90's TV - My Childhood

Oh, my childhood in front of the TV...

Recently I've been reading articles about the science fiction British import, Doctor Who, which will be going through a transition when the actor playing the title character leaves the show after the Christmas special this year and someone takes his place (like James Bond films, the main character has been played by a host of different actors).

What has been interesting to me is just the number of people who grew up watching the show in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. For many people the show shaped their childhoods. I've only been watching for the last few years, but I can relate. I too can't think about my childhood without remembering the different programs that I flocked to. I'll list some of them below:

1. Super Mario World. No, not the video game, but the TV show. It was a real thing. And I watched it right up until I went to Kindergarten. Check it out:

The video game convinced me that Mario was perhaps the greatest hero of all time. It was not

enough that I played the Super Nintendo game every minute I was allowed to be on the console. I dressed up like Mario. I wore a cape like Mario. There's a picture of me blowing out candles on a Mario-themed birthday cake. 

The show didn't need to do anything fancy to keep my interest. Mario teams up with Luigi and Yoshi, they have to defeat Bowser who has usually captured Princess Peach, and they almost always succeeded by getting a power-up in the nick of time. I had to quit watching when I began going to afternoon Kindergarten and could never get back in time for the show. Looking back, the show was really pretty awful and was jam packed with Italian stereotypes. One episode actually revolved around attempts to revive an unconscious Mario with the smell of pizza. Kinda racist now that I think about it...

2. Power Rangers. If Mario was awful, Power Rangers was ... what's worse than awful? Vomit-inducing? Bad. But I was a dumb kid and I loved it. It had ninjas, robots, and dinosaurs. The show was so formulaic that by the end of 1st grade I was wondering why the heck didn't they just skip all the precursory stuff and just go straight to the final battle (which involved a one-hit kill...maybe they should have lead off with that).

I vividly remember one of my saddest moments being when my babysitter jokingly told me that Power Rangers was canceled and they weren't going to be showing it anymore. I cried for about two hours before she could convince me she had been just joking. 

This is the premise of the show, taken word-for-word from Wikipedia:

     In Mighty Morphin, alien wizard Zordon recruits "teenagers with attitude" to harness the power of the  

     dinosaurs to overcome the forces of evil space alien Rita Repulsa.^[4] When "morphed," the rangers become 

     powerful superheroes wearing color-coded skin-tight spandex battle suits and helmets with opaque visors

I still can't believe I was so obsessed with something so dumb, but it ruled my life there for a while. One thing that invariably happened in each episode was "Rita" would send down some of her minions wearing all-grey spandex to fight the rangers. These minions were completely indestructible with only ONE weakness...a giant circle in the center of their chests which, when hit, kills them. It was the ONLY thing that could destroy them!

Occasionally, I and my friends would try to act out the stuff we saw on the show. You know, all the karate? It never worked out that well. We had an occasional bloody nose incident, but we still did it. I think the lesson from that is that I shouldn't let my child watch anything remotely violent until their brains have fully developed....so 25. 

3. Pokemon. Thankfully, I matured past the notion of brightly colored superheros battling enemies and moved to a show featuring brightly colored monsters leaping out of tiny orbs and battling each other. 

I was initially uncertain whether I should think Pokemon was cool or not. But after playing the Gameboy game I became addicted. It was the first (and last) anime show I ever watched and really it could get kind of goofy. Here's the premise:

Once a child turns 10 years old, he may leave home and travel the world finding and capturing wild pokemon (which means "pocket monsters") which he can then force into battles with pokemon belonging to other people in a quest to become the ultimate pokemon master. Looking back on it, it was actually a pretty horrible concept, kind of like Michael Vick's dogfighting ring turned into a cartoon.

As dumb as it sounds, it's easy to see why it appealed to kids. Imagine being able to walk around with the ability to summon monsters to do battle any time you wanted. Kids picking on you at school? Pull a raichu out of your pocket to electrocute him to death. Take that, Jebediah Hendrickson, you jerk!

