I used to hate going into department stores when I was a child.
Unless we took a detour to the toys and games section of a store, having to be dragged from store to store by either my parents or two sisters was incredibly boring. Keeping in mind that this was during a time before Nintendo Game Boys, it was pure torture to stand around and look at the floor while they browsed through clothing racks. Especially when a trip to the children's department never came out of the whole visit to the store in the first place.
There was another reason why I didn't like going to department stores. I hated mannequins.
Mannequins used to creep me out for some unknown reason. The fact that they were people dressed in the latest fashions from 1985 or whatever staring at you with porcelain eyes and not moving an inch. It wasn't really a good feeling.
Even worse still were those mannequins that were only half completed, or only showed the upper half of the mannequin's body to show off a dress shirt or a blouse. Some of them were even headless. The four year old version of myself was thinking to myself "what the heck did that poor mannequin do to get his/her legs chopped off"?
I think I was only like that for a couple of years. Over time, I began to accept the fact that mannequins were always going to be there, and that they weren't really as scary as I initially thought they could be.
Although part of that could be because my parents were introducing me to the wonderful world of TVOntario, and a certain show where the main star was a mannequin that came to life was very popular at the time. It was a show that I grew to love, and watch loyally for years. Even at the age of 30, I still find myself watching old episodes, wishing that children nowadays could have shows like this to watch today instead of Teletubbies, or whatever non-educational kids show happens to be on now.
Today's Special was a show that originally aired in Canada on the TVOntario network. It originally ran from 1981-1987 on that network, and played on reruns for many years. The show proved to be successful in Canada, and even aired in the United States on Nickelodeon.
The show took place at a department store in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the show was actually filmed on location at the old Simpson's Department Store on the corner of Yonge and Queen Street West. You can't go and see it though, because Simpson's was bought out by the Hudson Bay Company years ago, but The Bay is now in the location today.
Below, you'll see the main cast of the show.
From left to right, there's Jodie, Sam, Jeff, and Muffy.
Jodie works the overnight shift at Simpson's, in the children's department. Her job is to come up with new and exciting displays for the children's department each week. It usually relates to the theme that the episode is based on, such as hats, ice cream, and adventure.
Working alongside Jodie is Sam Crenshaw, the overnight security guard. He does his rounds through the store to make sure everything is safe and secure. He does so with the help of his trusty computer, TXL, who also serves as entertainment for the viewer. TXL will often cut into the show to display an activity or a game for the viewer to play. She also is our link (and narrative) to the Mime Lady, a woman who mimes everything she wants to say because she cannot speak.
Also living in the store is a little mouse named Muffy. Granted, with health codes and practices being very strict nowadays, the idea of a mouse in a department store could get the place shut down. Apparently in the early 1980's, such practices were lax, because Muffy lived in a hole in the wall of the store without a care in the world. Although she did not like Sam's cat Penelope, she was a kind-hearted mouse who had the quirky trait of speaking in rhyme all the time. She had a great relationship with Jodie and Sam, and while she could be a bit of a prankster at times, she meant well. (On a personal note, Muffy was my favourite character in the whole show.)
There were other guest stars on the show as well. Mrs. Pennypacker worked in the storage room, and appeared sporadically. Muffy's cousin, Mort was a frequent visitor as well, and just like Muffy, he talked in rhyme all the time.
Perhaps the star of the show is Jeff, and what makes Jeff unique kind of ties to the whole opening paragraphs of this blog entry.
Jeff was originally a mannequin.
Whenever Jeff puts on his magic plaid hat though, and someone says the magic words, then Jeff will miraculously come to life. And, do you know what those magic words are?
I'm sure you do.
Hocus Pocus Alimagocus!
Whenever Jodie, Sam, or Muffy said those words, Jeff would transform from mannequin to human. Although Jeff had only been a human for some time, he learned rather quickly about what life was like out there through Jodie's mentoring and the friendship that he had with Sam and Muffy. There were some restrictions though. For one, Jeff could only stay human as long as he was wearing the hat. If the hat was knocked off, he would revert back to mannequin status until someone said the magic words. Jeff could also never leave the store, because if he did, he would turn back into a mannequin permanently. There were some ways he could get around that, such as being able to go on the roof of the store. One time he even got to appear on a stage production by stowing away in a life-size suitcase, but for the duration of the series, Jeff never really got a chance to leave the store.
On a side note, I wish that Today's Special had a proper series finale where Jeff finally got the chance to be a human full-time and have the life that others did. I suppose that would be kind of an impossibility though.
I really struggled to find an example of this wonderful show that I could show you. Every single episode is worth posting in this space because I have so much love and affection towards this show.
In the end, I decided to post the 1983 two-parter episode 'Our Story'. It shows how each of the characters arrived at the store, and their fight to stop the store from being demolished. You can see it below.
So I suppose you're wondering what the point of this article is. What did I learn from Today's Special?
Oh, heaps of things.
Because each show had a theme, you learned lots of basic life lessons and tricks along the way. It worked really well for children, because each child had their own interests. More often than not, Today's Special focused on such topics that kids could really enjoy. I know I had my favourites.
The show even had holiday themed shows for Halloween and Christmas, which was nice to see.
Perhaps some of the most poignant lessons that the show taught children were life lessons. And some of these episodes were serious in nature, and some of them had really sad endings. I thought that was okay though.
Remember how I lamented that Jeff never got to be a human being at the end of the series? He almost got his chance. On the episode entitled "Wishes", all the characters were given a wish to use, and Jeff thought it would be the perfect chance for him to wish that he could become human forever. However, Jodie, Sam, and Muffy were careless and made wishes that they did not want, such as turning themselves into sandwiches accidentally. Jeff had no choice, but to use his wish to make everyone back to the way they were. Everyone was celebrating this, until they realized that Jeff had made the ultimate sacrifice. Seeing Jeff staring through the window at the world that he would never know still breaks my heart 25 years later.
Although not all the episodes were serious and sad in nature, they seem to be the ones that I remember the most, because of the lessons that I took away from them.
Take the episode "Phil's Visit", for instance. Phil was a photographer who was hired to take pictures of the display that Jodie worked on for hours, and he had asked Muffy to be his personal assistant. Phil was regarded as one of the best in the business, and he had won much accolades for his work, so naturally everyone in the store was excited about his appearance.
Phil did have one major flaw. He was an alcoholic.
When Muffy accidentally stumbled across Phil sneaking a drink from his flask, he initially got very angry at Muffy. But when Muffy promised not to tell anyone about it, it was business as usual. Still, Muffy was very conflicted as to what to do. When Phil sneaked another drink and verbally berated Muffy, Muffy got scared and worried. When Phil stumbled and destroyed the castle display that Jodie made, Phil yelled at Muffy to the point where she was in tears, and Jeff and Jodie tried to find her. Muffy found her way to Sam's computer room where she told Sam everything, and really, as uncomfortable as it was to watch, it served as a valuable lesson. At the beginning and end of that episode, Jodie was explaining to all of us that if we knew someone had a drinking problem that we should tell a responsible adult even if they are told not to by the person. Because Muffy told Sam what was going on, there was a possibility that Phil could have been rehabilitated, although we never did get any resolution as to what happened to him.
There were other memorable shows as well. The episode on "Hospitals" made me fear hospitals less after we saw Muffy get her tonsils out without much trouble. The episode on "Fire" taught me a lot about fire safety. And while the episode about "Butterflies" was a sad one to get through, it effectively taught kids about the death of a loved one.
I will be one of the first people who will readily admit to wanting Today's Special to come back on TV, or at the very least get released on DVD. I don't have any children of my own yet, but I know that when I do, I would want to show them this wonderful show.
Today's Special was just...special. It didn't have any bells or whistles, or famous faces, or aliens with televisions in their chests. It was just great children's television.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Monday Matinee Double Feature: Stand By Me & Now And Then
I have a special treat for all of you blog readers out there. For the first time since I started off this blog (and quite possibly one of the only times that I will ever do this), I am featuring two movies in the Monday Matinee entry.
Why?
To tell you the truth, I wanted to feature each of these movies separately, but the more I looked at them both, the more they sounded like the same movie plotline. There are definitely some major differences between the two movies, this is true. One movie has four teenage boys as the main stars, while the other features four teenage girls. One is set in the late 1950's, while the other is set in 1970. One takes place in Oregon, the other one in Indiana. Finally, while both of these movies feature the stars going on an adventure, each one is different, and has its own twists and turns that make both movies interesting to watch.
They are two of the best examples of 'coming of age' movies that I can come across at the spur of the moment, and part of it has to do with the rich character development and the wonderful plot devices that both films use.
These two films are "Stand By Me" released in 1986, and "Now And Then", released in 1995.
We'll look at each film one at a time, and come up with conclusions about each one, and maybe along the way I can find out some things about myself in revisiting these two films. Won't that be exciting?
Why don't we start off by going in chronological order, shall we?
Stand By Me was released in selected theatres on August 8, 1986, and two weeks later premiered nationwide. The film's plot was taken from a novella written by famed author Stephen King back in 1982 entitled The Body. Set around Labour Day weekend 1959 in the town of Castle Rock, Oregon, the movie features four friends who set out on an adventure to locate the body of a young boy named Ray Brower, who had died from being struck by a train.
Up above are the four boys who are the stars of the movie. Going from left to right, you have Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman), Vern Tessio (Jerry O'Connell), Chris Chambers (River Phoenix), and Gordie Lachance (Wil Wheaton).
As it so happens, the story is narrated by an adult Gordie Lachance (whose adult version was played by Richard Dreyfuss), who is writing the memoirs of his youth experience, which includes the search for the body, and the dangers they faced along the way, including outrunning a train on a bridge, falling into a swamp filled with leeches, and once they find the body, defending himself and the rest of the boys from Ace Merrill (played by Kiefer Sutherland) when he tries to take the body.
It sounds like quite a busy movie with an unbelievable plot, but it really was one of those movies that really tugged at the heartstrings for a lot of people who watched the movie.
The reason why is because the film (and for that matter, Stephen King who wrote the novella) really fleshed out the characters and made them so memorable. It was like you could identify with at least one, if not ALL of the boys.
Let's start off with the narrator of the movie.
Gordie for some reason was always my favourite character in the whole film. Gordie was probably the boy that I was most like as a kid. Quiet, studious, loved to write and tell stories. Uh-huh, that was me in a nutshell. Hell, that is me in a nutshell. I guess that's why I probably identify with him so much, because he and I were quite similar in nature. In fact, I think I actually owned the same shirt he's wearing in the above picture. There is one major difference between him and I, and that was his family life. After the tragic death of his brother Denny, who Gordie was close to, he had zero relationship with his father. In actuality, his parents never really paid much attention to him anyway, but after Denny's death, his father chose to ignore him. Gordie narrates the whole tale as an adult.
Along the course of the movie, there are several key events that seem to define Gordie. During a camp-out, Gordie entertains the other boys with a story (which includes the infamous puke scene), which confirms the idea that he's a born storyteller. During their encounter with the leech scene, he actually passes out cold when he yanks one out from inside his underwear (though I admit if I found a leech in my shorts, I'd probably pass out myself). This incident causes the boys to rethink their plan to find the dead body, but Gordie makes the decision to press ahead because they've come too far to give up now. Once they locate the dead body, it is a gruesome reminder for Gordie that his father loved Denny more than him. This scene is where Ace pops up, and Gordie manages to scare him away with a handgun.
Where did Gordie get the handgun? From his friend Chris. Here's the scene below.
It's here that we move on to our next boy, Chris Chambers. Despite the fact that he came from a long line of criminals and alcoholics, and despite the fact that he brought a GUN along with them, he claims that he's not like that. In all actuality, Chris wanted to have a life away from the crime and the negative stigma that seemed to plague his family. He even confided to Gordie that he hated being stereotyped because his descendants dabbled in criminal activity. His greatest fear was not being able to make something of himself, and he wanted desperately to break out of that cycle. Hoo-boy, can I relate to that one!!! In the end, Chris did manage to get out of the cycle, and managed to build a success out of himself, but his ultimate fate is one that seemed so cruel that...well, you'll have to watch the movie and read the book to find out.
