The King's Baby Burgers

Burger King
Muncie, IN (1987)
This photo was taken on East McGalliard Road in Muncie, Indiana.  It was shared on Flickr by Dr. Bob Hall.  You can see the entrance to The Mall Shoppes in the background, including a pizza restaurant and a video rental shop.  I did a little research on the area and found that the Burger King is still in the same location.

Dr. Hall has the photo labeled as August, 1988, but I believe that it was taken in the summer of 1987.  The newspapers in Muncie at the time in question include reports of a massive fire at the McGalliard Mall Shoppes in October, 1987.  This fire displaced nearly 20 businesses, including the ones from the advertisement above, which were published on August 5th, 1988.  When the Shoppes reopened, the shopping center was renamed from The Mall Shoppes to the McGalliard Mall Plaza.

The other clue that led me to date this photo to 1987 is the availability of Burger Bundles.  These were a limited edition mini cheeseburger similar to the ones sold by White Castle, and I loved them when I was a kid.

Burger King introduced these in 1987.  They sold well, but they were discontinued before the end of the year because they were difficult to prepare.  Burger King cooks their burgers on a grill conveyor belt.  The frozen patties are placed at the start of the belt which takes them through a broiler that is encased in a steel box.  The fully cooked burgers come out of the other side and fall into a drip tray that catches the excess grease.  It's actually a pretty ingenious way for a fast food restaurant to prepare a lot of product with a limited staff in a short period of time.  The problem with the Burger Bundles is that the meat patties were so small that they often fell through the conveyor belt and into the broiler.  The kitchen crew might put 10 Burger Bundle patties on the belt and get maybe 6 or 7 out of the other side while the other three burned away at the bottom of the grill.  Not only would this waste food, but it also required the grill to be dismantled and cleaned, which slowed down the production of most of their items.

Burger King has brought their mini burgers back a few times under different names over the years.  The one I remember best were sold for a few years starting in 1990 and were called Burger Buddies.  As you can see in the photo above, the mini burger patties were connected together in something like a figure 8.  The buns were connected in a similar manner, and the idea was that you would snap the Burger Buddies apart and eat them one at a time.  I imagine this was done to address the problem of the mini patties falling through the conveyor belt.  I'm not sure how well it worked because they were taken off of the menu before I started working for Burger King in the fall of 1995, but they were a lot of fun to eat when I was 9 and 10 years old.

They came back and were discontinued again at some point in the 2000's.  This time, they were called BK Burger Shots and were part of the Value Menu.  I don't remember having them in my adult life.  Hopefully they'll come back again sometime soon.

What We Did When Our Parents Went Shopping

Excitebike 64 demo stations
Toys R Us - June 29, 2000
These photos are from the @pori64 collection that I first wrote about last week.  Back in the days before LCD monitors, stores like this Toys R Us in Paramus, NJ would mount a CRT television on a shelf and hook it up to a game console that is either on display in a clear, locked box or hidden in a locked cabinet behind the merchandise.  Controllers were then connected to the system and mounted onto the front of the shelves, usually with a flexible metal enclosure to protect the cord.  This would allow shoppers to either a limited demo or the full version of the new games that were available for sale.  Like the example above, the televisions used on these demo stations were often surrounded by a thick cardboard border which made the display feel a bit more like an arcade cabinet.

Unfortunately, these displays didn't always stay in good shape for very long.  The ones at video game stores and toy stores were usually kept up pretty well, but the demo stations in department stores like Wal-Mart often had controllers that were damaged or completely broken.  When they were in working order, they were a great way for a kid to spend their time in the 80's and 90's while their parents shopped throughout the rest of the store.  I'm sure it annoyed the employees who worked in the electronics department, but hey, it was free entertainment.

To this day, I've never played Excitebike 64, but I grew up playing the original Excitebike on the NES when I was a kid in the 80's.  You can see two different N64 console bundles on the bottom shelves: the limited edition Atomic Purple edition, and the set that came packaged with Pokemon Stadium and the Transfer Pak which allowed gamers to use Pokemon from their Game Boy games in Pokemon Stadium.  Other N64 games that you can see on display include Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Lego Racers, StarCraft 64 and Perfect Dark.  The yellow square signs below the television are there to inform shoppers that you need to have the N64 Expansion Pak to play Perfect Dark.  There is a Nintendo Power magazine rack in the center of this display where you can see volume #134 which has Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards on the cover.  The side of the display has a poster for Mario Party 2, but it looks like that was eventually covered up by the Playstation demo station when it was pushed beside it.  The Playstation games aren't as easy to see, but the one on the top right hand corner is ECW Hardcore Revolution.  The rest of the games on peg hooks had too much camera glare for me to identify, but if you look closely at the shelf above the demo station controller, you can see Pong: The Next Level and The Legend of Dragoon.  If you're as completely ridiculous as I am, you'll see a Playstation's Greatest Hits copy of Gran Turismo 2 hiding in the back.

