I suppose some of you are wondering why today's blog post is called 'Sunday Jukebox' and not 'Sunday Funnies'. If you scroll down below to the Bobby's World entry, the explanation is there.
I just felt that in discussing all things pop culture that there was one topic that remained largely undiscussed.
Music.
I can't imagine a world without music in it. What kind of a dull place would it be if we didn't have any music whatsoever. During one six-month period, the music at my workplace just stopped working. It was hell.
So, I started thinking to myself. “Self,” I said, “why don't you have any sort of music feature in this blog?" Music is a universal language that everyone in the world understands. Whether a song has lyrics or is just an instrumental, the way it is presented can have a big impact.
Certainly in my lifetime are songs and artists that stick out. Perhaps it was a Top 40 song that I couldn't get enough of. Maybe it was some obscure B-side that nobody knew existed. Quite possibly, I was touched by the meaning of a particular chorus, or moved by the imagery presented in a music video.
The more I thought about it, the more I thought that I needed to have a category that celebrates nothing but music. Since the Sunday funnies day was sort of made redundant by the fact that many comic strips have been turned into cartoons, I made the decision to move the comic strips to Saturdays and free up Sundays for music discussion.
Hence the creation of the 'Sunday Jukebox' feature!
A couple of points to explain this new day. Most of the time, I'll be featuring a song that really resonated with me, or one that reminds me of something. Sometimes I'll do an artist spotlight. Sometimes, I'll do a band spotlight. I may even throw in a couple of references to albums and television clips for children. After all, most shows for kids usually have a couple of musical numbers in them. You all look at me like I've lost all my hearing in one ear as you read this, but it's amazing what songs for children can teach you about yourself!
Have you got your quarter in your hand? You do? Great! Stick it inside the coin slot and push A-1 to get this feature started.
The first song?
ARTIST: Howard Jones
SONG: Things Can Only Get Better
ALBUM: Dream Into Action
RELEASED: February 9, 1985
PEAK POSITION ON BILLBOARD CHARTS: #5
I was born a little too late to appreciate Howard Jones when he was first releasing music. His debut single was released when I was all of two years old, and back in those days, I believe the only singer I ever listened to was Raffi.
(Suffice to say, it may have taken some years for my musical tastes to mature)
Whatever the case, Howard Jones was one of those artists that had quite a bit of success in the 1980s. In the United States alone, he had eleven singles chart on the Billboard Top 100 between 1983 and 1992 – two of which made the top five.
One of those songs was “No One Is To Blame”, which was Jones' highest charting single at #4 in 1986. The other song is the one that I'm featuring in this blog entry.
The song 'Things Can Only Get Better' was initially released in the United Kingdom in February of 1985, and a month later hit the North American charts. Oddly enough, although Jones was born in the UK, this particular song charted higher stateside than it did in his own country.
And it was a pretty decent song at that. It had every element of a quintessential 1980s hit. Synthesizers. Big hair. Catchy and upbeat. The song and its accompanying video had all of these things and more.
Of course, as I mentioned before, I was a little too young to appreciate Howard Jones' music. Back when the song was hitting the charts, I was likely hitting the sack with my little yellow blanket inside my playpen. I probably couldn't tell the difference between Howard Jones and Jughead Jones back then.
It wasn't until recently that this song crept back into my life in a way that I never would have thought possible.
On February 9, 1985, Howard Jones released 'Things Can Only Get Better'. Twenty-six years later on February 9, 2011, I was in some of the most severe pain that I had ever experienced in my whole life.
About a week prior to this, I had been having some problems with my stomach area. There was this sharp, pulsing pain in my gut that no matter what I tried, I could not get rid of. If you can picture a Ninja dressed head to toe in black tossing shurikens directly at my mid-section, you would probably get an idea of how bad of shape I was in. It was absolutely unbearable.
After suffering from this for almost a week (and after several trips to the emergency room), it was on February 9, 2011 that I made the decision to go to the hospital and I was not going to leave the emergency room until the doctors did something to help me.
Picture this. It was roughly eight-thirty in the evening. I was in so much pain that I was literally out of breath as I was walking to the car. My mom agreed to take me to the emergency room because I was in really bad shape, and I didn't know what was going on with me.
It was an incredibly scary feeling to have, you know. The feeling of being so incredibly sick and not knowing what was wrong at all. I didn't know what to expect, and I was worried as to what would happen to me.
As soon as the car started, the radio kicked on, and what song came on the radio?
Yeah, you pretty much figured it out, right?
It seems like such a random moment, and it seemed like a random song that was playing on the radio. Somehow though, it calmed my fears a little bit. It almost seemed as though someone was trying to give me a message of some sort. I don't claim to be a religious person by any means, and I'm in the camp that thinks that there might be a God, but yet there's no proof that such a deity even exists. Yet, after hearing that song play through on the ride up to the hospital, somewhere inside me, I kind of knew that like Mr. Jones was singing on the song, that things would only get better from here.
After hearing that song, I was at peace with whatever the outcome would be.
The end result was that I had a severe gall bladder infection. So severe that it had gotten fused onto my liver. My surgery was three days later. The surgeon actually had to cut around the liver to get the gall bladder out. It meant a hospital stay of sixteen days total, and the end result was that I ended up with this sexy scar.
Isn't that a beaut? My apologies for the lack of six-pack abs and abundance of chest hair. Metrosexual I am not.
It's been four months since I had my surgery, and the only souvenir I have of the experience is that scar. When you consider that had I let it go any longer, I could very well not be here to write this blog entry, that's a very big deal. I'll greatly wear my scar with pride, and hope that others will see it as a badge of honour and not an ugly disfigurement.
Seriously, you insult the scar, you insult me.
So what have we learned from this?
Howard Jones may not be a fortune teller, or a psychic. Heck, he hasn't had a hit song on the charts in almost twenty years. He was right about one thing though. Things could only get better...and they did.
It was the power of positive thinking. Listening to the Howard Jones song on the radio kickstarted my belief that I would get through my medical scare of February 2011 because I kept telling myself that things would only get better.
I'm thinking maybe I should adopt this song as my own personal mantra.
Before I go ahead with this blog entry, I'm going to announce a slight change to the weekly schedule.
It dawned on me while I was writing my entry on U.S. Acres last Sunday that I could have really used the show under the Saturday Morning cartoon feature. The Saturday morning and Sunday funnies feature are almost the same exact thing, as many comic strips and comic books have been turned into cartoons. Similarly, many Saturday morning cartoons have been turned into comic books. Therefore, I have made a decision to change the focus of the Sunday entry. The Saturday Morning and Sunday Funnies Section will combine into the Saturday Morning feature.
So, what will I do for Sundays then? It also dawned on me that I never really had a music spotlight in my blog, and there's lots of music videos that tell a story. So, Sunday Funnies will now become...
SUNDAY JUKEBOX!
I think you'll like the change, and I think you'll enjoy the new Sunday feature. I already have a great artist lined up for tomorrow's entry.
We still have to get through Saturday first, so let's see what show we'll be featuring today.
Ah, Bobby's World. A cartoon that I used to adore as a child. A cartoon that was well-loved by many, many people. A cartoon that many people want to see back on television.