The other two boys didn't seem to have as much of a storyline as Chris and Gordie did, but I can still find things about both of them that stand out. Teddy for example came from a really abusive childhood. It was bad enough that he had poor eyesight and had to wear glasses, but he also had to wear a hearing aid. It was due to the fact that his father had burned his ear by holding it next to a hot stove, and as a result, his hearing was permanently damaged, and he was physically scarred. He also had emotional wounds from the abuse he suffered, and as a result of the combination of physical and emotional trauma, his future didn't end up so bright. As for Vern, he was a lot like me physically. He was the overweight, timid kid, who was often the butt of jokes. Yeah, can't imagine why I could relate to that one.
Ultimately though, it didn't matter what backgrounds each of the four boys came from. They were friends, and they had a really great adventure where they discovered more than a dead body. They found themselves along the way, and while it either helped or hindered them, it was one summer they will never forget. I think Gordie summed it up best looking back on it when he said "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anybody?"
I think this quote is the one that will serve as the transitionary moment where we switch from one movie to another.
While Stand By Me dealt with teenage boys coming to age, the movie Now And Then centered around four teenage girls. The movie, which was released on October 20, 1995, differed a little bit from Stand By Me. Whereas in Stand By Me, we saw only Gordie all grown up, in this film, we see all four women as adults, both at the beginning and the end of the movie (although Demi Moore narrates all throughout the film).
Just like Stand By Me though, each of the four leads had their own distinct personalities, and during the summer of 1970, all four of them have life-changing revelations as they save up for a treehouse while embarking on an unsolved mystery.
Once again, we'll go from left to right in identifying the girls. From the left, you have Tina "Teeny" Tercell (child actor Thora Birch, adult actor Melanie Griffith), a child of socialites who are never home who has ambitions of making it big in Hollywood as an adult (a dream that eventually comes true). Next to her is Samantha Albertson (Gaby Hoffmann/Demi Moore), who narrates the film. She is described as the token weird girl who has an obsession with seances, astronomy, and aliens, and whose family drama bothers her immensely, and ends up shaping the way she herself views relationships as an adult. Then you have Chrissy DeWitt (Ashleigh Aston Moore/Rita Wilson), who could best be described as a sheltered young lady. Her own mother was very overprotective, almost overwhelmingly. It was like Chrissy would have been trapped inside a bubble if her mother had anything to say about it. As a result, she was very awkward around boys, and her sexual education was very basic, if not non-existant. She was responsible though, and did keep all the treehouse money safe. As an adult, she is expecting her first child, which she gives birth to at the end of the movie. Finally, you had Roberta Martin (Christina Ricci/Rosie O'Donnell), the only girl in her house after her mother died in a car accident. She puts on a tough persona, and even tapes her chest to appear more tomboyish, but inside, she's still deeply hurt by her mother's death. When we see her as an adult, she is a doctor who happens to be 'living in sin' with her boyfriend.
The basic plot of the film is that the girls want to buy a treehouse for them to have meetings in, and they save up the whole summer to buy it. During this time, they try to avoid the Wormer brothers, who tease the girls every chance they get by throwing water balloons at them, and making all of the girls (especially Roberta) very angry.
At some point, the girls decide to head to the cemetery where they wish to perform a seance. In fact, you can watch it here. Don't worry, no scrolling necessary, it starts up almost immediately.
This seance kicks off the main plot of the movie...a mystery. You may have seen the part where the lightning bolt strikes right behind the girls. That lightning bolt cracked open a tombstone inside the graveyard. The stone marked the grave of a young boy, who the girls affectionately called "Dear Johnny", and their mission is to find out who he was, and how he died, since he died when he was a child.
The group tries searching for answers at a couple of libraries, but seemingly seem to come up short. During one of these searches, Roberta comes across the article where it reports on her mother's fatal car accident, and she immediately copies the article and puts the photocopy in her pocket. After this scene, Samantha discovers that Dear Johnny and his mother were killed in a tragic manner, but have no idea how as some pages have been ripped out. Undeterred by this, the girls keep searching for the truth.
I'm going to stop right here to talk about the friendships within the friendships, which is one reason why I felt this movie worked really well. All four girls were really close with each other, but there were two distinct groups that really seemed to bond.
One was Chrissy and Roberta, which seemed like an odd match, as Roberta was tough as nails, while Chrissy was as harmful as marshmallow fluff. They worked well together though. For instance, when the girls went for a swim, Roberta jumped in the lake and pretended to drown, which freaked the other girls out, especially Chrissy. Chrissy gave Roberta mouth to mouth, but when Roberta confessed her trick, Chrissy punched her out! Chrissy admitted to Roberta that she was her best friend, and didn't want to see her die. Roberta's fascination with death likely stemmed from the fact that she had lost her mother at an early age, so it kind of made sense why she would pretend it was a game of sorts. Needless to say, Roberta promised Chrissy that she would never do it again. As adults, Roberta was the one who delivered Chrissy's baby, cementing their strong bond as adults.
On the other side, you had Samantha and Teeny growing closer. When Samantha found out that her parents were divorcing, it was a big deal to her. Keep in mind that back in 1970, divorce was still considered very much a taboo subject to talk about. It was something that people just didn't do. So, when Samantha confided to Teeny about her fears of not having a normal family, Teeny comforted her by saying that no family is ever normal. Teeny was there for her through her fears and to help Samantha feel better, she divided a bracelet she was wearing in half and gave one part of it to Samantha as a token of friendship. Ot was a simple gesture that Samantha really seemed to appreciate.
On their way home, Samantha loses her bracelet and when she and Teeny stop to look for it, they discover it in a storm drain, where Samantha crawls inside to retrieve it. It's where we see one of the more emotional moments of the whole movie.
Now, unbeknownst to Samantha and Teeny, the introduction of Crazy Pete and how he ended up saving Samantha's life is a key part in guiding the girls to a nice little conclusion to the Dear Johnny mystery. The girls find out what really happened to Dear Johnny and have one final meeting in the cemetery to pay their respects to the deceased. Outside of the cemetery, Samantha runs into Crazy Pete one final time, and with that meeting holds the last piece of the puzzle together, but since I don't like spoiling everything about movies, you're just going to have to find the answer yourself by watching the movie.
That is quite a lot to digest, isn't it? These two movies are definitely worth checking out though. Both of them are as I said before, the perfect coming of age movies to watch. The characters are so incredibly powerful, and you can really feel for all of them and the trials they had to endure. The plots for both were outstanding, and it is always a moving experience seeing the moments that bond people together and help shape them into adults.
I've been fortunate to have had re-established connections with a few of my old classmates back when I was twelve and thirteen (the age that all the characters were supposed to be in the films), and I'm happy to report that we're still very close today as we were way back in 1993. It truly is a remarkable feeling to have known someone for all those years and still get along today. How we all grew up together to become the people we are now.
It's a beautiful feeling.
On a sad note, there is one more similarity that both films share. Both of the films have had one of the young stars pass away. River Phoenix of Stand By Me died in 1993, while Ashleigh Aston Moore lost her life in 2007. Through these two films though, they do live on.
I'd better end this blog entry before I get really choked up here...below is the 1995 song 'Now And Then', performed by former Bangle Susanna Hoffs. Enjoy!
Why?
To tell you the truth, I wanted to feature each of these movies separately, but the more I looked at them both, the more they sounded like the same movie plotline. There are definitely some major differences between the two movies, this is true. One movie has four teenage boys as the main stars, while the other features four teenage girls. One is set in the late 1950's, while the other is set in 1970. One takes place in Oregon, the other one in Indiana. Finally, while both of these movies feature the stars going on an adventure, each one is different, and has its own twists and turns that make both movies interesting to watch.
They are two of the best examples of 'coming of age' movies that I can come across at the spur of the moment, and part of it has to do with the rich character development and the wonderful plot devices that both films use.
These two films are "Stand By Me" released in 1986, and "Now And Then", released in 1995.
We'll look at each film one at a time, and come up with conclusions about each one, and maybe along the way I can find out some things about myself in revisiting these two films. Won't that be exciting?
Why don't we start off by going in chronological order, shall we?
Stand By Me was released in selected theatres on August 8, 1986, and two weeks later premiered nationwide. The film's plot was taken from a novella written by famed author Stephen King back in 1982 entitled The Body. Set around Labour Day weekend 1959 in the town of Castle Rock, Oregon, the movie features four friends who set out on an adventure to locate the body of a young boy named Ray Brower, who had died from being struck by a train.
Up above are the four boys who are the stars of the movie. Going from left to right, you have Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman), Vern Tessio (Jerry O'Connell), Chris Chambers (River Phoenix), and Gordie Lachance (Wil Wheaton).
As it so happens, the story is narrated by an adult Gordie Lachance (whose adult version was played by Richard Dreyfuss), who is writing the memoirs of his youth experience, which includes the search for the body, and the dangers they faced along the way, including outrunning a train on a bridge, falling into a swamp filled with leeches, and once they find the body, defending himself and the rest of the boys from Ace Merrill (played by Kiefer Sutherland) when he tries to take the body.
It sounds like quite a busy movie with an unbelievable plot, but it really was one of those movies that really tugged at the heartstrings for a lot of people who watched the movie.
The reason why is because the film (and for that matter, Stephen King who wrote the novella) really fleshed out the characters and made them so memorable. It was like you could identify with at least one, if not ALL of the boys.
Let's start off with the narrator of the movie.
Gordie for some reason was always my favourite character in the whole film. Gordie was probably the boy that I was most like as a kid. Quiet, studious, loved to write and tell stories. Uh-huh, that was me in a nutshell. Hell, that is me in a nutshell. I guess that's why I probably identify with him so much, because he and I were quite similar in nature. In fact, I think I actually owned the same shirt he's wearing in the above picture. There is one major difference between him and I, and that was his family life. After the tragic death of his brother Denny, who Gordie was close to, he had zero relationship with his father. In actuality, his parents never really paid much attention to him anyway, but after Denny's death, his father chose to ignore him. Gordie narrates the whole tale as an adult.
Along the course of the movie, there are several key events that seem to define Gordie. During a camp-out, Gordie entertains the other boys with a story (which includes the infamous puke scene), which confirms the idea that he's a born storyteller. During their encounter with the leech scene, he actually passes out cold when he yanks one out from inside his underwear (though I admit if I found a leech in my shorts, I'd probably pass out myself). This incident causes the boys to rethink their plan to find the dead body, but Gordie makes the decision to press ahead because they've come too far to give up now. Once they locate the dead body, it is a gruesome reminder for Gordie that his father loved Denny more than him. This scene is where Ace pops up, and Gordie manages to scare him away with a handgun.
Where did Gordie get the handgun? From his friend Chris. Here's the scene below.
It's here that we move on to our next boy, Chris Chambers. Despite the fact that he came from a long line of criminals and alcoholics, and despite the fact that he brought a GUN along with them, he claims that he's not like that. In all actuality, Chris wanted to have a life away from the crime and the negative stigma that seemed to plague his family. He even confided to Gordie that he hated being stereotyped because his descendants dabbled in criminal activity. His greatest fear was not being able to make something of himself, and he wanted desperately to break out of that cycle. Hoo-boy, can I relate to that one!!! In the end, Chris did manage to get out of the cycle, and managed to build a success out of himself, but his ultimate fate is one that seemed so cruel that...well, you'll have to watch the movie and read the book to find out.
The other two boys didn't seem to have as much of a storyline as Chris and Gordie did, but I can still find things about both of them that stand out. Teddy for example came from a really abusive childhood. It was bad enough that he had poor eyesight and had to wear glasses, but he also had to wear a hearing aid. It was due to the fact that his father had burned his ear by holding it next to a hot stove, and as a result, his hearing was permanently damaged, and he was physically scarred. He also had emotional wounds from the abuse he suffered, and as a result of the combination of physical and emotional trauma, his future didn't end up so bright. As for Vern, he was a lot like me physically. He was the overweight, timid kid, who was often the butt of jokes. Yeah, can't imagine why I could relate to that one.
Ultimately though, it didn't matter what backgrounds each of the four boys came from. They were friends, and they had a really great adventure where they discovered more than a dead body. They found themselves along the way, and while it either helped or hindered them, it was one summer they will never forget. I think Gordie summed it up best looking back on it when he said "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anybody?"
I think this quote is the one that will serve as the transitionary moment where we switch from one movie to another.
While Stand By Me dealt with teenage boys coming to age, the movie Now And Then centered around four teenage girls. The movie, which was released on October 20, 1995, differed a little bit from Stand By Me. Whereas in Stand By Me, we saw only Gordie all grown up, in this film, we see all four women as adults, both at the beginning and the end of the movie (although Demi Moore narrates all throughout the film).
