Nostalgia is not healthy .. but maybe watching 2016 Netflix is on a snowy weekend in January..
This morning when I woke up, I noticed that Netflix added a new category to its main page called Let’s Pretend It’s 2016. It features movies and television shows like the Ghostbusters remake, The OA, and of course Stranger Things, since Season 1 appeared ten years ago.
Seeing that listing was a reminder of just how many things have come and gone on Netflix… and, honestly, how much better things used to feel. Over the last decade, everything seems to have gone downhill. So much of what’s released now feels rushed, made without much care or concern, with lackluster scripts and very few fresh ideas. But go back just ten years, to 2016, and we kind of had it made. We just didn’t know it.
Back then we were probably complaining that Netflix had already dumbed things down, that there wasn’t much to watch, and that the best entertainment was from ten or twenty years earlier. Little did we realize that here in 2026 we’d be decrying the bad writing of Stranger Things Season 5 and missing shows that were genuinely binge-worthy, not ones you casually glance at on a boring snowy weekend.
It’s nice to see this category, but it’s also bittersweet. Nostalgia can be one of the most dangerous things… it has a way of creating unrealistic memories of the past. Things weren’t always that great, and tomorrow isn’t always as bad as it seems. But when it comes to entertainment, movies, and television shows on Netflix, things really might be as bad as they feel right now.
So I guess this weekend, as the snow falls outside, I’ll watch what I watched ten years ago… and maybe it’ll feel new again.
It can happen to you.. because he’s Lumberjack and he don’t care
In a desperate attempt to change the narrative away from Stranger Things posts for the last week, or maybe just as a brief respite from entertainment and movies altogether, we’re going to focus on dreams. That’s fun. Or, in my case, last night’s nightmare.
Every now and then I have a dream this memorable .. a nightmare that sticks with you .. and last night was one of those sleepless nights. It was the 3:00 a.m. witching hour when I woke up. That seems to be the most popular time for a nightmare to abruptly pull you out of your nocturnal decommission.
In this situation, the abrupt nature was a giant inflatable lumberjack.
Let me explain.
In the dream, there was a bluish tint to the atmosphere and fresh-fallen snow covering a giant yard .. presumably my yard. I noticed something underneath the snow, struggling to move. When I went down to investigate, it turned out to be an inflatable lumberjack. How cute. Have fun.
It started innocently, with the lumberjack now freed from the heavy snow on top of it and able to inflate freely. But as dreams tend to go, it didn’t stop there. Literally. It just kept inflating, to the point where it was potentially 30 to 40 feet high, and that’s when it started to frighten me.
So, in the dream, I ran back to the house for safety. When I looked out the window, the lumberjack decided to grab a giant inflatable axe, detach himself from the strings holding him down, and run at the house at full speed.
What a strange concept — a lumberjack, let alone a 40-foot inflatable lumberjack, charging at you at full speed.
It’s weird because it was just a dream, but it’s the kind of dream that stayed with me all day. There could be plenty of reasons why it happened. Maybe it’s stress. Maybe there’s something in my own life coming at me full speed that I need to grasp or grapple with.
Or maybe it was just too much vino at the hotel bar. Either way, I asked AI to make a gritty four-panel comic based on my very detailed description. It didn’t quite capture the full inflatable rendering, the size and ferocity of the lumberjack, but it’s good enough for me.
So I present it for your approval, with the help of our ever-increasing spy device known as AI. Enjoy: The Inflatable Lumberjack Dream, comic-style.
Picture it: Christmas 1990. You’re sitting there playing Zelda, and you just can’t figure out what to do next. You’re stuck, it’s ruining Christmas, your family’s angry, you’re angry, and you don’t want to throw the controller at the TV. What do you do? Well, this is 1990. We didn’t have Google, we didn’t have AI, we only had the word of mouth of others. And in this case, your friend circle has no idea what you should do next.
Who are you going to call? You’re going to call the Nintendo phone number helpline.