It seems hard to believe but Bobby's World first aired over twenty years ago in the autumn of 1990. It ran until 1998. Almost unheard of for many Saturday morning cartoons. Just goes to show just how creative a show it really was. The show centered around young Bobby Generic (pronounced JEN-a-ric), a four year old boy who had a rather normal upbringing in a rather normal family. One might say that the Generic family could be rather generic (pronounced djinn-AIR-ick) in nature by this description.
The one thing that set Bobby apart from the rest of his family was...ah...well, I'll tell you later.
Bobby's World was created by Howie Mandel, who those of you probably remember from the television show St. Elsewhere. Or, if you're a bit younger, you may know him as the host of 'Deal Or No Deal' and current judge on 'America's Got Talent'. Back in the days when Howie actually had hair on his head, he used to do the voice of young Bobby. In fact, here's a clip of Howie and Bobby in action.
I really tried to find one that actually appeared on Bobby's World, but had very little luck finding one of decent quality, so I inserted this clip from Deal or No Deal.
Those of you who DO remember watching the cartoon know that it always started and ended with a live-action/animated clip where Howie Mandel talks with his creation about the theme of the episode and what lessons they learned. I thought that this was kind of a neat way to introduce the show. Not a lot of cartoons that aired combined animation with live-action and lived to tell the tale, but somehow it worked.
I think part of it could be the fact that Howie Mandel also played the role of Bobby's father in the show, and I think that Mr. Generic was meant to be the actual animated version of Howie himself. You even had some instances in which live-action Howie morphed into cartoon Howie and vice versa. It was interesting to see, because back in those days, not a lot of us were able to see what voice actors looked like. Bobby's World did start airing before the days of widespread Internet service and Blackberries, so around that time, voice actors were mostly shrouded in secrecy. To see the voice actor turn into the cartoon he voiced was interesting to see.
That's my little nerd freakout for this week. I am entitled to at least one per week, you know.
Being a kindergartener in the show, Bobby sure had to stand out in order to be heard. His family was absolutely huge. There was his father, Howard. Then there was his mother Martha, who looking back on it now sounded a lot like Sarah Palin. He had two older siblings, Kelly and Derek, who found Bobby more of an annoyance than a help. Later in the show, he became a big brother to his twin siblings born during the early part of the series. He had a beloved uncle who used to give him noogies (something that I myself admit to giving all of my nephews when they were younger), and of course his dog Roger.
Aside from the whole having younger siblings (I am the youngest of three), Bobby's family was surprisingly like mine was. Granted, I never had an uncle who gave me noogies. I did have two parents and two sisters who like Kelly and Derek were considerably older than I was. And, yeah, like Kelly and Derek, I imagine my sisters considered me more of an annoyance than a help too. I was the youngest child though, so I guess it happens.
Oh, and I never had a dog. Not since the one we had when I was born tried to bite off half my face at a year old. I've been a cat person ever since.
Of course, if I were to say that my family was kind of like the Generic family, then it would make for a really boring entry.
I think the thing that really made me feel like I was a lot like Bobby was something that Bobby and I shared.
We both had a vivid imagination that would take us to places that nobody else could ever visit.
Bobby had one of those overactive imaginations that many four year olds develop. If he wanted to, he could dream up a place where he could go, and with a little brain power, he would transport to that place. In his mind, I suppose he was goin', was goin', was goin' on a trip.
And, that's just one example. Check these out as well, just to see how imaginative a boy Bobby was.
Yeah, Bobby was kind of a weird child according to some people. Then again, so was I.
When I was a child, I tended to keep to myself. Not having siblings close to my age, and not living in neighbourhoods that were filled with kids, I pretty much had to entertain myself. And, how did I entertain myself? I would pretend to be places just like Bobby.
Whenever I would play with my Fisher-Price little people playsets, I would grab my favourite little person (usually the grumpy looking kid with the sideways cap and freckles), and I would grab my Fisher-Price main street set, and pretend that I was in the downtown area meeting people, doing errands, and having fun doing it. Of course as an adult, those things are anything but fun now. When you were a kid, your imagination could take you to tons of places, and do lots of things.
I reckon that I took better vacations in my imagination than I ever did in real life. I reckon that I created imaginary friends that were better behaved than some of the kids I really did know.
The sad thing is that a lot of kids who have overactive imaginations are unfairly judged as being dreamy, or being silly, or something else that judgmental adults would say, and I think that's the wrong attitude for adults to have about kids like Bobby (and ultimately me). Where would we be without our dreams and our goals? Sure, the odds of me travelling to Mars in a rocket are slim to nil...but in my dreams I could go there anytime I wanted to. And, yes, I doubt that I could sail around the world in a dinghy, but in my dreams, I could do it in whatever speed I so chose.
Just because a kid dreams a lot and uses his imagination to escape from the real world from time to time, it doesn't mean that they have no future, or that they're wasting their time. It shows that they're creative, introspective, and just plain more interesting than someone who never did have that opportunity to explore the world that they live in.
Looking back on when I was four, I'm glad that I did have the same imaginative qualities Bobby did. I don't think they warped me in any way, or made me any less of a person for it. If anything, it allows me to look at problems through a different point of view from the average person. I'm okay with that.
This is the third edition of the TGIF series, where we take a look at our favourite sitcoms of yore. The last two sitcoms that were featured in this space had both previously aired sometime in the popular TGIF block of shows that used to air on the ABC network every Friday.
Ah, but not all of these sitcom features aired on Fridays. I just borrowed the TGIF phrase because it sounded cool.
The sitcom I've decided to feature in this entry originally aired on Saturdays. But then again, the show is currently in syndication through reruns on Monday through Friday, so you have a one in five chance to see it on a Friday.
That's my explanation, and I'm sticking to it, anyways.
The Golden Girls ran from September 1985 to May 1992, and admittedly, the show was quite an unusual one. It was one of the few shows to have an all female main cast (if I'm thinking correctly, only 'The Facts Of Life' and 'It's A Living' could make the same claim at the time). It was also one of the few sitcoms where each member of the main cast was over the age of fifty. A remarkable feat, considering how youth-oriented Hollywood could be.
Somehow, it worked. In fact, it didn't just work...it was one of the most brilliant sitcoms that has ever aired over the past thirty years.
Granted, when the show first started airing, I was only four years old. Back in those days, I only watched Sesame Street, Mr. Dressup, and the occasional movie shown on 'The Wonderful World Of Disney'. I hardly was at the right frame of mind at the time to sit in front of a television and watch a bunch of old ladies gabbing at a kitchen table while they chomped down on cheesecake.
I certainly didn't hear kids talking about the latest episode of Golden Girls. There were no Golden Girls lunchboxes. No Golden Girls pencil cases. And certainly, nobody handed out these cards on Valentine's Day.
Okay, admittedly the Sophia one is really funny.
This blog entry is not on her though. Someday though.
The Golden Girls was a successful show for the seven seasons it was on. Although it spawned a spinoff with 'Empty Nest', as well as a less successful sequel (The Golden Palace), the Golden Girls was arguably one of the most successful sitcoms of the 1980's and 1990's.
Recently the show started airing reruns on a cable channel here in Canada called TVTropolis, and it wasn't until I re-watched the show through thirty-year old eyes that I realized how witty and well-written the show was. As a four year old, they didn't really do anything that was out of the ordinary from my grandparents, but as a man, they were quite entertaining to watch.
I wish I could do an entry on each of the four leads. All of them really had their own distinct personalities, and all of them have qualities that I myself can identify with...even though I'm a male and about thirty years younger than they were.