Just like Stand By Me though, each of the four leads had their own distinct personalities, and during the summer of 1970, all four of them have life-changing revelations as they save up for a treehouse while embarking on an unsolved mystery.
Once again, we'll go from left to right in identifying the girls. From the left, you have Tina "Teeny" Tercell (child actor Thora Birch, adult actor Melanie Griffith), a child of socialites who are never home who has ambitions of making it big in Hollywood as an adult (a dream that eventually comes true). Next to her is Samantha Albertson (Gaby Hoffmann/Demi Moore), who narrates the film. She is described as the token weird girl who has an obsession with seances, astronomy, and aliens, and whose family drama bothers her immensely, and ends up shaping the way she herself views relationships as an adult. Then you have Chrissy DeWitt (Ashleigh Aston Moore/Rita Wilson), who could best be described as a sheltered young lady. Her own mother was very overprotective, almost overwhelmingly. It was like Chrissy would have been trapped inside a bubble if her mother had anything to say about it. As a result, she was very awkward around boys, and her sexual education was very basic, if not non-existant. She was responsible though, and did keep all the treehouse money safe. As an adult, she is expecting her first child, which she gives birth to at the end of the movie. Finally, you had Roberta Martin (Christina Ricci/Rosie O'Donnell), the only girl in her house after her mother died in a car accident. She puts on a tough persona, and even tapes her chest to appear more tomboyish, but inside, she's still deeply hurt by her mother's death. When we see her as an adult, she is a doctor who happens to be 'living in sin' with her boyfriend.
The basic plot of the film is that the girls want to buy a treehouse for them to have meetings in, and they save up the whole summer to buy it. During this time, they try to avoid the Wormer brothers, who tease the girls every chance they get by throwing water balloons at them, and making all of the girls (especially Roberta) very angry.
At some point, the girls decide to head to the cemetery where they wish to perform a seance. In fact, you can watch it here. Don't worry, no scrolling necessary, it starts up almost immediately.
This seance kicks off the main plot of the movie...a mystery. You may have seen the part where the lightning bolt strikes right behind the girls. That lightning bolt cracked open a tombstone inside the graveyard. The stone marked the grave of a young boy, who the girls affectionately called "Dear Johnny", and their mission is to find out who he was, and how he died, since he died when he was a child.
The group tries searching for answers at a couple of libraries, but seemingly seem to come up short. During one of these searches, Roberta comes across the article where it reports on her mother's fatal car accident, and she immediately copies the article and puts the photocopy in her pocket. After this scene, Samantha discovers that Dear Johnny and his mother were killed in a tragic manner, but have no idea how as some pages have been ripped out. Undeterred by this, the girls keep searching for the truth.
I'm going to stop right here to talk about the friendships within the friendships, which is one reason why I felt this movie worked really well. All four girls were really close with each other, but there were two distinct groups that really seemed to bond.
One was Chrissy and Roberta, which seemed like an odd match, as Roberta was tough as nails, while Chrissy was as harmful as marshmallow fluff. They worked well together though. For instance, when the girls went for a swim, Roberta jumped in the lake and pretended to drown, which freaked the other girls out, especially Chrissy. Chrissy gave Roberta mouth to mouth, but when Roberta confessed her trick, Chrissy punched her out! Chrissy admitted to Roberta that she was her best friend, and didn't want to see her die. Roberta's fascination with death likely stemmed from the fact that she had lost her mother at an early age, so it kind of made sense why she would pretend it was a game of sorts. Needless to say, Roberta promised Chrissy that she would never do it again. As adults, Roberta was the one who delivered Chrissy's baby, cementing their strong bond as adults.
On the other side, you had Samantha and Teeny growing closer. When Samantha found out that her parents were divorcing, it was a big deal to her. Keep in mind that back in 1970, divorce was still considered very much a taboo subject to talk about. It was something that people just didn't do. So, when Samantha confided to Teeny about her fears of not having a normal family, Teeny comforted her by saying that no family is ever normal. Teeny was there for her through her fears and to help Samantha feel better, she divided a bracelet she was wearing in half and gave one part of it to Samantha as a token of friendship. Ot was a simple gesture that Samantha really seemed to appreciate.
On their way home, Samantha loses her bracelet and when she and Teeny stop to look for it, they discover it in a storm drain, where Samantha crawls inside to retrieve it. It's where we see one of the more emotional moments of the whole movie.
Now, unbeknownst to Samantha and Teeny, the introduction of Crazy Pete and how he ended up saving Samantha's life is a key part in guiding the girls to a nice little conclusion to the Dear Johnny mystery. The girls find out what really happened to Dear Johnny and have one final meeting in the cemetery to pay their respects to the deceased. Outside of the cemetery, Samantha runs into Crazy Pete one final time, and with that meeting holds the last piece of the puzzle together, but since I don't like spoiling everything about movies, you're just going to have to find the answer yourself by watching the movie.
That is quite a lot to digest, isn't it? These two movies are definitely worth checking out though. Both of them are as I said before, the perfect coming of age movies to watch. The characters are so incredibly powerful, and you can really feel for all of them and the trials they had to endure. The plots for both were outstanding, and it is always a moving experience seeing the moments that bond people together and help shape them into adults.
I've been fortunate to have had re-established connections with a few of my old classmates back when I was twelve and thirteen (the age that all the characters were supposed to be in the films), and I'm happy to report that we're still very close today as we were way back in 1993. It truly is a remarkable feeling to have known someone for all those years and still get along today. How we all grew up together to become the people we are now.
It's a beautiful feeling.
On a sad note, there is one more similarity that both films share. Both of the films have had one of the young stars pass away. River Phoenix of Stand By Me died in 1993, while Ashleigh Aston Moore lost her life in 2007. Through these two films though, they do live on.
I'd better end this blog entry before I get really choked up here...below is the 1995 song 'Now And Then', performed by former Bangle Susanna Hoffs. Enjoy!
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Sunday Jukebox - "Legs" by ZZ Top
I always loved watching some of the music videos that would grace the early days of MTV and MuchMusic. Well, back in those days that those two channels actually showed music videos anyways.
What some don't realize was that a lot of the music videos released during the 1980's were like watching little four or five minute movies. Each one had a plot, a main character, a few supporting characters, and the lyrics of the song done by the singer or the band in the video acts as the dialogue of the music video.
Not all of the videos followed this formula. Many of them were just headshots of the band, or showed band members dancing in front of a green screen dodging flying objects. But, quite a lot of them did.
Last week, we did a study on Madonna's 'Material Girl' video, which had a concrete plotline, and worked as a mini-movie. Certainly, a lot of Madonna's videos follow the 'let's tell a story in five minutes' method, and that's probably why Madonna became so successful.
Other artists who have done this successfully at least once include Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, Mariah Carey, and the group that is featured in today's blog entry.
And as it so happens, this is one video that sort of has a double meaning to it, and depending on your point of view, it will go from one extreme to the other.
Some people will claim that the video can be quite sexist. It can be demeaning to see women dressed scantily and causing all sorts of mischief throughout the video, and that it isn't appropriate to showcase women like Barbie dolls. And that's fine, they're certainly entitled to their opinion. I on the other hand am firmly on the opposite side. I feel that the video brings forth a positive message throughout the song. It not only shows people standing up to bullies, but I actually feel that it promotes empowerment in women, and tells them that they can be strong and powerful if they really put their minds to it.
I'm certain that you want to see this video to see what I mean. Don't worry...it's just below this line.
It could be said that the 'Eliminator' album was the one that most people seem to associate with the band ZZ Top. Certainly with hit songs like 'Legs', 'Sharp Dressed Man', and 'Gimme All Your Lovin' on the album, it certainly helped put them on the map as musical artists.
The band currently known as ZZ Top was founded by Billy Gibbons, Dan Mitchell, and Lanier Gregg in 1969 in Texas. The original line-up only lasted a few months before Mitchell and Gregg departed the band. They were replaced by Dusty Hill and Frank Beard shortly after, and have been that way ever since.
With the release of their first album in 1971, the band developed a following in Texas as well as other Southern states, and by 1975, they had achieved popularity by touring all across the United States. They took a little hiatus in 1977, and returned to the music scene in 1979, with Gibbons and Hill now sporting their signature beards (ironically enough Frank Beard was the only member who chose to go beardless).
Although the band had a lot of success with tours throughout the 1970's, it wasn't until 1983 that the success began to spill over onto Top 40 radio with the 'Eliminator' album. It was so popular that it is currently ranked at #396 in Rolling Stone magazine's Top 500 albums of all time.
The name 'Eliminator' came from a term used in the world of drag racing, and it also happens to be the name of the above car that Billy Gibbons had a hand in designing (and which appears in the video). The album had a total of five singles released from it, and 'Legs' just happened to be the fifth and final single that charted.
So let's talk about 'Legs', and why the video itself seems to divide people, despite the fact that it won the award for Best Group Video in the 1984 MTV Video Awards.
If you watched the video, you know what the storyline is. You see this young woman, who is very much what one would call the 'Plain Jane' type. She dresses conservatively, she wears glasses, and she doesn't really speak very much. You get the impression that she wants to come out of her shell, but isn't sure how to do that. She does have one thing going for her...she has nice legs.
Hey...someone had to say it.
On a break from her depressing job at a shoe store where she is treated terribly by the other staff members and customers there, she finds herself in a diner where the patrons and staff aren't much better than the ones at the shoe store.
Which kind of makes you wonder what ghetto mini-mall she happened to find herself stuck in.
When she tries to order lunch, she's hit on by men who treat her like she's fresh meat, while the women in the diner immediately pounce on her insecurities and her fear. Even the staff seems to go out of their way to make her totally uncomfortable.
Well, all except one kind-hearted young man behind the counter. I guess you could call him her knight in blue plaid.
Unfortunately, our knight in blue plaid is also an easy target for the people in the diner, and they have no problem inflicting as much harassment on him as they do with the customer of the day.
It appears that the girl is feeling overwhelmed by being there, and once she gets her order, she tries to leave as quickly as she can, but in the process ends up leaving behind a slice of cake, and her glasses. She hurries back to the shoe store, where once again, she is belittled and bullied by the other staffers there, with one even rudely stepping on her hand.
During this time, our knight in blue plaid finds the items she has lost, and hurries over to the shoe store to return them. Although the woman is very appreciative of this fact and responds with a smile and and thank you, her bosses will have none of it, and throw him out of the store.
At this time, the Eliminator pulls up behind the alleyway of the shoe store, and three women help our knight in blue plaid up on his feet before entering the store through the back.
It is here that our salesgirl meets the three girls and the staffers who made her life a misery have instant karmic retribution served up to them on a silver platter. For some reason unknown to me, the band itself soon pops up, and hands the saleswoman the key to the Eliminator.
Cue the makeover montage! The Eliminator girls give our meek and timid salesgirl a whole new look to try and get her to feel more self-confident about herself. New hair, new clothes, new shoes from the store she works at (now that the sales staff couldn't be nicer to her after being served up a nice dose of Eliminator justice). It kind of reminds me of a caterpillar crawling inside a cocoon to show off the bad butterfly that it can become.
Before you know it, the salesgirl, all decked out in her hot little ensemble now has a lot more confidence inside her pink pumps, and wastes no time in telling others what she thinks of them. She had so much confidence that the losers who tried to impress her by being rude to her got burned. It was beautiful to see.
Oh, and her knight in blue plaid? He and her reunited, and they hopped in the back of the Eliminator where they both lived happily ever after.
It was almost kind of like a 1980's version of Cinderella, in some weird way.
Now for the divide.
As I said earlier, there are a few people that I know who find this video a bit sexist. And honestly there may be a couple of arguments for that. Some of the claims that I've heard from others include that the video objectifies women in a negative way, and treats them like sex objects. The idea that the three women who help our salesgirl happen to be Playboy models certainly didn't help alleviate those thoughts.
But if one were to take a second glance at the video, they might see something beyond the models. I think it's a great message myself. It shows a woman who initially let people walk all over her and treated her like garbage finding her inner strength, and telling herself that she was worth more than that. When she shed her old image to try on a new set of clothes, it was almost symbolic, for she was shedding her shell that prevented her from being the confident, self-assured woman that she knew she could be.
She also knew that the only people whose opinion mattered were the people who thought highly of her no matter what she looked like, or how she dressed, or how she acted. Which is probably why knight in blue plaid got the girl at the end of the video. Who knows? If this was an actual couple, by now they might be celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, thinking about that day when fate brought them together at that greasy spoon, and how angels made sure that they found their way to each other.