Yes, there was a Nintendo helpline where you, as a gamer, could call up and not speak to a computer, but actually talk to a real person. You’d describe the scene you were in, the level you were stuck on, and that person.. who might literally be playing Nintendo games while on the line.. would give you the advice you needed.
Talk about an amazing snapshot in time, right? I think back to it and realize that as a kid, I learned to find secrets or figure out glitches in games through pure perseverance or maybe a tip from another kid at school. There was no internet walkthrough; you either figured it out yourself or called someone who could walk you through it like a gaming therapist. And that was part of the challenge and the fun.
You know, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: if I ever end up with Alzheimer’s and find myself in a nursing home, I want someone to bring me a Nintendo. Because no matter what happens to my brain, I guarantee I can still beat Mario 3.
Bring your wallet and purse as we stroll down nostalgia lane. Let’s do a price check together.
What’s the one Christmas gift from your childhood that still stands out—and where did your family buy it?
Christmas time is here again. The annual ritual of spending cash you really don’t have. Society expects it!! Get that card out!
Like you, I’m out there right now wandering the stores, scrolling the apps, perusing the malls that still exist and matching the prices up with the Amazon option. I get panicky this time of year because I haven’t purchased much yet. I check my bank account (you do it too), and I realize there just isn’t much time left until the big day … food, medicine? Or Christmas gifts. What do you spend on in December?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9TByT3QlWc
Every year I try to be one of those organized people who gets things done early.. knock a few gifts out in November, finish up the first week of December. Because we all know what happens if you don’t: the Panic Purchases begin.
We’ve all been there. You see nervous husbands frozen in the appliance aisle. You see kids staring at some sad-looking afghan blanket, trying to convince themselves, “Yeah, Mom would probably like that.”
Let’s be honest: most of us already have enough stuff. We don’t really need much of anything on Christmas. But we’ve been programmed for decades to think we have to buy, buy, buy.
So go buy. Be a part of something.. 🙂
As you get older, it actually becomes more fulfilling to buy something for someone else that genuinely makes them smile. The only problem is that we still wait too long to start looking for that “special” thing. So we end up right back in that blender aisle, trying to justify why someone in life might really want to circular-saw their fruits and vegetables into mush all year long.
That’s a different story for a different post. We have digressed too long.
Toy Ad Nostalgia: The Real Christmas Catalog
One of my favorite things about this time of year isn’t the new stuff… it’s the old stuff. Specifically: old Christmas ads. Especially toy ads.
We all feel those toy ads, right?
For me and many, the sweet spot is the late ’80s and early ’90s. That’s when my childhood was starting to age out of toys, but not quite yet. Right before everything shifted into “I just want money” mode. You may be prompted into the inebriation of nostalgia from the 70s, maybe the 50s.. Maybe even the 2010s! Any way you slice it, the same effects on the mind and body occur.
Those were the years when the toy spreads in the Sunday paper or the department store flyers looked absolutely magical:
He-Man figures lined up like plastic warriors
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in all their neon glory
The Nintendo Entertainment System taking over living rooms one cartridge at a time
I remember one of the greatest Christmases of my entire life like it was yesterday. I got:
A Super Mario game for Nintendo
A Batman game for Nintendo
A red bean bag
A blue bean bag
The colors matched Mario. That was it. That was the list. And somehow, that simple combination still stands out in my mind as the Best Christmas Ever™.
Before that, when I was younger, I remember getting Tonka toys—real metal, heavy, practically indestructible. That was also the year Christmas collided with a stomach bug. I spent part of that magical morning sick, but here’s the thing: even with that, the memories still come back warm. A little queasy, but warm.
Old Ads, Old Prices, New Reality
So here’s what I want to do with this post:
I’ve got a couple of old Christmas toy ads I want to share with you. Take a good look at the prices in those ads. The toys, the games, the “big” items.
Below each ad, we’ll break down a few of those prices and talk about what they’d roughly translate to in today’s money. How much would that Nintendo, that action figure set, or that Tonka truck actually cost now if you adjusted it for inflation?
Because back then, a toy that cost $19.99 felt like a big deal. Now we blink at $49.99 like, “Eh, that’s just what stuff costs.”