Beyond that, though, the show got touchy-feely when it came to the relationships between humans and their pokemon. That's really what made the show itself appealing, this notion of "No one understands me! But at least I have you, bulbasaur!" One of my friends was able to relate. I'll keep his name secret to protect your identity, Josh Dreiling. He was once watching an episode entitled "Bye-bye, Butterfree!" in which one of the main character's pokemon is set free back into the wild so that she can be happy and live with the other butterfrees. While watching it, his sister barged into his room to ask him something when she stopped and asked, "Are you crying?" "NO! Shut up! Leave me alone!"

It's truly scary for a 10-year old to get in touch with his feminine side. 

4. Angry Beavers. No feminine side here. Two beavers who are brothers must live on their own in the wild. There is absolutely no moral or educational value that can be taken from this show, it was just silliness. 

What probably appealed to me about the show was the brothers, Dagget and Norbert, had arguments and fights that my brothers and I had all the time. Fights over everything from getting the last candy bar to being the first one through a doorway. 

Aside from that, it was probably just the silliness of the plot that kept me interested, but there was always something vaguely relatable in each episode. For example, in one episode Dagget and Norbert are eating literally tons of cereal and collecting hundreds of box tops so that they can send them in and get their own street sweeper. I still remember eating as much cereal as I could when there was a toy or a competition at stake, so I could relate to the episode on some level. To this day, the part of that episode that sticks with me is....why on earth did they want a street sweeper so badly? Chances are, they probably didn't. They only wanted it because the cereal company was offering it. 

Oh, and there was a character named Stump. You don't ever see him move...and by all measurements of logic he shouldn't move, but apparently he is completely self-aware and mobile and is well-liked by everyone in the forest. Part of the fun was you never knew when Stump was going to show up next with his stupid carved-out smile.

My Fatherhood Reading List

We're now a few weeks into the great second trimester of our pregnancy. And by "our" I mean Christina's. As much as I try to be supportive there's just not a whole lot I can do to make anything easier other than feel slightly guilty.

Christina: "I feel so nauseous."
Me: "Yeah...that sucks..."

Aside from just trying to keep things relatively clean around the house and making the occasional helpful baby name suggestion (Zagathor did not make the cut) I've been doing a lot of reading. You may not know this but  there are quite a few books on parenting. For those of you who have seen "baby" sections of book stores, you know there is a giant sarcasm sign flashing above my head.

See?

Someone, somewhere, at some point once said that babies don't come with an instruction manual. If that's the case, then what the heck have I been reading over the past 18 weeks? I started with something pretty basic: What to Expect When You're Expecting. Among other things, I learned that there must be an international law somewhere out there that says you may only compare your preterm baby size to some piece of produce. "Your baby is now the size of a grape! Your baby is now the size of an apple! Your baby is now the size of a green pepper! Your baby is now the size of the great pumpkin! By the way, you should probably get that checked out..."

What to Expect is actually insanely thorough. There are about 500 pages on nutrition for an expectant mother, all of which I as the father may ignore with no negative effect on the baby's health...although again, it makes me profoundly guilty. It's also insanely thorough on everything that can go wrong with your baby's development, some of which is scary enough to replace my nightmares of 24/7 Kardashian marathons replacing ESPN's current programming. I solved that problem though. I quit reading.

NOOOOOO!!!!

From there I began meandering around the Internet and reading up on what Christina and I should begin doing to prepare for baby time. Some of it is a bit morbid (making a will). Some is a bit more fun (painting the nursery). And the vast majority of the rest is just expensive. Do you know how much a stroller costs these days? Personally, I was starting to think we could take the Harry Potter route and just keep him or her in a cupboard instead of taking the child outside. Ya ain't North West, kid. I'm kidding of course. I'm not cruel enough to keep a baby in a cupboard. Besides, Christina wouldn't let me. So we got the stroller. Two strollers, in fact. One for us and one for our in-laws. I'm hoping they will motivate me to get up and actually walk a bit more than I am right now. Which is a number somewhere in the neighborhood of zero.

