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Home | Video Madness | Video Madness: HBO – Reflection of the Past

Video Madness: HBO – Reflection of the Past

Welcome one and all to Video Madness. For those of you who don’t know, I’m Professor Fiendy and I scour the Internet looking for cool sh*t to entertain you with while you peruse all the goodness Horrornews.net has to offer. Since the news updates are daily, I try to do this daily as well so you have something quick and fun to watch while you do it. I also take suggestions.

I primarily use YouTube. It embeds easy. Some other websites have not been so kind to the administrators of this site. Thankfully, most things from the Internet wind up on YouTube as well. So that’s good. As all of you probably know, searching through YouTube for things can be a fun adventure that leads you down various paths you didn’t expect to go down when you initially started. This pretty much rapes your free time, as you also know these sessions go on for hours on end. You look at the clock and suddenly realize you forgot to pick up your son from hockey practice 3 hours ago. I truly am sorry about that Kenny. You know this. Please come see me, you don’t need to stay at your mother’s indefinitely. I know she lies about me. What does she tell you!!?

[springboard type=”video” id=”384329″ player=”horn005″ width=”480″ height=”400″ ]

Anyway, I grew up in the ‘80’s; that magical time of Reagenomics, Cocaine and awesome, violent movies that were sold to children with no remorse. I had a “Robocop” action figure for God sakes! YouTube is a wonderful place for ‘80’s babies to see all the great sh*t marketed towards them that they only consciously forgot about. Replete with commercials for “Battle Beasts,” “Boglins” and the intros to every cartoon you thought you’d never see again, YouTube is nostalgia at it’s finest.

My father wasn’t big into video stores. I don’t know why exactly, he just wasn’t. He liked the idea of turning on the TV, channel surfing and finding cool sh*t he hadn’t seen before. He’s not a huge fan of DVR’s for this exact reason. I believe he was enamored with the idea that this wide world of Television existed out there and he could tune it and catch glimpses of it, rather than make it his own bitch through renting a movie he could pause or pre-programming a Tivo to record it all. He was never a man to rearrange his own schedule to catch something either. He was simply there to see it, or he missed it and said, “Sh*t. Well, I’ll catch it next time.” Naturally, thanks to my father, I have this sort of philosophy when it comes to the television as well.

So what does this all mean? Why should you give a sh*t? Well, you shouldn’t. I only mention this to setup today’s madness. Not a proponent of the rental scheme, my father was a cable guy through and through. Which means we had a bunch of premium channels. Back in the day, the best one to have was HBO – the home box office. Sure, my father didn’t see new movies for almost a year or so, but apparently it was worth it to him to not have to go to the theater or a video store. Back then, there was only one HBO channel and not 17, so you were pretty much watching whatever they decided you were. They actually had a lot more variety back then with only one channel. I’m not sure what happened. No options led to me watching a lot of sh*t I would never have otherwise. As such, we would often record movies we wanted to see again on our VCR right from HBO.

Now, for anyone who grew up watching HBO in the ‘80’s, this clip will surely blast back memories into your head of sitting up late, your living room bathed in the mind numbing glow of the television screen, eager to watch something new and unexpected. I stumbled upon this clip and I nearly died. I think about this opening every time I watch HBO, and it’s been like that for years, wishing they would start using it again. It never actually occurred to me that YouTube might have it. And yes, I know. It’s not horrific, and It certainly isn’t all the strange, but damn it, this is my column and you’ll just have to indulge a nostalgic fool for a day as he sets up one up for the old man. Dad, you fed us the same American Chop Suey every night while mom was at work and taught us that sometimes movie weren’t sucky – sometimes they were pieces of sh*t. Thanks pop.

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