We used a typical inflation calculator to see what the Nintendo was.. $237 in today’s money. and even in today’s dollars that would be VERY affordable compared to the high priced almost $1000 dollar gaming consoles of today’s gaming market. And you ca n OWN a game then, BATMAN, for 40 bucks.. That would be $96 today. So yes.. we are being taken advantage of in today’s gaming market, right?
But just stop and appreciate that 1990s. That was the year I got the bean bags, BATMAN, and MARIO 3.. life changing childhood moment.
A year before the greatest Christmas ever I most likely before the $3.99 BATMAN action figures.. My parents got me BATMAN and the JOKER and BOB THE GOON. They spent $15 bucks on those, and in today’s money about $11 each. But yet in 2025, action figures in stores are 20 bucks or more… Again, are we being used by corporations?
Kids drooled over the SEGA by 89 as Nintendo faced competition.. It was pricer at $189
So now we are talking bigger money.. that is almost $500 in today’s cash. We are getting closer to the Playstation or xBox..
Ad for the heck of it in 1986 when you may have craved a Wuzzle at the Schuylkill Mall.
$1.99 then! Not even $6 bucks now .. Great deal. I am sure if they were existent today they would be $20 on sale. And if you kept it in a box, you could sell in on eBay TODAY for $99 bucks (according to sell prices), which by the way was $33 bucks in 1986. Reverse.. deflation.. See how that worked?
So money talked.. Money was spent. Bills long paid, or ignored.. We have moved on.
What make it all so special in the past?
Maybe it wasn’t the price. Maybe it was the bean bags. They meant more than anything else..
Revisiting the 1990 It miniseries is like stepping back into a time when horror on TV had to dance carefully around the censors and when a clown named Pennywise became an icon dancing on the little screen.
I remember it well: I was ten years old, my homework half-finished, and the only way I could get to watch that eagerly anticipated TV event was by promising I’d get my work done. It was absolutely life-changing for a young movie fan like me.
ABC took a pretty bold leap adapting Stephen King’s It for prime-time television. Sure, they had to cut out the more graphic and adult themes from the novel. The blood and gore was minimized to nearly nothing. The unsettling moments got toned down so they wouldn’t scare the living daylights out of a wide audience watching that night. But even with all those network limitations, they created something truly special.
A big portion of the magic was Tim Curry.
His portrayal of Pennywise wasn’t buried in monster makeup. It was a deceptively simple clown design—almost friendly on the surface, which somehow made it even more terrifying. Curry didn’t rely on special effects or gore but instead was able to subtlety have presence, voice, and a simple smile. That haunting, unforgettable smile. In a time when horror icons like Freddy and Jason dominated with blades and blood, Pennywise chilled you with charm and menace and a little paper boat for Georgie.
The production itself had challenges. There were delays, rewrites, and debate within ABC about just how far they could go. But the cast, both kids and adults, brought heart to the screen. The chemistry was real, and despite the limitations of the format, they managed to breathe life into King’s story. Curry’s performance was so commanding that he overshadowed everything else and become the most anticipated part of the made for TV series.
Yes, even that ending with the not-so-great giant spider was lousy.. but being honest, that part’s a bit of a punchline now when you watch it again.. but somehow Curry held the whole thing together and ages like a fine wine.
There are no reports of any dramatic on-set accidents or major injuries. It wasn’t a famously chaotic set. Most of the struggles came from trying to condense King’s dark, emotional, and layered story into something suitable for 1990s television.
At the time, the reviews were generally solid, especially considering the restraints of the medium.
Stephen King himself was pleased with it. And now, all these years later, it’s still fondly remembered—not just for the scares, but for what it represented: a moment when horror tried something different. When it became a prime-time event. When kids like me rushed to finish their homework just to be scared by a clown.
The 1990 It wasn’t just horror—it was appointment television. And for a lot of us, it still lingers in the back of our minds, floating there like a red balloon in the storm drain of memory.