From the Internet I moved on to two separate books on fatherhood: Bill Cosby's Fatherhood and Jim Gaffigan's Dad is Fat. I love Cosby but Gaffigan's book blows it out of the water. For those of you who don't know, Gaffigan is the comedian who has the "Hot Pocket" routine. What I never realized in watching his standup (which is largely about being a lazy slob) is that he's actually a pretty big family man. And I don't just mean big as in "physically large." The guy has five kids. Five. As in four more than I will have in four months. Holy crap I only have four months left. Thanks a lot, blog, for reminding me.

He writes a lot about how the dad is a bit superflous during the whole pregnancy. In one of his best essays he talks about how being the "birth coach" to him is really just a nice way to make the father feel involved: "I'll just stand here in the corner and take pictures." It's morbid humor but it's funny. He even writes about the process of cutting the umbilical cord but, "You can't screw this up. The wouldn't let you do it if you could."

I think what appealed to me most about the book wasn't just the humor. The book was hilarious, don't get me wrong, but throughout the entire thing is an undercurrent of genuine love for his kids and a tentative fear that he's not being as good of a father as he could be. He worries that his kids are going to grow up hating him. He worries that show business will make life difficult for them in ways they aren't for other children. Despite that worry though, he's almost defensive about his worry and his mistakes. He absolutely hates getting unsolicited child advice from other people because it suggests his effort and love and common sense is not enough. What becomes clear though is that it definitely IS enough. He works hard at his job, he spends quality time with his children, he supports his wife, and his family adores him for it. I know that's a lot to do, and the effort involved will be staggering, but just the feeling and the comfort of knowing that the important part is the effort and the process involved has done worlds for any anxiety I've had.

Right. Now, back to searching for zombie children's books on Amazon.

Man No Feel - audience disconnect in Superman

It has been a while since I've posted anything. Christina and I just returned from a short vacation in Oklahoma City visiting my grandparents. Now is a good opportunity to make up for lost time.

While in Oklahoma, we went to see Man of Steel. There were some other good options, but I figured since Steel had already made so much money and since my older brother had talked almost non-stop about it since the first trailer appeared, I figured we should see what all the fuss was about. I came away just a little disappointed that it didn't live up to the lofty expectations I'd gained for it.

It's a reboot, for sure. Just about every superhero has gotten a reboot lately: Spiderman, Batman, Iron Man, Thor, and there's even a Wonderwoman movie in the works.

This movie, however, falls short from some of its better peers in a number of ways. I'm going to try to organize them here:

1. There are too many story lines going on simultaneously.

For a rebooted first film, there was just too much that the filmmakers tried to cram in. Don't let the trailers fool you. This is not a film about Clark Kent's childhood, although it tries to be. It also tries to be a film about Clark finding his identity, about discovering his father, about the success and failures of Krypton,  about Lois Lane finding Superman, about Clark discovering his powers, about General Zod's quest to redeem Krypton, etc. etc.

This makes the film into the "Golden Corral" of movies. Instead of serving up just one storyline well, it tries to do everything and ends up with poor quality. Ideally, the film would have focused almost exclusively on Clark finding his identity just so that his character could be solid for any sequels. Clark wrestles with what kind of a person he should be. But there is no specific point in the movie you can point to as the place where this issue is solved. As a result, you don't get a sense for how he relates to his inner turmoil because you can't pinpoint any exact change.

Batman did the "inner turmoil" bit to perfection. His parents are murdered by a thief and he wrestles with seeking revenge versus honoring his parents' memory by promoting justice.

Steel could have done this as well, but for whatever reason, decides against it. He could have had daddy issues and the film could have built his turmoil around that. Batman did it. Iron Man did it. So did Spiderman, Thor, the King's Speech, and EVEN HARRY POTTER. It works.

But the film doesn't devote the time to rounding out Superman's character that way or really in any way. The result? You don't care about Superman near as much.

2. Too much kablooey.

There are a LOT of explosions in this movie. I mean, I expected there would be an occasional destroyed building, but this started to feel like a Michael Bay movie after a while. I might be alone in this, but sometimes I think this is the film equivalent of dangling aluminum foil in front of the audience. It starts to feel lazy, like the relationships and interactions between the characters aren't enough to keep us interested on their own. Plus, I'm not that impressed by visual effects anymore. When too much of it is used, it becomes sensory overload. All that's important is that Superman fought someone and he eventually won. That doesn't need to go on for 20 minutes because then it starts to get boring.