Lefty In Reading

Steve Carlton (1976)
Municipal Stadium - Reading, PA
The Philadelphia Phillies took a trip to Reading to play an exhibition game against their Double A counterparts 44 years ago today.  Both the Philadelphia Phillies and Reading Phillies already had their seasons underway by the second week in May, so this game cut into what would have been a day off for the two clubs.  The Phillies made the best of the situation and had a little fun, including a pinch hitting appearance by manager Danny Ozark in the top of the 9th.  The 52 year old skipper stayed in the game and played first base as Philadelphia capped off a 7-3 victory.

The News Journal - Wilmington, DE - May 11, 1976

The Philadelphia Inquirer (left) and Philadelphia Daily News (right) - May 11, 1976

What Would You Do For The Rest Of Your Klondike Bar

Klondike Donuts
Unilever (2020)
You ice cream thieving polar bear bastards.  I have a bone to pick with you.

First and foremost, shame on me for not noticing that the little drawing of the Klondike Bar on the wrapper has a hole in it.  Even if I had noticed it, I probably would have assumed that it was just a cute way to write the letter "o" in the word "donuts".  What I would not have assumed is that my delightful ice cream square would have a giant gaping hole in the dead center, reducing it in size by 12 grams compared to the classic one.  That's 15% smaller than the traditional Klondike Bar!  This means that when you buy a six pack of Klondike Donuts, you're getting ripped off by almost one full bar.  However, the true kick in the teeth comes when you realize that Boston Cream donuts don't have holes!

You see that, Klondike?  It's a Boston Cream donut - NO HOLE!

On the plus side, the Klondike Boston Cream Donut bar tasted pretty good.  There are two other flavors in the product line: Frosted Strawberry Donut and Triple Chocolate Donut.  I don't think I'll be trying them unless they come packed with a half dozen Klondike Munchkins to make up for the missing ice cream.  I mean, come on!  They had to invest money in this.  They had to modify the manufacturing equipment at their ice cream plant or buy all new machines that were designed for the sole purpose of making this hole-y disaster.  Why spend all that money on a donut gimmick when you could have just as easily made regular shaped Klondike Bars with donut flavors?

You owe me some ice cream, polar bear!

Mario Has Leaky Pipes

iQue Player
Nintendo / iQue (2003)
At a glance, the iQue Player may look like one of the bootleg plug-and-play consoles that they sell at mall kiosks and shady dollar stores.  You know the ones - they're loaded with 500 games and at least half of them are rom hacks, like Super Mario 14.  However, the Nintendo Seal of Quality on this box is totally legit.  The iQue Player was a Nintendo-licensed console developed by Wei Yen.  It was sold exclusively in mainland China and played N64 games which were stored on flash memory inside of proprietary cartridges.  It's a trivia footnote to western audiences, but the console is being talked about a bit more than usual this week.

A number of credible sources in gaming media have confirmed a Reddit claim that hackers stole over 2 TB of internal Nintendo data from BroadOn, a partner company that helped to develop the Nintendo Wii hardware.  This data allegedly contains detailed information about the iQue Player, but more importantly, it includes the original source code for the Nintendo 64, GameCube and Wii consoles.  The leak also includes game demos, marketing information and other Nintendo documents from the late 90's and 2000's.  It may not be a coincidence that an unofficial PC port of Super Mario 64 was also announced this week.

The emulation scene looks like it's about to get a little more interesting.

The Last Days Of The Super NES

Super Nintendo shelves
Toys R Us - (1999 - 2000)
Fellow retro gamer @pori64 recently purchased an album of photos that were taken at Toys R Us stores in Hanover and Paramus, NJ.  In an incredibly awesome gesture, all of the photos were scanned and shared on Twitter and Archive.org.