Only their angels had chest-length beards.
What some don't realize was that a lot of the music videos released during the 1980's were like watching little four or five minute movies. Each one had a plot, a main character, a few supporting characters, and the lyrics of the song done by the singer or the band in the video acts as the dialogue of the music video.
Not all of the videos followed this formula. Many of them were just headshots of the band, or showed band members dancing in front of a green screen dodging flying objects. But, quite a lot of them did.
Last week, we did a study on Madonna's 'Material Girl' video, which had a concrete plotline, and worked as a mini-movie. Certainly, a lot of Madonna's videos follow the 'let's tell a story in five minutes' method, and that's probably why Madonna became so successful.
Other artists who have done this successfully at least once include Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, Mariah Carey, and the group that is featured in today's blog entry.
And as it so happens, this is one video that sort of has a double meaning to it, and depending on your point of view, it will go from one extreme to the other.
Some people will claim that the video can be quite sexist. It can be demeaning to see women dressed scantily and causing all sorts of mischief throughout the video, and that it isn't appropriate to showcase women like Barbie dolls. And that's fine, they're certainly entitled to their opinion. I on the other hand am firmly on the opposite side. I feel that the video brings forth a positive message throughout the song. It not only shows people standing up to bullies, but I actually feel that it promotes empowerment in women, and tells them that they can be strong and powerful if they really put their minds to it.
I'm certain that you want to see this video to see what I mean. Don't worry...it's just below this line.
ARTIST: ZZ Top
SONG: Legs
ALBUM: Eliminator
DATE RELEASED: May 18, 1984
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #8
Wow...that song hit the charts the same day I turned three years old. That makes me feel old.
It could be said that the 'Eliminator' album was the one that most people seem to associate with the band ZZ Top. Certainly with hit songs like 'Legs', 'Sharp Dressed Man', and 'Gimme All Your Lovin' on the album, it certainly helped put them on the map as musical artists.
But, did you know that the band had formed fifteen years earlier in 1969?
The band currently known as ZZ Top was founded by Billy Gibbons, Dan Mitchell, and Lanier Gregg in 1969 in Texas. The original line-up only lasted a few months before Mitchell and Gregg departed the band. They were replaced by Dusty Hill and Frank Beard shortly after, and have been that way ever since.
With the release of their first album in 1971, the band developed a following in Texas as well as other Southern states, and by 1975, they had achieved popularity by touring all across the United States. They took a little hiatus in 1977, and returned to the music scene in 1979, with Gibbons and Hill now sporting their signature beards (ironically enough Frank Beard was the only member who chose to go beardless).
Although the band had a lot of success with tours throughout the 1970's, it wasn't until 1983 that the success began to spill over onto Top 40 radio with the 'Eliminator' album. It was so popular that it is currently ranked at #396 in Rolling Stone magazine's Top 500 albums of all time.
The name 'Eliminator' came from a term used in the world of drag racing, and it also happens to be the name of the above car that Billy Gibbons had a hand in designing (and which appears in the video). The album had a total of five singles released from it, and 'Legs' just happened to be the fifth and final single that charted.
So let's talk about 'Legs', and why the video itself seems to divide people, despite the fact that it won the award for Best Group Video in the 1984 MTV Video Awards.
If you watched the video, you know what the storyline is. You see this young woman, who is very much what one would call the 'Plain Jane' type. She dresses conservatively, she wears glasses, and she doesn't really speak very much. You get the impression that she wants to come out of her shell, but isn't sure how to do that. She does have one thing going for her...she has nice legs.
Hey...someone had to say it.
On a break from her depressing job at a shoe store where she is treated terribly by the other staff members and customers there, she finds herself in a diner where the patrons and staff aren't much better than the ones at the shoe store.
Which kind of makes you wonder what ghetto mini-mall she happened to find herself stuck in.
When she tries to order lunch, she's hit on by men who treat her like she's fresh meat, while the women in the diner immediately pounce on her insecurities and her fear. Even the staff seems to go out of their way to make her totally uncomfortable.
Well, all except one kind-hearted young man behind the counter. I guess you could call him her knight in blue plaid.
Unfortunately, our knight in blue plaid is also an easy target for the people in the diner, and they have no problem inflicting as much harassment on him as they do with the customer of the day.
It appears that the girl is feeling overwhelmed by being there, and once she gets her order, she tries to leave as quickly as she can, but in the process ends up leaving behind a slice of cake, and her glasses. She hurries back to the shoe store, where once again, she is belittled and bullied by the other staffers there, with one even rudely stepping on her hand.
During this time, our knight in blue plaid finds the items she has lost, and hurries over to the shoe store to return them. Although the woman is very appreciative of this fact and responds with a smile and and thank you, her bosses will have none of it, and throw him out of the store.
At this time, the Eliminator pulls up behind the alleyway of the shoe store, and three women help our knight in blue plaid up on his feet before entering the store through the back.
It is here that our salesgirl meets the three girls and the staffers who made her life a misery have instant karmic retribution served up to them on a silver platter. For some reason unknown to me, the band itself soon pops up, and hands the saleswoman the key to the Eliminator.
Cue the makeover montage! The Eliminator girls give our meek and timid salesgirl a whole new look to try and get her to feel more self-confident about herself. New hair, new clothes, new shoes from the store she works at (now that the sales staff couldn't be nicer to her after being served up a nice dose of Eliminator justice). It kind of reminds me of a caterpillar crawling inside a cocoon to show off the bad butterfly that it can become.
Before you know it, the salesgirl, all decked out in her hot little ensemble now has a lot more confidence inside her pink pumps, and wastes no time in telling others what she thinks of them. She had so much confidence that the losers who tried to impress her by being rude to her got burned. It was beautiful to see.
Oh, and her knight in blue plaid? He and her reunited, and they hopped in the back of the Eliminator where they both lived happily ever after.
It was almost kind of like a 1980's version of Cinderella, in some weird way.
Now for the divide.
As I said earlier, there are a few people that I know who find this video a bit sexist. And honestly there may be a couple of arguments for that. Some of the claims that I've heard from others include that the video objectifies women in a negative way, and treats them like sex objects. The idea that the three women who help our salesgirl happen to be Playboy models certainly didn't help alleviate those thoughts.
But if one were to take a second glance at the video, they might see something beyond the models. I think it's a great message myself. It shows a woman who initially let people walk all over her and treated her like garbage finding her inner strength, and telling herself that she was worth more than that. When she shed her old image to try on a new set of clothes, it was almost symbolic, for she was shedding her shell that prevented her from being the confident, self-assured woman that she knew she could be.
She also knew that the only people whose opinion mattered were the people who thought highly of her no matter what she looked like, or how she dressed, or how she acted. Which is probably why knight in blue plaid got the girl at the end of the video. Who knows? If this was an actual couple, by now they might be celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, thinking about that day when fate brought them together at that greasy spoon, and how angels made sure that they found their way to each other.
Only their angels had chest-length beards.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Saturday Morning: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Almost every generation seems to have some sort of cartoon fad surrounding it.
What I mean by cartoon fad is that in my experience, there's one cartoon that seemingly defines a whole generation because it was one that it seemed that everyone else watched.
Supposing that one was born in, say, 2001, for example. A lot of the shows that kids born in that year may have watched back then were Hannah Montana and Spongebob Squarepants. Certainly, my nephew, who was born in September 2000, watched both of these, as did quite a few kids.
Or, take someone born in 1991, for example. In those days, a lot of kids born during that time period watched shows like Pokemon, because a lot of kids from that period played Pokemon games and watched the Pokemon movies.
It's been my experience that certain shows can define a whole generation.
Now, we'll go back to 1981...the year that yours truly was born in. What cartoons best defined our generation?
It's kind of hard to say for the girls of '81. Right around the late 80's, early '90's, many girls were addicted to the New Kids On The Block, and when a cartoon based on the band premiered around my third grade year, almost all the girls watched that show. It made sense too, considering that all the girls in third grade listened to the tapes on their Walkmans, and kept NKOTB pencils inside their NKOTB pencil cases, and scribbed in their notebooks, I LOVE JORDAN KNIGHT!!!
But what were we boys watching? Here's a hint. They wear their armour on their backs, and they have an appetite for pizza.
Give up? Okay, here you go.
(I really wanted to post the actual opening, but couldn't find one that had the greatest of quality, so this will have to do).
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were a huge part of my childhood growing up, as I'm sure they were for millions of boys born around the same time I was. Heck, even a few girls that I went to school loved theseguys turtles.
You had Raphael (red), Donatello (purple), Leonardo (blue), and Michelangelo (orange) teaming up against the evil Shredder and his henchmen to save New York City, and in some cases, the world itself, from evil.
Most people (such as myself) were introduced to the Ninja Turtles through the original animated cartoon series, which debuted as a miniseries on December 28, 1987, and ended up running straight through until 1996. But, did you know that the whole Ninja Turtle empire was started off in the form of a comic book?
In early 1984, the comic was put together at a company known as Mirage Studios, based out of New Hampshire. The characters were created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and it started off as a result of a brainstorming session. Together, they self-published the first issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and initially, the creation was meant as a parody of other superhero comics of the day, including Daredevil, Ronin, New Mutants, and Cerebus.
The first issue was released in the spring of 1984 (publication date of May 1984), and only 3,000 copies of the original printing were made (which translates to a very HIGH value as of July 2011, so if you have one, keep it in good condition!). The comics attracted a cult following over the next two years, but it wasn't until the duo of Eastman and Laird formed a partnership with licensing agent Mark Freedman to expand their creation into a more mainstream audience.
The idea to create action figures of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was tossed around as early as 1986, and a company by the name of Dark Horse Miniatures created a set of 15mm lead figurines. Eastman and Laird wanted to get Playmates toys to work out a deal to create the action figures of each of the characters, but initially they were uneasy to come up with the patent for the action figures without a television deal being acquired first.
So, in December 1987, the Ninja Turtles miniseries aired for the first time. To those of you real fans of the turtles, you'll know that the first part of the miniseries is almost identical to the 1990 movie adaptation. We're introduced to April O'Neil, who works as a reporter for a New York City television studio (in the movie, it's Channel 3, and in the cartoon, it's Channel 6). She gets attacked by a group of thugs and is knocked out cold, but is saved by Raphael, who brings her to their underground lair. There, she wakes up and immediately is frightened by the sight of four overgrown turtles and their giant rat friend. Eventually, she calms down, and she learns of the Ninja Turtles and how they got there. Apparently, all four turtles were coated in ooze from up above that mutated them into humanoid creatures. Splinter found the turtles and helped raise them.
Splinter, of course, is the rat-like master of the turtles. He named each of them after renaissance painters, and taught them all sorts of martial arts moves, with each one mastering a specific weapon to use in combat. How Splinter got to be that way differs a lot between the comic book and the animated series. Just because we're talking about the animated series, I'll explain that way instead. In the television series, Splinter (whose original name was Hamato Yoshi) was banished from the Japanese Foot Clan by Oroku Saki, who pinned Yoshi's dogi to the wall, which prevented him from bowing to the sensei...a grave insult in Japanese culture. When Yoshi removed the blade, the sensei jumped to the wrong conclusion, and threw Yoshi out.
When Yoshi found the turtles, the ooze caused Yoshi the human to morph into Splinter the rat.
Oh, and Oroku Saki?
You know him better as Shredder, the chief antagonist of the Ninja Turtles. Though the turtles would face many, many enemies throughout the course of the show, Shredder was the one who just couldn't take no for an answer.
The miniseries took a couple of airings for people to take notice, and by the summer of 1988, the first Ninja Turtle action figures hit the shelves.
Weren't they cool looking? (And, yes...I owned all four, though it took me forever to find a Leonardo!)
The action figures hit store shelves and immediately garnered great interest. By that time, the miniseries had aired a third time, and this time was so successful that the animated series was picked up for a full season, beginning on October 1, 1988.
By 1990, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were EVERYWHERE. The movie version had come out on March 30 of that year, which created even more buzz, and which spawned two sequels.
The action figure line expanded that year as well. Along with the four turtles, you could also purchase action figures of Shredder, Splinter, April O'Neil, Bebop the warthog, Rocksteady the rhino, Krang, assorted Foot Soldiers, and many more. You could even get the vehicles used in the animated series, like the Pizza Thrower, Party Van, and Turtle Blimp. And yes, I will admit to playing with all of those characters and more.