Tim Curry…
He made us all really scared of clowns. And that was more than enough for TV…
Imagine one day you go to the mailbox and there’s an envelope in there with no return address. Just your name. No explanation. Inside is an old VHS tape. No label. No handwriting. Nothing. Just a blank tape. So you dig out that old VCR from the closet or the basement, because of course you kept it, right? You pop the tape in, press play, and what comes on the screen is a dimly lit room with a group of people sitting around a table. Regular people. Nobody looks dramatic or haunted. They’re just… there. Talking to someone who isn’t visible. And then the table begins to move.
That idea sticks with me. Because the thing we’re talking about here is the Philip Experiment, and most of us only ever see fragments of it. Little clips that show up on YouTube or TikTok every so often. Grainy, eerie, just long enough to make you wonder if you’re seeing something you’re not supposed to see. The full uncut video isn’t floating around. It’s not archived publicly. Parts of it exist — but never the whole. Which adds to the legend, if you ask me.
Back in the early 1970s in Toronto, a group of people got together to see if they could create a ghost purely through imagination. They didn’t believe Philip was real historically. He wasn’t. They made him up. They gave him a life story, motivations, a tragic arc. They shaped him the way writers shape a character — except instead of writing a book, they sat around a table and tried to call him into existence.
This is where belief becomes interesting. Because these people weren’t actors, they weren’t psychics, and they weren’t trying to deceive anyone — including themselves. They knew Philip was fictional, and yet they set out to see whether their collective attention could make something happen.
And eventually, something did.
Knocking sounds. Rhythmic responses. The table moving. Slight at first, then more confidently. If you’ve ever sat around a Ouija board and felt that moment when the room shifts from joking to dead silent — you’ll understand the sensation. It’s not just about the movement. It’s the way the air changes. The moment your body reacts before your brain does.
I imagine that’s what happened in that Toronto room. Everyone knew Philip wasn’t real — until they felt something that made them question that certainty. And once one person believes, the belief becomes contagious. Group energy is real. Human minds sync. A spark in the room becomes a fire in the room, and suddenly everyone feels like something is there, whether they can define it or not.
Now, depending on what you believe, there are two paths this story can take.
Some say this was purely psychological. The human brain moving the table subconsciously. The ideomotor effect. A shared feedback loop of expectation and excitement.
Others say that when you call out to the void — something answers. But not always the thing you think you’re calling. And that it might have worn Philip’s face for the fun of it.
Either version is unsettling in its own way.
What stands out to me personally are those video clips. Watching the table move with no visible hands lifting it. Not proof — because the paranormal never seems to allow itself proof — but enough to make you sit still for a second. Enough to make you inhale differently. Enough to make you wonder if reality is a thinner membrane than we pretend it is.
Some of the people involved in the experiment did speak about it years later. None of them claimed it was hoaxed. None of them said they summoned an actual spirit either. What most of them said was something closer to this:
“We knew Philip wasn’t real. But the things that happened felt real.”
And that is the part that lingers.
Not the ghost. Not the séance. Not the story they invented.
But the moment where imagination and experience touch. Where the room feels different. Where the mind opens a door it didn’t know it could open.
And once a door is opened — even for a moment — who’s to say it ever really closes?
So here’s my question.
If you tried to recreate the Philip Experiment today — would you be daring enough to go through with it? And if you did, what would you name the entity you were trying to call into existence? Would you choose a new name? Or would you try Philip again?
And what if — just what if — when they created Philip all those years ago, they didn’t create something pretend… but they connected to something that has been drifting ever since. Not gone. Not dead. Just waiting in the quiet spaces between worlds to be acknowledged again.
It’s a controversial but yet still amazing movie to discuss 40 years later
November 1st 1985, on a budget of $3 million, Freddy’s Revenge grossed $30 million.
Some people love this movie, some people hate it — but it’s now been 40 years since A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge hit theaters. Over the decades, detractors have always said it doesn’t “fit” the storyline of the original. Meanwhile, others have celebrated it, especially for its place in horror history and the way it unintentionally (or maybe intentionally) introduced the idea of the male scream queen.
