Just as in horror movies, there are certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully survive an advertising campaign. Sex, of course, sells almost anything. Unless you’re marketing to children. Then you should probably find another route. That’s where animal mascots come in. Mascots like today’s furry, fluffy Flashback Friday special guest: Chester Cheetah.

I’m a sucker for a cute animal mascot. I’ve admittedly been charmed by the likes of the Snuggle Bear, Spuds Mackenzie (which included an incident at school in which I was told I either had to turn my Spuds T-shirt inside out or risk being sent home on suspension; I guess Baptists aren’t Bud Light fans), the Coca-Cola polar bears, the Taco Bell chihuahua, the Cadbury Egg Easter bunny, the Puma puma…it’s slightly embarrassing how easily I can be manipulated by a cute advertising mascot.

But Chester Cheetah was sort of the icing on the cake for me. A big, finger-dying, fake cheese, fatty, fried cake. I loved those strange little color-not-found-in-nature orange doodles of puffy cheese crunch. They were always my favorite part of the Frito-Lay variety snack packs that my parents would buy for me for my school lunches. I haven’t had Cheetos in years, but I still salivate like a Pavlovian princess whenever I see a bag.

Adding Chester as the mascot to this already beloved snack food? Well, I can’t say that it was a stroke of genius in my case. I was already driving my parents crazy for bags of Cheetos. Chester didn’t really increase that pestering. However, I do remember drawing Chester on my school books and lusting after Chester-approved merchandise like school supplies, T-shirts, posters. I do believe there was also a Saturday morning cartoon and a couple of video games. I didn’t experience either, but I loved those silly commercials. They were always the same, apparently running from the same playbook used by Wile E. Coyote and the Trix rabbit: Chester sees Cheetos, wants Cheetos, tries to get Cheetos, fails. He then delivers catch phrase accompanied by goofy sound effect. Don’t believe me? Watch:

In addition to “It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Cheesy” and “The Cheese That Goes Crunch,” I also remember Chester using the line “Dangerously Cheesy.” Probably not a good catch phrase for a food snack that would soon come under fire for turning American children into unhealthy little pork balls.

I don’t think that Chester Cheetah has ever officially been retired by Cheetos. He just stopped appearing in television commercials for a while, but he was still around in print advertising and packaging. However, back in 2008, Cheetos decided to revamp Chester for the television market. This time, though, he wouldn’t be a whimsical children’s mascot.

These commercials instead targeted the original children of the Chester Cheetah generation: my generation. Chester changed from a cartoon into a puppet and apparently became a fake-cheese-induced delusion that encouraged Gen-Xers to wreak orange-fingered havoc on those they felt had somehow maligned them. The commercials encouraged us to join the “Orange Underground.” I never liked these commercials. They were extraordinarily creepy and lacked any of the kitschy charm that Chester used to possess. Not even the future Guild Queen herself, Felicia Day, could save this campaign for me:

Yeah, no thank you. Oh, and stay the hell away from my laundry with your Oompa Loompa fingers.

(I know, it’s not that far back a Flashback Friday today…but this is for all of those who are right now waiting for the moment when they can finally say “Goodbye Earl” to the latest hurricane sweeping up the East Coast. Soon, my shore-dwelling denizens! Very soon!)

Oh, those Dixie Chicks. Even before they were stirring up trouble with anti-Bush comments that knocked them from their status as country divas, they were treading hot water. One of the first times they rattled the cage? With the song “Goodbye Earl.” This third release from their second studio album, Fly, tells the story of two best friends, MaryAnn and Wanda, who get away with killing Wanda’s abusive husband, Earl (it also irritates me for its lack of proper punctuation in the title…but I think that’s just me).

[Loba Tangent: As if there wasn’t enough black humor all throughout this song, the Chicks released a single of “Goodbye Earl” with their own cover of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” as the B-side song. Oh, those clever girls.}

When “Goodbye Earl” came out in 1999, I remember varying degrees of “panties-in-a-wad” syndrome from several groups, including an interesting argument regarding an assumed racism on the part of stores and radio stations that willingly sold or played songs like “Goodbye Earl” or other songs from the country music genre that propagated murder as a solution while banning and condemning similarly themed songs from the rap music genre.

