All Nostalgic and Stuff

Yesterday was a big day at work – a landmark day if you will.  No, Jo-Ann Fabrics did not eclipse record sales numbers, I didn’t get promoted, nor did I succeed in anything of particular importance.  Yesterday, the Marketing department got new color copier/printers.  Long gone are the days of walking down a narrow hallway to fetch 11x17 copies, I now can walk 30 feet to my printer.  I know…groundbreaking stuff.  What is of real importance in this non-story was the nostalgia I experienced while walking up to that printer for the first time.  It had that “new electronics” smell, which instantly brought me back to my childhood.  I can’t quite explain the smell in words, but it is the same smell that is present whenever you open up a new video game console.  Being a self-described geek, this smell instantly kick started my morning, along with the 64 oz. of coffee that I routinely chug without coming up for air.  That video game console smell got me thinking about my youth.

Mr. Webster, in all of his wisdom, defines nostalgia as, a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.  It’s never a good sign when there is a word in a definition that you don’t know the definition of.  In this case, I also had to look up the word wistful, a word that I’ve certainly heard before, but have never used.  To make things simpler, I have defined nostalgia as, awesome crap that I may or may not have remembered from the past.  Much easier to remember, and no other words need to be defined.  Perfect.  Nostalgia hits people both consciously and subconsciously. The song I’m So Excited by The Pointer Sisters recalls a memory that I am very aware of.  Of course, I’m talking about Jessie Spano’s addition to caffeine pills.  You did not want to be near Miss Spano when she was off of her highly addictive caffeine pills.  Man, what a bitch.  I will always remember the line, “I’m so excited, I’m so excited, I’m so scared”.  Ahhh, nostalgia.  It is a one-to-one relationship.  When I hear the song, it’s all I think about.  However, instantly associating the smell of a new copier/printer to the feeling of un-boxing a new video game console is a little different and unexpected.  That feeling really got me thinking of my youth.  I spent the day taking a look back and reminiscing on the simpler times.



There's no time - there's never any time!

 The majority of my youthful memories fall between the ages of 9 and 14.  In a previous post, I dubbed this portion of my life, The DJ From Roseanne Years.  Yes, I bore a striking resemblance to DJ Conner when I was young and haven’t really had a celebrity look-alike since.  Some people have cool celebrity look-alikes, I have some young asshole from a 90s sitcom.  Sexy.  Oh well, I guess it could be worse, I could look like Rachel Maddow.  I have plenty of other memories outside of this age range, but the hard-core nostalgic stuff always falls back into this timeframe.  Eventually high school and college stuff will start to creep in, but I think that at least 15-20 years need to pass by before full-fledged nostalgia starts to kick in. 



What a little jerk.



My youth was dominated, (in no particular order) by; Nintendo, The Bad News Bears, The Sandlot, WWF Wrestling, trading cards, sports, Saved By The Bell, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Ghostbusters.  In the summer months, give me a basketball and a hoop and I could entertain myself for hours.  Every day, I was Mark Price and the Cavs, while at the same time playing as Michael Jordan and the Bulls.  I tried a little harder to make the shots when Mark Price was at the helm and purposefully tripped over myself, throwing the ball out of bounds while I was Michael Jordan.  Any on-looker watching me play basketball by myself would think I was schizophrenic.  Oh nothing to see here, just a 10 year-old kid screaming at himself, trying to psych himself out during the last 10 seconds of a fake basketball game.  Of course, the Cavs almost always won, except for the times when I would purposefully try to miss the game winning shot as Jordan, and the ball would inexplicably carom off the backboard, around the rim, and through the net.  Those were the worst moments ever.  Just a little kid ashamed of himself for having the Bulls defeat the Cavs.  Without a reset button to hit in my driveway, I was relegated to defeat.

