The question “Where’s the beef?” was a common “meme” in American culture in the mid-1980s. (Nobody used the word “meme” back then, though.) “Where’s the beef?” implied that something lacked value or substance.
It all came from a series of Wendy’s commercials, starring Clara Peller (1902-1987). Pellar made this inquiry whenever she was confronted by a hamburger that was too much bun, not enough beef.
Wendy’s made the size of its beef patties a selling point. And while fast-food hamburgers were never among my favorite foods, the Wendy’s burgers were better than most, at least in the 1980s.
This commercial is pure genius. It is entertaining in itself, but it also conveys an effective marketing message.
I’ve been aware of Johnny B. Truant for years now. I was a long-time listener of the (now defunct) Self-Publishing Podcast. Truant cohosted this podcast with his writing partners, Sean Platt and David Wright.
The Self-Publishing Podcast was quite informative. I really miss it.
Truant and his two cowriters provided instruction on what quickly emerged as the “standard” way to do indie publishing in the era of Kindle Unlimited and increasing competition. But now Truant has become a critic of an overheated indie publishing ecosystem, dependent on high ad spends and mass production techniques.
I recently listened to Truant being interviewed on the Self Publishing Info with the SPA Girls podcast. What follows are some highlights from the interview, with my own editorial asides liberally sprinkled in.
Two trends have distinguished indie publishing for at least a decade: a focus on high-volume output (aka “rapid release”, and a doctrinaire conformity to “tropes” within a very limited range of genres (aka “write to market”).
I’ve seen most of Mel Gibson’s movies, but I somehow missed Payback (1999). I watched the movie tonight and was distinctly underwhelmed.
Payback, as the title suggests, follows a boilerplate revenge plot. Mel Gibson plays Porter, an unlikable underworld figure who has been shot, left for dead, and cheated out of $70,000. Most of the movie concerns his violent quest for retribution.
Payback seems to be influenced by the nihilistic violence of [the much overrated] Pulp Fiction (1994), which was then recent in the public memory. There is much bloodshed in Payback, but none of it is very believable. Characters sustain fatal gunshot wounds, but recover long enough to deliver a coherent wisecrack or two, before falling off to sleep.
Payback proceeds with a smirking, tongue-in-cheek tone and vibe. The result is a movie that is not enough of one thing or another. Payback is too grim to succeed as a comedy, it’s too ridiculous to succeed as an action film.
Mel Gibson has starred in some great movies over the years. Payback isn’t one of them.
-ET
VENETIAN SPRINGS
Read it in Kindle Unlimited or paperback!
Mark Baxter thought a trip to the casino would mean easy money. Instead he faces a desperate fight to save his wife from a ruthless narcotics kingpin.
I discovered pop/rock music in 1981-2, when I was still in junior high. Because of the longevity of contemporary rock bands, I sometimes come across new material from bands that I first discovered 40 years ago.
This is always a treat, and it always makes me feel younger. (If the rock bands of your youth are still making new music, you can’t be that old, right? That notion works for the Boomers, so why not for Gen X?)
38 Special is one such still-active band from my junior high years. I became a fan of 38 Special back when their 1982 album Special Forces was new, and reached the number 10 spot on the Billboard 200. This album includes several of the group’s classic songs, including, “Caught Up in You” and “You Keep Runnin’ Away”.
The band has just released a new song on YouTube, “All I Haven’t Said”.
There have been some personnel changes since 1982, of course. (I believe 38 Special has a new lead vocalist.) So the sound is a little different, but the same spirit is there.
I like the new song, and I am glad to see that 38 Special is still around and making music.
I have been an avid runner since 1984. In more than 40 years of running, I have had relatively few injuries. But all of the injuries that I have had have involved my feet.
As a result, my quest for the perfect running shoe has lasted for 40 years, too. I’ve tried all the major brands at one time or another: Nike, Adidas, New Balance, etc.
I recently acquired this pair of Cloudsurfers, and they are like no running shoes I have ever owned. They are light for speed, but also provide extensive support.
My new Cloudsurfer running shoes
Regular readers will know that I often wax nostalgic about the 1980s. I’m a curmudgeon when it comes to most social media—and don’t even get me started about AI.
But sometimes, the more modern, high-tech solution represents an improvement. Cloudsurfers weren’t available for me to run in back in 1984. I wish such shoes had been on the market in my salad days.
The following excerpt is from Chapter 1 of Kuwa6226!
Go to bed already, an internal voice told him. Be sensible. Be responsible.
Hajime Takagawa rubbed his eyes as he stared at his computer screen. He knew that he should have been asleep an hour ago. The time was already 11:47 p.m.