That’s an interesting argument, but one that doesn’t completely hold water in my opinion. While it is true that murder is being proposed as a solution both in “Goodbye Earl” and in songs like Ice-T’s “Cop Killer,” one is proposing it as a solution for escaping an abusive husband from whom Wanda is unable get protection via the “proper authorities.” The other is promoting random violence against any officer because of misdirected anger over police brutality. Ironically, both focus on the failures of the police to “protect and serve,” as is their credo.

I do agree that there is a certain bit of disingenuous disdain directed toward songs like “Cop Killer.” If you listen to this song, there is definitely a recognizable level of black humor taking place. Of course, you have to wade through a morass of overwrought obscenity and pedantic lyrics to get to it. To me, that’s the true failure of this song in comparison with “Goodbye Earl”: Where the latter is composed of clever lyrics that take on a dark and frightening situation in humorous but provocative ways, the former is just a pathetic, juvenile rant against something that deserves a far more intelligent argument against it.

Police brutality, just like domestic violence, should be addressed, but putting out a song with lyrics as “profound” as “Die, die, die, pig, die”? Sorry, but that just gets a FAIL. Guess I’m guilty of extreme snobbery when it comes to clever versus insipid writing. Also, I’m related to a former police officer who came as close to being killed while on duty as any of us would ever have preferred her to come. To hear a song that promotes the random killing of anyone wearing a police uniform really doesn’t sit well with me, regardless of the attempted black humor behind it.

Well, there you go. A little Dixie Chicks history and some armchair sociological blathering to boot. I guess I should at least post the video to the song now, eh? This is one of my all-time favorite music videos from one of my all-time favorite bands. It’s funny, it’s silly, it’s got recognizable actors, and it’s got happy, adorable dancing Dixie Chicks. With banjos. And a zombie. Seriously, what’s not to love?

Running on CBS from 1967 to 1978, The Carol Burnett Show was a wee bit before my time (well, except for those two seasons I watched from my playpen with my Clifford the Big Red Dog).

Thank the prophets for reruns. Every weekday evening on TBS (and, of course, after my homework was finished), I had the opportunity to laugh myself into oblivion at the genius comedy antics of Carol Burnett, Tim Conway, Harvey Korman, and Vicki Lawrence (sometimes the reruns that I saw would feature Lyle Waggoner, but I don’t think I ever saw the season that had Dick Van Dyke in it). More than just a comedy variety show, Burnett and her cast mates were amazingly adept at tapping into popular culture and lampooning it with inimitable style. Nothing was safe as they burned through spoofs of television, movies, commercials, music…anything was fair game.

My favorite part of the show, however, wasn’t necessarily the proper, rehearsed routines. Oh no. I loved the mistakes. The goofs and gaffs that typically would find their way onto show blooper reels, but with Burnett’s shows, they sometimes made their way on air. Why? Because they were hilarious. Sometimes even funnier than the “correct” skits. I’ve found a couple on YouTube along with a longer blooper reel. Surprisingly, YouTube has quite a few clips from The Carol Burnett Show, which I think is really cool. It also makes up for the fact that the show hasn’t been released in its entirety on DVD. Yet.

Burnett attempted to revive her variety show back in 1991, this time on NBC. Unfortunately, the era of variety shows had long since passed. It’s quite a shame, though. I remember this new show being funny. Not quite as good as her original run, but still able to provide solid laughs. Like the following skit, which of course would appeal to me. Not only is it a spoof of Star Trek, but it features Andrea Martin, who would later go on to play Quark’s mom on DS9. What is there not to love about this?

From the Angry Blogger^TM archives:

With all love and respect to Sammy the Wonder Car, I wish I still had my very first car. Well, it wasn’t really mine. But it was the first car I drove. It was a 1980 Chevrolet Chevette. Metallic blue that was the same color as a Smurf…thus the nickname “SmurfMobile.” Dark blue vinyl seats that could fry the skin right off your ass if you were unfortunate enough not to find parking in the shade in the summertime. Rear wheel drive that fishtailed in a snowstorm like Moby Dick on speed. With four cylinders, 85 was its top speed (but only if you liked the feel of a car getting ready to vibrate apart beneath you).

