pop culture | Cavalcade of Awesome

Archive for the pop culture Category

40 years of the Elvis ’68 Television special

Posted in pop culture, TV shows with tags Elvis Presley, pop culture, TV shows on December 3, 2008 by Paxton

Forty years ago today, Dec 3, 1968, NBC aired the Elvis Presley Special sponsored by the Singer Sewing Company. It has since become known as the ’68 Comeback Special, or just the ’68 Special. It has stood the test of time as one of the most iconic performances of Elvis Presley’s career. It re-ignited his singing career and also started him touring and performing live concerts for the first time in seven years. This is how the televised special became known as the Comeback Special, Elvis was returning to touring and making rock-and-roll records.

As I said, the ’68 Special has become iconic, not just for Elvis fans, but for the man himself. One of the more famous images of him is decked out in his all-leather suit strumming his guitar.

This special marked the first time Elvis had “gone electric” during a musical performance. In all previous performances he only played acoustic guitar.

Another iconic image of Elvis is in his all-white suit, standing in front of the immortal red ELVIS letters singing “If I Can Dream”

Although it aired on Dec 3 1968, the special was actually filmed in July 1968. Elvis had just returned from his honeymoon with Priscilla. While the Special was wildly successful, many people don’t realize that the original concept of the show was completely different.

Continue reading →

9 Comments »

Google Gmail: Now with ninjas!!

Posted in Gmail, Google, ninjas, reviews, technology with tags Gmail, Google, ninjas, technology on November 25, 2008 by Paxton

I joined Google’s Gmail service back in March of 2005. At that point, you could only join by invitation. I was able to find a guy that had a Gmail account on one of the tech websites I usually visit (PCMag.com) and got him to forward me an invitation. Once I was approved and given a log on, I tried it out. I was immediately in love. Google Gmail is simple, elegant, and has TONS of space to store all of your emails. It’s because Gmail started offering 2.5Gb of storage that Yahoo! Mail had to up their limit too. While Gmail’s form factor, or interface, is minimal (which is typical Google), the functionality is fantastic.

Gmail has many cool features that I enjoy. Instead of folders, it uses labels. You can affix multiple labels to a message and search on these labels. Makes finding emails easier. Also, Gmail will sort your emails into groups. Emails with the same subject get stacked on top of each other into a message thread called a “conversation”. This lets you see all the emails pertaining to a subject instead of having to search through 15 separate emails for a piece of info. It also lets you see each email within the context it was sent. This particular behavior takes some getting used to, but I love it now that I am.

For the first few years Google added small items of functionality to Gmail, but the online interface remained the same. When you logged on, this is pretty much what you saw.

Continue reading →

7 Comments »

Pepsi modifies its Globe logo and soda packaging

Posted in advertising, Coca Cola, Pepsi, pop culture, soda with tags advertising, Mountain Dew, Pepsi, soda, sodapalooza on November 12, 2008 by Paxton

I was surfing around some of my favorite soda websites several months ago and I saw that Pepsi was planning a “change up” with its logo and labels. Soda companies usually do this every few years to “freshen up” their image. It’s fairly common and many times you hardly notice the change until years later when you compare the designs side-by-side. This obviously interested me so I waited for graphical proof that this was going to happen. The pictures finally showed up several weeks ago but I’ve been busy with AWESOME-tober-fest so now I can finally bring you the goods on Pepsi’s new image.

Now, the picture to the left of “The Hoff” dry humping the top of a Pepsi bottle is NOT a part of the new branding. Hasselhoff as the new face of Pepsi would be like the Fisher Space Pen, strawberry flavored Cheetos or Jessica Biel’s body; awesome beyond human comprehension. Words couldn’t begin to describe the jaw dropping bad ass that would be unleashed on the unsuspecting soda drinking public. However, it’s only happening in Europe because, for some reason, America doesn’t embrace Mr. Knight anymore like they do abroad. But I think he’s making a mini-comeback with America’s Got Talent and recent roles in movies like Click, Anaconda III and the new Knight Rider tv show.

But, enough about DH. I could ramble on about “His Hoffness” for four or five blog articles and not begin to scratch the surface of his gleaming kick-assitude (yes, I said kick-assitude. WHAT. UP.). Instead let’s get back to talking about Pepsi’s new logo design. The current logo is the red and blue globe seen below.

Continue reading →

15 Comments »

AWESOME-tober-fest 2008!!! A Look Back at the Crestwood Monster books

Posted in AWESOME-tober-fest, books, Halloween, holiday, movies, pop culture, reviews with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2008, Book Report, book review, Halloween, holiday on October 30, 2008 by Paxton

Welcome to AWESOME-tober-fest Week 5!!! I revealed yesterday that there will be an article a day starting yesterday, so here’s today’s installment. FYI…I got sick yesterday afternoon. So I want you to know the Herculean effort it took to get this article out. That’s the kind of sacrifice I do for you, my readers.

Today, I want to talk about the the keystone topic I’ve wanted to talk about all month. It’s a series of books I remember vividly from elementary school. I finally acquired copies of the first six books in the series late last year. It was late enough that I didn’t really get a chance to talk about them last Halloween. However, now I’ve had a year to look at them so let’s take a stroll down memory lane at the Crestwood House Monster Series.

I have a very vivid memory of checking these books out from the HW Gwin Elementary school library. The vibrant orange color of the cover and the cool monster subjects made them a popular choice amongst my friends. Each book focused on a monster or creature from a movie or series of movies. The first six books included Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolf Man, King Kong, Godzilla and Mad Scientists. Most were published in the late ’70s and early ’80s. As you can see, they are also the inspiration for my blog header this Halloween.

Continue reading →

22 Comments »

AWESOME-tober-fest 2008: Remembering Cracked Monster Party

Posted in AWESOME-tober-fest, Cracked magazine, Halloween, holiday, Monster Party, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2008, Cracked, Halloween, holiday, pop culture on October 22, 2008 by Paxton

Welcome to AWESOME-tober-fest Week 4. For those that are just joining us, AWESOME-tober-fest is my countdown to Halloween which includes spooky articles each week covering things like scary books/movies, candy, etc. I’ll discuss these things each week until we finally reach “H-Day” as I like to call it (or Halloween, for the layman). Since we are celebrating in October, and this is the Cavalcade of Awesome, the name of this countdown is AWESOME-tober-fest. If you missed any of the first three weeks, here’s a handy dandy list:

Week 1: I review gallons of Halloween sodas
Week 2: Some of my favorite scary movies
Week 3: I Survive Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights

All caught up? Good, let’s get started with today’s topic; Cracked Magazine’s Monster Party.

I was going through an old chest of mine in the garage a week or so ago and found my old stash of Mad Magazines. Along with all my Mad mags, there was also a huge stash of Cracked magazines. Talk about hitting the mother lode. I loved reading Mad and Cracked magazine when I was a kid. I would wait each month to buy the copy and read it endlessly until the new issues came out. I even bought the Super Specials and Collector’s Editions which only reprinted material I already owned, but I didn’t care. I loved the spoofs, parodies and humor of my Mad and Cracked magazines. I saved every issue I bought of these magazines and stored them carefully in this chest when I was about 13 and it was left there until I opened it a few weeks ago. I had found my own personal Arc of the Covenant.