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.

A 90's Horror Dusk-til-Dawn Marathon

Exhumed Films: 90's Horror Screamover

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tomorrow
Silverchair (1995)

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

The Mad Hatter Of Southern Rock

Southern Accents

Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers (1985)

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

Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers (1985)

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

Moonlight Scene

Postcard
Hazle Park - West Hazleton, PA  (1910)

Heroes Always Have Their Scars

George Foreman
1949-2025

You Put The Lime In The Cherry Sprite

Sprite Chill Cherry Lime
The Coca-Cola Company (2025)
This had an interesting flavor that reminded me a bit of Luden's Wild Cherry cough drops, but I think it's much too sweet.  I'm hoping to find the Zero Sugar version to try.

What If You Could Find Brand New Worlds Right Here On Earth...

Sliders
Fox (1995)
A science fiction television series that had potential to become one of the greatest of all time premiered thirty years ago today.

Sliders began its life on March 22nd, 1995 as a mid-season replacement on the Fox network.  It was an hour long show that starred Jerry O'Connell as Quinn Mallory, a young genius who accidentally invents a device that allows people to travel into parallel worlds.  He, along with his co-worker and love interest Wade Welles (Sabrina Lloyd), his college professor Maximilian Arturo (John Rhys-Davies), and a singer who was in the wrong place at the wrong time named Rembrandt Brown (Cleavant Derricks) travel through the wormhole created by Quinn's device and end up getting lost in the multiverse.  Each episode featured the group "sliding" into a different parallel world in an attempt to finally get back home.

Starlog Science Fiction Explorer (June 1995)

The concept of a multiverse is a relatively common plot device after it has been popularized by the Marvel Cinematic Universe and in movies such as Everything Everywhere All At Once which won the Academy Award for Best Picture a few years ago.  However, this was rarely used on television or in movies thirty years ago.  The concept was explored in an episode of The Twilight Zone and several times on Star Trek, but it wasn't the kind of thing that people generally understood unless you were a sci-fi nerd.  I think this lack of familiarity with the idea of parallel worlds was one of the things that kept Sliders from being a big hit when it first aired.  A lot of write ups about the show back in the mid 90's compared it to Quantum Leap, which is another excellent show, but the only thing it has in common with Sliders is the fact that the travelers have no control over where they're going or when they leave.

This show will forever be linked in my memory with the days of dial-up internet.  I was 14 years old when it premiered.  Not long afterward, I got an IBM Aptiva computer from Radio Shack, and a 28.8k modem to go online.  One of the first things that I looked up was Sliders, and I came across a message board run by MCA Universal called the Sliders NetForum where I used the username neonrocketship for the first time.  I didn't post very often, but I checked the boards after every episode to see what folks were saying about the show.

 

I spent even more time back in those days working on my first website, which was a Sliders fan page in the Area 51 community of GeoCities.  I have long since forgotten what it was called, but I remember having a gadget called the Snappy Video Snapshot hooked up to my computer and my VCR to capture jpgs from the show to upload to the GeoCities page.

Computer Life (October 1995)
scanned and shared by Vintage Computing & Gaming

Does anybody else remember this thing?  I spent hours of my life as a teenager going through VHS tapes of movies and shows trying to pause it at exactly the right moment to get the perfect image on my computer.  Clearly I was one of the cook kids... not nerdy at all... no sir-eee.

The first three seasons of Sliders were broadcast on Fox.  If you're going to watch it in 2025, my recommendation is that you stick to these three seasons.  Network meddling began to rear its ugly head midway through the third season, which led the show's co-creators Tracy Tormé, Robert K. Weiss, and John Landis to drop out of the series altogether.  This left David Peckinpah in charge, who wasted no time in running the series into the ground.

Sliders was cancelled by Fox after the third season.  It was picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel for the fourth and fifth seasons.  At the time, I was happy to see that the show had been saved and hopeful that it would get back to its roots going forward, but that didn't happen.  The fourth and fifth season had a handful interesting ideas for parallel worlds, but the show had become an absolute train wreck.  The series finale at the end of the fifth season felt more like a mercy killing than a celebration.

Sliders is available to stream on Peacock and Fandango.  The series was also released on DVD, and new old stock of the box sets are still pretty easy to find on eBay for very reasonable prices.  I absolutely loved this series when I was a teenager and I strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoys science fiction, but I just as strongly recommend sticking to just the first three seasons.  You'll see a sharp decline in the show from the start to the end of the third season, but I assure you, the worst episode of the first three seasons is still a lot better than what comes after that.

The Philadelphia Inquirer (March 22, 1995)

The One And Only

Mickey 17
Warner Bros Pictures (2025)
Based on the trailer, I was expecting this to be kind of a slapstick comedy about a guy who gets paid to die over and over again.  The more I saw that trailer, the less interested I was in going to see the film.  It has been getting impressive reviews so I decided to check it out, and I'm glad that I did.

This movie reminds me of RoboCop and Starship Troopers.  There is a dark comedic undertone, but the world building is taken seriously.  The villain of the film is an over-the-top former Senator and present-day cult leader who is this film's representation of Donald Trump, and his wife who is essentially a straight up parody of Tammy Faye Bakker.  They're in charge of an expedition to colonize another planet.  This feels like a bit of wish fulfillment, as nothing would make me happier than seeing their real-world counterparts and their followers launched into space to go screw up some other world and leave the rest of us to clean up the mess they've made on Earth.

It's not doing well in the box office, but I think Mikey 17 has all of the makings of a future cult classic.  It probably won't be in theaters too much longer, so I'd recommend checking it out this weekend while you still can.

Happy First Day Of Spring

Almond Blossom
Vincent van Gogh (1890)
There is a framed print of this hanging sideways in my living room.  I didn't realize it was sideways when I first hung it up, but I've gotten used to it so it has remained sideways.