For years, many in the LGBTQ community recognized and embraced the movie’s underlying themes .. a hidden subtext that wasn’t widely discussed back then, but is now openly talked about and appreciated today. It’s become a cult conversation piece because of that. And a male scream queen!
But one thing is absolutely certain: The makeup and visual effects in this film were some of the best in the entire series. Freddy’s face is incredible. The school bus scene is iconic. And Jesse’s transformation into Freddy remains one of the most memorable sequences in the franchise… disturbing, surreal, and unforgettable.
Forty years later, I still celebrate this film. In my opinion, it’s one of the better entries in the series. And without question — it has one of the greatest VHS cover arts of all time.
The nostalgia is only superseded by the bad acting! MALCOLM!!!
This time of year always brings a certain melancholy reflection and a lot of nostalgia. For me, one of the oddest and most memorable parts of that mix is an old made-for-TV movie that somehow manages to be both terrible and fantastic at the same time.
You’ll probably think I’m crazy for saying it, but I’m talking about “Without Warning,” a CBS television movie from 1994.
It aired on the anniversary of Orson Welles’ infamous War of the Worlds broadcast — the one that scared the space aliens out of America in 1938 when people thought aliens were actually invading. CBS promoted Without Warning heavily, making sure viewers knew it was fictional. Still, that didn’t stop some people from calling the police that night, convinced that history was repeating itself .. another alien invasion, right on early 90s prime-time TV.
The 1990s Were the Perfect Time for This Kind of Weird TV movie
Let’s rewind to the great 1990s. Seriously, they were pretty great. The Clinton administration was just getting started. No one had heard of Monica Lewinsky yet. The economy was taking off (despite NAFTA and GATT which would eventually kinda sorta ruin everything).. And in the background, the paranormal was quietly creeping into pop culture’s bloodstream.
Shows like Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM, Sightings, and Unsolved Mysteries made the supernatural feel just a little more believable. It was the perfect atmosphere for a movie like Without Warning .. a fake news broadcast about the end of the world.
The entire film was presented as a series of breaking news segments. Sander Vanocur, a respected journalist at the time, played it completely straight. The first reports came in of mysterious asteroids striking the planet .. there were three impact sites, three disasters. But as the “coverage” went on, it became clear that these weren’t asteroids at all. They were intelligently controlled… and they were angry.
Then we were joined by mom from Malcolm in the Middle!! Long before Malmolm..
In the movie, the U.S. government (under a fictionalized version of the Clinton administration) launched nuclear weapons in a last-ditch effort to intercept the incoming objects. That, of course, made things worse. Soon, radar screens filled with hundreds of unidentified craft closing in on Earth. Cue the faux-emotional poetry, the panicked anchors, and the eerie fade-out that left everyone wondering if the end had already begun.
CBS was ready.. they were knew that WAR OF THE WORLD caused panic.. so they thought they would devise a nifty course of action and tell people the show was fake every commercial break…
That should work, right?
NOPE.. it didn’t.
Terrible… but Terrifying for a lot of people!
The reviews were brutal.. But 14-year-old me? I loved it.
I remember sitting there on Halloween night in 1994, too old to trick-or-treat and living in an area with few kids anyway. I was ready for Without Warning like it was the Super Bowl. When John B. Wells’ voice kicked in for the opening narration, I was hooked.
Even today, I still sometimes throw it on YouTube as background noise though I almost hesitate to mention it, since no one has claimed the copyright and I don’t want to jinx it. It’s oddly comforting in that late-night, static-on-the-screen way. I hope this Youtube video with ORIGINAL COMMERCIALS FROM THE TIME doesn’t go away..
Each time the movie returned from commercial break, a voiceover reminded viewers that this was not actually happening. Despite that, many people still believed it was real — a modern echo of Orson Welles’ panic nearly six decades earlier.
Even with the warnings… even with the constant “we are fake” promos, hundreds of people called television stations in various cities and states in panic!! Reports at the time said some of those calling in were in tears.