The same went with wrestling.  Do you know how many times Hulk Hogan (umm…me, duh), would defeat Randy Macho Man Savage (the old pillow)?  That answer would be a lot, and always during the winter months and rainy days, when I couldn’t be outside staging a full 16-team NBA playoff bracket by myself.  Whereas the basketball would sometimes go through the hoop by accident on an opposing team’s last shot, there is no real explanation as to why I sometimes let a pillow pin me for the WWF Championship belt. I guess it’s because I would never have had the chance to win the belt.  Any fake pillow wrestler worth his weight in gold knows that it’s better to win the championship belt, rather than to constantly defend it.  I wanted a little realism and didn’t want to win every time.  Unlike DJ from Roseanne, I didn’t want to be a little jerk to my pillow opponents.

I would of killed to have one of these - I had to be imaginative and use a plain old pillow

After thinking hard for 15 straight minutes, I cannot come up with a single other memory of my youth that didn’t involve those topics listed above.  Music didn’t enter my life until high school.  Same with the Cleveland Browns thanks to Dead Art Modell.  My guitars and foolish blind love and support for the Browns are my other real loves that I hold from my past.  I guess the reason those two don’t make me as nostalgic is because I am still obsessed about them. As you grow older, you have to let go of some of your youth from the past, or you start to become a weirdo.  Would I love to still have an awesome baseball card collection?  Yeah, but the older you get, it’s just strange to have that interest.  Any hobby that a 9 year-old kid and 40 year-old man share is just creepy.  Same goes for watching wrestling on a weekly basis.  I would be willing to be that great majorities of the card collecting creeps are de facto wrestling fans – I just have that hunch.

So these were the thoughts that were running through my head all day after printing out marketing plans for Martha Stewart paper crafting supplies.  It all started with that smell (Ooooo that smellllll).  Sorry, my music obsessive-ness coming through once more.  You never know where nostalgia will bring you.  I’ve since watched YouTube videos on Zack Attack, Don West QVC trading card infomercials, old Ninja Turtle clips and of course, mid-90s WWF footage.  These bring me back to a simpler time of no marketing strategy meetings, no mortgages, no real stresses other than being concerned with how fake Craig Ehlo could go through a scoring drought at the worst possible time in fake NBA games.  It’s great to look back, but even better to look forward to the days where I will get the chance to push all of this on to my kid one day.  Oh God help me if I have a girl.

Stone Cold E.T. and White Castle Cheeseburgers

What do E.T., White Castle cheeseburgers and Stone Cold Steve Austin have in common?  Absolutely nothing, and that's what makes Stone Cold E.T. the perfect viral video.  It makes no sense and shouldn’t be funny, but throw all three together with a video camera and you get comedy gold.  I’ll admit that you need to know a little wrestling to really get the nuances in this video; but even for those who have no wrestling interest, the ridiculousness of the combo is what makes it so hilarious.

Stone Cold E.T. instantly catapulted itself into my top 3 favorite YouTube videos of all-time and joins the likes of Crying Wrestling Fan and GI Joe Pork Chop Sandwiches.  As of the writing of this post, Stone Cold ET has 471,000 views on YouTube, which blows my mind.  This thing deserves to be in the millions - it really is the bees knees.  I gauge the success of a viral video on how quickly I want to share it with everybody I know.  Within one minute of seeing Stone Cold E.T., I was forwarding the link on to all of my social contacts online.  Over the past week, anybody that enters my home must first watch the video before even saying hi.  You might be coming over to share that you got that huge promotion or that you and your wife are expecting your first child, but before sharing the big news you will be sat down and forced to see Stone Cold E.T. order a couple of White Castles to go…and maybe a drink. 