3. Dads are good. Moms not so much.

The best part of the film was the first 20 minutes. Russell Crowe plays Superman's father, Jor-El and he takes the lead for the first portion of the movie as the scientist who foresees Krypton's doom. He simultaneously works to save his son while also fighting off a coup by General Zod, and he carries the focus quite well. Crowe manages to pull off the most floaty dialogue with gravitas ("You will give the people an ideal to strive towards...they will join you in the sun." - really though, how can you relate to an ideal of human perfection?)

Jonathan Kent is also pulled off superbly and he has the single best line in the film (Clark: "Can't I just go on pretending to be your son?" Jonathan: "You ARE my son!" - oh man, tear-jerker if ever there was one.) He even sacrifices himself saving people in a tornado so that Clark can keep his identity a secret.

The moms, however, are not as relatable and aren't as well acted. Lara Lor-Van, his biological mother, seeks justice for the murder of her husband at the hands of general Zod, and so she ensures that Zod is imprisoned in the phantom zone for his crimes...even though she KNOWS that Krypton is about to be destroyed and therefore this imprisonment will likely save their lives. She next appears grief-stricken and despondent as the planet explodes around her. You'd think she'd be a bit more concerned that Zod might succeed in his threat to find and murder her son.

Martha Kent is just tough to relate to. We're just sort of told that Clark loves her, but we don't really ever see that love. The best comparison I can think of is with Forrest Gump and his mother. He loves his mother, he and others in the movie tell us that, but we don't ever really SEE that love and experience it because she's absent most of the time from the movie. It's Jonathan who takes up the vast majority of the bonding moments, and once he's killed off Martha is all that's left to pick up the slack. It's just sort of assumed from that point that there was a relationship there, but unfortunately, we the audience aren't asked to join in.

The day I became a soccer fan

I can still remember the day I became a soccer fan.

It wasn't when I started playing youth soccer in Clinton, Oklahoma. While I learned the basics of the game as well as the positions (I was a central defender) opportunities to watch the game were few and far between.

It wasn't when the U.S. hosted the 1994 World Cup. While thousands of Americans poured into football stadiums to view soccer at the highest level, we stayed in Oklahoma. Besides, I was too young to appreciate such an event.

I had no idea who this guy was

I became a fan of the sport during the 2002 World Cup held in South Korea and Japan. While the U.S. had been an embarrassment at the 1998 World Cup, my brothers and I had vowed to watch the tournament anyway.

Up until that year, I hadn't really gained a passion for watching soccer because I didn't feel like I had much at stake. I didn't have a lot of pride steeped in the national team. And why should I? We were still a country that considered just qualifying for the World Cup to be a major, major accomplishment. And while many countries do indeed consider qualification an honor, defeating countries Antigua and Barbuda just doesn't command the world's respect like you might think.

These were the guys we beat. WE DID IT!....I guess?

And so we committed ourselves to waking up at 4:00 a.m. so that we could watch the games live with the time differential (ESPN was not replaying the games on primetime) We set our alarms, got up in our pajamas, fixed up some bowls of frosted flakes, and turned on ESPN, which happened to have nothing better to show that early (I've been frustrated when the network has opted to show "rock-paper-scissor" tournaments before).

This year, however, the tournament started off very well for the U.S. We actually beat Portugal. Portugal, for heaven's sake. This wasn't a fluke. You don't just beat Portugal by accident. There are no accidents when Portugal is on the field. Usually, the only accident that takes place is Portugal accidentally crushing you to death.

But we won.

Now all that would be for naught if the U.S. didn't perform respectably against the other two opponents in its group. A loss to Poland but a tie against South Korea was good enough to put the U.S. through to the round of 16.

By this point, I was excited. We were among the top 16 countries in the world. You don't find yourself at this point in the tournament by fluke. It just doesn't happen. You have to have something special going for you and I finally felt like I had a team I could be proud of.