There are over 20 photos in the collection, and I highly encourage you to check them out and offer a few kind words of appreciation on Twitter if you enjoy them as much as I do.  The two photos above have been cropped and rotated to focus on the displays of Super Nintendo games in the last couple of years that they were still in production.  If you look closely, you can see Super Mario All-Stars, Super Mario RPG, Super Mario Kart, Super Metroid, Starfox, Super Castlevania IV, Super Star Wars, Super Empire Strikes Back and F-Zero, among many other classics.

Some of the other photos include Game Boy Color and Nintendo 64 displays, including a demo station for Excitebike 64 from June, 2000 shortly after it was first released in the United States.

Where's The Beef?

Where's The Beef Puffy Stickers
Wendy's (1984)
Not too many people become celebrities after their 80th birthday, but that's exactly what happened with Clara Peller.  She made "where's the beef" a popular catchphrase that is still very well known decades after her death in 1987.  The joke in the ad campaign was that Wendy's competitors have big fluffy buns, but a sparse amount of meat.  This prompted Ms. Peller to lift the bun and squint to see a tiny hamburger patty as she shouted "where's the beef" in a grouchy voice.  If she was still with us today in 2020, the iconic spokeswoman would have trouble finding any beef at Wendy's.

The New York Times reported earlier this week that the problems with the supply chain as a result of the global pandemic has resulted in 20% of Wendy's restaurants that have completely run out of beef.  Although there is plenty of frozen beef at this time, Wendy's policy of serving "fresh, never frozen" beef in its hamburgers has left it with a shortage.  With meat processing plants facing a drastic reduction in its workforce due to Covid-19 infection, this doesn't appear to be a problem with a quick or easy solution.  The lesson here is to stock up on frozen beef while you can.  If McDonald's starts hanging up the "sold out" signs on the drive-thru menu, it will already be too late.

CM Punk Finally Got His Wish

WWE Superstars Cookie Sandwiches
Good Humor (2020)
Wrestling fans who grew up in the 80's and 90's have long waited for the old WWF Ice Cream Bars to make a comeback.  They're so fondly remembered that they were written into the 2011 CM Punk storyline in which he made a list of demands from company chairman Vince McMahon.  It was subsequently turned into a t-shirt, but the ice cream bars themselves never came back

These new cookie sandwiches aren't the same thing, and not just because they don't have a stick).  The old bars had a crisp cookie that reminded me of a thin Nilla Wafer.  These are much softer with a texture similar to the Millennium Falcon ice cream sandwiches that I wrote about yesterday.  These cookies are much more flavorful than the Star Wars ones.  I believe this is because of the artificial flavors.  Back when I was working for Nestle, the company underwent a change to remove all of the artificial colors and flavors from their confections and ice cream products.  In my opinion, this resulted in a bland, less flavorful product with no added health benefits (in fact, there are many natural flavors which are less healthful than artificial ingredients).  At any rate, these cookies taste significantly better than the Millennium Falcon ones.

The ice cream is also different from the Star Wars sandwiches.  Whereas the Millennium Falcon ones have a low-fat vanilla ice cream, the WWE Superstars Cookie Sandwiches are made with "frozen dairy dessert".  This has to do with the FDA guidelines that regulate what can legally be labeled as ice cream, such as the percentage of milk fat, milk solids and air whipped into the product to make it creamy.  I've never been a big fan of light ice cream.  I find it to have a chemical aftertaste, even when it's made with all natural ingredients.  The frozen dairy dessert in the WWE sandwiches had the same taste and texture of the vanilla ice cream that I grew up eating, so I prefer these.

The wrestlers that were chosen for these sandwiches are an interesting mix.  Roman Reigns and Becky Lynch represent the modern era of WWE Wrestling.  John Cena is all but retired from professional wrestling, but he still makes appearances from time to time, and with the exception of The Undertaker, he's probably still their most marketable star.  The last one is the one that has me puzzled.

"Macho Man" Randy Savage is by far my favorite wrestler out of this group, and he's one of my favorite wrestlers of all time.  He's also the only one out of this group who also appeared on the old WWF Ice Cream Bars back in the day.  However, the wrestling fan community has long debated why WWE waited until after the death of Randy Savage to acknowledge his existence.  Performers who have sued him, testified against him in federal court, and have even physically assaulted him have been brought back to work in the WWE, but numerous former employees have stated that Vince McMahon wouldn't even allow the name of Randy Savage to be mentioned in creative meetings.  It was only after Randy's death in 2011 that the company inducted him into their Hall of Fame and began to release t-shirts, toys, home video and other merchandise featuring their former champion.  Yet, when the time came to choose a wrestler for this product to represent fans who watched the product in the 80's and 90's with a WWF Ice Cream Bar in their hands, they chose Randy.  Interesting.

