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chikins fer rent
Nov. 30th, 2016 04:18 pmWay back in the cable TV glory days of the 1980s, Night Flight was on USA for hours and hours every weekend, shoving music videos and re-dubbed serials and odd bits of comedy and short films into our eyeballs. One of those shorts was a pencil animated film called "Chikins Fer Rent", about a motorist menaced by a hayseed in a chicken truck who stalked him incessantly, hollering "HEY MISTER, YA WANNA RENT A CHICKEN?"
I had taped it, back in the day when we first got a VCR and we'd just weaned ourselves off of using the same tape over and over. For years I thought that it was lost, and just recently I was going through a VHS of Honey Honey and Leo the Lion episodes taped off CBN, and there it was, "Chikins Fer Rent".
It's a partial copy, I didn't get the very beginning. I had a heavy hand on the 'pause' button in those days, I didn't want to waste valuable video tape on commercials. Of course now 30 years later I wish I had saved every one of those ads.
Speaking of ads, some of the ad breaks on CBN at that time were local Smyrna Cable ads produced locally and just inserted into the satellite feed whenever the guys at Smyrna Cable felt the need.
New York Pizza Exchange is still in business in Vinings, but I don't know if Captain Pepperoni or whatever his name was still works there. I love this kind of stuff. My brother worked at Smyrna Cable for a while, shooting local access shows, programming the odd bit of Fleisher Superman cartoons or Lupin III films on the channel when the opportunity arose. I really should have worked there myself, or pitched a public-access show of my own, or otherwise capitalized on that opportunity. Smyrna Cable TV is, sadly, no more, having been swallowed up by Charter or Time Warner or one of those conglomerates. Its studio at Atlanta Rd & Spring Rd was an Auto Zone for a while, and now I believe it's been demolished and will soon be part of the big Publix they're putting in, finally, after 8 years of vacant-lot wilderness.
I had taped it, back in the day when we first got a VCR and we'd just weaned ourselves off of using the same tape over and over. For years I thought that it was lost, and just recently I was going through a VHS of Honey Honey and Leo the Lion episodes taped off CBN, and there it was, "Chikins Fer Rent".
It's a partial copy, I didn't get the very beginning. I had a heavy hand on the 'pause' button in those days, I didn't want to waste valuable video tape on commercials. Of course now 30 years later I wish I had saved every one of those ads.
Speaking of ads, some of the ad breaks on CBN at that time were local Smyrna Cable ads produced locally and just inserted into the satellite feed whenever the guys at Smyrna Cable felt the need.
New York Pizza Exchange is still in business in Vinings, but I don't know if Captain Pepperoni or whatever his name was still works there. I love this kind of stuff. My brother worked at Smyrna Cable for a while, shooting local access shows, programming the odd bit of Fleisher Superman cartoons or Lupin III films on the channel when the opportunity arose. I really should have worked there myself, or pitched a public-access show of my own, or otherwise capitalized on that opportunity. Smyrna Cable TV is, sadly, no more, having been swallowed up by Charter or Time Warner or one of those conglomerates. Its studio at Atlanta Rd & Spring Rd was an Auto Zone for a while, and now I believe it's been demolished and will soon be part of the big Publix they're putting in, finally, after 8 years of vacant-lot wilderness.
