sunday morning.  They were being sold individually, so I grabbed one along with a cup of coffee that helped to keep me awake for the drive home.  I was originally going to get an energy drink, but the sign on the front door was too enticing.


I mean, how could I say no?


Bungo Choco Mochi are snack cakes that look like giant fluffy Goldfish crackers that are stuffed with a thick chocolate cream that sort of tastes like the center of an E.L. Fudge cookie.  I guess they're supposed to be filled with mochi too, but I didn't see or taste anything other than chocolate.  They're not terrible; maybe a little spongy for my taste, but I'd get one if I saw 'em again.

Mar 31, 2025

Spot Takes The Tropics


7Up Tropical
Keurig Dr Pepper (2025)
This company is absolutely killing it, both with the wide variety of flavors of 7Up and Dr. Pepper that they're producing, and for the fact that they make all of them available in Zero Sugar.


7Up Tropical is a lemon lime soda blended with peach and mango, and it's freakin' outstanding!  I only picked up one case in our last shopping trip.  Next time, I'm going to stock up so that we'll have it for drive-in season.

Mar 30, 2025

A 90's Horror Dusk-til-Dawn Marathon


The Gap Theatre - Wind Gap, PA
For nearly 30 years, Exhumed Films has hosted screenings of retro films and cult classics, including 12 and 24 hour themed marathons where you don't know what movies you're going to see until you buy a ticket and show up for the event.  I've been to quite a few Exhumed events at the Mahoning, the Colonial, and the Gap since 2021, but this is the first time I've been in attendance for one of their mystery movie marathons.


The 90s Horror Screamover was a six movie marathon of horror flicks from the 1990's with vintage trailers between each of the features.  It began at 9:00 pm last night and continued through nearly 9:00 am this morning.  It took a little bit of adjustment on my Friday night and Saturday afternoon sleeping schedule, but I managed to stay awake for the whole thing.


Johnny and Nick who I met at the Mahoning were in attendance as well, so I was lucky enough to enjoy the night with friends.


I sat in the middle of the theater for the Indiana Jones double feature and at the top of the stairs on the right hand side of the screen for the John Carpenter triple feature.  This time, I was in the back row by the exits.  It's a good place to settle in with plenty of leg room, and it has the added advantage of being able to stand up and stretch your legs during the movie without disturbing anyone else in the theater.


The first movie of the night was Clive Barker's 1990 fantasy horror film Nightbreed.  I've seen the VHS cover of this flick so many times over the past 30ish years that I always assumed that I saw it before, but I quickly realized that this was my first time seeing it and I thought that it was pretty great.  Not sure how I've gone this long without seeing it, but I'm glad that my first experience  was a 35mm print at a retro theater.
 

The second movie of the night was my favorite film of the night: the 1990 Charles Philip Moore film Demon Wind.  I've come to learn that it was one of the movies hosted by Joe Bob Briggs on The Last Drive-In back in 2019, but either I missed that week or my memory has gotten a lot worse because I don't remember ever seeing this movie before.  It's one of those horror flicks that seems like it's trying to be sincere, but ends up being one of the most hysterically funny things you'll ever see.


The third movie was the 1990 psychological horror classic Jacob's Ladder.  I saw this for the first time on the mid 90's, either on home video or on one of the pay channels, but I was a bit too young to be able to fully understand the story at the time.  This was probably the first time I've seen it in over twenty years, and having the opportunity to see in on 35mm on the big screen with no distractions gave me a new level of appreciation for this great film.


The fourth flick was a 1990 cult classic that I had never seen or heard of before.  Shakma is the story of a med school professor, his students, and a baboon who they have injected with an experimental drug which unexpectedly fills the animal with violent rage.  Later that night, the animal hunt and kills while the professor and his students participate in an elaborate live action role playing game across the building.  This movie just screams early 90's and is a hell of a lot of fun.


The fifth movie was a 1991 film adaptation of a HP Lovecraft novella, The Resurrected.  I enjoyed it, but if I'm being honest, it was my least favorite movie of the night.


The sixth and final movie of the night was Frank Henenlotter's sequel to his 1982 directorial debut, the 1990 dark comedy horror film Basket Case 2.  I'm pretty sure I saw this before, but it's been a very long time since I sat down and watched it from start to finish.  The story picks up right where Basket Case left off, starting with a woman and her adult granddaughter rescuing Duane and Belial and bringing them back to her home, the attic of which she has turned into a sanctuary for severely deformed people.  For as much as I enjoy the first film in the series, I think that I love this one even more.  It was a perfect end to an awesome night of movies at The Gap.