Because I enjoy a challenge, I went with a character that on the surface was nothing like me. Beneath though, it's almost eerie how much in common we really did have with each other.
Blanche Devereaux.
Portrayed by the late Rue McClanahan, she was the youngest of the Golden Girls. Born and bred in the South, Blanche was one of those girls who always seemed to depend on the kindness of strangers.
Preferably the male kind.
One of the biggest running gags of the whole serial revolved around Blanche's promiscuity. Although she was physically in her fifties, she had the sex drive of a nineteen year old woman. Blanche would often get ribbing from Dorothy, Rose, and Sophia about her lust for men, but more often than not, Blanche would let their insults roll right off her back.
I'd tell you how Blanche often saw herself in spite of those comments, but I think this music video montage I found on YouTube explains it better.
On the surface, Blanche didn't seem to care about what people thought about her. She was a real Southern belle. An independent woman who knew what she wanted and knew how to get it. She was the woman who looked beautiful at any age, and who thought she could give women half her age a run for their money.
Was she any of those things though? I'm sure that Blanche really wanted to be. As you peel back the layers however, she ends up being a scared little girl who just wanted to be loved and accepted for who she was.
That's probably where Blanche and I are kind of the same. We both wanted to be accepted and loved no matter what. We also didn't like to be hurt. In some ways, I think both of us were slightly insecure just based on our experiences.
The difference is, where I closed up and hid from the world, Blanche literally wanted to open up her world to anybody who happened to be passing through.
The thing is, I think the reason we became that was was because of a traumatic event that happened to both of us. Something so traumatic that it caused us to act somewhat out of character for years.
In my case, I remember when I was a little kid, I would be happy and carefree. I would start up conversations with random people in the grocery store, or on the streets, and I was a very outgoing child.
Then I entered school, and kids were mean to me, and somewhere along the way, I got less and less outgoing. I tried to talk to them and be their friend, but nobody really seemed interested. As time passed, I talked less and less to the point where the teasing got so unbearable that I tried everything to get them to leave me alone. I guess my parents were kind of shocked because I never used to be so closed off from everything. People who lived near us were kind of nosy, and they thought I was weird because I hardly ever left the house other than school, but they didn't know the truth. It's taken me years to try and heal from it to have some sort of a normal life, but it hasn't been easy.
Blanche was in a similar experience. After the death of her husband, Blanche's sex drive really went into overdrive. Part of me wonders if she acted this way because she was worried of being alone after the death of her husband, and this was her way of not feeling as alone. It's interesting to note that none of Blanche's relationships really seemed to work out, or last longer than a few episodes at a time. Sometimes the problem was with the men. Some of them were real jerks. Some of them were really nice guys that adored Blanche. Blanche would always seem to find something wrong with them, though. They didn't have a good job, or they didn't have the stamina in the bedroom...really superficial stuff.
That's what one might initially say about Blanche with that information. They might have thought that Blanche was a superficial snob and that nobody was good enough for her.
That's only partially right.
I think deep down inside, Blanche had difficulty committing to a new man because she was still in love with the deceased. Blanche's husband couldn't be replaced, and I think deep down, Blanche knew it. I could be totally off the mark here, and this could just be an opinion, but my theory is that Blanche kept going after men for the company. Blanche really did not want to end up alone. She just wanted companionship so she could fill the void lost by the trauma of losing her husband, even if only temporarily.
A lot of people don't realize that emotional trauma can be just as debilitating as physical trauma. On the surface, a lot of us appear like nothing is wrong when inside we might be hurting, or unsure of what may be wrong. It's nothing to be ashamed of.
Certainly, Blanche has nothing to be ashamed of. Sure, she may have a reputation, but she never let it define who she was as a person. She had a successful job at a museum, and managed to live a fairly comfortable life.
Though sometimes she would have a slip up...like the time she stayed up late to write a novel.
That was kind of a train wreck, wasn't it?
I'll admit to having almost a similar moment as Blanche though. No, I never stayed up all night to write a book and then ended up a delerious mess of a man. I did stay up all night during Frosh week, and ended up passing out on a bus. I was so lucid and tired when I arrived at my stop that the poor bus driver thought I had been drinking, or had done heavy drugs. It was...an embarrassing situation to say the least.
Sleep was something that was a secondary issue though as far as I was concerned. Like Blanche was so concerned with getting her manuscript done, I was so concerned with making it through Frosh week. At the time, my living situation was kind of in limbo, and to try and get my mind off of things, I ended up focusing all my attention into Frosh week and trying to find accommodations for the school year. All that stress prevented me from taking care of myself, so I would try to take care of others.
Yeah, that worked well, didn't it?
Everything worked itself out in the end, but it wasn't one of my finer moments. Much like Blanche.
There's another similarity between Blanche and myself. We both love our families, but absolutely hate it when we find ourselves unable to get on the same page as them.
I really love my loved ones, but I'll admit that there are times in which I feel like we kind of don't see eye to eye. Quite a few than I really have space for.
Blanche seemed to have these issues with her family as well, particularly with her children. When her daughter Rebecca came for a visit, Blanche was shocked to find that the once waif supermodel was now more chunky in appearance. You could tell that it was something that she disapproved of, but she tried her best to hide it so as not to start a fight.
I can recall many times where I had to bite my tongue at things where my family is concerned. Not so much with physical issues as much as it is behaviour issues. Again, it would take a week of blog entries to get into it here, but maybe one day I'll talk about it.
Blanche would soon realize that her daughter's weight gain was the least of her worries. Turns out that Rebecca had gotten engaged to a man named Jeremy who basically treated her like dirt. He made comments about how she was big as a whale, and how unattractive she was, and it made Blanche furious. In fact, you've got to see this clip to see what I mean.
That clip made me see myself in BOTH those women.
Obviously, I could be considered the male version of Rebecca. I have been where she is. When I was at my heaviest weight, I was practically 300 pounds. I didn't think anyone would want me either. I took friendship where I could get it, even if they took advantage of me or made me feel worse about myself. I took the abuse because I didn't think I could do better.
Of course, that way of thinking turned out to be wrong.
Rebecca saw that Jeremy wasn't the right guy for her, and a lot of it was because Blanche had that heart-to-heart with her. By listening to Blanche, Rebecca finally decided to make a decision that benefitted her. I guess in some ways, I can say that about my family. They didn't always have the right thing to say and sometimes they said the wrong thing (like at the tail end of the above clip), but they at least listened. I think that's what Blanche did.
And that's how I'm kind of like Blanche too. I may not have the right answer or even say the right thing, but I will always listen to a friend or a family member.
I may have even been taught a valuable lesson by Blanche as well, which she herself didn't learn until it mattered most. If something isn't right, SPEAK UP!
Have you guys ever had a really terrible day where it felt as though nothing ever went your way? I have. Yesterday happened to be one of those days. Not to go into too much detail, but I've had better days.
I think we can all agree that adult problems can sometimes suck the life out of you, especially when they all seem to come at you all at once. It kind of makes you long for the days when you were a child, and your most pressing problem was having to take a red crayon and a blue crayon to get the shade of purple needed to colour the grapes on the bowl of fruit page in a colouring book.
Or having lost twelve straight games of Clue because you kept getting stuck with the Mrs. White token, as your bratty cousin demanded to be Professor Plum.
Or, if you happen to be playing video games, and you get stuck in one particular level that you cannot figure out how to get past.
