Thoughts Off The Stem Podcast Episode “Nostalgic Fridays Hit Different VHS, Video Games and Pizza” Transcript

Why We’re Craving 90s Nostalgia in 2026

In an era of instant streaming and digital overload, there is a collective yearning for the ‘analog ritual.’ Remember the tactile click of a VHS tape? The smell of a freshly opened Pizza Hut box? Nostalgic Fridays isn’t just a trip down memory lane; it’s a mental reset. We’re trading 4K resolution for the warm, fuzzy tracking lines of a home-recorded movie and the simple joy of a ‘Be Kind, Rewind’ sticker.

This is the transcript titled “Nostalgic Fridays Hit Different” is the transcript for “Nostalgic Fridays Hit Different, VHS, Video Games and Pizza” Thoughts Off The Stem Podcast Episode 183. Available Now on Spotify, Youtube, Apple Podcasts and anywhere you consume podcasts.

0:06

Welcome to Thoughts Off the STEM.

I’m Justin Barone, your friendly neighborhood pothead.

Thank you for joining me on your Friday at 4:20.

Just start your weekend off right.

I’m such a dork.

I’ve been getting high all day because, you know, why not?

Last night I was smoking my Palmetto all in It’s a pink burst and melonberry ice.

0:32 Nostalgic Fridays Hit Different

I thought I’d smoke it on the podcast today because I was sitting in my garage smoking this with a little bit of hash which I have loaded in the nugs apple just in case we decide to smoke some hash in a little bit.

But I was smoking this stuff and hitting the hash in a bong and I was giggling like an idiot for like 2 hours straight while watching those AI Sasquatch videos.

0:57

Dude, I love those things.

You know what drives me nuts though is you know the baby.

Remember that?

Like Chinese rapper, I guess that put out the the song and it was the babies in AI doing the rap.

Dude, that one baby, that first one he did, I think it was the first one.

1:14

That baby was so cute.

I watched that thing like a million times.

Now everybody is adding babies to everything.

Like it’s amazing to me how quickly people jump on a trend.

I wonder if it’s actually working though, Like when is there diminishing returns of that, you know?

1:30

Anyway, I was smoking this Palmetto dual chamber guy and I was laughing my ass off.

So I thought this would be a fun one to talk about because I started to get a little, I’ve been like nostalgic lately and I’ve been, I’ve been watching Toby because I don’t want to pay for shit.

1:45

So I’ve been watching Toby and there’s a lot of old school movies and stuff from like my childhood on there and I’ve been getting super nostalgic while watching it.

And I’ve also been re watching some of the old episodes like sessions of the podcast.

2:04

And I came across the one where I talked about a buddy of mine in our adventure to Blockbuster after smoking a joint.

You should, you should listen to that.

If I remember the name of it, I would tell you right now, but I don’t.

I think it’s like, what was it called?

Something in a trip to Blockbuster.

2:21

Yeah, I don’t remember what episode it was.

Bad prepared, Justin.

No bueno, dude.

But because I was, because I watched, because I listened to that the other day and I’ve been watching all these like old movies, like, you know, what was it, Escape from New York, What else?

2:44

I watched a whole bunch.

Why am I brain farting now?

See a couple hits of this and you brain fart a bit and then if you just keep going like over the cusp of the situation of over the cusp of the cusp.

You know what I did notice too while I was watching some of the episodes back?

2:59

I say situation a lot to describe a scenario or a moment in time, you know, So I’m going to try and stop saying situation so much.

I’m going to try and maybe I should read some more, right?

Like, you know, read a book or two and then hide, like expand my vocabulary because I’ve noticed that number one, I swear a lot #2 I used like the same specific words over and over again.

3:25

When I’m transitioning into talk or if I get like caught up on myself, I say like a lot, I say I’m a lot.

I got to work on that.

But I’ve been listening to the old podcast, that one in particular, which I don’t remember the name of or the episode number.

3:41

Good job, Justin, I’ll put it in the description.

So check it out in the description.

But it’s a good story about a time we smoked weed and the afternoon went to shit and I started getting all nostalgic and thinking about how.