The main room of his studio apartment was completely dark, except for the glow of his laptop screen. The remnants of Takagawa’s late dinner—ramen and salted pork—still hung in the semi-fetid air.
He would have to clean up the kitchen before he went to bed, too.
More than that, though,Takagawa would have to report to work tomorrow. No different from any other Tuesday. Another grueling morning commute through Japan’s Kantō region, which encompassed Greater Tokyo.
The commute was even more grueling when you were sleep-deprived. (This Takagawa knew from experience.)
But Takagawa, seated in the dark at his kitchen table, was too transfixed by what was on his computer screen.
It wasn’t pornography, nor online gambling. Not even social media—not really.
It was an online forum.
The forum was called: the International Legend Hunters (ILH) forum.
The forum consisted of a series of conversations with complete strangers, about supernatural phenomena and urban legends.
Takagawa leaned forward in his chair, the time and tomorrow’s troubles forgotten again.
Someone in Scotland had just posted a field report about an investigation of a supposedly haunted castle outside Edinburgh.
The poster’s handle was IanK12. Takagawa read IanK12’s report with great interest. He struggled over a few typos, awkward sentences, and unfamiliar words. The language of the International Legend Hunter’s forum was English, which Takagawa understood, though imperfectly.
If nothing else, Takagawa told himself, his new obsession might be improving his English skills. That could come in handy at work.
“I didn’t see any ghosts,” IanK12 typed at the end of his report. “But I didn’t debunk the legend, either.”
Takagawa pondered this. The whole point of the International Legend Hunters forum was to debunk urban legends and ghost stories. IanK12 had therefore failed. (Takagawa, though, would never be so ill-mannered as to point this out.)
But he was determined to do better. When Takagawa carried out the investigation he was planning, he would not fail. He would find the truth, and he would not lose his nerve.
And he already had a doozy of an urban legend in mind.
Takagawa read two more field reports. The first of these concerned a haunted village in the Philippines. The second was about a site in Ireland where UFOs were commonly seen—if you believed the stories.
These field reports, too, were inconclusive. They were little more than descriptions of the locations, with some random speculations thrown in.
The forum has no real purpose if no one ever comes to any conclusions, Takagawa thought. These investigations should be more thorough, more systematic.
Takagawa considered for a moment, and then typed:
“Interesting reports, to be sure. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to make several more trips over the coming days, to see if any phenomena present themselves? Then we may have some concrete data to analyze.”
He paused. Was his English correct, or at least comprehensible? He believed that it was. He typed another paragraph:
“On the other hand: while no one can prove the nonexistence of a negative, a lack of a phenomenon, repeated over multiple days, weighs in favor of disproving an urban legend.”
Then he added:
“Please excuse my poor English.”
Finally he pushed the POST button, and his remarks appeared in the forum.
His handle in the forum was TokyoTaka. Everyone in the forum posted under a pseudonym, often one that suggested nationality or location.
Takagawa’s comments of constructive criticism received several upvotes, but the enthusiasm was muted. Not everyone in the forum was serious about making systematic inquiries, let alone approximating the scientific method. Many of the forum’s contributors seemed content to exchange ghost stories in cyberspace.
Finally, Takagawa went to bed.
The time was 12:21 a.m., Tuesday morning.
His sleep was tortured. He dreamt of being chased through a forest by a giant skeletal creature, one with bulging green eyes and clattering teeth.
Not far from where I live, there is a stretch of Ohio State Route 125 that has been dubbed Dead Man’s Curve.
The spot is just a few miles from my house, in fact. I’ve been by there many times.
According to the urban legend, if you drive this section of rural highway a little after 1 a.m., you might see the faceless hitchhiker. From a distance, this male figure may look relatively normal. Once you get close, though, you’ll see that he has no face.
Sometimes the hitchhiker isn’t content to stand there by the side of the road and watch you. There have been reports of the phantom actually attacking cars.
Creepy, right?
Yeah, I think so, too….
Dead Man’s Curve on Ohio State Route 125 has a long and macabre history. Route 125 is the main road that connects the suburbs and small towns east of Cincinnati with the city. But much of the road (including Dead Man’s Curve) was originally part of the Ohio Turnpike, which was built in 1831. (Andrew Jackson was president in 1831, just to put that date in perspective.)
That section of the Ohio Turnpike was the scene of many accidents (some of them fatal), even in the horse-and-buggy days. The downward sloping curve became particularly treacherous when rain turned the road to mud. Horses and carriages would sometimes lose their footing, sending them over the adjacent hillside.