Before long, Ninja Turtles cereal and juice boxes appeared in supermarkets, and Ninja Turtles bubble bath stocked the shelves of pharmacies all over the world.
They even had lunchboxes.
And, yes, I too owned a Ninja Turtle lunchbox. Only not the one up above. Mine was fluorescent orange and had a picture of the Turtles battling against the Technodrome on it. It was still cool. I wish I still had it.
But, just why was I so entranced by the Ninja Turtles at a young age?
Let's state the obvious. The Ninja Turtles were marketed towards boys, and well, I definitely fit well within their target audience. Heck, my whole 9th birthday party was Ninja Turtle themed, and as it so happened, I only sent invites to the boys in my class, as girls made it clear that they hated the Ninja Turtles.
Looking at it through a thirty year old man's perspective though, there's a part of each turtle...a character trait, that I wish I had in each of them...and in some cases, I was more like some turtles and less like others.
Let's take Donatello, for instance. Donatello was the turtle who wore purple, and used a bo as a weapon. I'll let you in on a secret here. On any Ninja Turtle themed game, Donatello was one of two turtles that I always played with mainly because his weapon was the best defense against Foot Soldiers. Donatello was probably the Ninja Turtle that I was most like. Donatello was the brains behind the turtles. He built inventions, loved studying books and literature, and even had a nerdy-like voice. He was your mad scientist of the group, and made no effort to hide it. It's easy to say that Donatello is my favourite Ninja Turtle of the group now, but I actually had another favourite when I was a kid.
Leonardo was actually my favourite Ninja Turtle for many years. As far back as I can remember, Leonardo just always seemed to strike a chord with me. He was the other turtle I chose for combat in the video games (aside from Donatello), and his katana sword made quick work of enemies. Decked out in blue, he took on the role as the team leader in the animated series (in the movie, it was Raphael). I think that's why I ended up liking Leonardo, was because he was a leader. Unfortunately, Leonardo seemed to take his leadership a little too seriously at times, and came across as a killjoy in some episodes of the show, but when it came down to it, whenever a problem needed fixing, Leonardo was always the turtle that people counted on to be there, and I think that was one of the reasons I wanted to be like Leonardo. As a kid, I wanted people to look up to me, and see that I could work my way through problems. Granted, leadership has never really been one of my top qualities, but I'm trying to work my way through that.
From Leonardo in blue, we head on to Michelangelo in orange. If you were to ask me now who my least favourite Ninja Turtle is, Michelangelo would be at the top of my list. I do like all four turtles, don't get me wrong, and I will say that I must have liked Michelangelo at one time to dress up as him for two Halloween seasons. But looking at him now, Michelangelo was only good for one thing...his constant surfer talk. Really, it was like someone transplanted a California Valley Boy personality in the ooze that morphed Michelangelo. It was fun at first, but eventually, it got really old, really fast. Oh, and he used nunchucks, which were okay (though funnily enough, any scenes of Michelangelo swinging nunchucks were banned in Europe). I'm not denying his popularity was huge (he was the only Turtle to appear in the 1990 drug awareness special Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue), but I see him now as just a one-trick-pony.
Last, but certainly not least, we have the red-bandana wearing Raphael (or, black suited Turtle if you read the Archie Comics adaptation of the Ninja Turtles comic book serial). I'd have to say that while I rarely ever used Raphael for the video games (his sai weapon really sucked, in my opinion), I did find Raphael to be the funniest turtle in the whole show. To be truthful, I think Raphael was a perfect combo of the other three turtles. He couldn't do science experiments like Donatello, but he definitely could think quick on his feet. Whenever Leonardo was out of commission as leader, Raphael stepped into the role almost flawlessly. I actually even found Raphael having more of a personality than Michelangelo. Basically, Raphael was the turtle that seemed to be jack of all Turtles. He wasn't a master in a specific field, but he knew enough of them to be the most well-rounded one of the group.
What I mean by cartoon fad is that in my experience, there's one cartoon that seemingly defines a whole generation because it was one that it seemed that everyone else watched.
Supposing that one was born in, say, 2001, for example. A lot of the shows that kids born in that year may have watched back then were Hannah Montana and Spongebob Squarepants. Certainly, my nephew, who was born in September 2000, watched both of these, as did quite a few kids.
Or, take someone born in 1991, for example. In those days, a lot of kids born during that time period watched shows like Pokemon, because a lot of kids from that period played Pokemon games and watched the Pokemon movies.
It's been my experience that certain shows can define a whole generation.
Now, we'll go back to 1981...the year that yours truly was born in. What cartoons best defined our generation?
It's kind of hard to say for the girls of '81. Right around the late 80's, early '90's, many girls were addicted to the New Kids On The Block, and when a cartoon based on the band premiered around my third grade year, almost all the girls watched that show. It made sense too, considering that all the girls in third grade listened to the tapes on their Walkmans, and kept NKOTB pencils inside their NKOTB pencil cases, and scribbed in their notebooks, I LOVE JORDAN KNIGHT!!!
But what were we boys watching? Here's a hint. They wear their armour on their backs, and they have an appetite for pizza.
Give up? Okay, here you go.
(I really wanted to post the actual opening, but couldn't find one that had the greatest of quality, so this will have to do).
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were a huge part of my childhood growing up, as I'm sure they were for millions of boys born around the same time I was. Heck, even a few girls that I went to school loved these
You had Raphael (red), Donatello (purple), Leonardo (blue), and Michelangelo (orange) teaming up against the evil Shredder and his henchmen to save New York City, and in some cases, the world itself, from evil.
Most people (such as myself) were introduced to the Ninja Turtles through the original animated cartoon series, which debuted as a miniseries on December 28, 1987, and ended up running straight through until 1996. But, did you know that the whole Ninja Turtle empire was started off in the form of a comic book?
In early 1984, the comic was put together at a company known as Mirage Studios, based out of New Hampshire. The characters were created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and it started off as a result of a brainstorming session. Together, they self-published the first issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and initially, the creation was meant as a parody of other superhero comics of the day, including Daredevil, Ronin, New Mutants, and Cerebus.
The first issue was released in the spring of 1984 (publication date of May 1984), and only 3,000 copies of the original printing were made (which translates to a very HIGH value as of July 2011, so if you have one, keep it in good condition!). The comics attracted a cult following over the next two years, but it wasn't until the duo of Eastman and Laird formed a partnership with licensing agent Mark Freedman to expand their creation into a more mainstream audience.
The idea to create action figures of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was tossed around as early as 1986, and a company by the name of Dark Horse Miniatures created a set of 15mm lead figurines. Eastman and Laird wanted to get Playmates toys to work out a deal to create the action figures of each of the characters, but initially they were uneasy to come up with the patent for the action figures without a television deal being acquired first.
So, in December 1987, the Ninja Turtles miniseries aired for the first time. To those of you real fans of the turtles, you'll know that the first part of the miniseries is almost identical to the 1990 movie adaptation. We're introduced to April O'Neil, who works as a reporter for a New York City television studio (in the movie, it's Channel 3, and in the cartoon, it's Channel 6). She gets attacked by a group of thugs and is knocked out cold, but is saved by Raphael, who brings her to their underground lair. There, she wakes up and immediately is frightened by the sight of four overgrown turtles and their giant rat friend. Eventually, she calms down, and she learns of the Ninja Turtles and how they got there. Apparently, all four turtles were coated in ooze from up above that mutated them into humanoid creatures. Splinter found the turtles and helped raise them.
Splinter, of course, is the rat-like master of the turtles. He named each of them after renaissance painters, and taught them all sorts of martial arts moves, with each one mastering a specific weapon to use in combat. How Splinter got to be that way differs a lot between the comic book and the animated series. Just because we're talking about the animated series, I'll explain that way instead. In the television series, Splinter (whose original name was Hamato Yoshi) was banished from the Japanese Foot Clan by Oroku Saki, who pinned Yoshi's dogi to the wall, which prevented him from bowing to the sensei...a grave insult in Japanese culture. When Yoshi removed the blade, the sensei jumped to the wrong conclusion, and threw Yoshi out.
When Yoshi found the turtles, the ooze caused Yoshi the human to morph into Splinter the rat.
Oh, and Oroku Saki?
You know him better as Shredder, the chief antagonist of the Ninja Turtles. Though the turtles would face many, many enemies throughout the course of the show, Shredder was the one who just couldn't take no for an answer.
The miniseries took a couple of airings for people to take notice, and by the summer of 1988, the first Ninja Turtle action figures hit the shelves.
Weren't they cool looking? (And, yes...I owned all four, though it took me forever to find a Leonardo!)
The action figures hit store shelves and immediately garnered great interest. By that time, the miniseries had aired a third time, and this time was so successful that the animated series was picked up for a full season, beginning on October 1, 1988.
By 1990, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were EVERYWHERE. The movie version had come out on March 30 of that year, which created even more buzz, and which spawned two sequels.
The action figure line expanded that year as well. Along with the four turtles, you could also purchase action figures of Shredder, Splinter, April O'Neil, Bebop the warthog, Rocksteady the rhino, Krang, assorted Foot Soldiers, and many more. You could even get the vehicles used in the animated series, like the Pizza Thrower, Party Van, and Turtle Blimp. And yes, I will admit to playing with all of those characters and more.
Before long, Ninja Turtles cereal and juice boxes appeared in supermarkets, and Ninja Turtles bubble bath stocked the shelves of pharmacies all over the world.
They even had lunchboxes.
And, yes, I too owned a Ninja Turtle lunchbox. Only not the one up above. Mine was fluorescent orange and had a picture of the Turtles battling against the Technodrome on it. It was still cool. I wish I still had it.
But, just why was I so entranced by the Ninja Turtles at a young age?
Let's state the obvious. The Ninja Turtles were marketed towards boys, and well, I definitely fit well within their target audience. Heck, my whole 9th birthday party was Ninja Turtle themed, and as it so happened, I only sent invites to the boys in my class, as girls made it clear that they hated the Ninja Turtles.
Looking at it through a thirty year old man's perspective though, there's a part of each turtle...a character trait, that I wish I had in each of them...and in some cases, I was more like some turtles and less like others.
Personally speaking, I think I would want to be just like Raphael, though I still have Donatello as my favourite.
The original series ended in 1996, and since then we've had a couple of reboots of it over the years (such as the picture up above), but nothing will ever recapture the original series, which held my attention, as well as the attention of other boys during that time.
A lot of men my age are now having sons and daughters of their own, and from what I hear, a new adaptation of the animated show is due to air sometime in 2012. I'm a bit old to tune in to see it now, but I hope that a new generation of kids can grow to enjoy the same characters their fathers did before them.
That would be totally tubular man, like a resurrection of the heroes in a half shell, dude!
Friday, July 15, 2011
TGIF: Steve Urkel from Family Matters
No pussyfooting around. Let's just jump right into this blog entry.
Above, you will see the cover of the DVD set of the first season of Family Matters. The show premiered on September 22, 1989 and ran until 1998 on two different networks. (The first eight seasons aired on NBC, and the last one was aired on CBS)
The bad news is that the first season DVD set is the only season that is currently available for purchasing. For me, it's considered to be a good thing, since I enjoyed the earlier seasons more than the later ones.
Not many people seem to realize this little trivia fact right off the bat, but Family Matters was actually a spin-off of another popular Miller-Boyett program, Perfect Strangers. Anyone who may have remembered watching the first few seasons of Perfect Strangers would remember that when Balki and Larry started working at the Chicago Chronicle, Harriette Winslow worked there as the elevator operator. In the fall of 1989, when Family Matters premiered, Harriette was fired from her job as elevator operator at the Chronicle, and in the second episode of the first season, she was re-hired at the paper as the 'Chief of Security', effectively eliminating her from the Perfect Strangers sitcom and firmly putting her into place as the matriarch of the Winslow family.
The rest of the cast was put in place. Joining JoMarie Payton (who played Harriette) was her husband Carl (Reginald VelJohnson), her three children Eddie (Darius McCrary), Laura (Kellie Shanygne Williams), and Judy (Jaimee Foxworth), Mother Winslow (Rosetta LeNoire), Harriette's sister, Rachel (Telma Hopkins), and Rachel's young son, Richie (Bryton McClure).
In the show, you had similar plotlines to that of other shows on the ABC network's TGIF block. There really wasn't much different between Family Matters and other shows such as Full House, Boy Meets World, and even its parent show of Perfect Strangers.