3:57

Well I actually also came across a post I think online talking about how younger generations will never know what it’s like on a Friday night to rent your one movie from Blockbuster, your one video game, order pizza, have a sleepover, and, you know, do your thing.

4:16

But my generation, we’ll totally know that because that’s all the 90s were for anybody between the ages of like 10 and 16 probably.

Also I realized that in that there’s like a structure to that which I’m trying to get back in my own life because I feel like everything has gotten chaotic.

4:39

I’m getting away from it just like this.

It’s chaotic.

It’s just all over the map.

So OK, we’ll get back to that in a minute.

So it got me all nostalgic and then it got me thinking.

There were a lot of movies that I watched back when I was a kid.

And some of the stuff that was in those movies is now becoming like things in real life, you know, situations, if you will, in real life.

5:01

For example, if you look at Tesla and their style of cars, cyber truck and otherwise, you could take a lot of the design from some of the sci-fi movies that I grew up on like Total Recall.

5:19

There’s a couple car designs in there that look similar.

Blade Runner.

That was a little before the 90s, obviously, but my point being the original Blade Runner with Harrison Ford, the Jetsons, what else?

There was another one too.

5:35

Oh, oh, fifth element.

Some of the designs are, you know, there’s a fifth element level to that.

And now all of a sudden we’re see it.

So the question that I have then is, is the is the does the movie predict the future or did people that, or do people that make movies just have more access or better at accessing information that may be contributes to the to the way things look or you or happen or develop in the future, like technology wise.

6:10

Think about that for a second.

Like, I know alien hasn’t happened, OK, but is there the possibility that maybe one day an alien like we’re always this, we’re discovering new stuff all the time, right?

So is there the possibility that some kind of Organism could get lodged in a ship and we’re going to end up having to leave people in outer space on these crazy space missions because there’s like a centipede Ant cross mix alien trying to kill everybody that’s hunting.

6:38

That’s like on this scientific mission or even life.

Life’s a good example.

The movie Life, you know where.

Wait, is it life?

Yeah, it’s life, sorry, where scientists find a new Organism and then the Organism looks like a thing from Alien and then it sort of takes over the ship.

6:59

Like, that’s got to be possible, right?

I know that we haven’t really found too much, if any, like solar system biological entities, but I feel like they’re out there.

I feel like I’ve read a few maybe maybe articles lately that have maybe stated that some stuff has been found that they never thought they could find, you know?

7:22

So it makes me wonder, do movies potentially predict the future or does the future progress because of the depictions of the future in movies?

Meh, there’s a high thought for you.

7:42

I’m just saying you don’t know.

Because think about it.

I know I can’t remember what movies they were, but I know that I’ve seen vaping in a movie.

What else?

Obviously flying and floating cars.

I’m telling you the cyber truck looks just like something I’m pretty sure it was in Blade Runner.

8:02

Looks like it was right out of that.

Also, who built a truck that you can’t wash without putting it in wash mode?

Like here’s an electric, here’s a battery.

Now soak it.

Oh wait, you got to press this button first.

I don’t know man, but having think of thought about that and then, you know, thinking about the nostalgia of what it was like, ’cause I remember, oh dude, I remember so much so well how awesome it was on Friday.

8:31

You get done with school and next thing you know, it’s like 6:00 PM and you know, you’re, you’re out with your buddies or depending on what age you are, you’re at home, you’re going out with your parents to pick up a movie.

Remember Jumbo Video, do you guys?

Is that a Canadian thing?

8:47

Jumbo Video had the whole like sectioned off part, the adult part too.

You’d sneak a look through the beads, be like, what’s up over there?

All right, Movies, movie stores were awesome.

It was like the signaling of a new event.

9:04

Also, time seemed to go a lot slower back then.

So like the day at school was fucking forever.

And then you get home and you wait a couple hours till the whole family’s home.

Then you go out and you pick your two movies and then you pick your video game if you know that’s like what you were doing.

9:21

And then you get pizza on the way home.

And that was sort of thing.

So you spent Friday night from like 8:00 PM till midnight watching movies, playing video games and eating pizza.

Dude, that was the best.

It also made me think though, like now, because everything, I mean, at least in our lives, I’ve got, I’m a single dad, right?