Then we found out our opponent.

Mexico.

Of all the teams to end up against, we were playing the only team we can really call a rival.

Even as a kid, I remember having the overwhelming feeling of inferiority against Mexico when it came to soccer. The U.S. was normally the best at everything. Just look at how many medals we won at the 1996 Olympics (hosted, of course, in the USA). We always won, it seemed...except when it came to soccer.

I even remember my Mexican classmates talking about how much better Mexico was at the sport and how they themselves dreamed of being on the Mexican national team.

Heck, even soccer video games had all the U.S. players as tiny, slow, pixelated messes.

We were, (and to some extent still are) the underdogs when it came to soccer.

But now it was the World Cup. We had actually made it to the second round and we had a shot to take our neighbors to the south down a peg.

I can still remember how excited I got when Brian McBride blasted a shot home in the 8th minute--a quick start to a thrilling game. Later, I was out of my chair when Landon Donovan nodded in another goal in the second half. We were heading to the quarterfinals. The top eight teams in the world was pretty exclusive company.

Then, Mexican captain Rafael Marquez, completely frustrated by his team's inability to do anything, directed an intentional, cheap-shot head butt straight at American player Cobi Jones.

You....jerk......face

I was livid. I was indignant. The jerk nearly gave one of our best veterans a concussion and I wanted vengeance. I wanted justice. I wanted the entire U.S. squad to get a free shot at Marquez's crotch. 

Well, the crotch shots didn't happen. But the ref did see the foul and ejected Marquez from the game, reducing them to 10 men and virtually assuring us passage to the quarterfinals. 

When the clock passed 90 minutes and reality set in for the Mexican fans, the camera began to focus on all the sad, sad faces in the crowd. While the U.S. began celebrating, the Mexicans were gearing up the waterworks, and I remember feeling a twisted sense of joy at their misery. If Marquez had not just been ejected from the game, I'm certain I would have been feeling more sportsman-like, but not tonight. Tonight I was happy my team had dominated a rival. 

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

We would lose in the quarters 1-0 to a fantastic German team, but I still remember the passion I felt watching that World Cup. It's remarkable, really, to think about how much has changed since then. Major League Soccer matches appear on TV with some regularity. ESPN announcers hold back their sarcastic comments when discussing the sport (which they're finding they actually need to promote to help their own ratings). And as I type this, I'm watching Mexico play Costa Rica in a World Cup qualifier, which is right before the U.S.'s game versus Panama, all on the night before Christina and I go watch Sporting Kansas City play a Cup match at their high class soccer-specific stadium.

In 2002, I had to wake up in the wee hours of the morning to become a fan of the sport. Future fans might find themselves following the game much more easily. And that can only be a good thing. 

Science Fiction and Horror

I have a bad habit of watching movies and comparing them to almost every other work of literature under the sun. I'm starting to sense it's pretty annoying to those around me.

For example, while visiting some friends in Park City, Christina and I sat down to watch the 1954 classic The Creature from the Black Lagoon on AMC. The film is about a group of scientists who take a boat up the Amazon to research...something...I can't remember, but it's not important. What's important is that they soon find themselves under attack from a "gill-man" who is picking off the group (which of course features one attractive woman) one by one.

At one point the camera shows the woman swimming on her own while the monster gives the faintest of touches to her feet below water. So of course I said, "Wow, this movie is a lot like Jaws in how they did that." The camera work and just the amount of time spent under water made me think of almost every other water-based horror flick I'd ever seen, including Deep Blue Sea. I naturally started to feel like it was a forerunner of sorts.

Doesn't kill her. Takes her to his lair. Apparently, the monster just wanted to be looooved...

Later on, after the team of scientists ACTUALLY CAPTURES THE CREATURE, many of the crew are in favor of leaving the lagoon so that they might return home to civilization and bring in the creature for study. However, the leader of the scientists, Mark, refuses, claiming that their previous research and scientific inquiry is too danged important to give up just because a mysterious gill-man happened to murder a few members of the crew (a few more get killed as a result of staying). So I made my second comparison of the evening, claiming that was "just like Captain Walton being too stupid to head home in Frankenstein." 