Every company wants to get their content to go viral and some even try to manufacture buzz on their own.  What most companies don't understand is that you cannot set out and just create a viral video.  Unfortunately, the Internet decides what is going to go viral, not the companies themselves.  You cannot simply create buzz, otherwise there would be a ton of Viral Video Specialists and experts out there.  Oh wait, what was that?  There are people that claim to be viral video experts?  If anybody guarantees that they can make your video viral, please run as far as you can in the opposite direction in a Usain Bolt-like fashion.  These are the same people that love QR codes and push full-page newspaper ads even though newspaper readership is at an all-time low.  The best of the best sell a full page ROP with QR codes included, these people are what I like to call, out of touch.  The best viral content starts conversations, for both the good and the bad, and as a company, you must be ready to take part in this conversation.

Stone Cold E.T. likes whoopin' ass

White Castle is clearly the winner here due to the exposure that Stone Cold E.T. brings.  In a video like this, it is rare that the company being pranked is not cast in a negative light.  The drive thru staff showed extreme patience throughout the entire video and offered no reason to dislike White Castle. So far, 471,000 people have been exposed to the White Castle brand (which apparently stands for excellent service and crappy hamburgers). The company has a real opportunity to build upon this buzz.  If I ran White Castle’s social media team, I would link this video to Facebook and Twitter to try to gain momentum.  Obviously, current licensing agreements with Universal Pictures and WWE would instantly prohibit White Castle from officially promoting use of these characters in advertisements, but a couple of retweets and Facebook links should be within the realm of possibility.  There is a chance to stand out and be special and acknowledge that as a company, you can be real.  Of course this video is flying around White Castle coporate, it should be flying around their social media channels as well.

The good companies monitor what is being said about their brand, both good and bad.  Sometimes a little nugget like Stone Cold E.T. makes its way into pop culture and could catapult a brand into cult status.  Will this happen with White Castle?  Probably not. Their sliders taste like dog food on a tiny bun.  I haven’t had White Castle in over 10 years, but I might have to give them a curious chance, something I never would of done before this video. I’ve talked about this video and have showed it to everybody I know, exposing my small group to their brand.  This is what a good viral video can do for a company, even if they did not originate the content.  On the flip side, a viral video can be at the detriment of some companies, as was the case with United Airlines when their baggage carriers damaged a $1,200 guitar.  United Breaks Guitars has now been viewed over 12.5 million times. The next natural phase of this video is the sure-fire follow-up, which won’t be half as funny as the original (because you can’t manufacture viral).  If nothing else, Stone Cold E.T. has firmly cemented itself as a personal first-ballot YouTube hall-of-fame candidate, a video that I will view for years to come.  White Castle has a chance to build on this – all they have to do now is make an edible burger.

Obama, Romney & Rage Against The Machine

Coke & Pepsi, Android & Apple, Hoarders & Hoarding: Buried Alive, Obama & Romney.  America is crammed with choices.  With November 6th just 34 days away, everybody is talking politics.  I'm not one for missing out on a conversation, so I thought I would weigh in on the political landscape as well.  Both candidates are touting this as the most important election of our lifetime. That is until 2016.  Pretty sure that by the time the next election rolls around, we won't be hearing "The second most important election of our lifetime", or "Hey, remember that last one?  Yeah, well we lied.  This one is actually wayyy more important”.  Clearly, with the historical importance of this election people are more divided than ever.

Two choices.  Out of 311 million people in this country, we whittle it down to two people.  Half of the country thinks that their candidate is completely capable and ready to lead his country while thinking that the other is a total and utter dunce.  Of course, America is a diverse melting pot of humanity with dissimilar cultures so we should have some uniqueness in our candidates.  This diversity is what helps make the United States the greatest country in the world.  But what are the chances, that out of the 311 million, the last men standing are named Mitt and Barack, two names in which almost nobody else shares in the country?  These are the things I wonder about when election time rolls around.  George, Bill, Ronald, Jimmy, Gerald, Richard, John.  Sounds like a sandlot team from the late 60s.  Barack and Mitt? Sounds like a morning zoo radio show.  What are the chances?  Has to be less than 1% that these two are paired up, right?

