Give It A Tug.

Another nostalgia find from YouTube.  I don't remember this ad specifically, and I suspect the Canadian market might have had its own specific ads.  But I definitely remember thinking Quasar brand TVs were cool back in the '70s.  I also remember the female vocal bit at the end. For years I would pull on the cabinets of TVs, hoping to find the "works in a drawer," because when you're a little kid a secret drawer full of electronic gizmos is cool!  Now if I could find the spoof of these ads from the '70s Wayne and Shuster shows, which featured a female voice shrieking "Crazar!"

Get Friendly.

Feeling down? There's a good chance this will cheer you up, especially if you're Canadian and remember CBC kid's programming of days gone by. No overactive running around or overly sweet pandering here. Interestingly it seems to me some of the dialogue here might actually have been improvised. Cool if true. Seriously, how can you not dig a pair of swinging cats like those?

Old Days Radio.

Driving along tonight I had Ninety by 808 State playing. The final cut on side one of the cassette is "Pacific 202." As I listened to it I realised the first place I heard that tune was on CBC FM as end of the hour music on one of their late night programs. I think it might have been Nightlines. I listened a lot to CBC FM late night in the late '80s and early '90s, and the music on Nightlines and Brave New Waves no doubt shaped my musical tastes. I'm sure that's where I first encountered Nomeansno, Change of Heart, and Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet. That was a great period in radio, with Brent Bambury hosting Brave New Waves before he went on to the neutered world of CBC TV's Midday. Dave Bidini of the Rheostatics sat in at times and made a good host. Then there was Nightlines on Saturday nights, hosted for by David Wisdom for the last 10 years of its 15 year run. I personally think the name Wisdom is a great name for someone hosting a radio show that took advantage of his extensive knowledge of pop music and his gigantic collection of singles, showcased for years via the feature "10 Singles in Alphabetical Order." Nightlines came to an end in 1997, and I never really got interested in the various replacement series that CBC FM carried afterwards. I'd guess I stopped listening to Brave New Waves sometime around the mid '90s, but I'm not really sure. CBC finally brought it to an end last year in March.

Unhappy Breakaway Day!

If you live in the universe in which Space: 1999 is set today is the eighth anniversary of the Moon being blown out of orbit. Its funny to think of watching the series when I was 8 and 9 and the year 1999 seeming to be so far away. And here I am, writing this and the year 1999 is 8 years ago! Slow or fast, before you know it the years slip by.

The series arrived at both a fortunate and an unfortunate time. Fortunate because when in first aired in the fall of 1975 there was little competition, with Star Trek being limited to syndicated reruns and very little new science fiction being available. Unfortunate because it arrived a year too early, with the series being cancelled and the last episodes being aired in many markets just as Star Wars appeared to launch the late '70s sci fi boom, a boom that the series wouldn't be able to take full advantage of.