In the twentieth century, the Ohio Turnpike was paved and reconfigured into State Route 125. In 1968 the road was expanded into four lanes.
As part of the expansion, the spot known as Dead Man’s Curve was leveled and straightened. (As a result, the curve doesn’t look so daunting today…unless you know its history.) This was supposed to be the end of “Dead Man’s Curve”.
But it wasn’t.
In 1969, there was a horrible accident at the spot. The driver of a green Roadrunner—traveling at a speed of 100 mph—slammed into an Impala carrying five teenagers. There was only one survivor of the tragic accident.
Shortly after that, witnesses began to report sightings of the faceless hitchhiker during the wee hours. (The hitchhiker is said to be most active during the twenty-minutes between 1:20 and 1:40 a.m.) There have also been reports of a ghostly green Roadrunner that will chase drivers late at night.
Oh, and Dead Man’s Curve remains deadly, despite the leveling and straightening done in 1968. In the five decades since the accident involving the Roadrunner and the Impala, around seventy people have been killed there.
Is there any truth to the legend of Dead Man’s Curve?
I can’t say for sure. What I can tell you is that I’ve heard many eyewitness accounts from local residents who claim to have seen the hitchhiker. (Keep in mind, I live very close to Dead Man’s Curve, and it’s a local topic of discussion and speculation.) Almost none of these eyewitnesses have struck me as mentally imbalanced or deceitful.
I know what your last question is going to be: Have I ever driven Dead Man’s Curve between 1:20 and 1:40 a.m. myself?
Uh, no. But perhaps I’ll get around to it someday, and I’ll let you know in a subsequent blog post!
I’m not sure how 40 years went by without me seeing Commando (1985). But I finally caught it last night with my YouTube Premium subscription.
Commando stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a retired military operative, who is called into action when a group of international bad guys take his daughter hostage.
It’s a very basic plot, with a lot left to assumption, or the viewer’s imagination. This is pure 80s escapism, and the film suffers somewhat from the production values of that era.
On the plus side, there are no boring moments in the 90 minutes that it will take you to watch Commando. The movie is a lot of fun, in the same way that the A-Team and Magnum P.I. were fun in the 1980s.
There is no romantic subplot in Commando. Rae Dawn Chong, however, provides a solid performance as Schwarzenegger’s sidekick (and, at one point in the movie, his pilot). The 12-year-old Alyssa Milano, who was decades away from becoming annoying and political, appears as Schwarzenegger’s daughter.
The X feed Super 70s Sports has the following to say about the late Merlin Olsen (1940 – 2010):
“I miss Merlin Olsen. A true renaissance man who could kick your ass, eloquently break down exactly how he did it, then send you a thoughtful bouquet of flowers as a gesture of goodwill.”
I miss Merlin Olsen. A true renaissance man who could kick your ass, eloquently break down exactly how he did it, then send you a thoughtful bouquet of flowers as a gesture of goodwill. pic.twitter.com/rLxImgSPtR
I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but most Gen Xers don’t remember Merlin Olsen as a professional football player. Olsen played his last game in the NFL in 1976. This Gen Xer was an 8-year-old third-grader then.
Most of us do, however, remember Merlin Olsen in his post-NFL acting career. Olsen portrayed Jonathan Garvey on Little House on the Prairie from 1977 to 1981. In this secondary role, he was the “male buddy” figure for Michael Landon’s starring role.
My childhood household had one television, and my mom loved Little House. So we of course tuned in every week. I didn’t love this show quite as much as my mom did, but I didn’t exactly hate it, either. It was pleasant enough television for that pre-cable era, when most TV shows were written to the broadest audience possible. Little House on the Prairie was written and billed as wholesome family fare, with all that label implies, both for better and for worse.
I recall watching Olsen on Little House on the Prairie for several years, perhaps, before my father mentioned, apropos of nothing, that Merlin Olsen had previously been a professional football player.
My research tells me that he had quite a career in that capacity. But I, like most Gen Xers, will always think of him as Jonathan Garvey.
This past week marked the 40-year anniversary of the release of Back to the Future on July 3, 1985.
I saw the movie when it was new. I enjoyed it; but I never thought that this was a film that would be remembered four decades later.
But hey, I was 17 years old in the summer of 1985. What did I know?
1985 theatrical release poster
One of the forgotten facts about the movie is that Disney originally rejected it. The dealbreaker was the subplot in which Marty McFly’s mother becomes infatuated with him during his time in 1955. Disney execs didn’t like the incestuous plot twist.
And it struck me as a little strange at the time. Never mind that this is not the sort of scenario that anyone is likely to encounter in real life.