However, there was one thing that Family Matters had that none of the other shows really had. And, that one thing has evoked a ton of controversy in how the show ran, and seemed to be the very focal point of the whole series.
But, I'm getting ahead of myself here.
Why don't we flash back to the cover image of the Season One DVD? You have the entire Winslow family scrunched up in the left hand side of the cover while you have one person who almost has a full on head shot. What makes this whole cover quite hysterical is that the person who has the extreme close-up on the cover is actually a cast member who never became a regular cast member until season TWO! Sure, he appeared sporadically during season one, but was never credited in the opening until season two.
Don't believe me? Here's proof (well...as bad of quality as it can be, at least)
You'll notice that there's no visual proof that the character on the DVD cover even existed. But, you know he did.
Who is this character?
Steven Quincy Urkel.
Played by actor Jaleel White, Steve Urkel was in many ways both the blessing and the curse of the show that was Family Matters. I should note that none of this was of Jaleel's own doing...he was given a job to do, and he did it quite convincingly. It is however my own feelings that the addition of Steve Urkel did some great things for the program at first, but then the producers got waaaaaaaaaaaay out of hand.
And, yes, I did type the word way with twelve A's. That just goes to show just how serious I am about this.
To begin our story, we need to go back to the very first season. Episode 12 to be exact.
The episode was titled 'Laura's First Date', and it originally aired on December 15, 1989. In the episode, Laura wants to go to a school dance, but has no date to go with. Rather than run the risk of being a social outcast by going to the dance without a date (which in my opinion is NO BIG DEAL) she chooses to stay home. Meanwhile, Carl and Eddie decide to try and set Laura up by finding prospective dates for her. Carl's choice? Steve Urkel.
Boy oh boy would that be a decision that Carl would live to regret.
It wasn't that Steve himself was a bad kid. He really wanted to impress Laura and the rest of the Winslow family by doing good deeds with only the best of intentions. Unfortunately, you all know what the road to hell is paved with.
Here's just one of the many examples of this.
No matter how well-being Steve might be, he always does something to screw things up. He may end up electrocuting himself, or blowing up an oven in home economics, or flooding the senior prom with his balloon drop machine catching fire.
And, yes...all three of those things have happened to Steve Urkel.
He was your stereotypical nerd character. Always into creating new inventions and having high intelligence compared to other people, what Steve had in book smarts, he sadly seemed to lack in social skills, and this proved a problem when going after Laura, who simply wasn't interested.
Nevertheless, the addition of Steve Urkel was only meant to be a one-off episode, but on the episode that Steve appeared on, the ratings spiked upwards. On another episode he appeared in, the same effect. By the time the second season rolled around, he had been given a spot in the opening titles, and when Telma Hopkins left the series midway through, Steve Urkel got the prestigious last spot in the credits while Rachel and Richie took a backseat and Judy Winslow disappeared into thin air.
Steve began to take on a more dominant role in the series, and because of this, his popularity grew. He made guest appearances on 'Full House' and 'Step By Step', and he even had a breakfast cereal named Urkel-O's!
It's a wonder it wasn't cheese flavoured.
He even started up a dance craze during the early 1990's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTeOcVelYi0
I'll admit to it. When Family Matters first came on, and Steve was brought on, I liked it. Keeping in mind that I was barely ten years old at the time, I thought Steve brought a lot to the show. He was quick with the comebacks, and he caused a lot of hilarious happenings on the show. But, what a lot of people don't seem to realize was that Steve had a good heart underneath the argyle sweaters and suspenders.
For instance, he once saved Carl's life after he fell through the ice while fishing. He got revenge against Laura's nemesis, Cassie Lynn Nubbles after she tried to sabotage her election campaign for class president. And he has proven to be a good sounding board for Harriette and Mother Winslow whenever they need one.
He even managed to get the last word against Laura a couple of times, despite his obvious crush on her. When Laura desperately needed a ride to a cheerleading competition, Steve selflessly offered to take her. When Steve's car broke down outside a motel, Laura was pretty nasty to him until he decided that enough was enough. I regret that the video feature is kind of wonky tonight, so I'll have to post the link instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukH_g_HMonk
See...even the biggest nerds can have one heck of a backbone when pushed.
At any rate, the introduction of Steve Urkel probably helped get the show renewed season after season.
Then the producers got a little bit...too silly, and capitalized on Jaleel White's fame a little...too much.
Okay, so when they created a cousin for Steve Urkel named Myrtle (also played by White), it was kind of milking the Urkel cash cow for all it was worth. Still, it wasn't overly obnoxious, and in the few episodes that Myrtle did appear in, it did make some sense.
But then around season five, this guy came onto the scene.
Recognize him? Believe it or not, this is Steve Urkel. Kind of.
During season five, Steve created some sort of potion known as 'Cool Juice' that would alter his DNA and turn him from geek to chic with one simple chemical compound. He downs the potion and immediately becomes the alter-ego of Stefan Urquelle. Immediately, he wins the heart of Laura...something that Steve Urkel himself could not do. During a party at the Winslow house, Laura makes her feelings known and is happy to be with the new Steve. However, Stefan has one major difference compared to Steve Urkel. Whereas Steve was kind and compassionate to others, Stefan is self-centered, and a smidgen on the narcissistic side. Seeing the true colours of Stefan, Laura wants Stefan to turn back to Steve, and he does.
This would have been fine if it were a one-off episode, but before you knew it, it wasn't long before the whole show began to have Steve/Stefan plotlines. Stefan would appear more often, then Laura would sabotage the transformation chamber to have Stefan forever, then Carl would accidentally turn into a nerd, and then somehow, Stefan gets cloned, and it was just one big mess that viewers tuned out of really quickly.
Steve Urkel may have brought the show to new levels. Stefan Urquelle brought the ratings down in a BIG way.
The ratings got so bad that in 1997, ABC dropped it from its schedule, only for CBS to pick it up for the 1997-1998 season. It wasn't enough to save it though, and in May 1998, Family Matters went off the air forever.
You can't blame Jaleel White for trying though. Jaleel even admits that sometimes he found it hard to mingle with the other cast members, and he sometimes felt that there was a divide between him and the other cast members, in particular with VelJohnson. These days though, Jaleel White is still acting (his latest acting role was in the summer movie Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, which admittedly was a flop), and he is busy raising a daughter (amidst some drama with the mother of his child involving the police).
(I'm trying to keep a positive spin on this, people...I really am!)
I guess the one thing I can say about the Steve Urkel paradox is this. He was a good character if you could overlook the squeaky voice, cheese cravings, and endless 'DID I DO THAT?' utterances. He probably had more character development than a lot of the current sitcom characters have. I mean, if you take into consideration that his own parents seemed to have no relationship with him at all, it's a miracle he turned out as well as he did. Having the Winslow family as a sort of back-up family may have caused Carl to down the ulcer medicine a bit faster, but in the end, Steve was all the better for having them in his life. And maybe, just maybe, the Winslows became better people by having him in theirs.
Even if they didn't want to admit it.
Above, you will see the cover of the DVD set of the first season of Family Matters. The show premiered on September 22, 1989 and ran until 1998 on two different networks. (The first eight seasons aired on NBC, and the last one was aired on CBS)
The bad news is that the first season DVD set is the only season that is currently available for purchasing. For me, it's considered to be a good thing, since I enjoyed the earlier seasons more than the later ones.
Not many people seem to realize this little trivia fact right off the bat, but Family Matters was actually a spin-off of another popular Miller-Boyett program, Perfect Strangers. Anyone who may have remembered watching the first few seasons of Perfect Strangers would remember that when Balki and Larry started working at the Chicago Chronicle, Harriette Winslow worked there as the elevator operator. In the fall of 1989, when Family Matters premiered, Harriette was fired from her job as elevator operator at the Chronicle, and in the second episode of the first season, she was re-hired at the paper as the 'Chief of Security', effectively eliminating her from the Perfect Strangers sitcom and firmly putting her into place as the matriarch of the Winslow family.
The rest of the cast was put in place. Joining JoMarie Payton (who played Harriette) was her husband Carl (Reginald VelJohnson), her three children Eddie (Darius McCrary), Laura (Kellie Shanygne Williams), and Judy (Jaimee Foxworth), Mother Winslow (Rosetta LeNoire), Harriette's sister, Rachel (Telma Hopkins), and Rachel's young son, Richie (Bryton McClure).
In the show, you had similar plotlines to that of other shows on the ABC network's TGIF block. There really wasn't much different between Family Matters and other shows such as Full House, Boy Meets World, and even its parent show of Perfect Strangers.
However, there was one thing that Family Matters had that none of the other shows really had. And, that one thing has evoked a ton of controversy in how the show ran, and seemed to be the very focal point of the whole series.
But, I'm getting ahead of myself here.
Why don't we flash back to the cover image of the Season One DVD? You have the entire Winslow family scrunched up in the left hand side of the cover while you have one person who almost has a full on head shot. What makes this whole cover quite hysterical is that the person who has the extreme close-up on the cover is actually a cast member who never became a regular cast member until season TWO! Sure, he appeared sporadically during season one, but was never credited in the opening until season two.
Don't believe me? Here's proof (well...as bad of quality as it can be, at least)
You'll notice that there's no visual proof that the character on the DVD cover even existed. But, you know he did.
Who is this character?
Steven Quincy Urkel.
Played by actor Jaleel White, Steve Urkel was in many ways both the blessing and the curse of the show that was Family Matters. I should note that none of this was of Jaleel's own doing...he was given a job to do, and he did it quite convincingly. It is however my own feelings that the addition of Steve Urkel did some great things for the program at first, but then the producers got waaaaaaaaaaaay out of hand.
And, yes, I did type the word way with twelve A's. That just goes to show just how serious I am about this.
To begin our story, we need to go back to the very first season. Episode 12 to be exact.
The episode was titled 'Laura's First Date', and it originally aired on December 15, 1989. In the episode, Laura wants to go to a school dance, but has no date to go with. Rather than run the risk of being a social outcast by going to the dance without a date (which in my opinion is NO BIG DEAL) she chooses to stay home. Meanwhile, Carl and Eddie decide to try and set Laura up by finding prospective dates for her. Carl's choice? Steve Urkel.
Boy oh boy would that be a decision that Carl would live to regret.
It wasn't that Steve himself was a bad kid. He really wanted to impress Laura and the rest of the Winslow family by doing good deeds with only the best of intentions. Unfortunately, you all know what the road to hell is paved with.
Here's just one of the many examples of this.
No matter how well-being Steve might be, he always does something to screw things up. He may end up electrocuting himself, or blowing up an oven in home economics, or flooding the senior prom with his balloon drop machine catching fire.
And, yes...all three of those things have happened to Steve Urkel.
He was your stereotypical nerd character. Always into creating new inventions and having high intelligence compared to other people, what Steve had in book smarts, he sadly seemed to lack in social skills, and this proved a problem when going after Laura, who simply wasn't interested.
Nevertheless, the addition of Steve Urkel was only meant to be a one-off episode, but on the episode that Steve appeared on, the ratings spiked upwards. On another episode he appeared in, the same effect. By the time the second season rolled around, he had been given a spot in the opening titles, and when Telma Hopkins left the series midway through, Steve Urkel got the prestigious last spot in the credits while Rachel and Richie took a backseat and Judy Winslow disappeared into thin air.
Steve began to take on a more dominant role in the series, and because of this, his popularity grew. He made guest appearances on 'Full House' and 'Step By Step', and he even had a breakfast cereal named Urkel-O's!
It's a wonder it wasn't cheese flavoured.
He even started up a dance craze during the early 1990's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTeOcVelYi0
I'll admit to it. When Family Matters first came on, and Steve was brought on, I liked it. Keeping in mind that I was barely ten years old at the time, I thought Steve brought a lot to the show. He was quick with the comebacks, and he caused a lot of hilarious happenings on the show. But, what a lot of people don't seem to realize was that Steve had a good heart underneath the argyle sweaters and suspenders.
For instance, he once saved Carl's life after he fell through the ice while fishing. He got revenge against Laura's nemesis, Cassie Lynn Nubbles after she tried to sabotage her election campaign for class president. And he has proven to be a good sounding board for Harriette and Mother Winslow whenever they need one.