We traveled everywhere in that car when I was a kid. Family vacation time came around and it was me, my first dog Bear, and the cooler, all on the backseat. The hatchback would be loaded as would be any other spare spot that could store a bag, a blanket, a pillow, or anything else. We drove to Florida every year in that car.

Ah, those were indeed the days. I saw huge swaths of the East Coast, from Maryland all the way to Miami, from the windows of that little blue Chevette, which looked very much like this:

I’m still amazed at the mechanical genius of my father, and how he kept that Chevette road-worthy for more than 20 years. Not just road-worthy, but able to make the circuitous vacation journey of often more than 2,000 miles every year.

He was even able to keep it up and running for the terror of my early driving years. I nearly ran him down with that little car while he was resetting the cones for my abysmal attempts at parallel parking. It wasn’t my fault, really. My foot slipped. My arms were tired. I thought I was in Drive rather than Reverse. Yadda, yadda, excuses, excuses.

[Loba Fun Fact: Parallel parking is actually one of the easiest things in the world to master. In a car with power steering. The Chevette lacked this simple feature, which meant A LOT of steering wheel turning. I think it might actually have been easier to just get out, pick the little fart knocker up, and place it down into the parallel spot. Gave me a sweet bit of arm muscle though.]

I did, indeed, learn how to drive in the Chevette. I learned the basics, learned how to drive in the the worst that an East Coast winter can dish out, learned that back roads are most awesome at night at 70 mph and that rear wheel drive is best for making donuts in the snow (also learned that some things shouldn’t be shared with parents until well past the age of adult independence and that your teenage years are the time to do things like these because courage and youthful stupidity both often go hand-in-hand and disappear with the passage of time).

The Chevette was also the official mascot car of my high school senior class. My friends and I zoomed up and down the roadways, going to games, heading to the mall, meeting up for weekend trips to Sizzler (ew…there’s a Flashback both I and my digestive system could do without ever having). I picked up more Little Caesar’s pizzas in that car to sell during lunch breaks than could feed an entire tailgate party at FedEx Field. I’m willing to bet, in fact, that wherever the Chevette is today, it still smells of pepperoni. I also once fit my entire senior class in the SmurfMobile (also lovingly dubbed the Blueberry NerdMobile). Of course, there were only eight of us, so maybe that’s not so impressive.

Even though it’s been more than a decade since my dad donated it (more than likely for scrap), I still not only carry around happy thoughts about our Chevette but also my set of keys, which still hang on the same rack as Sammy’s key. Now that’s love, I tell ya.

That little Chevette was by far one of the favorite parts of my childhood. It carried me to all the places I loved the most: to spend time with family and friends, to visit magical vacation destinations…even making sure that I got to high school and college classes so that I could move ever closer to that seemingly elusive-at-the-time finish line for dependence known as “adulthood.” It was a great little car that, by the time we released it to greener pastures, was jam-packed from bumper to bumper with happy memories born from the steady stroke of rubber on asphalt and the wind whipping through our hair.

Here’s a cute little spoof commercial for the Chevette that gives you some great shots of this little wonder car.

And this video is for my dad, who always wanted to drop a V6 into our Chevette for reasons that eluded me at the time. I get it now though.

There are very few sitcoms from my childhood that I can tolerate today. I’m done with movin’ on up to the East Side. I don’t care what you would do without us, shalalala. I don’t want to take the good or take the bad, and quite frankly when you take them both, all you really have is a horribly cheesy sitcom to which time has most definitely been unmerciful.

But there’s something about Night Court. These characters of infinite flaws and infinite quirks provided endless laughs (most of which stemmed from jokes that I probably shouldn’t have understood at the age at which I was first watching the shows). It was one of those rare comedies in which character and actor merged so perfectly that you couldn’t imagine any other person ever playing the likes of Judge Harry Stone…Dan Fielding…Christine Sullivan…Mac…Bull…Roz.