The back of the package features a cardboard cutout of Roman Reigns with a stand and a WWE Championship Belt.  This takes the place of the old WWF Trading Cards that we used to cut off of the ice cream bar packages when we were kids.  It's a pretty neat idea.  I guess kids aren't into trading cards as much as they used to be, but it's nice to see that they're still including something fun for the next generation of fans.

It Made The Grocery Store Run In Less Than 12 Parsecs

Star Wars Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
Nestle (2020)
It's May 4th, which means my half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder self is going to spend a large chunk of the day watching Star Wars: original trilogy, original cut.  No added scenes, no replacement of iconic music with forgettable stock score, and no goofy CGI shoehorned in.  However, most Star Wars nerds will tell you that May 4th is about more than just the movies.  There are toys video games, comics and all sorts of other things that a man approaching 40 should have long since grown out of.  It's also important to have lots of Star Wars themed snacks close at hand.  That's where these Millennium Falcon Ice Cream Sandwiches from Nestle come in.

Before I review these, I should probably offer a bit of disclosure.  I worked with Nestle USA Consumer Services in various roles over the previous decade - specifically in the confections, baking, ice cream and beverage divisions.  In my time, I've visited the manufacturing plant in Laurel, Maryland to see first hand how the products are made, and I've eaten a ton of Nestle ice cream.

Having said all of that, I'm pretty confident in my opinion that the Star Wars Millennium Falcon ice cream sandwiches are virtually identical to the Nestle line of Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches.  The cookie has the same exact taste and texture of the vanilla cookie that was used for the discontinued Skinny Cow Strawberry Shortcake sandwiches, and the ice cream has the familiar Nestle Vanilla light ice cream flavor that I've had so many times before in the Skinny Cow and Dreyer's / Edy's Slow Churned product lines.

Low fat vanilla ice cream between a vanilla cookie is the very definition of bland, but these taste alright.  I think they were a bit overpriced, but if you want to enjoy an ice cream snack while you binge watch the Star Wars franchise, you could do worse than these little Millennium Falcon sandwiches.  May the 4th be with you!

Should Have Taken Warning

Surfers Go Home
Arnas Goldberg (2014)
This photo of the red sun setting into the ocean was taken at Tanah Lot in South Bali, Indonesia by Arnas Goldberg. You can see more of his photography on Instagram and 500px.  I especially liked this photo because it reminds me of one of my favorite songs - Red Skies by The Fixx.

Pandemic Pudding Pandemonium

Going to grocery stores over the past month has not been a pleasant experience.  I don't mind having to wear a face mask, but I've quickly learned that customers and store employees alike have absolutely no regard whatsoever for the six foot rule.  Pro-tip: if you happen upon a person like this who is making it their life's mission to be in your personal space, don't bother asking them to move.  Just start faking long, loud coughs and gasp for breath.  You'll have all the six foot clearance you need.  Still, the whole process can be stressful, so it's important to make your trips to the grocery store count.  Stock up on as much of the things you need in a single trip.  This will help ensure that you'll have enough food and other goods for when the supply chains inevitably break down.  It will also limit your number of trips to the store, thus limiting your exposure to the Covid-carrying soccer mom who is standing close enough to blow in your ear, which she can easily do from above her three week old surgical mask that hangs from her chin like a sarcastically bad cosplay of Bluebeard the Pirate.

Keep in mind that you're going to need a place to put your supplies when you get home.  Recreating the Iron Throne out of carefully placed 48-count packs of Charmin Ultra Soft is all well and good, but there's a limit to the amount of furniture you can build with your groceries.  Therefore, it's important that you go through the things that are already in your home.  Condense the eight open boxes of pasta into a single box.  Don't worry about mixing different kinds - if you're biggest concern during the apocalypse is the occasional wagon wheel in your macaroni and cheese, you're doing alright.  If you're feeling especially brave, go ahead and condense your open beverage containers as well.  Your quarantine-mates are sure to enjoy the Sunny Delight / Dr. Pepper / Clamato milkshake in the Kool-Aid Man pitcher.  I hear the CDC is recommending it as a way to ward off the virus.