Horror films and science fiction are close cousins to each other. It's a standard plotline anymore: a scientist's ambition becomes his downfall when he (I would say "or she" but the scientist who screws up is always male) either creates a monster through his pursuit of science OR leads others into a dangerous encounter with a monster in his pursuit of other discoveries. This is exactly why the professor would have been the first person to turn evil in Gilligan's Island...you know, if the show were a horror story and not a sitcom.

Guys! This coconut radio I invented will let us commune with the dead!!

You see this all the time:

• Victor Frankenstein was foolhardy when he thought he could "play God" and accidentally creates a superhuman monster, one who would have been friendly had Victor not screwed up a second time and shown him love and affection. 
• In 28 Days Later, scientists create the "Rage Virus" which, of course, is accidentally released, dooming most of Great Britain to a zombie existence. Oops.
• In Deep Blue Sea, marine biologists give sharks super intelligence, and are shocked to discover the sharks have begun turn on the humans (one of the dumber decisions I've seen. I mean really, why would you want to make sharks smarter?)
• In Prometheus, an old guy's pursuit of the science of immortality leads a crew to the planet where the aliens from Alien come from. You DO see an alien burst from a chest, which is cool. But then, you also see a woman perform a C-Section on herself to get rid of an alien....which is also cool.
• The Mist, a Stephen King book-turned-movie, features monsters attacking townspeople trapped in a supermarket when army scientists accidentally open a gateway to another dimension. Naturally, the townspeople start killing each other. 

In order for a horror movie to be really successful, I suppose it's important to make your characters tragic by making them the cause of all their own problems. For example, the Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre films use the tactic of making you absolutely hate the main characters before killing them off because of their own stupidity. 

You find yourself cheering when Jason picks them off one by one

However, on the more positive side of the tragedy coin, we can all relate to ambition. By and large, ambition is something we admire in people. 

Perhaps that's what makes a film more relatable, and where else can you find better examples of ambition than in mankind's ambition to explain all of the natural universe? Science fiction has always offered fertile ground for horror films particularly for this reason. As long as we still feel a drive for discovery and a pursuit of the unknown, there will always be the thrill of knowing that we're approaching strange waters.

Haiku

Jason Statham kills
People in the film "Parker"
Then he yells f-bombs

Young Adult Lit Fail

Today, I started to get a horrible, horrible feeling. It was a realization that put a huge damper on my day.

Young adult literature.....kinda sucks.

I know. I'm 25 years old, I'm not what you would call the "intended audience." But the problem is, as a high school English teacher, I'm supposed to be championing these books 'cause "READING IS AWESOME!" 

So now, in order to get my kids to read, I'm likely going to do a bit of lying. Great.

I started reading the first Percy Jackson book a couple weeks ago. In my spare time I've been reading a few pages here and there. I figured, since I teach archetypes, all the points of the hero's journey and the references to Greek mythology would only be a good thing. 

The BAD thing, though, is that it's simply not written well. 

There is no pacing in this thing. The entire book is a race from one huge explodey moment to the next. Percy Jackson loves his mother and is sad she is dead. What? You aren't emotionally invested in Percy's mother? Of course you aren't! You just met her five pages ago! Percy doesn't even spend any time mourning her, even though his pursuit to bring her back to life is supposedly a guiding plot line for the remainder of the book. 

Maybe by the time I finish it, my view will be different, but for now, it feels like this was written with zero patience and for low attention spans. I had the exact same problem with The Hunger Games.

For those who will point out that, again, I'm not the intended audience, I have two words: Harry Potter. That series was masterful, and apparently it's the gold standard I now hold other books up to. You aren't just "told" that there's a relationship between characters. You actually witness them grow and build. When Harry, Ron, and Hermione go after Voldemort in the very first book, you're invested in what happens because the author took time to establish that emotional connection. 

Ah well.  Perhaps I'm looking too much into this. After all few people put Percy Jackson in the same level as good 'ol H.P.

Once upon a time, I had a love seat...