Now before you move forward, if you must know, I am fairly conservative leaning.  I know, big shock if you are familiar with me.  Raised by a family who owns a small business, I went to Catholic grade school, high school, and graduate school for 16 out of 20 years, recognize the benefits of competition and hard work (not saying that this is mutually exclusive to conservative values), and married into the family of Brian Flannery (there are exactly 5 people reading who understands this last point).  So my political views can’t be that surprising.  However, there are many social conservative views that I disagree with so I’m a little more moderate than most.  Nobody will ever take me as a political savant. I don’t claim to be an expert, not even close, but I do go out of my way to read both sides before making an informed decision on an issue; which I can only hope the rest of the country does as well, no matter which candidate they support.  But, much like the Summer Olympics, most of the country only pays attention every 4 years.  It’s ironic that the Olympics and the Presidential election occur in the same year.  Just as I don’t watch the Synchronized Diving World Championships every summer, most people don’t watch live CSPAN House Chamber coverage to form a more rounded political opinion in a non-election year.  I certainly don't.

If I'm voting on magnetism alone, I'm voting for Obama.  He wins in a landslide.  I’m sure that even the most conservative of Republicans would agree that they need a candidate with a little more charisma.  Romney totally lost me in the personality department when he performed an impromptu a cappella rendition of America the Beautiful while on the campaign trail in Florida.  Although this was certainly chill worthy, it doesn’t hold a candle to John Kerry’s first line of the 2004 Democratic National Convention speech in which he declared, “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty”, while raising his hand in a salute fashion.  Most politicians do not understand how to talk and act normally to the American people because they have been put on a pedestal and need to almost be robotic to navigate through the political waters up to that point.  



Maybe it’s because of the incredible stress they’re under, or maybe it’s due to what’s on the line.  I do understand why politicians need to appeal to everybody, but they do so in a way that is so insincere.  Did you know when asked, Paul Ryan's favorite band is Rage Against the Machine?  However, Ryan says that he doesn't enjoy the songs based on their lyrics (which radically lean left), but rather for their musicianship.  Are you kidding me?  Every vote is precious, so of course even something as little as a favorite band must have some sort of asterisk.  This is solely due to the round the clock coverage in today’s connected world.  One slip up, and the 24-hour news networks report, Tweet, and have panel discussion on what this means to the American people. Ever since I heard that Rage Against the Machine is Paul Ryan’s favorite, I cannot stop picturing him running a 2 hour marathon listening to Killing in the Name Of while shouting, “Eff you, I won’t do what you tell me”.  Joking aside, much like the last election, I feel that Ryan reaches the American people in a way that Romney just can't connect to.  When it comes to newspapers and magazines, I hope he reads “umm…all of them”.  Wouldn’t want an uninformed VP now would we?

In preparation for the debates, I've been studying up on the issues of most importance.  And by that, I mean I'm not fast-forwarding through the commercials when I DVR something.  I can’t believe that there is still another whole month of political ads.  The positive to living in Ohio is that my vote actually means something.  Try being an Obama supporter in Houston, TX, or a Romney voter in Cupertino, CA.  Might as well not even show up to the polls.  But Ohio's votes count.  Unfortunately, we have to deal with all of the campaign commercials bashing the other candidate.  There are millions of potential voters forming their opinions on these commercials alone, it’s kind of scary.  But, as long as these replace the Aaron Rodgers State Farm Discount Double-Check commercials, then I am a-okay.

There are so many reasons to be down on the Presidential election process, from the absurdness of only having two candidates, to 24-hour news coverage, to political campaign commercials, to the Electoral College (I think they even beat the University of Akron in football last year). But just think, we could be living in the Middle East or in a faux democratic state where there is there is no true choice .  Or even better,  we could be texting the word VOTE to POTUS-02 after each live debate with Ryan Seacrest moderating.  Yes, there are some minor flaws; but overall, it is the best process in the world. Whichever candidate you are supporting, please get out and vote on November 6^th.  You know, it is the most important election of our lifetime after all.