The last one was a childhood problem that I kept having...in particular with one particular type of level in any sort of Mario themed game.
The above image happens to be from Super Mario Brothers 3, but really any Super Mario game could apply here. When I played any sort of Mario game, I absolutely hated underwater themed levels. Hated them with a passion. For one, you really had to time your movements correctly, or else you'd swim right into an electric jellyfish or those evil white squid creatures known as Bloobers.
I would have loved to have made a calamari meal out of those blasted diagonally moving beasts.
If I was armed with a fire flower, I could get rid of those monsters altogether (even though in real life, it would be nearly impossible to light anything on fire under the water). On water levels where I didn't have fire power, I was pretty much doomed to waste about ten chances getting through the level.
I really despised water worlds. They were really hard. They were the kind of level where I wish I could have more chances to complete the blasted thing so I could play on a level that had more control.
Heck, any of those castle levels were better than underwater levels. Even if all you got was...
And as anyone who has played any Mario game, we all know how much we HATED that mushroom capped dude by the seventh world...
...that's how I feel about underwater levels in Mario games.
It's also the perfect topic to bring up in...
(I don't know HOW it ended up so slanted...)
No matter.
This week's video game topic is something that during those blasted underwater levels in Mario games I wish I had. They were better than fire flowers. Better than Hammer Brothers costumes. They were even better than those yellow glowing stars. And, for something to be better than a star that granted you invincibility for fifteen seconds, you know it has to be big.
And here it is.
In most cases, if you were to come across a green mushroom, chances are that if you put it in your mouth, though it might look good to eat, and it might look good to taste, you could get sick, real quick. Or, so a couple of furry blue monsters told me way back when did...
These little guys don't have any of those poisonous qualities. Quite the opposite, actually.
Ladies and gentlemen...say hello to the 1-UP Mushroom!
Yes, the 1-UP mushrooms were bright green in hue and although rare to find, were worth seeking out. For every 1-UP mushroom that one managed to find, one could get new life breathed into them.
No, seriously, each 1-UP mushroom could be redeemed for one extra shot at saving Princess Toadstool from the castle (and yes, I know she's legally changed her name to Princess Peach now, but I'm a traditionalist at heart). Trust me. It was worth finding them all.
Sometimes they were easy to spot. Sometimes they were hidden by invisible blocks. And, sometimes they were gotten in the most unusual ways...
I tell you something. I wish that I had a staircase filled with Koopa turtles in every level. Would have made the game so much easier.
In fact, I almost wish that 1-UP Mushrooms existed in real life sometimes. You could find them in the produce section in between the portobello and shiitake mushrooms, and they would be somewhat expensive, but worth the price if it meant that you could have a chance to do-over entire sections of your life. Wouldn't that be something?
Of course, we all know that the odds of creating a mushroom that regenerates life has the same possibility of existing as the Loch Ness monster, dinosaurs, and unicorns. Still, it's nice to dream, isn't it?
Just as I would have wanted them in huge surplus in underwater levels, I would have loved to have had the chance to pop a 1-UP mushroom to redo some parts of my life. Would I have liked to have had one when I was making the decision to leave college prematurely? It might have helped. I'd probably loved to have sprinkled some 1-UP mushrooms on a pizza anytime I got a bad grade on a test. And as far as my school years go in general, I would have loved to have had a produce cooler filled with them.
And then some.
Sadly, 1-UP Mushrooms are a fictional creation. At least it inspired me to come up with a pretty decent post about what could be. Because honestly if we fail to look at things from all angles, it doesn't make for a very productive or even well-rounded life.
We don't need 1-UP mushrooms to get a second chance. We can create our own.
Or, at least...wait until we can find the Extra Strength 3-UP moons...
Hello again, blog followers, and welcome to another Wednesday entry. You all know what happens on Wednesdays, right?
Before you all ask...yes, I did end up designing the above graphic. Am thinking of doing one for each of the seven theme days. Let me know what you think, all right?
(And just to clarify, my world map is not designed to scale and probably looks like something you'd see on a seventh grade geology project. But as Five for Fighting asks...what kind of world do you want?)
Besides, we aren't here to go all Simon Cowell Steven Tyler on my ability to draw. I wanted to share some of my basic art skills because it relates to the theme of this blog entry.
How many of you have heard of a show called 'Art Attack'? The guy up above is named Neil Buchanan, and for seventeen years he hosted this successful children's show based in the United Kingdom.
Like a lot of children who grew up in Southern Ontario, my first experience with 'Art Attack' was watching a little channel called TVOntario. TVOntario was a station that aired dozens of children's shows, and I can guarantee you that many who were born around the same time I was probably spent quite a bit of time watching these educational shows.
When I first saw this show, I couldn't have been much more than ten or eleven. All I remember about my first episode was that this guy who always wore a red shirt of some kind and who kept referring to construction paper as coloured card was a friggin' genius.
No, seriously, he was.
I was so jealous of his art studio (which, granted was put together by the fine people of ITV), because he had almost every possible art supply in the world. Coloured pencils, magic markers, chalkboards, glitter glue. It was like an entire Staples location exploded on a television screen.
He used all those materials to create awesome art projects.
He would make three-dimensional puzzles using cracker boxes and magic markers. He would make simulated neon lights with pink and yellow chalk and black construction paper card.
He was basically the MacGyver of arts and crafts.
Oh, sure I tried to use some of his wonderfully creative ideas to make my own versions of his art, but mine never really seemed to look as good as his did. It didn't matter to me though. I loved making the effort.
Did I also mention that Neil Buchanan just didn't do artwork in studio?
Sometimes he would travel to various places all across the UK and he would make his whole world his canvas. Sometimes he would set up on sandy beaches. Other times, he'd be inspired to create something on a golf course. Everywhere was fair game.
And when the world becomes your canvas, simple Crayola crayons would not cut it for art supplies.
No, he needed something bigger. If he needed orange, he would use carrots and oranges. If pink was what he required, he'd use cotton candy or roses. Whatever objects he had at his disposal, he could use to create works of art like this.
Or, this...
Or, this...
Like I said. The guy is a freakin' genius.
Could you just imagine how much fun art class would have been had we had Neil as a teacher? Not that I'm completely dissing my art teachers that I had in school (well, maybe except one, whose idea of art was giving us a colouring book and crayons and saying 'enjoy!'
This kind of ties the idea of this blog post to my own experiences.
I absolutely loved art class.
Was I absolutely proficient in it? Hardly. The above is a picture that I ended up doing about four hours ago. Granted, it's no DaVinci, Van Gogh, or even a Neil Buchanan. But, I think it turned out not too horribly. And that's basically what art meant to me. To me, art is something that is completely subjective. What one person may consider to be trash, another might consider to be treasure. Art is supposed to be about expression. Expression of creativity. Expression of emotion. An expression of yourself, and what makes you, well...you!
To me, I didn't care whether an art project got me a grade of an A+ or a C-. Everything I created was beautiful because I created it by myself without any help from anyone else.
It's not only limited to just physical artwork either. I was a band geek in elementary school. Played the baritone for three years, earning my only awards for extracurricular activities in elementary school.
