This is a weird situation for me. I consider myself fairly savvy about 80’s pop culture. I can pull nuggets of recollections (drunken or otherwise) that would put search engines to shame.
Equally as strange as knowing the lyrics to Pole Position is knowing (most) of the words to Punky Brewster’s cartoon theme:
But this is where I dropped the ball. I saw some write-up about 80’s cartoons, and the show Turbo Teen was mentioned. I DON’T REMEMBER TURBO TEEN. That is until I saw this:
*hangs head in shame*
SIDENOTE: If you type Turbo Teen in Google, you get no results.
Cartoons, just like toys, aren’t only for kids anymore. We might be able to think the Japanese for that, but it might also be this current generation of man-children at fault.
The following videos are proof of that (only one Japanese one in the bunch… try and guess which one). Why else would there be:
a woman licking a horse and being offended by its erection
Jesus turning water into whiskey at a rave and space monkey angels
a gaggle of panties flying in the V-formation (not sure if it’s meant to be ironic)
selfish children getting devoured by cockroaches
Despite all being well-done, they burnt my brain. Which is the worst?
I just read an interesting fact idea this week. I don’t recall it verbatim, but the gist was this:
If alcoholic products were invented today, they’d never make it through to market.
One might think this is interesting, poignant, and sobering (these might all be redundant, but I’m too lazy, sluggish, and apathetic to double-check), but I find it harrowing. If it wasn’t invented oh-so-long ago by the monks, Jesus, the French, and Siberians, booze might have to be procured by illegal means. And what would I do at the bar and sporting events were that the case? More importantly, how would ugly people do the kamanawanaleia?
And as a bystander caught in the crossfire of a ripple in the time-space continuum that lead lead to alcohol’s disappearance, this Tiny Toons cartoon would have never existed:
This bit came from an episode entitled Elephant Issues, and as far as I’ve looked into it, it’s only aired once in this country (September 18, 1991).
A few problems I found with the segment:
When I had my first sip of beer, I got “the shakes” which was not depicted well by the characters. Nowadays, I call that shaking “getting my groove on.”
After one sip, they all start belching to a tune. I don’t know about the ladies out there, but to myself and most men, belching in key is a big selling point for beer.
The references to bars and money and martini glasses feels incomplete. Where are the silhouettes of strippers? Amiright?
If that bottle was a forty, I’d believe it could last that long and trash a couple of kidsanimalsTiny Toons. But I’ve seen them get shot in the face, fall off cliffs, and get blown up by dynamite. One 12 oz. bottle… not buying it.
And about that solo 12 oz. bottle being the only thing in the fridge at the beginning… that looked a lot like my fridge!
The entire thing is in insulting to hobos and drunks everywhere.
And man, was that animation kinda crappy, or what?
I remember being a lad of about 29 years old, and I finally gathered the nerve to ask my mom, “Where do babies come from?”
I often think back to my childhood, and remember Saturday mornings as a kid. Rolling out of bed from underneath my taped together Garbage Pail Kid posters. Grabbing a box of Cocoa Krispies and the biggest bowl I could handle. Turning on the TV without a remote control because we had none. Zoning out to crappy yet awesome cartoons and the commercials that sold me on Transformers and Star Wars and Centurions and M.A.S.K. with little to no effort. Then there would come along one of these ads:
Granted, it’s not one of the most heartwarming, but very often, they’d catch me by surprise and effect me on a personal level. Gee, maybe I should help my neighbor shovel the snow instead of throwing snowballs at them from my fort, I might consider. What I didn’t realize at the time was that it was a COMMERCIAL FOR A RELIGION! If I wasn’t born and raised RoamingRecovering Roman Catholic, seeing Jesus H. Christ’s name up there might have been a red alert, but I was, so it didn’t. (Also, I wasn’t raised in a way that told me we were the only ones that were right, so at least I had that going for me.)