9:40

So I’ve got 3 kids that do all kinds of different stuff.

You’re constantly just like running here and there to pick them up and never really getting a second to sort of like sit down and relax.

So obviously, obviously you need structure in life, right?

10:00 Nostalgic Fridays Hit Different

I’ve learned this as I get older because I haven’t had structure in a long time.

So I’m trying to structure things again because when I was a kid, there was so much structure that like that Saturday night movie night, even if it was just at home, was the like super exciting.

There was just something like those are the things that you remember, right?

10:18

And now when you get older or as you get older, I feel like it’s it’s less exciting because you’ve done it so many times, but it’s also less exciting because time just seems to go faster.

Dude.

Time seems to go way faster as an adult.

And then there’s no separation of like your daily tasks to the next thing.

10:38

As a parent, you’re just kind of fluidly moving through all of your responsibilities in a day.

But as a kid, you get home from school, then you have that pause for snack time and then after snack time and you play for like a couple hours outside with your buddies.

Then you have like everybody gets home around six, you have dinner.

10:56

Or if it’s a Friday, like I said, you go out, you pick up a movie or your dad picks up a movie, your mom picks up a movie on the way home with some pizza.

And then you sit down at 6:00, have some pizza, start watching the movie.

Yeah, that was so good, dude.

And going to the video store, there’s a, there’s a, there’s something to be said about being it like having to leave your house to start the process of the next event.

11:23

You know, ’cause like the way my life operates with my kids and stuff, I feel like there’s a lot less appreciation for things.

11:40

And like you have, you have to constantly, you have to, like, you have to, you have to accomplish certain things in a day to really appreciate the rewards of the day, right?

11:56

So like appreciating movie night with pizza and a Friday night and video games and having to make that trip to Blockbuster and how much fun it was to like peruse the shelves.

You know, it’s lost when you just go from one piece of entertainment to the next to the next, to the next.

12:13

We’re so inundated, I say this all the time.

We’re so inundated with technology and information that there’s no real appreciation for it because it’s in our hands all the time, right?

And we’re it’s always accessible and with movie houses or like movie theaters, I guess.

12:28

And and V like movie stores, movie stores.

What did I call them?

What did I call it?

Blockbuster is a crap.

12:44

I can’t remember Jumbo video video store.

Jesus Christ, Justin.

OK, so this does give you the giggles, but you got to keep smoking through it.

You know what I’m saying?

So you go to the movie store, you pick up your movies and stuff.

But there was something to be said about that, like because you had done certain things in the day and you transition and your transition is moving to that.

13:07

It’s more, there’s more appreciation to it because there had to you had to go through more to get it just like anything in life, right?

But now with like, what do you call it streaming services like Netflix and things like that, There’s no appreciation for it.

That’s why, you know, binge watching and you go through stuff like I found myself as I get older now wishing that I could just get regular TV so that I could see the commercials because even the commercials now are like nostalgic for me.

13:37

Isn’t that weird?

Like I can remember being a kid and be like, Oh my God, let’s get through this.

And like channel surfing, channel surfing is not a thing now.

You just like surf Netflix until you find it could take you as long to find a show to watch, but you’re not flipping through live TV or like, you know, T like just different channels that are where you actually see something happening.

13:57

You’re now flipping through titles.

So I’ve decided that because there doesn’t seem to be as much appreciation for it with my kids and I, I’m trying to restructure life like actually put some really nice like solid structure in there, much like I had when I was growing up.

14:18

So that come the weekend, then you actually appreciate the things that you get to do, right?

So even if you have to use a streaming service, because you have to use a streaming service now, if you don’t get Netflix all week, right, and you don’t get the use of your phone until like 7:00 or 8:00 PM for a little bit and limit that.

14:38

Then by Friday on at 8:00 PM and you’re ready to watch a couple movies and have some pizza.

The appreciation for that pizza and that movie time is like tenfold compared to what it was the week before.

You know, So that’s what I’m hoping for.

So I’m trying to structure structure my household where in the day, you know, you do your work, all that stuff when you get home from work or school, then you have to we have to clean certain areas of the house.

15:05

You got to make sure that the preparations for the space are up to par, you know, And then after that, once that’s all done, then you do your homework, get your homework done.