I also did lots of cut and paste artwork. Using pieces of construction paper, computer paper, even wallpaper and turning them into something beautiful. One of our homework assignments in sixth grade art class was to create a poster for the charity event 'Jump Rope For Heart', and I created a pop up guy made out of wallpaper and construction paper. It turned out beautifully. I only wish I had the poster to scan for you, but I made it eighteen years ago, and it kind of disintegrated over the years. However, my poster was noticed by the people in charge of our student art gallery, and for the last few months of 1993, my picture was prominently displayed right outside the gym. I even got this cool certificate to go along with it.
Wasn't that nice? On another unrelated note...June 21, 1993 didn't seem all that long ago, did it? Sigh...I feel old now.
And how could I NOT continue on with my love of creative classes without talking about the one I loved the most. I attribute my love of creative writing to my vivid imagination, which I wouldn't have found if not for the dozens of art classes I took.
Creative writing is an art too, you know.
So is fine penmanship and calligraphy. The first one admittedly took me years to master, but I managed to get it down pat. The second one is something I'm currently learning. Calligraphy may be seen by some as a lost art, but it's one I've always wanted to learn how to do.
Art of any kind should be something that all kids should have the right to do.
That's why it really, really bugs me when some schools actually cut art programs out of schools to balance the budgets. To me, that would be devastating to attend school without art classes. Art is the one thing that kids can create to effectively define who they are as children. I wouldn't take it if my school got rid of our art programs. I would either transfer to another school or picket the school board offices until they reinstated the art.
That's how much I care about the arts.
Where would museums be if people didn't create masterpieces to display? Political pages would be without those funny cartoons. Comic books would be blank pages. Children's books wouldn't be as fun to read without art.
I wouldn't be who I am today if art wasn't a huge part of my life.
Even though it's been years since I took an art class, I still get a high whenever I head to a store's arts and crafts section. It was the best part about back-to-school shopping, and even as far back as I can remember, my favourite toys to play with was a stack of loose-leaf paper, Crayola crayons, and a 24-count of Laurentian pencil crayons.
Before we launch into yet another fun-filled blog entry, there's something that I have to say.
This is probably going to be one of the most personal blog entries that I will probably end up doing. Most of the time, I like to have some fun with them, and certainly my blog entries of the past have been mostly lighthearted and fun. There is a sort of serious tone to this particular entry, and as I go into it in further detail, you'll soon see what I mean.
DISCLAIMER: It's nothing illegal, immoral, or incredibly embarrassing. It's just something that I want to bring up, is all.
That being said...this blog entry is NOT for children. You have been warned.
And now, on with the show.
Beverly Hills 90210 was a show that I really didn't start watching until it began showing on various syndicated cable channels on reruns. You see, when it first debuted, I was only a boy. According to the hierarchy that existed at my elementary school at the time, Beverly Hills 90210 was a show that only girls watched. Therefore, it was deemed uncool for males, such as myself, to watch this show.
So, for the first four seasons I did not watch.
It wasn't until I reached high school that I thought I'd watch one episode, just to see what I was missing out on. By then the show had swapped out Shannen Doherty for Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, and the main characters were in college. Nevertheless, I gave it a shot.
It wasn't bad. It wasn't bad at all.
I certainly didn't understand why the kids in my elementary school classes were saying that it was a show solely for girls, because when I watched my first episode of the series, they focused on a wide variety of topics that both male and female students could relate to.
Well...as much as one can relate to a school where everyone drives a Mercedes and dresses in Gucci, that is.
The show itself was very popular in a variety of countries, and it lasted for ten seasons from October 1990 to May 2000. It's quite a rarity for any show in general to make it to ten seasons, so for a show about spoiled teenagers in Beverly Hills to last that long was clearly an impressive feat.
As I watched the shows, and got caught up with the action by watching the reruns on CFMT (now OMNI1), it turned out that the kids weren't so stuck up and spoiled. In fact they all had real problems. You had the Walsh twins, who tried to fit in at West Beverly from Minnesota. You had Kelly whose physical beauty hid years of insecurity. You had Dylan, who was the ultimate rebel loner. And you had Andrea (that's AHN-drea...not ANN-drea) whose only crime was that she was a sixteen year old trapped inside a thirty year old woman's body.
Figuratively AND literally. Seriously, did you know that Gabrielle Carteris is turning fifty this year? Wild, eh?
I could easily devote an entire article to all the characters listed above, the Walsh family, the Peach Pit, and that character that Hilary Swank played for half a year before her Oscar win. And maybe someday, I will.
But this article is not about them. This article is about a character who may not have had much of an impact on the show at the very beginning, but later turned out to be one of four characters who lasted the whole ten year run without any breaks in between.
Watching Tori Spelling nowadays with her reality shows and tabloid drama surrounding how she ended up marrying her current husband, it sometimes seems hard to believe that she was an actress when she first appeared on our television screens. Following guest star appearances on The Love Boat and Saved By The Bell, when the show Beverly Hills 90210 was created, Tori Spelling really had no trouble landing the role that would inevitably make her a household name.
Of course, considering that her father Aaron Spelling created the program, it's easy to see how she fell into that role in the first place.
Ahem...
Nepotism aside, when Tori Spelling assumed the role of Donna Martin in 1990, she really didn't have a whole lot to do. At the time of the early shows, most of the plots revolved around Kelly and Brenda, with Andrea taking on a secondary role. Donna was one of those tertiary characters. Not really of importance to any scene in particular, and you wouldn't really miss her if she wasn't shown.
Not that it really mattered that much anyway. Until the second half of the first season, Donna wasn't exactly portrayed in a positive manner, at least not to me anyway. As far as I was concerned, Donna was only good for two things. Shopping and following Kelly around. She had very little to say, and the very little she did say wasn't exactly profound.
You know those blonde jokes that have existed for ages that while I personally don't find funny, other people do? Donna was kind of the perfect representation of what those jokes were all about at first.
Then Donna started to rebel, and she started sassing back at teachers, and a concerned Brenda found out the real reason why Donna was acting out.
Donna had failed her PSAT's. This meant that the odds of Donna going to college were slim to none, and Donna felt that there was no need to worry about her future because she was too stupid to pass.
And with that admission, we notice the first crack in the spongy soft exterior of Donna Martin.
We eventually learn that Donna suffers from dyslexia, and when she is given an oral version of the PSAT's, she does much better.
I guess it's quite interesting to see that Donna Martin was so concerned about how well she did on the test when we didn't see any evidence of her being concerned about schoolwork at all prior to this. All we had seen of her was this Malibu Barbie persona that was just there for show.
Just goes to show that looks can be deceiving.
But the idea of not judging a book by its cover is a minor lesson. An important lesson, but not the one I really want to talk about.
See the picture up above? That was taken at the gang's high school graduation ceremony at the end of season three. You can see Brandon, and Steve, and David, and Brenda, and Donna.
They all look so happy and carefree, don't they? They all are leaving high school behind and starting their futures, and Donna having had a great score on her PSAT's can do whatever she wants to do with her life.
But Donna almost didn't make it to graduation that day. All because of one little technicality.
You see, the school board that was in charge of West Beverly High were concerned about the increase of student rebellion and the possibility of underage drinking at the school prom. It was bad enough that the school was implementing a dress code for the following school year. This year, they pretty much put the kibosh on any pre and post prom parties. Any student who was caught drinking before graduation would have their right to graduate taken away from them.
They were taking it very seriously.
So it probably wasn't a great idea for the kids to drink some champagne right before the prom! Donna ended up drinking a glass. Then another glass. Then another glass, and well, you get the idea.