Even early episodes from the first season that featured “limited edition” characters like Lana Wagner or Billie Young were ribald and hilarious. And then there were the pre-Marsha Warfield bailiffs, Selma and Florence, characters who lasted far too short a season before their actresses slipped their mortal coils. Rather than sweeping their deaths aside and staying the course of mindless comedy, the writers and the other actors faced each of these actresses’ passing with honesty, humor, and honor. I remember those being some of the most moving and finest offerings that television brought to my young world.

I adored this show, and continue to find it funny whenever I find it on television. Regardless of how obviously 80s it is, with Mac and his knit sweaters or Dan and his rampant sexual escapades and random references to things like the McDLT…or Christine and her glorious 80s frosted hair and obsession with Princess Diana and Prince Charles’s wedding, the writing remains sharp and satirical and extremely funny.

Then there’s Bob and June Wheeler. Perhaps the funniest recurring characters from the show’s run, they hold a special place in this Trekkie’s heart. Bob Wheeler was played by Brent Spiner, who would go on to play Lieutenant Commander Data, my second favorite character from Star Trek: The Next Generation. However, what most people probably don’t realize is that Bob’s wife June Wheeler also appeared in the Trek universe. Actress Annie O’Donnell portrayed Keena in the Deep Space Nine first season episode “Progress.” Even if it was only for one episode, she played a Bajoran, which means bonus geek awesome points in my book.

Before they reached space, the final frontier, however, here’s a clip of O’Donnell and Spiner in their first appearance as June and Bob Wheeler, those wacky West Virginian Yugoslavians with the worst luck to ever roll through Judge Stone’s night court.

Okay, I have to confess that this is a bit of a cop-out this week, as I already wrote about the Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine during my Angry Blogger^TM days. This is what I wrote:

Reminisced a little this weekend. Does anyone out there remember the Snoopy Sno-Cone machine? Best. Toy. Ever. Of course, they could never sell it today. Kids are so stupid now, they’d probably try to shave off their tongues with the thing. Hell, I know some adults who are too stupid to operate this toy. But what a toy it was.

Loba is always willing to re-examine her statements (even her more incendiary ones), and apparently people aren’t as stupid as I once assumed (either that or corporations just don’t care about the stupidity factor in light of possibly making a buck off someone’s nostalgia kick). Turns out that the Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine has been reissued. You can even find it on Amazon.com!

I loved my Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine. It was silly and clunky and required way more effort than the end result could ever possibly live up to, but it was still awesome. For those wondering how it worked, first let’s look at the machine, shall we?

See the adorable Snoopy at the top, with the weird red hat? You lift Snoopy up and you see that he’s got an oblong extension attached to his bum. This is what you will use to press down on the ice cubes, which you insert into the shaft you’ve now cleared by removing the Snoopy-topped pestle.

At the bottom of this shaft is a cylindrical piece of perforated metal, sort of like a round cheese grater. This is attached to a crank in the back of the machine. As you press down on the ice with your Snoopestle, you turn the crank in the back, which causes the round cheese grater to slice against the cubes, shaving slivers down into the drum, as shown in this photo.

When you have enough ice shaved for a serving, you can either let it drop into one of the little paper cups that come with the machine, or you can use the snow shovel-shaped scoop seen on the right side of the photo. Once you have a serving in the cup, you can use the little snowman squeeze bottle, on the left of the photo, to squeeze syrup onto the shaved ice (the machine comes with a set of syrup mixes).

Sounds like a big potschke, doesn’t it? Well…it is. Also, minus the metal cheese grater portion, everything on the Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine is plastic. Plastic and flimsy. You feel like you might actually crush the entire thing in the process of trying to press down hard enough on the ice cubes. And believe me, you have to press hard. The cheese grater cylinder on my original machine was unbelievably dull. After reading some of the Amazon reviews, I get the impression that it’s still dull.

So why such fond memories? Well, I have always loved Snoopy and the Peanuts gang. One of my first stuffed animals I can remember getting was a Snoopy dog with a bunch of cute little outfits to dress him in: a raincoat, a soccer uniform, a hoodie and blue pants. My first Christmas ornament was one of the Hallmark ball ornaments with a little diorama inside of Snoopy leading a team of Woodstocks to deliver toys for Santa.