He even managed to get the last word against Laura a couple of times, despite his obvious crush on her. When Laura desperately needed a ride to a cheerleading competition, Steve selflessly offered to take her. When Steve's car broke down outside a motel, Laura was pretty nasty to him until he decided that enough was enough. I regret that the video feature is kind of wonky tonight, so I'll have to post the link instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukH_g_HMonk
See...even the biggest nerds can have one heck of a backbone when pushed.
At any rate, the introduction of Steve Urkel probably helped get the show renewed season after season.
Then the producers got a little bit...too silly, and capitalized on Jaleel White's fame a little...too much.
Okay, so when they created a cousin for Steve Urkel named Myrtle (also played by White), it was kind of milking the Urkel cash cow for all it was worth. Still, it wasn't overly obnoxious, and in the few episodes that Myrtle did appear in, it did make some sense.
But then around season five, this guy came onto the scene.
Recognize him? Believe it or not, this is Steve Urkel. Kind of.
During season five, Steve created some sort of potion known as 'Cool Juice' that would alter his DNA and turn him from geek to chic with one simple chemical compound. He downs the potion and immediately becomes the alter-ego of Stefan Urquelle. Immediately, he wins the heart of Laura...something that Steve Urkel himself could not do. During a party at the Winslow house, Laura makes her feelings known and is happy to be with the new Steve. However, Stefan has one major difference compared to Steve Urkel. Whereas Steve was kind and compassionate to others, Stefan is self-centered, and a smidgen on the narcissistic side. Seeing the true colours of Stefan, Laura wants Stefan to turn back to Steve, and he does.
This would have been fine if it were a one-off episode, but before you knew it, it wasn't long before the whole show began to have Steve/Stefan plotlines. Stefan would appear more often, then Laura would sabotage the transformation chamber to have Stefan forever, then Carl would accidentally turn into a nerd, and then somehow, Stefan gets cloned, and it was just one big mess that viewers tuned out of really quickly.
Steve Urkel may have brought the show to new levels. Stefan Urquelle brought the ratings down in a BIG way.
The ratings got so bad that in 1997, ABC dropped it from its schedule, only for CBS to pick it up for the 1997-1998 season. It wasn't enough to save it though, and in May 1998, Family Matters went off the air forever.
You can't blame Jaleel White for trying though. Jaleel even admits that sometimes he found it hard to mingle with the other cast members, and he sometimes felt that there was a divide between him and the other cast members, in particular with VelJohnson. These days though, Jaleel White is still acting (his latest acting role was in the summer movie Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, which admittedly was a flop), and he is busy raising a daughter (amidst some drama with the mother of his child involving the police).
(I'm trying to keep a positive spin on this, people...I really am!)
I guess the one thing I can say about the Steve Urkel paradox is this. He was a good character if you could overlook the squeaky voice, cheese cravings, and endless 'DID I DO THAT?' utterances. He probably had more character development than a lot of the current sitcom characters have. I mean, if you take into consideration that his own parents seemed to have no relationship with him at all, it's a miracle he turned out as well as he did. Having the Winslow family as a sort of back-up family may have caused Carl to down the ulcer medicine a bit faster, but in the end, Steve was all the better for having them in his life. And maybe, just maybe, the Winslows became better people by having him in theirs.
Even if they didn't want to admit it.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Thursday Night At The Arcade: Chrono Trigger
Have you ever had the desire to go back in time?
Maybe you'd want to fix a crucial mistake that you've made in the past. Maybe you want to relive the glory days of your youth by reliving your idea of the teenage dream at the age of 40. Or, maybe you want to go back and see your departed loved ones one final time.
Or, perhaps you'd take your time machine and go years into the future. Maybe you want to see how your life ended up. Maybe you want to see what the world looks like one hundred years in the future. Maybe you secretly want to find out the winning lottery numbers for next week's draw so you can be prepare yourself in the present day.
Whatever the case is, I'm sure that there are many reasons why one would want to go back in time, or delve their way into the future.
Would you, if you knew you had the power?
Personally speaking, I'm not sure I would take the chance to do so. I'm a firm believer in the concept that everything happens for a reason, and that if it is meant to happen, it will. Of course, presently speaking, I'm still waiting for that A-ha moment (and by A-ha moment, I don't mean requesting 'Take On Me' on my local radio station). Whatever the case, I'm sure that if the cards align themselves properly, it'll lead to great things.
Certainly, the temptation of wanting to go back in time to fix things has been there. Don't get me wrong, the idea of changing events in my high school life in order to have a better experience overall would have been too difficult to resist a few short years ago. The more I think about it now, the more I realize that I probably wouldn't take the chance to go back if I could. Everything that happened to me, happened to me for a reason, and somehow, I'm supposed to make sense of it all. So far, I'm beginning to find a way to do exactly that. Do I wish that things could have been better back then? Absolutely. Am I stressing out over it now? Not as often as I once did. It's going to take some time to come to grips with it one hundred per cent, but the journey's been a fun ride so far.
That's essentially why I started up this blog in the first place. Certainly, it celebrates the wonders of pop culture gone by, yes. I'll even grant you that there is a bit of irony involved in the idea that I would not want to go back in time, yet I have no problem writing about it in blog form. Irony aside though, I feel that writing about past experiences and what I can take from them is entirely different from wanting to build a time travel machine to warp back to 1997 to prevent people from bullying your sixteen year old self.
If I hadn't have gone through what I did, I most certainly wouldn't be the person that I am now. Because of what I had to deal with, I find that I can read other people a bit better than most others, and that I can tell the difference between what is genuine and what is sarcastic. I still can have emotional reactions to what people can say, but I've gotten a lot better at hiding it. Most importantly, if I can get through that, I know that I can get through anything that may come my way, and that's a good feeling to have.
Besides, the more I think of it, if I did have the chance to revisit my life as a teenager and have the ability to change even one thing, then who knows how badly my future could have been affected. And the idea of changing one minute thing in the past life completely changing the future in unpredictable ways...it's a scary thought if you really analyze it.
In closing, my ultimate answer would be that I would not use a time machine if I was given the choice (and if one actually existed). The only way I would even consider warping through decades and centuries would be if I knew I could do something to stop catastrophic global destruction.
The video game that I'm featuring in this blog entry deals with that very plotline. If you knew when and how the world was going to end, and you have the chance to change history so that the world is saved, would you take the challenge knowing that the future of mankind would solely lie in your own hands?
Quite the loaded question for a Thursday, no?
Yet that's the exact situation that the main characters in the 1995 video game 'Chrono Trigger' faced. Could they go back in time to save the world from being destroyed by an evil force? Could they save the planet from becoming one gigantic dustball? Would they be back home in time to watch the latest episode of Big Brother?
The story of Chrono Trigger starts off like this...and if you are interested, I'll provide you with some background music to listen to as I tell it.
The story of Chrono Trigger begins in the year 1000 AD.
Yep, we're going WAY back in time here.
Anyways, the main character of the game is a red-haired (seemingly mute) kid named Crono. Although the cat that lives with him seemingly has gotten his tongue and won't ever give it back to him, he is our main protagonist. There is a Millennial fair going on at the moment, and Crono is determined to spend his (hard-earned?) allowance on the attractions there. Besides, his mad scientist friend Lucca is working on a secret project there and Crono got curious.
I'M SURE WE'LL NEVER SEE IT...
Along the way, Crono quite literally smacks right into a young woman named Marle. Marle is sweet, kind, and a chatterbox of a woman. Quite literally, she speaks more than I think any other character in the game. Maybe she's the reason why Crono can't get a word in edgewise. After a brief conversation, Marle decides to join Crono.
(GAME TIP: You might want to mind your P's and Q's in this scene, because your actions will determine a future event depending on what you say and do. Just giving you advice. All girls love being reunited with their pets, and I hear the chicken is tainted there, so DO NOT EAT IT. You have been warned.)
We then come across Lucca and her 'Teleportation Machine'. If you're interested, the scene is just below. It also may explain how the adventure begins. Just scroll the time bar to the 2:44 mark, and away we go!
So, if you watched the video, you know exactly what's going on. If not, well...let's just say that Marle's pendant clashed with the diodes and anodes and other -odes that may have been present, and it kicked her back in time about four hundred years.
Crono, being the fearless type, decides that he's going to be in big trouble if he just leaves the fair without helping our damsel in distress, and decides to take off after her.
Fortunately, Crono ends up in exactly the same spot that he stood. Bad news? It's in 600 AD.
Even worse news, upon arriving in 600 AD, Crono is immediately attacked by historical creatures.
You know that fear people would have about how killing one little thing would change the future forever. Just ignore this. Kill the blue imps. You only have 29 HP's in this screenshot, you know!
Crono immediately heads to nearby Guardia Castle, where he discovers that Marle looks exactly like Queen Leene, who happened to go missing, but was found (when Marle took over the role). Just as Crono arrives to take Marle home, Marle suddenly disappears into thin air, and it is later discovered that Marle is actually a descendant of the royal family of Guardia. The reason she disappeared is because the real Queen of the 600 AD era was kidnapped by an evil being. If anything happened to the Queen, Marle would never be born!
So, now you see what I'm getting at here. If someone's existence depended on going back in time to stop a tragedy from occuring in the past, wouldn't you move heaven and earth to get back there?
With help from Lucca (who used her own teleportation device to warp back to 600 AD), and a green human-like frog creature whom they meet at the cathedral where Queen Leene is being held captive by Yakra, the trio defeat Yakra and rescue the queen (and Marle who reappears when history is corrected).
But, okay...you've seen how by going back in time, we can save a couple of lives. Yet when introducing the game, I talked about how if you were faced with knowing that an apocalypse was coming, would you go back in time, or go ahead in the future to try and prevent it from happening?
Once Crono et al arrive back in 1000 AD, they're arrested for kidnapping Princess Marle, and during the escape attempt, they notice an electric blue gate in the middle of Guardia Forest, similar to the one that sucked Marle and the gang back to 600 AD. There is some misgivings about going through a gate that they don't know, but considering that a barrage of guards wanted to kill them, I would say they made the right choice.
When they arrived at the other side, this is the landscape that they walked into.
What you see is the year 2300 AD. An apocalyptic wasteland where nuclear winters blanket the cold ground, and the water is as black as the midnight sky. The animal life are all mutated and sickly as a result of the catastrophe, and the few humans that are still alive are destitute and frail. There is no food, and no means of getting any food, as any efforts to grow crops are futile in a world with acidic soil. Someone had the foresight to invent little pods that restore health, but they do nothing to cure the endless hunger pangs the people of 2300 AD had to endure.
But how did the world get to be such a horrible place? Was it a nuclear disaster? Was it a comet? Was Harold Camping actually CORRECT in his predictions?
I believe this little clip will reveal all.
Back in 1999 AD (which was significant since at the time, some theories determined that the apocalypse was supposed to begin in 1999), a monster named Lavos woke up from beneath the Earth's core, and immediately threw a temper tantrum. He burned down whole cities, made volcanoes erupt, poisoned the rivers, and caused massive earthquakes which killed millions.
In the 401 years since, the world has continued to rot and decay, and the remaining survivors grow weaker and weaker.
Marle said it best when she said that she absolutely refused to believe that the world she loved so much in 1000 AD would end up in such an irreversible state.
So, that becomes the new goal of the game. To stop Lavos, and save the world. To prevent Alaska from being baked, so to speak.
It is here that I will stop talking about the plot, because for anyone who hasn't played this game, I don't want to spoil it for you. In fact, I want you guys to at least try this game out if you're into the RPG genre. It's a masterpiece, in my honest opinion. Originally, it was released for the Super Nintendo system on March 11, 1995, but since then it has been ported to the PlayStation console as well as the Nintendo DS. There's lots of opportunities to play this game.
There's also a lot of different endings for this game. There's well over a dozen, if I'm counting correctly. Remember how any actions you perform in the past can change the future? This has an effect on what ending you will receive. See if you can find them all. In my playing experience, I've managed to see four so far (and unfortunately that includes the GAME OVER screen), but I know some of you reading this probably HAVE seen all of them.
Oh, yeah, one final bit...I included a clip of the trio fighting some guy named Magus. You'll encounter him quite a bit. But, is he against you? Or, is he an ally?
Only you can decide that.
Maybe you'd want to fix a crucial mistake that you've made in the past. Maybe you want to relive the glory days of your youth by reliving your idea of the teenage dream at the age of 40. Or, maybe you want to go back and see your departed loved ones one final time.