And then once your homework’s done, then you can go on to entertainment for like an hour a day.

15:24

And if you start to limit it, you know, then by Friday when you can have a like a bulk chunk of time to sit and vegetate, right, then you can you, you appreciate that time more.

It’s the same as if you spend an entire week practicing basketball or sports or anything, whatever it is.

15:46

And then you have your, you know, like test exam or your sporting event or whatever it is on the weekend.

Then once that’s all over, there’s a greater appreciation for the relaxed time.

Whereas I feel like now me personally, 90% of my time is relaxed time and the rat and the 10% is work and effort, right?

16:10

I got to flip that because that’s how you become complacent and that’s how you get lazy.

And this is all what I realized while smoking this Palmetto Pink Burst and Melonberry Ice Duel.

So here’s the thing about this though.

The melonberry ice, the ice part has a little bit of a mint to it.

16:31

Now with this thing, you can click it once when it lights up green, hopefully you can see that if you’re watching.

If you’re not watching, watch it and you can see it.

If it lights up green, that’s the melonberry ice, pink, or I mean red.

16:49

See how I flipped it to red?

Press it once.

That’s the pink burst.

It tastes kind of like strawberry.

I don’t know, it’s candy like very like Jolly Rancher esque, I guess you could say.

And then if you tap the button twice, it’ll do both at the same time.

17:09

So you get to double hit.

It’s a hybrid.

It is 90 to 95% THC with 2% CBD.

The one thing though, the dual taste is not that good because the melon ice, like the minty part of the melon ice, does not go well with the pink burst.

17:27

Nope.

It kind of makes it feel like or seem like you’re smoking eucalyptus.

And I know that that’s a good smell, but it’s not a good flavor in my opinion.

But the high is really nice on both of these.

And yeah, the melon Berry ice apparently made me laugh.

Mixed with a little bit of hash.

17:44

It’s unknown hash.

I mean, I know that it’s hash, but I don’t know the name or the strain of it because a friend of mine gave it to me.

But yeah, this thing is delicious and it gives me the giggles and it got me thinking about nostalgia.

The 90s Staple	The Modern Equivalent	Why the 90s Version Won
VHS Tapes	Netflix / Disney+	You actually owned the movie.
Pizza Hut Buffet	Uber Eats	The red cups and “Book It” buttons.
Nintendo 64	PS5 / Xbox Series X	Four-player couch co-op was king.
Radio Mixtapes	Spotify Playlists	The thrill of hitting ‘Record’ on time.

18:00

Blockbuster Video, Jumbo Video.

Jumbo Video was the greatest one.

You’d walk in, you get a nice like a tiny little sample bag of popcorn, walk around eating the popcorn, checking out the movies.

And then when you were a young adolescent boy, you’d walk by that back wall and then all of a sudden you’d see that like drawbridge style opening to the to the off limits section.

18:24

And you’d peek your head through the little beaded entryway and look around and see maybe the occasional ass, you know what I’m saying?

And the and then of course, the old 50 year old dude that that has nothing going on in there looking for his weekend porn fix.

18:46

Yeah, Jumbo video was the best.

We only went there a couple times and then Blockbuster came out.

My dad was a big fan of like mom and pop video shops because he ended up getting to know the owner and he liked the owner, right?

So they had like this customer proprietor relationship.

19:03

And yeah, he would put movies aside for my dad.

We would go in there and if I wasn’t with my dad, we’d go up and we’d take like R rated movies that we weren’t supposed to watch.

We’d take him to the front.

He’d be like, I don’t know if your dad would let you see this.

I’m like, yeah, he would.

And then he’d call, you know, the house and then ask, ask my dad, My dad, like, yeah, it’s fine, let him have it.

19:22

Do you remember, do you ever remember getting sent to the store ’cause like I on weekends?

Well, I mean, sometimes during the week, but weekends, we’ve always wanted candy, right?

So my dad would send me to Becker’s.

Remember Becker’s?

I drove by one the other day.

19:38

I thought they were all gone, but so he would send us to Becker’s and he would give me like $5.75.

I’d be enough to get his pack of cigarettes and like a Bigfoot, you know, one of those gummy bigfoots.

