My sister, blogging for CourtTV, has found a vintage, unintentionally entertaining video, “Notifying the Hostile Next of Kin” over at The Smoking Gun’s new video section.

Dating the film is difficult but not impossible. While the narrator sounds like an early-’60’s presence, the countrified old man stereotype is clearly post-Uncle Jesse from “The Dukes of Hazard” (1979). The son would appear to place the whole thing after the rise of the “prancing glam-tough” on MTV (1983) - the man’s other son may have died in the military, but love is a battlefield too. And the Pontiac Firebird seems to be from around 1980, according to my 25 seconds of extensive, painstaking research. One thing is certain - the film was made during an era when folks down on the watermelon farm still didn’t know the difference between a plane and a helicopter.

It should also be noted that approximately two minutes in, the original narrator apparently gets fired. I hope his family was notified gently. I’m somewhat concerned that this film might still be in use today, but even more concerned that the video that replaced it might be worse.

[Note - I decided to separate this from the post below. The cognitive dissonance was too much.  The original title, “Odds and Ends,” actually works pretty well when you separate it out like that, though...]