When Fiction Feels a Little Too Real
What makes this worth bringing up now, 31 years later, is how eerily it ties into today. Right now, we have 3I/ATLAS passing near Mars .. an interstellar object that some, including Harvard’s Avi Loeb, speculate might not be a comet at all. Maybe it’s something… different.
Could it be another visitor from deep space? Maybe even a kind of mothership?
If that’s the case, if someone or something out there really did hear our old radio signals and decided to drop by to see what we’re about, then Without Warning might not just be a cheesy relic of ‘90s television. It might be a glimpse of how it all begins.
For a whole bunch of kids.. Today will be the worst Sunday of the summer. And for parents, don’t let the nostalgia keep you there too long..
The school year’s about to start. Today is a Sunday before many schools begin session.. others happen next week…
The change is here. You can feel it.
Even if you’re not the one carrying a book bag and lunch box anymore, there’s something about this time of year that still gets into your bones. The air changes. That first crisp edge eventually replaces the heavy summer heat. Evenings come a little sooner. Somewhere in the distance, there’s the faint glow of Friday night lights.
It’s like the world is quietly telling you it is again time to turn the page.
Starting school was always a rite of passage. New shoes, fresh notebooks, the awkward excitement of seeing who ended up in your classes. Adults now join in by posting their kids’ schedules and seeing who what other kids share the same homeroom as theirs.. and the photos on the first day blanket the socials…
Fall itself is wrapped itself around it all—cool mornings, leaves crunching under shoes, the smell of sharpened pencils and pumpkin spice everywhere.. memories come back so easily you can almost hear the hum of the fluorescent lights in the hallway of your own school..
Nostalgia.. It’s warm. It’s familiar. But like I’ve said before—it’s a little like pulling a blanket out of the dryer only to realize it’s still damp. Comforting for only a moment and then the warmth vanishes and you are left with something very different than how it started..
Our minds edit the past into highlight reels, cutting out the awkward moments, the bad grades, the stress. We remember the best parts and forget that life was never as flawless as the memory makes it seem.
Sometimes, we try to go back—not physically, but mentally. Mental “teleporting.” Close your eyes. Block out the present. Let yourself drift to a hallway you once walked, a mall you once wandered, a crisp fall night under the stadium lights. Picture every detail—the way the air smelled, the sound of shoes on the floor, the weight of the backpack on your shoulder. If you let yourself sink into it, your brain can almost convince you you’re there again.
I guess it can be healing for a bit.. But here’s the danger—stay there too long, and the present starts to fade. You risk getting so wrapped up in what was that you stop paying attention to what is. Nostalgia can be a bridge, but it can also be a trap and a curse into oblivion..
So use it wisely. Take the trip in your mind when you need to remember who you are, or to feel the spark of a time when things seemed simpler. But then—open your eyes. Look around. Notice the smell of this fall’s air, the sound of these streets, the people who are part of this chapter.
Because here’s the truth—one day, right now will be the moment you’re trying to teleport back to. And when that day comes, you’ll wish you’d really been here for it.
AOL just hit me with some news I didn’t see coming: they’re officially discontinuing their dial-up service.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I thought dial-up was long gone—like floppy disks and Blockbuster stores. Turns out, it’s been quietly hanging on this whole time. But as of September 30th, at least through AOL, it’s officially done.
From the company itself:
> “AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet. This service will no longer be available in AOL plans,” according to AOL.
And… that’s it?
We’ve all talked about how the internet is slowly dying—not disappearing, but changing in ways that make it feel less real. Artificial intelligence is certainly helping speed that along. So are bots, spam, and fake accounts pretending to be real people. But at least with dial-up, you could count on one thing: if someone was using it, they were definitely a real person. They were out there, patiently (or impatiently) suffering through the endless hang-ups, busy signals, and painfully slow connections.
What worries me is that one day, we might actually need that phone line again. All it takes is one big asteroid or comet knocking a few satellites out of orbit, and suddenly those “ancient” connections start looking pretty useful again.
September 30th—mark it down. A day for dial-up that will live in infamy..
And just for that nostalgic melancholy hears the old sounds for your enjoyment.