Reach Out And Touch Faith

Violator
Depeche Mode (1990)
My favorite Depeche Mode album, and one of my favorite albums from any band, was released 35 years ago today.  Violator is an incredible album from start to finish with no skippable tracks.  The song that has probably stood the test of time that I still hear on the radio today is its first single, Personal Jesus.  The opening track and the namesake of Richard Blade's autobiography, World In My Eyes, is another excellent song.  However, my favorite song on the album is a tie between these two:

Enjoy The Silence
Depeche Mode (1990)

Words like violence break the silence

Come crashing in into my little world

Painful to me, pierce right through me

Can't you understand, oh my little girl

All I ever wanted

All I ever needed is here in my arms

Words are very unnecessary

They can only do harm

Vows are spoken to be broken

Feelings are intense, words are trivial

Pleasures remain, so does the pain

Words are meaningless and forgettable

All I ever wanted

All I ever needed is here in my arms

Words are very unnecessary

They can only do harm

Enjoy the silence

Policy Of Truth

Depeche Mode (1990)

You had something to hide

Should have hidden it, shouldn't you?

Now you're not satisfied

With what you're being put through

It's just time to pay the price

For not listening to advice

And deciding in your youth

On the policy of truth

Things could be so different now

It used to be so civilized

You will always wonder how

It could have been if you'd only lied

It's too late to change events

It's time to face the consequence

For delivering the proof

In the policy of truth

Never again is what you swore

The time before

Now you're standing there tongue-tied

You'd better learn your lesson well

Hide what you have to hide

And tell what you have to tell

You'll see your problems multiplied

If you continually decide

To faithfully pursue

The policy of truth

Never again is what you swore

The time before

The Pains Of Living A Painless Life

Novocaine
Paramount Pictures (2025)

This is a fun movie that reminds me a little bit of Love Hurts in that it features a nerdy guy with a regular job who is drawn into a battle with bad guys to save his love interest.  The hook in this film is that the nerdy guy in question, played by Jack Quaid, has a genetic condition called CIPA which makes him unable to feel pain.  It may sound like a pretty cool superpower to have, but people who suffer from this condition have an average life expectancy of 25.  His character, Nathan Caine, has to live his life with such caution that he doesn't consume anything that he would have to chew because there's a danger that he could bite off his own tongue without even knowing that he had done it.

Novocaine isn't the kind of movie that's likely to be on too many people's top ten lists at the end of the year, but it's a solid action comedy that I think most people who see it would enjoy.  If you don't catch it in theaters, this might be a good one to save for December.  The story is set during the holiday season with villains who are introduced to the film dressed as Santa Claus.  It's no Die Hard, but I could see it turning into a holiday tradition.

Our Pluto Mining Stations Are Now In Unknown Hands

Descent
Interplay (1995)
The classic science fiction first-person shooter Descent was released thirty years ago today.  It's one of two games on CD Rom (the other being Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure) that came bundled with the first computer that I bought for myself, an IBM Aptiva.  I'm not a big fan of first person shooters but I had a lot of fun with this game.

I can honestly tell you that the 14 year old version of me would not believe that video game graphics could get much better than this.  It's still a lot of fun to play in 2025.  You can get it today on Steam for less than ten bucks.

Elvis Has Entered The Ice Cream Parlor

Sundaes On Broadway
South Broadway - Wind Gap, PA
Just a few doors down from The Gap Theatre is a very nice ice cream parlor that I highly recommend to anyone who's stopping in to see a movie.

This place is just downright charming.  There's plenty of seating available and a hell of a good selection of sundaes, shakes, and other frozen desserts.

I had the Elvis Sundae, which is made with peanut butter sauce, caramel, cut up banana slices, whipped cream and a cherry on top of your choice of ice cream flavors.  My base was Vanilla Peanut Butter ice cream, just because it seemed like it would blend well with the rest of the sundae.  Very tasty!

We Will Cure This Planet Of The Disease Of Human Pollution

Terror Of Mechagodzilla
Toho (1975)
The 15th film in the Godzilla franchise premiered in Japan fifty years ago today.

You Can't Take Back All Those Years

A Boy Named Goo
Goo Goo Dolls (1995)
The album that propelled Goo Goo Dolls into the mainstream was released thirty years ago today.  A Boy Named Goo is the band's fifth studio album, but it's the first of their records that a lot of their fans heard, and I am no exception.  I was 14 years old when I first heard this record and it immediately tapped in what I was feeling at the time.  Hearing those songs today has a way of taking me back to that place and wanting to hop in a time machine to go find my younger self to let him know that this shit will all work out... you just have to hang in there.

I've already written about Name before, so this time, I'm going to focus on the fourth single that came out of the album, Naked.  The lyrics are a pretty straight forward self-examination of anxiety and loneliness.  Hearing it today reminds me of the song Ask by The Smiths, almost as if the person singing Naked is the one that Morrissey was singing to in Ask. 

Naked

Goo Goo Dolls (1995)

Yeah I'm fading

And I call out

No one hears me

Never been, never felt, never thought I'd say a word

Weighed down

Safe now

You're naked inside your fear

You can't take back all those years

And shots in the dark from empty guns

Are never heard by anyone

Yeah I'm hiding

In the fallout

Now I'm wasted

They don't need me, don't want me, don't hear a word I say

Weighed down

Safe now

You're naked inside your fear

You can't take back all those years

And shots in the dark from empty guns

Are never heard by anyone

Inside your head

No one's there

And I don't think I'll ever be

And I don't care

You're naked inside your fear

You can't take back all those years

And shots in the dark from empty guns

Are never heard by anyone