And that's a wrap on the 90s Horror Screamover.  This was a hell of a lot of fun and it definitely will not be my last Exhumed Films marathon.

Mar 29, 2025

Nobody Named Blackie Is Sincere


Desperately Seeking Susan
Orion Pictures (1985)
The Susan Seidelman cult classic film Desperately Seeking Susan premiered in theaters forty years ago today.

Mar 28, 2025

One, Two, Three Strikes... I'm Out


The Phillies season started yesterday with a 7-3 victory against the Washington Nationals.  It didn't look like it was going to be a good day for the Fightins for most of the game.  Nationals pitcher MacKenzie Gore struck out 13 batters while giving up just one hit and no walks through the first six innings.  The Nats went to their bullpen in the top of the 7th and the Phillies beat up on five Washington relievers to win in extra innings.

Getting shut down by a league average starter who led all of baseball in wild pitches last season and has yet to finish a season with more wins than losses is not exactly an inspiring performance from this Phillies lineup.  It's especially concerning coming off of another early playoff exit last season which saw the Mets exploit the Phillies free-swinging tendencies at breaking pitches outside of the strike zone.  The Phillies had the fourth highest chase rate in 2024, which was highlighted in a mid-September series against the Brewers in which they struck out 40 times in three games, including back-to-back games in which Phillies batters struck out sixteen times.  The Mets had them well scouted, striking out 41 batters in the NLDS.  With this team's reputation for mashing fastballs and chasing every other pitch out of the zone, I'd be shocked if opposing pitchers don't feed the Phillies a steady diet of curveballs, sinkers, and cutters while laying off of the heat.


If I'm being completely honest, I'm not feeling overly enthusiastic for the 2025 season.  I expect that the Phillies will have a good season and will reach the playoffs (barring major injuries), but I don't have a lot of hope that they're going to win the World Series.  For the most part, they're running back the same team with the same flaws that saw them go down in defeat to the Astros in 2022, the Diamondbacks in 2023, and the Mets in 2024.  Three of the four major additions to the team in 2025 are pitchers (starter Jesús Luzardo and relievers Jordan Romano and Joe Ross) who seem more like low risk lottery tickets than the missing piece to a championship.  The only new position player is 32 year old left fielder Max Kepler, who is not only another left-handed bat to a lineup that's already a bit too heavy from the left side, but also a career .238 hitter whose best season is now six years behind him.  Any one of these guys could be due for a change-of-scenery comeback season, but even in the unlikely event that all four of them have career years, it's not going to fix the problem that saw them get outsmarted in the playoffs for the past three seasons.  I hope they prove me wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.

However, my lack of enthusiasm for the 2025 season has less to do with the team itself and more to do with the cost of seeing them play in person.


I reserve the right to change my mind, but I think this is going to be the first season since 2014 (not counting the pandemic) that I don't go down to Philadelphia to see a game.  The amount of money that I'd have to spend to see a game at Citizens Bank Park compared to what I'd spend on a night out doing anything else that I enjoy has gotten so out of whack that I just can't justify it to myself anymore.

First of all, parking is $25 and it costs $8 in tolls each way on the Turnpike, so we're already over $40, and that's not counting the cost of gas for the 200 miles round trip, or food and drinks at the ballpark, or ticket prices.  Speaking of which...
 

When I first started going to games, the Phillies published their ticket prices at the start of the season.  The cost was determined by how good the seats were.  Generally speaking, the closer you were to the field, the more expensive your ticket was.  They had a special deal once in a while that brought the price down, but the only way you'd pay any more is if you bought your tickets from a third party, like StubHub or eBay, or from a scalper outside the ballpark.

The Phillies don't publish the cost of their tickets on a list like this anymore because they've adopted Dynamic Ticket Pricing.  Prices are set on a wide variety of factors, none of which the customers are informed about other than that it's based on "demand".  Some of the factors that go into the cost of your ticket are obvious.  For example, tickets to a game on the weekend, an interleague game, or a games against the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers will theoretically cost more than the average game because they're in demand.  However, there's no easy way to know how much more these games might cost because the prices of any game can change at any time for any reason, and you aren't told what those prices are until you log into the website and choose a game and a seat.  If you log in the next day to choose those same seats at that same game, the cost of your ticket may be higher or lower than it was the day before.  You might get lucky and get a halfway decent deal on your tickets, or you might be a sucker who pays twice as much for your seats as the person who you'll be sitting next to.  Sounds like fun, huh?