One of the fun side effects of going through your cupboards is finding things that you may have purchased and forgotten.  Take, for example, this "Seasonal Release" of Jell-o Pudding Mix.  I don't know what I was thinking when I bought the Classic Turtle artificial flavor.  These days, I demand real turtles in my pudding.  I must have purchased it in the wild, carefree days of my youth - back in the days when we all skipped merrily in groups of ten or more while coughing openly into each other's face and shamelessly neglecting to wash and sanitize our hands.  Germs, you say?  Phooey!  I grew up in Hazleton.  My lungs have been working out on cigarette smoke and coal dust.  What my immune system doesn't kill, my Italian sarcasm will.

For a fleeting second, I think that I should throw this pudding away, but it passes quickly.  The flap on the box says "best when used by: 20 Aug 2012".  At least that's what I think it says.  It's hard to make out through all of this dust.  Hmmm... how would I have advised someone who called me at my old consumer services call center job back in 2012?  Let's see if I can remember the script: "We don't recommend using a product after it's best by date because it may not meet our quality standards.  Products within the best by date have the best quality, freshness and performance."  Then again, that script came from the same knowledge base which said that we won't put the words "gluten free" on our Slow Churned, 1/2 the fat, 1/3 the calories, all-natural ingredient Classic Vanilla Light Ice Cream because we consider it to be "over-labeling".  Besides, I was raised in a house where we didn't waste food.  Best by 2012, you say?  Well, I was best by 2008 and I'm still here.  Bring on the delicious blend of chocolate, caramel and pecan flavors!  I need the cupboard space for this pallet of Teriyaki Spam!

Yum!  The pudding was delicious, just as I expected.  It's a good thing too, because there are three more boxes just like it, along with a few Pumpkin Spice and Candy Cane flavors of the same vintage.  I wonder if there's a community of Candy Cane Jell-o Pudding junkies out there spamming the Kraft social media sites to ask for it to come back.  Maybe I can put this stuff on eBay and get rich.  Slide over, Jeff Bezos.  Here comes Will, the expired pudding slangin' gazillionaire, about to do a Scrooge McDuck swan dive in my Paypal money bin.  See that Ferrari in the driveway?  Bought that sucker on six year old Amaretto Coffee-mate.  The Maserati?  That's from Ecto Cooler juice boxes that were jammed in my freezer right behind the leftover turkey from Thanksgiving 2016.  Wait a minute... there's already 800 sellers offering it for a Buy-It-Now price of five bucks?  Damn!  I guess I still have to work on Monday, but at least I have all this sweet, sweet pudding from a decade ago.  Pass me the spoon.

Baseball In 2020

Super Baseball 2020
SNK (1991) / Tradewest (1993)
This futuristic baseball game first appeared in arcades in 1991 and was ported to the Genesis and Super Nintendo two years later.  It features baseball games played by robots and cybernetic-enhanced men and women inside of an egg-shaped ballpark with special rules, including land mines in the arcade version.

Here we are in 2020 and there are no robots or robotic-enhanced humans in baseball.  Sadly, there aren't any humans in baseball at all.  The developers of Super Baseball 2020 had quite a good imagination about the future of baseball, but they couldn't picture a world in which a new virus from China caused more Americans to lose their lives in less than three months than the Vietnam War did in over a decade.  I suppose it's good that they didn't.  A baseball video game filled with empty stadiums and a guy in a Phillies shirt and a surgical mask trying to find toilet paper probably wouldn't have thrilled too many gamers in the early 90's.

If Bob Nightengale is correct, we might see a return of Major League Baseball in the near future.  According to his sources, the league is planning to start the 2020 season in late June or early July.  Unfortunately, the games would have to be played in empty stadiums, but unlike the Cactus / Grapefruit Plan or any of the other rumored plans that have been leaked to the media, this plan would not separate players from their family in a quarantined baseball bio-dome.  However, it would radically realign the divisions in an effort to limit travel.  For all intents and purposes, the American League and National League would not exist.  Instead, there would be three divisions which break down like this:

The executives that Mr. Nightengale cited in his article are confident that this plan will not only work, but that Major League Baseball will be able to get in a season of over 100 regular season games, but it does leave us with a lot of unanswered questions.  For example, will every team in the league adopt the DH rule, or will games played in National League ballparks still require the pitcher to bat?  Will the teams return to their AL / NL breakdowns in the playoffs to battle for the pennant before facing off in the World Series, or could we potentially see a World Series between two AL teams or two NL teams?  If the three-division realignment continues into the post-season, how many Wild Card spots would be up for grabs and how would the playoffs be structured?  How many players would be on each roster?  Would minor league games be played, and if not, how would teams replace players who get hurt, or even players who get infected by Covid-19?  Speaking of the pandemic, will they have to shut down the entire league if a player tests positive for the virus?  How about if a groundskeeper tests positive, or a camera operator, or a player's immediate family?  And where are they getting all of these tests from when there doesn't seem to be enough tests for the general public, and the ones we do have are highly questionable for their high number of false-positive and false-negative results?