Those were my favorite.

And I remember I was like 8 years old, maybe 10-8 to 12:00 somewhere in there.

20:02 Nostalgic Fridays Hit Different

And you’d be at the counter and you’d be like, I’ll take these big feet and that pack of players light, please, you know, and the guy be like.

What you’d be like, yeah, my dad sent me.

He’d be like, OK, and then he would just call the house.

He called my dad.

Did you send your son to get cigarettes?

Yep, I did, no problem.

OK, Then he just give you the cigarettes and you’d be walking home.

20:20

Cigarettes, big feet, happy as pig and shit.

You could do that now, dude, not even kinda.

Although my son is get, he’s bigger than I am now.

And he said to me the other day when he was at the gas station, ’cause they sell beer there, right?

20:37

The guy asked him while they were buying chips.

The guy asked him if he was looking if if he needed any lottery, tobacco or beer.

It’s like, Jesus, my son is 13, OK.

And people are like, yeah, they would.

20:54

I had a baby face.

He’s got a baby face.

But because he’s so big, most people don’t think twice about it.

So I’ve been tempted lately to maybe try and send them in to get me beer, see if they’ll do it, and then go back and complain that they sold my 13 year old beer and they didn’t ID them.

21:17

But that’s crazy to me because there were times when I wished I’d had too many drinks and you can’t really go anywhere.

Or I got too high and you just can’t send your kid anymore to go get you tobacco products.

Man, those are the good old days when mom or dad would send you to the store and you’d pick up smokes.

21:33

Will you picked up candy or a slushie.

Those were always the big ones.

Slushie runs.

Then you get caught up because there’s a video game like Street Fighter and the guys put, the guy that owns the stores put a video game, you know, little arcade game at the back of the shop where people sit there eating their chips and drinking their slushies and pumping quarters into this thing for hours on end.

21:54

That’s what ours did.

You’d you’d stay back there for like 2-3 hours watching guys play Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat.

What else did they have?

One point, I think they had wrestling.

Yeah, man, it was crazy.

And then there was like the old kids on the block who wouldn’t let you play.

22:11

They would take it over, you know, and just they, they would do that all day.

Then the shop would get a call because your parents are like, where the fuck are my cigarettes?

Be like, is my son still there?

Yeah, he’s watching.

OK, send him home.

Then you get sent home.

You can’t do that nowadays, man, No way.

22:29

All that’s gone.

But that stuff like that was the that’s the stuff that you really look back.

I don’t know, I look back on it on when I was a kid, those were the memories, man.

And I want to give my kids the same memories, but fucking smartphones.

22:45

And all they do is sit on smartphones and you know, Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, whatever, it’s all the same.

They’re just watching these 15 second videos all day.

Mind numbing fucking I said to them the other day they wanted to start playing like volleyball and throwing the football around.

23:02

So I take him to the park to play football and like my son was pretty into it.

But then my daughter who had requested this to happen was just like, I don’t care.

I don’t want to, like, what the hell?

Then I had to explain to them that when I was a kid, you’d go over to your friends house on your bike who lived like four blocks away, knock on his door, ask him if he could do anything.

23:23

Then he would get his bike and you guys would ride to the other side of town just to play baseball at a baseball diamond for four hours.

And then you’d get there to do that.

And you get bored of that.

And then you’d be sitting around and get deliriously bored.

And then you come up with some other stupid game that you could play.

23:39

And you’d be pissing yourself laughing, realizing that you only have an hour left to hang out because you had to be home by the time the streetlights went on.

Like, my kids will never experience that.

They’ll never experience that because their generations don’t mess with the outdoors at all.

23:57

Like, they go camping maybe, but everybody’s got their phone and tablet with them anyway, so I’m trying to get them to shut that shit off for a bit.

This summer is going to be the summer of like hanging out with Mother Earth.

I think because as great as technology is for certain things, I think it’s killed attention spans and appreciation levels.

24:19

And I think my kids need to to need to up their appreciation level for life again.

You know, and a big part of that is probably is having adventures like, you know, take a big long walk to fucking Blockbuster to get a movie on a Friday, take your bike out to go play with your buddy and play baseball at a baseball diamond.

