Video: Classic (and weird) Atari Centipede commercial

by Jay Garmon in After Hours

on March 27, 2007, 6:10 AM PDT

Video: Classic (and weird) Atari Centipede commercial

Take a strangely catchy 1980s synth-pop soundtrack, mix in some stock footage of assorted weirdness, and ice it with a giant university-mascot style Centipede costume (that kidnaps a genuinely terrified teen playing an Atari 5200 console), and you’ve got a vaguely surreal TV commercial for the ages. And if you think this is weird, you ...

By Jay Garmon

The Trivia Geek, known to some by the mysterious alias "Jay Garmon," is an online community entrepreneur trying his luck with some promising Internet startups. To get the real skinny on his wacky business ideas--and his amateurish sci-fi short stories--read his blog, JayGarmon.net. It's like Jay without editorial oversight or decent engineering support. \ \ Jay is also the diabolical mind behind TechRepublic's Geek Trivia newsletter, a former contributing editor of TR's Geekend blog, and until March of 2008 was a project manager for TR site feature development. \ \ In a previous life (read: fresh out of college), he was an ad man, toiling away for low pay and less respect as a copywriter and producer of print ads, radio spots, and TV commercials. No, you've probably never seen his work. Be thankful. \ \ Between his ad days and his life as a TechRepublicist, he worked briefly as a Web developer, mostly using (shudder) FrontPage and SQL Server to build rickety and poorly conceived database-driven Web sites. He was self-taught, and it showed. He's also dabbled in proposal writing, though he wouldn't recommend that as a career choice. \ \ Today, when he's not trying to build the next Internet media giant, Jay reads some comic books, plays tabletop RPGs, helps run a local sci-fi con, tries to launch a career as a fiction author, watches a lot of sports, and keeps his wife and daughter happy. The last part is easiest.

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Video: Classic (and weird) Atari Centipede commercial

Video: Classic (and weird) Atari Centipede commercial

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