When It Was Cool Dark

Continuing our 100 darkest moments in pop culture history we examine the trading card bust of the 1990s. For generations sports fans, especially baseball, collected trading cards. In the past, these cards packaged often with bubble gum, often also increased in value, especially for rookie players who became big stars. Enter the speculators who were then feed by massive over production. By the early 1990s every sport (including pro wrestling, football, hockey) and even pop culture properties (comic books, TV shows, and movies) had multiple card sets. Over supply lead to a crash in values and once the speculators fled, millions of people were left with boxes of worthless cards.

The 100 darkest moments in pop culture history series continues as we examine the terrorist assault and murder of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, Germany.  Germany, wanting to put the stain of the past behind them, had strongly pushed the "smiling Olympics" and despite warnings, failed to take precautions against a terrorist attack. Then, to make matters worse, they totally botched the response resulting in multiple deaths.

On March 1, 1932 one of most sensational crimes ever to grip America occurred- the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping and Murder. The son of famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, aged 20 months, disappeared from his crib upstairs and was, apparently, held for ransom, which was paid. However, just over two months later the child's body was discovered in the woods near the home. What happened? Why? Who did it? It was America's first truly big true crime story.

The only Major League Baseball player to be killed during a game was Ray Chapman and it happened in 1920. The story is tragic even beyond what was likely an accident. Likely, because, well, the player who threw the pitch had a reputation for hitting batters, on purpose, and after hitting Ray Chapman with the fatal pitch did himself no favors by continuing to be a pretty unlikable fellow. And... that's not all. Ray Chapman's wife was pregnant at the time and neither she nor her child make it out of this story alive either. Truely one of the saddest sports deaths ever. One of our 100 darkest moments in pop culture history series.

Welcome to the 2022 When It Was Cool Dark Halloween Special, hosted by Dirty Dawg Darsie and joined by Kid Zombie and the Desert Rat of WhenItWasCool.com and Joe Drilling and Eric Allen of OnTheStick.com to talk all things spooky! Wrestling Halloween stories, UFO encounters, a Roanoke Dogman encounter on the "These Woods Are Haunted" TV show, clips of the 2001 Ghost to Ghost AM with Art Bell, and so much more!

I wanna thank Turpak for the opening song with Tony Schiavone!

You can find Turpak's work at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFL0ebm06CSK38i--BZhHqw

I also wanna thank Karl Casey at White Bat Audio for the song Annihilation!

You can find Karl Casey's work at https://www.youtube.com/c/WhiteBatAudio

If you wanna watch the clip Joe, Eric, and I reviewed, you can find it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm-gGjaDe9k

It's the ghost with the most. This week WhenItWasCool.com continues our month long celebration of Halloween as Karl and Tonya take a look back at the 1988 horror comedy Beetlejuice! An all-star cast battles with the afterlife in this late 1980s classic, fun for everyone on your Halloween playlist! Beetlejuice is a cult classic movie that has actually aged pretty well. Just don't say the title three times!

We continue celebrating Halloween all month long here at WhenItWasCool.com and this week Karl and Tonya discuss the classic 1982 horror movie Poltergeist. Into the pop culture lexicon entered the eerie phrase, "They're here!" And, beyond the storyline itself, the movie was followed by the tragic death of its young star. Poltergeist gave birth to multiple sequels and remains a staple of must-see horror Halloween classics.

We are celebrating Halloween all month long at When It Was Cool and we will return in November to our 100 darkest moments in pop culture history series, but today we take a look at a real life monster. In fact, a new controversial Netflix series called Monster: The Jeffery Dahmer Story is currently one of the most popular streaming series of the year. Karl and Tonya from When It Was Cool have watched it and this is our review. We understand there is a lot of negative feelings toward this series and we try to address those as honestly as possible.

We interrupt our 100 darkest moments in pop culture history series for the month of October as we are celebrating Halloween all month long at WhenItWasCool.com. So, this episode, host Karl Stern (DragonKingKarl) is joined by his wife Tonya from WIWC to discuss one of the iconic horror movies of ever- A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) which gave us a young Johnny Depp and one of the greatest monster horror characters ever in Freddie Kruger! One-Two-Freddie's Coming For You!

Who was Fatty Arbuckle? Besides having a hilarious name he was the first big Hollywood scandal. Yes, the sad tale of Fatty Arbuckle is a cautionary tale for the movie industry still to this very day. Fatty Arbuckle was a silent movie era star until his career was destroyed by an allegation that he raped and killed a Hollywood actress. It took three trials with wildly varying verdicts to finally proclaim him, not only not guilty, but the jury issued him a written apology as well. This is the tragic story of Fatty Arbuckle.