Thursday, July 10, 2008

Good times

We had a pretty good holiday weekend. Although why does 3 days sound so luxurious until you get to Sunday afternoon and realize, fuck, 3 days is still not enough. You really can't work up a good laze unless you have 2 full days dedicated to doing nothing but laying around in your own filth eating junk food and watching truly horrible television. This time I was only afforded 1 day and it wasn't nearly enough.

However, we did have a great 4th. It was spent doing next to nothing. Glorious, glorious nothing. We put a ban on laundry, tidying, dishwashing, eating of healthy things, etc. I actually had a real live moment of relaxation. Those don't come often, let me tell you, and it was nice. In between napping I enjoyed some Hitchcock and watched almost all of Jaws.

It probably goes without saying but Jaws in 2008 does not have the impact of Jaws 1975. Speaking of which, can you believe that movie came out in 1975? That's 33 years for my fellow math-challenged peeps. Hardly seems possible, doesn't it? That puts Spielberg in his 20's when he directed. Amazing. My mother actually took me to see that movie when I was 7 or 8. What the hell? Thanks for the 25 years of trauma and permanent fear of invisible pool sharks, mom!

But despite the goofy effects, super duper fake shark and ridiculous plot "a great white shark has staked a claim in the waters off Amity Island, and he's going to continue to feed here as long as there is food in the water" (no one likes a predatory squatter), it made me feel nostalgic for that period of my childhood when it was all about no school and all fun. It was all about Saturday. It was all about the best day in your life, where the sun seemed to hang in the sky forever and the mornings were spent watching the most awesomely ridiculous television in the history of entertainment.

For those of you born after 1980, or (farging hell) maybe even a little earlier than that you will have no idea what I'm talking about so just straighten your Strawberry Shortcake t-shirt and skip to the previous entry.

I don't know what kind of fucked up genetics are plugged into a kids brain that makes them positively narcoleptic during the school week and pops your eyes open at 5:59 on Saturday morning but we were up and ready to consume mass quantities of sugary cereal, if my mother had had a fit of generosity and actually bought some, park our asses in front of the boob tube and tune in to hours on end of live-action Sid & Marty Kroft koo-koo for cocoa puffs craziness.

Looking back on these things is always a precarious activity. On one had you get the great sense of sentimentality and on the other is the cringe-worthy realization that we must have been stupid as a box of hair to buy the lame crap they were selling us. I suppose I'll go for the former since it's way more fun and I don't have to admit I was stupid.

And let me just say, hooray for creativity and tapping into the crazy Swiss cheese labyrinth of rug rat minds but what in the fuck were Sid & Marty smoking? Their offices must have been thick as a New England fog with bong smoke at all times. There's no way else to explain how they came up with that kind of weirdness over and over again. Thank goodness we were only hopped up on Cap'n Crunch while watching or my dreams would have been plagued with giant puppets and talking monkeys all trying to eat my head.

One I started to think about it I did a little research and it all came flooding back. Let's see how many you remember.

How about this guy?

sigmund

Gawd, I had an unnatural love for that stupid show.

And of course who could forget:

hr

If that wasn't the result of a weekend opium bender than I don't know what.

And somehow in my memory merged Pufnstuff with another psychedelic extravaganza starring a mop-topped young boy hanging out with giant hat plushies (hats??) being pursued by a flamboyantly evil wizard type person and a drunken witch. I don't know what the fuck was going on and it didn't help that half the actors from Puf were in this crapfest, too.

lids

As I was doing a little research about this I stumbled onto this site:

http://www.70slivekidvid.com/main.htm

And holy shitballs did it bring back memories! I'd totally forgotten about Electra Woman and Dyna Girl (who was 27 freaking years old when this show was shot, not a girl, totally a woman.) And yes, the blond is Deidre Hall of Days of Our Lives fame.

electro

And did you know there was a Ghost Busters before Ghost Busters?

ghost

A gorilla with a beanie? Seriously? How did we watch this drek?

Then of course there was the beauty of The Bugaloos. This one I actually sort of miss.

bugaloos

I suppose these are not much different than what kids have now, like those horrible fake fingered Doodlebops, and we all know Barney should have his own special place in hell. And I can admit that I've watched more than one video of Lazy Town but as popular as these shows are now, as clever and educational as they may be, they'll never capture the craptacularness of shows like Wonderbug.

wonder

Of that I have no doubt.

5 comments:

x said...

I ran across Electra Woman a few years back. It was airing on some odd station. It was totally hilarious! hehe

smiles,
Kathy

Avalon said...

Sigmund ROCKS!!

NouveauBlogger said...

LOL - good stuff. We're about the same age, but after Sid and Marty Croft we moved straight into Bugs Bunny/Road Runner then onto Tom & Jerry / Grape Ape show before Fat Albert bored us straight outside.

T.Allen said...

hahah, I actually didn't watch Sid and Marty but both my pot smoking parents enjoyed it while I sat alongside grimacing, think Stewy from Family Guy.

Anna Dykema said...

Land of the Lost! "Run, Holly! Run!" And the sleestack (how the hell do you spell THAT?) is one of my best impressions.

But, I could never watch 'Days of our Lives' without seeing her as Electra Woman. I still can't.