last night, new year's eve, nick and i waited for midnight.  for the ball to drop in times square, NYC, via the TV.  nick wanted to watch the clock automatically change on his iPod from 2013 to 2014, me i was up because midnight is my normal bedtime.  i'd been on the 'net earlier to watch videos of the fireworks displays in sydney and auckland and london.

waiting for the ball to drop, i was on a youtube jag looking up old drive-in intermission shorts.  i found one anna and i remember from our childhoods.  the projectionists at the Sac 6 drive-in theaters -- still up and running this far into the 21st century -- played it all the time in the 1970s and early 1980s.  anna and i both can sing the tune because the memory of this ad is tattooed on our grey matter and i was overjoyed -- i shit you not -- to find it, again, after so many years. 

seems appropriate that i start the new year with a clip from a dead industry.  i showed nick this clip earlier tonight but since he has no history for it the drive-in intermission short is out of context, slightly moribund, and a bit esoteric for him.  instead he wanted me to look up 'what does the fox say' by ylvis.  all the kids love that song.

i think it is appropriate to start the new year with this drive-in memory because it was a fortuitous discovery of a sliver of our shared culture that i love so much.  that sliver is gone now but for the memory.  i watched and watched again this clip because it is joyous, goofy, and simply a delight.  for me, and for anna, we've been singing this tune all day. 

behold; it is the first clip on this batch, the one that looks like a bad outtake from the movie grease.  even though the Sac 6 drive-ins are still open and showing films it long stopped playing these intermission snack bar ads.  before youtube these shorts were the domain of collectors of 35mm film prints.  unless you collected the prints you wouldn't see these ads.  today, i can watch these intermission shorts.  in a way, the internet created a space and allows these shorts to live in the present.  great good news to a drive-in nut and cinema geek.  i love these ads, their burnt colors and crackled frames. 

oh, last night, when nick watched the clock change on his iPod, he said, 'that's it, i'm going to bed' matter-of-fact and straight off.  he left the room to bed and left me to see what more drive-in memories i can muster up.