24:36

Like I sent them down to the park the other day with because they wanted to play volleyball.

So I sent them to the park where there’s a volleyball net.

They ended up getting kicked off for a volleyball league that was playing.

But, you know, at least they went take them out to play football, play catch, like just playing catch.

24:53

I remember going out to the road near, you know, when I was growing up, and you just be in the middle of the street throwing the ball back and forth.

Car, car, pause, pause, game on, game on when the car goes by.

You know, like, yeah, man, my kids need a little more of that.

25:09

They need a little more appreciation.

They need a nostalgic look at having to engage in activities and then transition from that activity to a different activity.

Because I think in the transition of those moments is where you like build up the foundation for appreciation because you feel accomplished.

25:32

Like you have to feel accomplished to move on to the next thing.

You know, you can spend your whole life sitting around and relaxing, but like, how do you ever feel fully content with yourself?

Like for me, I need to have certain things that I accomplish in a day.

25:50

So like when I do this podcast, it’s not just, oh, I record it and then I leave it for a day.

I record it, I produce it, put it all together, make sure that it’s ready to be, you know, uploaded.

And then I go on to another task in my day and maybe I work out for an hour and then a transition from that.

26:06

So that the, the amount of things that I do in a day fills me with the feeling of an, of accomplishment.

So that when I do decide to sit down and relax at the end of the day or with my kids or go to a movie, it feels special.

26:22

There’s like a specialness to it that is gone as you get older and you become the provider, you know?

So I feel like we got to get back to that.

So I’m doing that, and I’m also going to spend the next little while because you probably forgot thinking about what I was talking about at the beginning of this and whether that is whether movies predict the future or whether the future takes elements from movies during its progress.

26:59

You know what I mean?

Because to progress, like there’s too many similarities.

Is it because we have a visual, like once the movie shows you what somebody’s interpretation of a flying car is, then it’s easier for a person to make a flying car because they have that visual of what the expected item will be.

27:18

You know, I wonder that.

Or is it that people in the movie industry are better at or have more access to information that the regular human doesn’t like?

The regular.

Yeah.

That the regular person doesn’t.

27:35

And so they’re able to sort of give depictions of things because they know what certain entities are working on for the future of mankind.

I’ve wondered that for a long time, dude.

I really have.

27:55

But, yeah, that’s what I’ve been thinking about.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about this week.

I hope you enjoyed the sesh.

Thanks for sticking around.

If you have stuck around this far, hit subscribe.

Like the video, pass it on to your friends who you think might get a good kick out of it.

You know what I’m saying?

Subscribe to the Thoughts off the Stem on YouTube because I also put shorts out.

28:14

So you don’t, you know, you get a little bit of a little bit more variety.

Visit thoughts420.com because I’m starting to put out the transcripts and there’s blogs and stuff on there.

Also, access to all of the episodes links on that.

What else?

Oh, check out Thoughts Off the Stem Sunday Strain review playlist for all of the things that I smoke on the podcast.

28:37 Nostalgic Fridays Hit Different

Yeah, I hope you have a good week.

I hope life is good to you.

I hope everything goes great for you.

Until next time, keep your lids low baby.

The Lost Art of the Video Store Run

• The Atmosphere: The blue and yellow neon, the popcorn smell, and the crushing disappointment of your movie being “Out of Stock.”
• The Selection: Spending 45 minutes walking the aisles just to pick the same movie you’ve already seen five times.
• The Snack Tax: Buying a $10 box of candy because it was part of the experience.

This is the transcript titled “Nostalgic Fridays Hit Different” is the transcript for “Nostalgic Fridays Hit Different, VHS, Video Games and Pizza” Thoughts Off The Stem Podcast Episode 183. Available Now on Spotify, Youtube, Apple Podcasts and anywhere you consume podcasts OR you can click the Links embedded below to join the sesh.

What was your “Go-To” movie to rent on a Friday night, and did you have a specific pizza topping that defined your childhood? Let’s get a nostalgia thread going in the comments! If this post gave you a case of the “feels,” share it with your favorite 90s kid!

Listen/Watch on Spotify

Watch on Youtube

Contact Thoughts Off The Stem

Contact