When I go to the ballpark, I prefer to be either behind home plate or on the first base side, but I'm not super picky about how close I am to the field.  I've had seats where I was just a few rows from the infield grass, and I've had seats that were in the top row of the 400 section with the fence to the outside of the ballpark at my back.  So, when tickets for single games went on sale, I logged in to see how much tickets would be for my birthday.  My birthday falls on a Tuesday this year and they're playing the Padres, but there's a fireworks show after the game, so where this combination falls on the team's dynamic pricing hierarchy is anyone's guess.


When I logged in, I headed straight for the nosebleed seats - the 400 section, also known as the Terrace Deck.  Specifically, I went to Section 420 which is behind home plate, and I picked two seats in the very last row.  We sat in these exact same seats several times over the years.  I remembered that because... well.... 420... and because our seats were right next to a beam that kind of made it feel like you were sitting in the corner.  Surely there can't be too much demand for a game in the middle of the week in the highest seats in the ballpark (no pun intended)... right?


They're showing today at $65 bucks each, which means a night out at the ballpark on my birthday for my wife and I, including gas, tolls, parking, and food, would cost around $250.

Look, I get it... inflation is a bitch and I can't expect things to cost the same in 2025 that they did in 2011, but this is a Tuesday night game against the Padres... one game out of 162 regular season games that the Phillies will play this season.  Unless Zack Wheeler pitches a no-hitter or Bryce Harper hits four home runs, there's a pretty good chance that I wouldn't even remember who won the game by the end of the month without looking back on my blog.

To put the value for your dollar in perspective, the total cost for tickets to the first six nights of the 2025 season at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater comes to $62.  That's nine movies across six nights (not counting secret features) at my favorite place in the world to relax and hang out with my friends... all for $3 less than the cost of a single ticket to a Tuesday night game at Citizens Bank Park.  I'm sorry, but this isn't even close.  Two and a half hours at a ballpark is not worth the same amount of money to me as roughly 30 hours at the drive-in.  Even if the drive-in didn't exist, if I'm going to spend $250 bucks on a night out with my wife, I'd rather go to a concert, or go out to a nice dinner and to a museum that she likes, or an aquarium or something like that.  Hell, I'd rather go see a minor league game at Reading or Allentown and pocket the difference.  The point is that I've reached a point in my life, and the Phillies have reached a point in their pricing, where I just can't justify it anymore.  I'm not saying that I've seen my last game at Citizens Bank Park, but unless I hit Powerball or the team drastically reduces their prices, going to a Phillies game has fallen to the bottom of the list of things I'm considering to spend my entertainment budget on.

Mar 27, 2025

The George Costanza Trio


Frogstomp
Silverchair (1995)
The debut album from Australian rock band Silverchair was released thirty years ago today.  This was a fairly big deal to be at the time because it's the first time that a band that I was seeing on MTV was my age.  I was 14 years old when this album first appeared in stores.  The band's lead singer and guitarist Daniel Johns, bassist Chris Joannou, and drummer Ben Gillies were all 15 years old.


The hit single that brought them mainstream attention in the United States and around the world is called Tomorrow.  It played all the time on MTV and although I liked the song then and still do today, I had no idea what the lyrics meant.  The only thing I knew is that every time I heard Daniel sing the word "fatboy", all I could think of was Conrad Bennish from the Last Days episode of Sliders that aired at around the same time that I first heard the song.

The Aquarian Weekly  (January 17, 1996)

According to an interview that Daniel had with The Aquarian Weekly, Tomorrow was inspired by a television show that he saw.  I have no idea what show he's talking about, but it's a great song regardless.

It's twelve o'clock and it's a wonderful day
I know you hate me but I'll ask anyway
Won't you come with me to a place in a little town
The only way to get there's to go straight down
There's no bathroom and there is no sink
The water out of the tap is very hard to drink

You wait until tomorrow

You say that money isn't everything
But I'd like to see you live without it
You think you can keep on goin' living like a king
Ooh babe, but I strongly doubt it

Very hard to drink

You gonna wait too fat boy
Fat boy wait until tomorrow

Mar 26, 2025

The Mad Hatter Of Southern Rock


The sixth studio album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was released forty years ago today.  It's not my favorite Tom Petty album, but its first single spawned one of my favorite music videos of the decade.
Don't come around here no more
Don't come around here no more
Whatever you're looking for
Don't come around here no more

I've given up, stop
I've given up, stop
I've given up on waiting any longer
I've given up on this love getting stronger

I don't feel you anymore
You darken my door
Whatever you're looking for
Don't come around here no more

I've given up, stop
I've given up, stop
I've given up, you tangle my emotions
I've given up, honey please, admit it's over

Stop walking down my street
Don't come around here no more
Who did you expect to meet?
Don't come around here no more
Whatever you're looking for
Don't come around here no more

Honey please
Don't come around here no more
Whatever you're looking for
Don't come around here no more