Oh, Donna...if only you had remembered the new rule. If only you had been 21. If only you had eaten that grilled cheese sandwich for lunch.
Now she was doomed to spend the rest of her life at West Beverly while the rest of her friends went out into the world and got their diplomas. She would be all alone in high school while everyone else went away.
All because David's father decided to liquor her up.
That bastard.
Of course, one could argue that Donna could have refused to take a sip, or a glass, or the whole damn bottle. If she had more self-control, she might not have been in this situation to begin with. But as you read on, you'll notice that there was a reason why she did down the alcohol, which makes this whole scenario easier to understand.
The threat of Donna not graduating was weighing heavily on her. It was made even worse when Donna's own mother seemed like she was more in support of upholding the school rules rather than standing by her own daughter.
I should mention that Donna's mother was a real bitch on wheels.
Her friends were far more supportive. They found that the school's punishment of not letting Donna graduate with her friends a real injustice, so they took action.
Admit it. You have Donna Martin Graduates running through your head as you read this, don't you?
Donna was moved though. She had the whole student body by her side and supporting her as she tried to defend why she should be allowed to graduate.
Well, okay, some of them were there to oppose the dress code, but most were there to support Donna. This proved that most people were fond of Donna and felt that she was getting a raw deal. The votes were close, but the school board overturned the rule and Donna was a proud member of the West Beverly Class of 1993.
So Donna learned a valuable lesson about the consequences of underage drinking. That's not what this blog is about.
This blog is actually about something that was very important to Donna. It was a choice. A choice that some may disagree about, but Donna owned that choice until she was sure of what she wanted.
She was a virgin.
A lot of her beliefs did come from her value system. She was raised in a religious family where sex before marriage was frowned upon. Her sanctimonious cow of a mother made sure of that.
(Did I mention that I disliked Donna's mother immensely?)
I really, REALLY wished that I could have found the video clip on YouTube that shows Donna standing up to her mother when the topic of putting condom machines in West Beverly came up. Donna's mother believed that putting condoms in schools would only promote teen sex and was against their installation (because apparently teen pregnancy and STD's are okay in the world according to Mrs. Martin). Donna disagreed, and uttered this famous quote when trying to explain her reasons.
“It’s like if you have a swimming pool in your backyard, you can tell your children not to go in it, you can even build a fence around it, but if you know that they’re going to find a way in to that water, don’t you think you ought to teach those kids how to swim?”
Wise words from the younger Martin lady. Like I said, I wish I could have found the video clip so you guys could have seen her mother shut her yap about it all.
Of course, Donna was a virgin by choice. She had decided that it wasn't right for her. She did struggle with it though. When she began dating David Silver, Donna knew that David eventually wanted to go all the way with her, but Donna simply wasn't comfortable with the idea of losing her virginity until she got married. You can see more of it here.
As frustrated as David may have been with Donna, he tried to be understanding. Donna did make some really good points. They had way too much drama in high school as it was. Sex would only complicate things even more.
The road to romance was a very rocky one though. Donna and David attempted to try and get lucky with each other on a couple of occasions. One such occasion was planned on the night of their senior prom. Donna got nervous though, and thought that by drinking the forbidden champagne it would loosen her up. Yeah, that worked out well for her, didn't it?
Just like that instance, every time David and Donna were in the mood, something would happen that would pre-empt the woo from taking place. For Donna, it may just as well have been fate that no, she should not engage in the sex with the singing teeny-bopper.
Eventually, David did end up getting what he wanted...from some random guest star who was on the show for all of four episodes. Donna's heart was broken, and she dumped him, thankful that she didn't give it up to him after all.
Donna's next boyfriend wasn't much better. He had a temper, and once threw Donna down a flight of stairs. Luckily, she held onto her beliefs and came out of it unharmed (and untouched).
After a slew of one-off relationships, Donna and David eventually got back together again, and when they graduated college, Donna was secure enough in her relationship with David to give him a graduation gift he would never forget.
What can we learn from this? It's okay to wait.
Seriously, it is. In Donna's case, her belief system was impacted by the church and her parents somewhat...but she didn't let it completely control her either. She had her own mind, and what she wanted was to wait until she felt the time was right for her. She had always thought that it would come on her wedding day, but for her, the right time came before that. In the end, she found that at that moment, it was worth the wait, because she had waited until she found the right person, and more importantly, she had waited until both of them were keen on the idea.
Now you're probably wondering where this ties in with my own experiences. Well, I'll tell you right here.
Like Donna, I was also a virgin in high school (and beyond that even, but that's all you need to know about that...LOL) And yes, I admit, the pressure of teen sex was definitely out there. Temptations came at you from all angles. Movies. Music. Magazines. Everywhere.
To be completely honest, I wasn't really tempted. Not one bit.
It wasn't because I found girls unattractive...I did. It wasn't because I had a belief system like Donna did. I'm hardly the religious type as it is.
The reason I stayed a virgin in high school was because I didn't want to further complicate my already complicated life as it was.
High school was not my happiest time in life. It was pure hell. The homework assignments that kept piling up, being the unfortunate victim of abuse from classmates...not to mention various homefront stresses. The last thing on my mind was having premarital sex at sixteen years old. Who wanted to add an unplanned child or an STD to that mix? Not me!
I thought Donna's decision to hold off on losing her virginity was fantastic. In fact, if I remember correctly, she could have been a major role model to young girls everywhere. The fact that Donna waited until she was truly ready didn't really cause her any ill effects along the way. She still had friends, she still kept her head held high, and more importantly, she respected herself enough to know what she wanted. Really, shouldn't we all feel like that about ourselves?
It's very interesting going along those same lines that I kept my virginity during high school, considering that was the time period that my self-worth was at its lowest levels. It would have been easy to have just not cared about myself and do it with some unknown girl from three streets over to feel like I was loved even for one day, but that's just the thing. It would have been too easy, and I wouldn't have felt good about myself afterwards.
Sometimes things as personal and private as losing one's virginity is worth the wait. It certainly was for Donna Martin, and I think that if we had more Donna Martins in this world, it would be infinitely better for it.
It's Monday, and you know what that means. It's time to take a look at another detailed analysis on a random movie, and in that analysis, I hope to learn more about myself in the process.
I am definitely no Gene Siskel or Roger Ebert here, but I do have experience in reviewing movies. When I wrote for my college newspaper ten years ago, I had to go to several movies and give a detailed review on them. Many of them were forgettable, but there were a couple that I really enjoyed, and maybe you'll see some of them in a future featured blog entry.
For now though, I think that it's time that we take a trip back to the year 2003.
It was a year in which a lot happened. America went to war, the SARS outbreak caused worldwide panic, and one of the largest blackouts was recorded in North America.
(I should know...I survived the great blackout of '03.)
But that was the bad news. There was plenty of good news.
Remember the movie Finding Nemo? It was released on May 30, 2003, and raked in over seventy million dollars its first opening weekend, setting a record until it was beaten by Shrek 2 one year later. I'd say that's a pretty impressive feat.
It also happens to be one of my all-time favourite animated feature films of all time.
Well, okay...computer-animated film if you want to get really technical.
The movie was absolutely fantastic, and it teaches a great lesson at the end.
If you've seen the movie, the gist of the story is that Nemo is a clownfish who happens to be the only son of Marlin. Early in the story, Marlin's wife and most of his children were eaten by a barracuda, and Nemo was the only surviving fish. During the attack, Nemo's egg case was slightly damaged, and it left Nemo with one fin being smaller than the other one. As a result, Marlin was incredibly overprotective of his son to the point where it almost became smothering.