Right now, there are far more questions than answers, but setting aside the pandemic, I would be in favor of making this division realignment a permanent change in Major League Baseball.  With inter-league play, talk of a universal DH, and teams like the Brewers and Astros changing leagues when it suits them, the American League and National League breakdown is all but obsolete.  The realignment would definitely make it more difficult for the Phillies to win their division, but I think it would be a more interesting regular season.  It would put all of the Phillies World Series opponents except for the Royals in their division: Red Sox (1915), Yankees (1950, 2009), Orioles (1983), Blue Jays (1993) and Rays (2008), while allowing the Phillies to maintain their rivalry with the Mets and Nationals, and potentially renewing a rivalry with the Pirates that ended after the last divisional realignment in 1994.

Or they could go with cyborg baseball.  That works too.

Keeping Tabs On The Early 90's

Tab Clear pin
Coca-Cola (1993)
I had some eBay Bucks that were about to expire, so I used them to do what any sensible person living through an apocalypse would do.  I bought a promotional pin that was used to advertise a soda that was discontinued 27 years ago.

Tab Clear soda will always have a special place in my heart.  My dad had a minor scam operation going in 1993 which resulted in a free year's supply of his favorite diet cola.  I would wager that our household drank more Tab Clear than anyone else in the country.

It only lasted for a year so there's not a lot of Tab Clear merchandise floating around out there, but I try to keep my eye out for things like this pin.  One of these days, I'm hoping to find the flyer that Dad used to take advantage of the promo that brought us all of that free soda.

Source: Kevin Trotman (Flickr)

The Enchirito

Enchirito
Taco Bell (1970)
According to @RetroNewsNow, the Enchirito was introduced by Taco Bell fifty years ago.  It was a soft tortilla filled with seasoned ground beef, pinto beans and and onions, topped with cheddar cheese, olives and red sauce, and served in a reheatable aluminum foil tray.  Chico's in El Paso reminded me of it a little.  The Enchirito was discontinued by Taco Bell in 1993, but if you get creative with the customization options on the mobile app, you can re-create something similar to it.  Sadly, it will not come in the snazzy tray.

Too Much Virus On The Dance Floor

Ghost Town
The Specials (1981)
This classic British punk/reggae song has had a dark tone since it was recorded in April 1981, but it has an even more ominous feel during the pandemic.

This town is coming like a ghost town
All the clubs have been closed down
This place is coming like a ghost town
Bands won't play no more
Too much fighting on the dance floor
Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?
We danced and sang as the music played in any boomtown
This town is coming like a ghost town
Why must the youth fight against themselves?
Government leaving the youth on the shelf
This place is coming like a ghost town
No job to be found in this country
Can't go on no more
The people getting angry
This town is coming like a ghost town

It Was A Million To One Shot, Doc

Fusilli Jerry
Brooklyn Cyclones (2019)
Every year since 2014, the Brooklyn Cyclones have held a Seinfeld appreciation night.  Last year, they gave away figurines of the statue of Jerry Seinfeld that Kramer makes out of pasta in a Season 6 episode called The Fusilli Jerry.  In that episode, which first aired 25 years ago today, the statue ends up in a very uncomfortable location for Frank Costanza.

Out Here In The Fields

As you might expect, the baseball fields and basketball courts behind the former West Hazleton High School are usually crowded with parents and children who are having fun and enjoying the outdoors.  These days, the fields are empty.

I took these photos of the fields over Easter weekend.  The advertisements on the outfield wall are a who's who of products and businesses that will forever be linked with the Hazleton area, including Farmer's Iced Tea, Valley Hi Drive In and Jimmy's Quick Lunch.

Social Distancing Of The Juggalos

Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope of the Insane Clown Posse announced on Thursday that the 2020 Gathering Of The Juggalos has been cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  Within minutes, ICP trended on Twitter with most of the comments pointing out the fact that two rapping clowns who wrestle in barbed wire have more common sense and decency than many of our elected officials.