Stan Freberg changed my life

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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28 Responses

  1. Maribou says:

    My first comment, while Jay was in the other room and I was watching the commercial, “I hate watching this commercial, it’s uncanny.” (Gentle readers, I know he’s not much like that NOW, but I knew him when he was only 24.)

    My second comment, “Wait, THAT was how you met (name redacted)?!?!??!?!?!” (I have little love for (name redacted).)Report

  2. I didn’t even know Stan was still around. He was a brilliant and funny man, the father of a lot of great comedy, a champion of jazz and radio long into the era of rock and TV. Here’s his classic “What radio can do that TV can’t” bit.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPbvFv6BJvUReport

  3. Troublesome Frog says:

    You’ve been stirring a lot of weird commercial memories up lately. This is another one.

    Along similar lines, my future wife and I were walking through a department store in college when we were hit with the overwhelming smell of the perfume section and I did this. Loudly. It was around 15 years after Labyrinth was released, so I figured it would just confuse and embarrass her, but that’s how I roll. Instead, she recognized it immediately and almost died laughing / of embarrassment. This was a turning point in my life.Report

  4. Mike Dwyer says:

    I can’t really speak to memories of Stan but I spent a lot of time with our encyclopedia set. My summer routine in the 80s consisted of rising early, baseball practice in the backyard and then some kind of other mischief, then retresting indoors to escape our KY humidity. I would spendthe day reading comic books and encyclopedias. I would pick a topic, always something historical, and then dive in. It helped shape my love of history into something resembling an academic pursuit.

    I still used those books for a while in college even before that whole Internet thing.Report

    • veronica d in reply to Mike Dwyer says:

      #same

      If I had had Wikipedia back then, well, I don’t think I’d ever have left the house. By now I’d have merged with the machine.Report

      • Mike Dwyer in reply to veronica d says:

        @veronica-d

        +100

        I shudder to think of the man-hours I spend in Wikipedia now. It is the ultimate rabbit-hole for random trivia. The TV show Wikis are even worse. Having never read the JRR Martin books or the Walking Dead comic books I have still completely spoiled everything I watched by diving into those Wikis.Report

  5. Saul Degraw says:

    http://www.theonion.com/articles/remember-me-im-that-kid-who-had-a-report-due-on-sp,10854/

    His son was also the voice of Linus and Charlie Brown in the late 70s and early 80s according to wikipedia.Report

  6. North says:

    Man, I was actually rather enormously amused by that commercial. I didn’t realize the 80’s had that kind of dry wit. Then again, since I was in single digits during that era I really didn’t know much about the 80’s at all.Report

  7. Glyph says:

    Ah, the classic two-tone jeans jacket. Sweet.

    I won a set of Encyclopedia Britannica in a spelling bee as a kid. As I already had a (very old, and inferior to Britannica – but good enough, and hey, who would’ve thought that HISTORY and SCIENCE and GEOGRAPHY would ever change on us?!) set of encyclopedias, I sold the Britannicas for a few hundred in the classifieds and bought a stereo (dual cassette decks! High-speed dubbing!) and custom-made skimboard with the proceeds.

    I think I made the right choice.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Glyph says:

      We had the Encyclopedia Americana.

      You traitor.Report

      • Glyph in reply to Brandon Berg says:

        I said I sold it!

        I forget what the older set I already had was. It came from my grandma’s house, probably published in the 40s or maybe early 50s I am guessing? So it was full of all kinds of already-outdated info.Report

    • Mike Dwyer in reply to Glyph says:

      “Ah, the classic two-tone jeans jacket. Sweet.”

      Did anyone have the classic Levi’s jean jacket? Two things that were very popular in grade school:

      – Put a .22LR cartridge in the Levis tag on the pocket. It fit perfectly and looked SO cool. Then your mom would run your jacket through the washer and you would panic that it would go off in the dryer and kill her.

      – Buy one of those big bandannas for your favorite band and have your mom sew it onto the back panel. Then you can advertise Metallica, ACDC or Def Leppard every day.Report

  8. veronica d says:

    Wow. Was 1988 really that tacky? I mean, I was there, but the memories — they have been mercifully washed away by time.

    I am sooooo glad I cannot remember any commercial that remind me of myself.

    DO NOT WANT TO KNOW.Report

  9. Tod Kelly says:

    Here’s my favorite bit of Stan Freberg trivia:

    It was Freberg — not Mel Blanc — who did the voice of Pete Puma in the Bugs Bunny cartoons.

    (“Better give me a whoooole lotta lumps.”)

    Report

  10. Will Truman says:

    Freberg used to host a “Radio show classics” program that ran on a news radio station in Colosse. I used to listen to it religiously, as I was a fan of that. By “host” he would just introduce the program (The Shadow or Life of Riley or The Whistler or whatever) and talk just a bit about it. But his name always brings back warm memories because of that.Report