On Nemo's first day of school, he is told by Marlin not to venture away from the reef, but when he is dared by his classmates to touch the bottom of a boat (or butt as they pronounce it), Nemo is abducted by a scuba diver, much to Marlin's horror.
While Nemo ends up in an aquarium in a dentist's office in Sydney, Australia, Marlin tries desperately to look for him. Along the way, he literally crashes into Dory, who while very nice could be a bit loopy. Part of that could be because she had a horrible short-term memory. Nevertheless, Marlin knew he needed Dory's help to find Nemo, so he recruited her for assistance.
The little picture above shows the first sea creature that Marlin and Dory encountered. A shark! A vegetarian shark, mind you, but a shark nonetheless.
It's funny how fate can work, isn't it? Had Marlin and Dory not met the sharks, Marlin wouldn't have seen a vital clue that would help him get to his son. As it turned out, the clue was a scuba mask that had the address of the dentist's office that Nemo was being kept in, and once Dory remembered that she knew how to read, they had some idea of where to go. The road was not an easy one, as they had gotten into a fight with an anglerfish, almost died in a sea of jellyfish, and hitching a ride on a sea turtle named crush in the East Australian Current. It all culminated by Marlin and Dory accidentally getting swallowed by a whale. Luckily, Dory remembered that she could speak whale, and ended up getting out as a result of it.
Before I continue on with the plot, I'm going to interrupt this for a second.
Right off the bat, I can definitely see myself in this movie. It's so obviously clear to me.
Nemo's life as a child? Yeah. I lived it.
Granted, I am not an only child, nor did most of my family get eaten by a barracuda (though it would definitely make for an entertaining story if they did), but I wasn't really given as much...freedom...as I felt that I should. My mother is someone who I really do love, but she could be smothering at times, just like Marlin was with Nemo. I'm not exactly sure why that was. Maybe it was because I was the baby of the family. My siblings were nine and fifteen years old when I was born, so after age eleven, I was pretty much the only kid left in the house. Maybe it was because I was picked on a lot as a kid, and she saw it as her duty to protect me from them at all costs, even though sometimes she went a little overboard.
Even at age 30, I sometimes feel that I'm not taken seriously. Sometimes I feel like my loved ones still see me as a timid little kid, even though I'm over six feet tall. It frustrates me to no end some days, but I've learned how to grin and bear it over the years.
What surprises me is how much I happen to be a lot like Dory.
It does makes sense to me though. Dory is the type of fish that can always see the best in a situation, even if she does look at things in a childlike manner. Here's a few examples of Dory's zest for life.
Dory also had a problem with having short-term memory loss. That's also a problem that I have.
Oh, that's right. Dory also had a problem with short-term memory loss.
(Yeah, you kinda knew where I was going with that, didn't you?)
It's the truth. I have no problem recollecting events from five, ten, even twenty years ago. Most people don't even remember what they were doing on May 24, 1995, but I remember being in Toronto on my eighth grade graduation trip. Kind of freaky, no?
Now, you hand me the remote control for a television set and I'll put it somewhere, and then ten minutes later, I forget what I did with it. Recently, I ended up losing my cell phone and it took me six hours before I even remembered where I could find it.
Word of warning to all. Whenever I lose something, it's not pretty. If you take the chart that shows the level of terror in the world, I can range anywhere from blue to orange when I am searching for it. I'm trying to get it down to around a yellow though, so I am doing a bit of improvement in that regard. Such as it is.
That's just a minor foible though. Sure, my short-term memory is more or less useless in most cases, but it doesn't define me as a person. It certainly didn't define Dory as a fish. Once Dory remembered that she had skills that were useful in helping her and Marlin find Nemo, it turned out that Dory was the perfect ally to have. She could read. She could speak whale. She was always in a positive mood. She was Dory. And, everyone seemed to love her. The sharks, the sea turtle, even Marlin grew to like having her around.
That's what mattered.
Back to the movie now.
While Marlin and Dory were trying to head to Sydney, Australia to rescue Nemo, Nemo was befriending the sea creatures that happened to be in the aquarium with him. They dubbed themselves the 'Tank Gang'. There was Bloat the pufferfish and Deb (and her sister Flo which was really Deb's reflection) the damselfish. There was Bubbles the Yellow Tang and Gurgle the Royal Gamma. There was Peach the starfish and Jacques the shrimp.
The boss of the gang was one Gill. A black and white moorish idol who had a really tough personality, Nemo was at first intimidated by his gruffness and his scarred face, but eventually Gill admires Nemo's bravery when he tries to stop the filter of the tank so they could escape. It is later revealled that Nemo was caught by the dentist to give to his niece...a girl known for unintentionally killing every pet fish she has ever owned, and the 'Tank Gang' did everything they could to save Nemo from that fate.
I thought it was awesome that they went out of their way to help Nemo out even though Nemo himself was a little uneasy of the group. Peach and Deb/Flo were very kind towards Nemo, and Gill, Bloat, Bubbles, and the others held a ceremony where they rechristened Nemo as 'Sharkbait'.
I still love that scene. Firstly, even though it's been eight years, it's still fun to watch. But, secondly, it just goes to show that Nemo could make friends and be a part of a group in no time. And he did it without being under the watchful eye of his overprotective father.
See? Nemo CAN do things on his own.
Was he afraid to go through that ceremony? At first, he was. But as you've seen, it wasn't nearly as bad as he thought it was. Had Marlin been there, you know that he wouldn't have even gotten past the part of the maze where Peach was! Nemo showed lots of inner strength and courage though, and because he did, he ended up having a new group of friends.
It's also to the credit of the 'Tank Gang' to bring Nemo into their inner circle. For most of them, having a new fish around, they sort of felt a little insecure. What if they didn't like them? What if they didn't like him? Once they all got to know him, they thought Nemo Sharkbait was cool enough for him to become one of them. It really was great to see.
I guess I sort of identify with this whole aquarium plotline because I know what it's like to be in a new place with new people. When I was a rez student, I felt the same way as Nemo did. Having a tumultuous school existence, I was worried that I would have a rough go of it. My roommate was a great guy though, and I had a core group of friends there who really had my back.
I only wish I hadn't lost contact with them all, because I would love to catch up with them. In fact...
If any of you were at Carleton University in the year 2000/2001, and you lived on the fourth floor of Stormont House, come find me. I lived in room 457!
That's really all I have to say about Finding Nemo. I don't want to spoil the ending for anyone who hasn't seen the movie, but all you need to know is that it was made by Disney/Pixar. And, I don't remember any Disney movie where everyone dies at the end, so that should give you an idea of what the ending is.
The point that I think the movie is trying to make is this. DON'T GIVE UP!
Marlin never gave up looking for his son, and ended up having an adventure along the way. Nemo never gave up on wanting more freedom, and ended up making a slew of new friends. Dory never gave up her positive attitude, and it ended up benefitting the search...even if her memory wasn't all that great.
I think Dory said it best in a few simple words.
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming...
"I shall call him Squishy, and he shall be mine, and he shall be my Squishy!"
Okay, okay...now you all must think that I have lost my marbles by making this rather unusual choice.
Matthew, you say. Today is Sunday! This is the day that you are supposed to feature a character from a comic strip, or a comic strip itself, or a comic book.