So now this little vid is making it’s way around the web. I recieved it via a link in an email from frequent idea spurner Dave, and I watched it in similar wonder to the old LSD, er, I mean LDS commercials. It was beautiful, and in fact made me happy to be alive. Damn YouTube and their header captions:
I guess what I’m saying is it’s much more effective than this old thang:
In other words, how can so many inches of Tom Cruise can be wrong? (My guess: 60 of his 67…)
While Paul’s out of the office and off dreaming up new lists on vacation, I thought I would play catch up. We’ve been too busy at work (and I’m not posting my boss’ lists while I’m playing at home), so since I have a slight chance to breathe today, here we go:
Top 5 Professional Sports Moments[Ed. – Local anyway, and without further explanation]
1.) 1997 Red Wings Stanley Cup Champs
2.) 1997 Michigan Football NCAA Champs
3.) 1989 Michigan Basketball NCAA Champs
4.) 1984 Detroit Tigers World Series Champs
5.) 2008 Detroit Lions fire Matt Millen
[Ed. – Oh yeah. Guess where Paul went to college…]
Top Five 80’s Cartoon Theme Songs[Ed. – With explanations and video!]
1.) G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero – “He’ll fight for freedom wherever there’s trouble…” (This should replace the Star Spangled Banner.)
2.) Transformers – “More than meets the eye…” (Song seemed to be ahead of it’s time.)
3.) The Wuzzles – “Two types of fun, wrapped up and rolled… into one!” (What could be better?)
4.) M.A.S.K. – “Masked crusaders, working overtime, fighting crime.” (Song passes the time test.) [Ed. – I had to twist his arm to get this included – it’s my favorite.]
5.) Silverhawks – “Partly metal, partly real.” (Very underated show. Plus, it has a sweet guitar solo.)
Top Five Stores That No Longer Exist (Now in Reverse Order)[Ed. – My favorite list so far.]
5.) The Old Ballpark – Every baseball card collector’s favorite store located in Livonia. If you wanted mint rookie cards of Alan Trammell or Lou Whitaker, this place had ’em.
4.) Great Scott, A&P, Farmer Jack (all lumped in together) – I do have the fondest memories of Great Scott, as it was our old school place to buy groceries. [Ed. – “Old school,” as in O.G. boyee!]
3.) Highland Appliance – “50 watts per channel babycake!” Oh, the memories of buying our first 27″ color tv and our first camcorder, which was VHS-C.
2.) Babbage’s (honorable mention goes to Egghead Software) – I remember browsing the shelves of hundreds of games for my 286 PC at Fairlane Mall.
1.) Children’s Palace – Heaven on Earth to all of us kids who grew up in the 80’s. Enough said. [Ed. – Also, my first job.]
My sister, Becky, recently started a blog about things she learns everyday called SomethingKnew. Since I’m usually forgetting things, I thought I’d pay tribute to her site by recounting something new that I learned.
Today, I discovered the origin of a nickname I received when working overnight at Target. I didn’t even know there was a basis for the moniker. Whereas most of the other overnighters bounced around departments in the store, my only job was to take care of Plastics – the unpacking and organizing of all large Rubbermaid and Sterilite containers. I always had a bunch of cardboard by morning, and the trash compactor runner guy, Greg, used to call me Baby Plas. He called my friend, John, the Gordon Fisherman for some unknown reason, and my friend, Rodney, simply Dangerfield out of necessity, I guess.
And I didn’t think much about it. I thought it was just an odd yet obvious choice. (For example: if I was dubbed, say, the Trix Rabbit, I would have wondered where it came from, much like I did with John the Gordon Fisherman.) Somewhere inside me, I resigned to the fact that it teetered on the Dangerfield zone of unoriginality.
Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon this facet of pop culture that escaped me:
Baby Plas was a reference to “The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show.” Baby Plas was Plastic Man’s baby. I worked with plastics. I was more the Gordon Fisherman than John would ever be. I was more Dangerfield in every sense of the word.
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