Whether Disney was right to reject the film or not in the 1980s, herein lies a measure of how much Disney—and the movie business—has changed since then. As we all know, Disney is more than happy to let its freak flag fly nowadays.
When I was in junior high in 1981, everyone was talking about Ozzy Osbourne.
We were too young to remember when Ozzy was the lead singer for Black Sabbath (the band that finally fired him in 1979). But we all liked Blizzard of Ozz, and Diary of a Madman, the two solo albums of his that were then available.
Back then, we bought them in vinyl, or maybe cassette. There were no lame streaming platforms in 1981. In 1981, Taylor Swift would not even be born for another eight years. It was a grand time, indeed.
There were concerns about some aspects of Ozzy’s persona. His music, like that of Black Sabbath, had a quasi-occult vibe. That was typical for heavy metal music of the 1980s. On at least one occasion, Ozzy had bitten off the head of a (already deceased) dove. That was not so typical, even for heavy metal artists.
I still like Ozzy’s music. But as is so often the case with still-thriving Boomer artists whom I discovered in my tender years (like Stephen King, for example), I have a strong preference for the early portion of Ozzy’s oeuvre. And even that is something I have to be in the right mood for.
I never tire, however, of my interest in Ozzy the individual. A few years ago, I watched several of Ozzy’s reality show series with my dad. I could never get my dad to listen to Ozzy’s music back in the 1980s; but he liked Ozzy the reality show star.
Now 76 and beset by health issues, Ozzy is closing out his long career. This weekend marked his final solo performance. Not bad, for a man whose first stage performances date back to the late 1960s.
The dating app Bumble has lost over half of its value since going public in 2021. The company recently announced plans to cut 30 percent of its workforce.
Bumble is not the only dating app that is in trouble. Tinder is also hemorrhaging members. So is Match. Almost all dating apps are losing paying members, otherwise known as “men”. What gives?
Women almost always get a “free ride” on dating apps. In other words, they almost never have to pay for memberships.
This isn’t because of some feminist conspiracy. It’s because of simple laws of sexual economics. In the human world, as in the animal one, males are in supply, and females are in demand.
If you don’t believe this, and you would like an extreme example as proof, announce online that you’re going to host an orgy at your house. A hundred men will show up, and not a single woman. Continue reading “Bumble and the death of the dating app”
I was driving through my neighborhood the other day when I saw…a group of kids riding their bikes.
No, seriously. Kids. Riding. Bikes. There were no electronic devices involved. No one was checking Instagram. There were no hovering, fretful parents, either.
For a moment I thought I had strayed into a time slip, and wandered back into the 1970s or 1980s, when the “free range” childhood was the norm. During the summer months, I used to take off at 8 o’clock in the morning—maybe come back for lunch—and disappear again until dinnertime. The bicycle was the cornerstone of that style of summering.
But that simply isn’t done anymore! Someone might get hurt! And think about all the screen time that the kids are missing.
I had to be back in 1978 or 1982! Time travel is real, I told myself.
Then I noticed that the kids were all wearing helmets, as if they were commandos assaulting the Taliban headquarters in Afghanistan. A concession to the hyper-vigilant, ever-nervous present. No—I was still in 2025! Whew! That was a close one!
Me, with bike, summer of ’78. The older adults in the photo are my grandparents, members of the WWII generation, who grew up during the Great Depression.
Nevertheless, this was reassuring to see. For years now, childhood has become increasingly screen-based and indoors. This trend accelerated during the pandemic.
The result is a young generation that is more disturbed than ever—even more than my grandparents’ generation was; and they came of age during the Great Depression—when there was actually a lot to worry about.
According to one recent study, 30 percent of adolescents today are affected by anxiety disorders. Some pundits blame social media. I don’t disagree with that analysis. I’m 56 years old, and an hour on Facebook or TikTok gives me anxiety, too.
I will interpret the kids on bikes as a positive sign, then. Perhaps there is a collective realization that the kind of childhood enjoyed by Generation X and the Baby Boom generation was much healthier—even if we didn’t wear bike helmets.
Now let’s turn our attention to something really important: the future of the rock band AC/DC.
I’ve been a fan of AC/DC since the early 1980s, when Back in Black was the latest thing. AC/DC isn’t my favorite band. (That honor goes to Rush.) But AC/DC is definitely among my top ten.
The members of AC/DC, just like the rest of us, are getting older. Angus Young, the group’s iconic guitarist, is now 70. Lead vocalist Brian Johnson is now 77.
No, it isn’t 1981 anymore. (And oh, how I wish that it were, for any number of reasons.) But AC/DC still gives a pretty solid live performance, by my estimation.