Yes. Yes, today is Sunday. And, yes, I am featuring a comic strip in this edition.
But Matthew, I hear you call out. U.S. Acres is a cartoon that aired on Saturday mornings! We forgave you for talking about Saved By The Bell on Saturday, but where is the logic behind featuring U.S. Acres as the featured Sunday blog entry?
Yes. I'll admit it. All of that is entirely true.
It's true that U.S. Acres (or Orson's Farm as it was known outside of the United States) did air as a cartoon. It was a part of the successful Saturday morning cartoon series "Garfield And Friends", which ran from 1988 to 1995. In fact, U.S. Acres was sandwiched in between two Garfield cartoons, like the white sugary cream found in the middle of an Oreo cookie.
But (and this is where it will all make sense), did you also know that U.S. Acres started off as a comic strip back in the mid-1980's?
Here's the proof.
Mind you, the characters in this comic strip were slightly more crudely drawn than they were in the Garfield and Friends cartoon series. It was still a comic strip.
Jim Davis had created Garfield back in 1978, and had a lot of success with it. Hoping that lightning would strike twice, he created the serial "U.S. Acres" in the spring of 1986. It took place on a farm, and had a whole bunch of different farm animals as guests. In fact, just because some of you might not remember U.S. Acres at all, here's a little introductory clip from the Garfield and Friends show.
Hopefully that clip might have jogged your memory a little bit. Then again, it might not. Either way, there is a method to my madness.
The bottom line is that U.S. Acres trudged along, and was successful enough to have comic book collections and plush animals associated with the comic. Unfortunately, it didn't prove to have the same winning formula that the Garfield strip had, and the comic was pulled in May of 1989. The cartoon series still ran though, and as recently as 2010, some websites have begun re-posting the old U.S. Acres comic strips so that a new generation of people can enjoy them.
That's your history lesson for today.
Now that I have the confusion cleared up and proved to all of you that U.S. Acres was a Sunday comic strip, I suppose the next question you have for me is 'Matthew, why did you choose to base your blog on a comic strip that was cancelled 22 years ago that hardly anyone even remembers?'
That's one reason right off the bat. I want people to remember it. A lot of kids who watched Garfield and Friends only watched the Garfield cartoons and skipped the U.S. Acres ones, but not me. I liked it.
And do you want to know why I liked it so much?
Because I can find a quality in each of the characters that I possess.
U.S. Acres is basically all of my character traits split up into several different farm animals.
Let's start off with Sheldon, for instance.
Sheldon is supposed to be a newly-hatched chick. As you can see, he didn't quite make it all the way. But does that bother him at all? Not in the slightest. See, Sheldon was perfectly content to stay in his shell. He liked it in there. Astonishingly enough, the comic strip made it out that Sheldon's shell was almost the equivalent of a spacious New York City penthouse, where he could put anything he wanted inside there, which physically speaking was an impossibility. Nevertheless, Sheldon was in no rush to hatch. The one occurance in which he did hatch, it was revealled that there was another shell underneath the outer shell!
Still, Sheldon's shell never really got in the way of him living his life. He got along well with his brother, Booker, and the other animals on the farm. He was comfortable in his own shell, and he wanted to be the one to make his own mind up as to when he wanted to come out of it.
I'll admit it. It took me a really long time for me to come out of my shell, so to speak. Like Sheldon, it took me a while to break out of it. But in the end, only I was the one who could make that decision. Of course, unlike Sheldon, I didn't have a back-up shell!
Or, how about Sheldon's brother, Booker? Booker was pretty much the opposite of Sheldon. Whereas Sheldon preferred to hang back in his cozy shell, Booker was more than ready to bust out into the world. Booker was more of an adventurous type, and his impulsiveness often lead him into trouble. He'd be so excited about catching worms that he'd accidentally set off his own trap!
I'll admit it. When I was really young, I was a bit adventurous as well. I still remember the one time that I was exploring the garden at my grandmother's house and I wasn't really being careful where I was walking because I was so determined to scope out every leaf and flower in that garden. Ended up kicking over a beehive and nearly getting stung by a whole bunch of bees. That was definitely a Booker-type mistake.
Roy the rooster was probably the character that I liked the least. He was incredibly self-centered and got off playing practical jokes on the other animals. If there were people in this world that I don't really get along with, it would be people like Roy. I'm not saying that I don't like practical jokes. I just don't like the mean-spiritedness Roy seems to exhibit.
I do have to admit that the one character trait I exhibit from Roy is his boisterous loud voice. As a rooster, he has to wake up all the other animals on the farm, so being loud is a quality that would definitely be an asset. I have been told by lots of people that my voice can be loud and that it carries well. If ever I decide to take on a career as a motivational speaker, I'd be perfect!
Then there's Wade, one of Roy's favourite targets. Wade was a duck that hated water (hence the little floatie he's wearing which eerily has the same facial expression as he does). He honestly hated everything. He was afraid of almost everything out there in the world. His irrational fears often caused a lot of havoc on the farm, and naturally, Roy used Wade's fears to cruelly taunt him.
I'll admit this right here. Like Wade, I suffered from irrational fears as well. One of them happened to be loud noises. I couldn't stand fireworks, firecrackers, even a balloon popping freaked me out. And, naturally, the meaner kids in my school brought balloons to school to terrorize me during recess.
(Yeah, I went to a school that was FILLED with Roy Roosters.)
For the record, I'm a lot better at dealing with this irrational fear. I can watch fireworks displays, but I can't bring myself to pop a balloon. It's about 50/50 in that regard.
Perhaps if I had someone like Lanolin by my side, I would have fared better. Lanolin was the type of gal who was incredibly outspoken. She was so loud that she could even take Roy Rooster down a peg or two. She was also an incredibly hard-worker.
It wasn't really until I hit adulthood that I became to access my inner-Lanolin. No, I never put a bright blue bow in my hair. I do have some rather strong opinions that I am not afraid to defend though. Like Lanolin, I take work very seriously.
Lanolin's twin brother Bo is the polar opposite. Whereas Lanolin is a hard-worker, Bo is somewhat on the nonchalant side. Where Lanolin can come across as a shrieking ewe, Bo is as cool as a cucumber. Lanolin is often the brains of the operation in some aspects, whereas Bo...isn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
However, Bo's one trait that I can say that I am as well is the fact that he has shown himself to be a dependable person. People would rather talk to Bo about their problems than Lanolin because Bo will actually listen. He may not have the best solution for how to fix it, but at least he would listen.
I may not know how to fix a problem myself, but I will promise to at least listen.
It's now that we finally come to the main character of this crew.
Orson the pig is more of the bookish type. He likes to read a lot, and this trait has made him the de facto leader in U.S. Acres. I learned how to read at an early age and would walk to the public library and check out lots of books every week. It's actually a practice that I should take up again, as I now realize that it has been nine years since I last used my library card.
He's also the type of personality that hates conflict. I'm the type of personality who hates conflict.
Orson was the runt of the litter in his family. I'll admit that sometimes in my family, I feel as though my opinions are not heard. Of course, the plus is that my family never abandoned me, so that's a plus.
How about that? I managed to take seven distinct personalities and managed to find something about them all that match up with me. In six of the seven, I even managed to find positive qualities about myself. The only one that I struggled with in that regard was with Wade, and that's only because I have a hard time breaking out of my comfort zone at times because of my fear.