I love Snoopy.

I also remember making sno-cones with my mom, which is obviously a memory that is that much more special to me now. I think she might have even enjoyed making these sno-cones more than I did. She was often a big kid when it came to silliness like this. Guess that’s from where I get that silly, eternally-a-kid part of my personality.

Part of me is tempted to get another Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine, probably not to use but just for the nostalgia value of having this sitting on a shelf.

Okay, maybe I’d use it. Once or twice. Ooh, I could bring it to work and we could have sno-cone breaks on Fridays!

Mmm, that’s an OSHAlicious event just begging to happen!

Yes, I know that this isn’t Friday. There isn’t anything so impaired about my mental faculties that I can’t tell the days apart anymore. Yet. I simply ran out of time to post yesterday. Technically, however, I thought of this yesterday, so it still counts.

This is another photograph from my aunt’s artsy black and white period, although obviously a little earlier than the Mickey Mouse Ears photo.

This is me with my rocking horse, which, incidentally, my artsy photographer aunt made. I love my artsy aunt. And I loved this little horsie. Loved him so much that one of my earliest memories is of me dragging him across the hall from my room into my parents’ room and locking the door when I left. I wanted him to be safe. Safe from what, I’m not sure. Probably safe from my dad’s irritation when he realized that I had locked their door to protect a wooden pony. Thank goodness for skeleton keys, eh?

My little rocking horse still exists. He made a circuitous path through our family after I outgrew him, spending some time with one of my cousins before finally making his way back to his maker. He now resides in my aunt’s attic. His rockers are a little worse for the wear, having been chewed by the various dogs that have completed our packs over the years. I sometimes have a thought that I’d like to have his head mounted and hung on my wall. Then I realize how creepy and Godfather-esque that sounds. So I’ll be content with this photograph and my silly memories.

This is another flashback from my old blog, incite.thought. Every now and again, I scroll through those entries, looking for links to stories that I’d like to revisit or trying to refresh my memory regarding something I discussed before. Honestly, though, the more I review those entries, the more I’m tempted to delete that blog from existence. I was so angry.

However, every now and then, I did have moments of silliness. Like this one. Listed under the title, “whimsical vacation edition,” this was a random little poem I wrote after photographing the praying mantis that hung out around my apartment every spring. I thought having a praying mantis outside my door was awesome. Jodie, however, had different thoughts on the matter, which hopefully I have properly expressed at the end of this poem 🙂

praying mantis!
offering psalms with alien palms,
your silhouette evangelical.

preying mantis!
watchful eye as I stride by,
your posture puritanical.

playing mantis!
limbs so strange, colors that change,
your image so fantastical.

my dog would love to eat you.

I’m a sucker for a sucker. Well, I used to be. I used to be quite the sugar hound back in the day, actually. Again, there should be no surprise that there was quite a bit more of me back in the day as well.

Eating healthy and exercising, FTW.

Of course, I still do get cravings. This Sunday, for example, I’ll more than likely be indulging this secret love, which I hid from you all last year for utterly selfish reasons. Consider this my recompense. Just don’t forget. I’m not reminding you again.

So back to my sucker fetish. I like candy that’s going to stick around with you, give you the most bang for your buck. Push Pops definitely qualify in this regard. Unlike regular lollipops or Tootsie Pops, Push Pops aren’t just a tiny disc or orb of lickable candy. Oh no. These are solid sticks of candy pleasure, complete with plastic case and top for a lovely easy-to-retract storage option.

Of course, this isn’t completely true. Anyone who’s eaten a Push Pop knows that two things inevitably can happen with these funsticks that never happen with a regular lolly on a stick. One: You run the risk of having saliva drip down the Push Pop and pool briefly inside the plastic container before finally rushing down the finger inside the Push Pop and down your arm in a sugary deluge. I had this happen more often than I preferred when I was a wee wolf. I can assure you, it’s quite disgusting.

The second thing? Let’s say you decide you don’t want to finish your Push Pop, so you push it back inside its case and snap on the lid. You let it sit for a little while