Or, perhaps you'd take your time machine and go years into the future. Maybe you want to see how your life ended up. Maybe you want to see what the world looks like one hundred years in the future. Maybe you secretly want to find out the winning lottery numbers for next week's draw so you can be prepare yourself in the present day.
Whatever the case is, I'm sure that there are many reasons why one would want to go back in time, or delve their way into the future.
Would you, if you knew you had the power?
Personally speaking, I'm not sure I would take the chance to do so. I'm a firm believer in the concept that everything happens for a reason, and that if it is meant to happen, it will. Of course, presently speaking, I'm still waiting for that A-ha moment (and by A-ha moment, I don't mean requesting 'Take On Me' on my local radio station). Whatever the case, I'm sure that if the cards align themselves properly, it'll lead to great things.
Certainly, the temptation of wanting to go back in time to fix things has been there. Don't get me wrong, the idea of changing events in my high school life in order to have a better experience overall would have been too difficult to resist a few short years ago. The more I think about it now, the more I realize that I probably wouldn't take the chance to go back if I could. Everything that happened to me, happened to me for a reason, and somehow, I'm supposed to make sense of it all. So far, I'm beginning to find a way to do exactly that. Do I wish that things could have been better back then? Absolutely. Am I stressing out over it now? Not as often as I once did. It's going to take some time to come to grips with it one hundred per cent, but the journey's been a fun ride so far.
That's essentially why I started up this blog in the first place. Certainly, it celebrates the wonders of pop culture gone by, yes. I'll even grant you that there is a bit of irony involved in the idea that I would not want to go back in time, yet I have no problem writing about it in blog form. Irony aside though, I feel that writing about past experiences and what I can take from them is entirely different from wanting to build a time travel machine to warp back to 1997 to prevent people from bullying your sixteen year old self.
If I hadn't have gone through what I did, I most certainly wouldn't be the person that I am now. Because of what I had to deal with, I find that I can read other people a bit better than most others, and that I can tell the difference between what is genuine and what is sarcastic. I still can have emotional reactions to what people can say, but I've gotten a lot better at hiding it. Most importantly, if I can get through that, I know that I can get through anything that may come my way, and that's a good feeling to have.
Besides, the more I think of it, if I did have the chance to revisit my life as a teenager and have the ability to change even one thing, then who knows how badly my future could have been affected. And the idea of changing one minute thing in the past life completely changing the future in unpredictable ways...it's a scary thought if you really analyze it.
In closing, my ultimate answer would be that I would not use a time machine if I was given the choice (and if one actually existed). The only way I would even consider warping through decades and centuries would be if I knew I could do something to stop catastrophic global destruction.
The video game that I'm featuring in this blog entry deals with that very plotline. If you knew when and how the world was going to end, and you have the chance to change history so that the world is saved, would you take the challenge knowing that the future of mankind would solely lie in your own hands?
Quite the loaded question for a Thursday, no?
Yet that's the exact situation that the main characters in the 1995 video game 'Chrono Trigger' faced. Could they go back in time to save the world from being destroyed by an evil force? Could they save the planet from becoming one gigantic dustball? Would they be back home in time to watch the latest episode of Big Brother?
The story of Chrono Trigger starts off like this...and if you are interested, I'll provide you with some background music to listen to as I tell it.
The story of Chrono Trigger begins in the year 1000 AD.
Yep, we're going WAY back in time here.
Anyways, the main character of the game is a red-haired (seemingly mute) kid named Crono. Although the cat that lives with him seemingly has gotten his tongue and won't ever give it back to him, he is our main protagonist. There is a Millennial fair going on at the moment, and Crono is determined to spend his (hard-earned?) allowance on the attractions there. Besides, his mad scientist friend Lucca is working on a secret project there and Crono got curious.
I'M SURE WE'LL NEVER SEE IT...
Along the way, Crono quite literally smacks right into a young woman named Marle. Marle is sweet, kind, and a chatterbox of a woman. Quite literally, she speaks more than I think any other character in the game. Maybe she's the reason why Crono can't get a word in edgewise. After a brief conversation, Marle decides to join Crono.
(GAME TIP: You might want to mind your P's and Q's in this scene, because your actions will determine a future event depending on what you say and do. Just giving you advice. All girls love being reunited with their pets, and I hear the chicken is tainted there, so DO NOT EAT IT. You have been warned.)
We then come across Lucca and her 'Teleportation Machine'. If you're interested, the scene is just below. It also may explain how the adventure begins. Just scroll the time bar to the 2:44 mark, and away we go!
So, if you watched the video, you know exactly what's going on. If not, well...let's just say that Marle's pendant clashed with the diodes and anodes and other -odes that may have been present, and it kicked her back in time about four hundred years.
Crono, being the fearless type, decides that he's going to be in big trouble if he just leaves the fair without helping our damsel in distress, and decides to take off after her.
Fortunately, Crono ends up in exactly the same spot that he stood. Bad news? It's in 600 AD.
Even worse news, upon arriving in 600 AD, Crono is immediately attacked by historical creatures.
You know that fear people would have about how killing one little thing would change the future forever. Just ignore this. Kill the blue imps. You only have 29 HP's in this screenshot, you know!
Crono immediately heads to nearby Guardia Castle, where he discovers that Marle looks exactly like Queen Leene, who happened to go missing, but was found (when Marle took over the role). Just as Crono arrives to take Marle home, Marle suddenly disappears into thin air, and it is later discovered that Marle is actually a descendant of the royal family of Guardia. The reason she disappeared is because the real Queen of the 600 AD era was kidnapped by an evil being. If anything happened to the Queen, Marle would never be born!
So, now you see what I'm getting at here. If someone's existence depended on going back in time to stop a tragedy from occuring in the past, wouldn't you move heaven and earth to get back there?
With help from Lucca (who used her own teleportation device to warp back to 600 AD), and a green human-like frog creature whom they meet at the cathedral where Queen Leene is being held captive by Yakra, the trio defeat Yakra and rescue the queen (and Marle who reappears when history is corrected).
But, okay...you've seen how by going back in time, we can save a couple of lives. Yet when introducing the game, I talked about how if you were faced with knowing that an apocalypse was coming, would you go back in time, or go ahead in the future to try and prevent it from happening?
Once Crono et al arrive back in 1000 AD, they're arrested for kidnapping Princess Marle, and during the escape attempt, they notice an electric blue gate in the middle of Guardia Forest, similar to the one that sucked Marle and the gang back to 600 AD. There is some misgivings about going through a gate that they don't know, but considering that a barrage of guards wanted to kill them, I would say they made the right choice.
When they arrived at the other side, this is the landscape that they walked into.
What you see is the year 2300 AD. An apocalyptic wasteland where nuclear winters blanket the cold ground, and the water is as black as the midnight sky. The animal life are all mutated and sickly as a result of the catastrophe, and the few humans that are still alive are destitute and frail. There is no food, and no means of getting any food, as any efforts to grow crops are futile in a world with acidic soil. Someone had the foresight to invent little pods that restore health, but they do nothing to cure the endless hunger pangs the people of 2300 AD had to endure.
But how did the world get to be such a horrible place? Was it a nuclear disaster? Was it a comet? Was Harold Camping actually CORRECT in his predictions?
I believe this little clip will reveal all.
Back in 1999 AD (which was significant since at the time, some theories determined that the apocalypse was supposed to begin in 1999), a monster named Lavos woke up from beneath the Earth's core, and immediately threw a temper tantrum. He burned down whole cities, made volcanoes erupt, poisoned the rivers, and caused massive earthquakes which killed millions.
In the 401 years since, the world has continued to rot and decay, and the remaining survivors grow weaker and weaker.
Marle said it best when she said that she absolutely refused to believe that the world she loved so much in 1000 AD would end up in such an irreversible state.
So, that becomes the new goal of the game. To stop Lavos, and save the world. To prevent Alaska from being baked, so to speak.
It is here that I will stop talking about the plot, because for anyone who hasn't played this game, I don't want to spoil it for you. In fact, I want you guys to at least try this game out if you're into the RPG genre. It's a masterpiece, in my honest opinion. Originally, it was released for the Super Nintendo system on March 11, 1995, but since then it has been ported to the PlayStation console as well as the Nintendo DS. There's lots of opportunities to play this game.
There's also a lot of different endings for this game. There's well over a dozen, if I'm counting correctly. Remember how any actions you perform in the past can change the future? This has an effect on what ending you will receive. See if you can find them all. In my playing experience, I've managed to see four so far (and unfortunately that includes the GAME OVER screen), but I know some of you reading this probably HAVE seen all of them.
Oh, yeah, one final bit...I included a clip of the trio fighting some guy named Magus. You'll encounter him quite a bit. But, is he against you? Or, is he an ally?
Only you can decide that.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
We Interrupt This Across The Pond And Beyond Blog For An Important News Bulletin
Normally, I would just leap in and talk about what today's blog subject is, but before I do, I have a very public announcement to make...more along the lines of a warning.
I think we may be on the verge of a real epidemic in the world of cyberspace.
No computer virus or malware threat could infiltrate as many computers as this phenomenon surging across the globe like a sonic boom.
It started off innocently enough in 2007. At first, only a few people were affected, but over the past four years, a whopping 35 MILLION people have been knocked senseless by this growing threat. Some reacted with absolute frustration, others merely laughed it off. And, some vindictive people, upset that they had become victims, decided to spread it to other unsuspecting people.
Unsuspecting victims had no clue what was to come. Clicking on websites promising the moon and more. Trying to download video clips of that show you missed. Attempting to watch live embarrassing bloopers. Sure. That's what they WANT you to think.
Oh, speaking of which...someone just e-mailed me this video link. You know that show Family Guy? One of my favourite clips on that show was the whole fight between Peter Griffin and that giant oversized chicken. Well, I have some great news! Someone sent me this e-mailed link to me. Apparently, they have word that the season premiere of Family Guy will have an all new fight scene between Peter and the Chicken, and they promised that someone will not get out of it alive!
I haven't watched the video yet...and unfortunately, the video has been dubbed in Korean, but hey...at least it fits the theme day, right? But, I wanted to share this with you before I inadvertedly end up becoming a victim of this plague that seems to be attacking computers left and right.
Ladies and gentlemen...I give you...a preview of the Family Guy Deathmatch...in Korean.
Wait...what th-.
What the hell is this?!?
The video clearly shows a chicken in the previews, but...what the heck is going on at the beginning?
There's no blood.
There's no Chicken.
All I see is the president.
The president dancing with Ellen.
And, singing something...
Oh no.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
Not me too! NOT ME TOO!!!
AUGH!!!!! I'VE BEEN RICKROLLED!!!!!!!!!!!
But, then...so have ALL OF YOU TOO!!!!
But, don't be afraid, you guys. This ties in with the theme for today's actual blog entry, which I like to call...
Across The Pond And Beyond: The Rick Astley Edition
And here's the song that got the ball rolling...
Some stats:
ARTIST: Rick Astley
SONG: Never Gonna Give You Up
ALBUM: Whenever You Need Somebody
DATE RELEASED: July 27, 1987
PEAK POSITION ON BILLBOARD CHARTS: #1 for 1 week
TOTAL VIEWS ON YOUTUBE AS OF JULY '11: 35,923,789 and counting!
That's a lot of Rickrolling for you.
But, what exactly IS Rickrolling? And, how did it start?
As I alluded to, the whole business kicked off in 2007, which appropriately enough was 20 years after the single "Never Gonna Give You Up" (Astley's breakthrough hit) was released. It started up as a simple prank around the beginning of the year. Much like I have done at the beginning of this blog entry, you take a link or a video clip that seemingly seems innocent enough, but too irresistible not to explore. But once you click on it, you are immediately taken to either a clip of 'Never Gonna Give You Up' playing on an endless loop, or the music video itself. By May 2007, the prank had garnered publicity, and on April Fools Day, 2008, YouTube and several other sites made every link on their home page redirect to Rick's video.
It proved to be great fun, and even Rick Astley himself was quite chuffed over the Rickrolling trend. In fact, proving what a good sport he was about it all, let me direct you to a clip of the Macy's 2008 Thanksgiving Day parade. Don't worry...it's not another Rickroll trick...not exactly, anyway.
I think it's pretty cool to see that he's such a good sport about it all. If anything, it may have given his record sales a little bit of a boost...
...or prompted the massive burning of every single copy of 'Whenever You Need Somebody' by a group of radicals who may have been Rickrolled fifty times too many.
Still, though...you have to wonder if Rickrolling is the only legacy that Rick Astley will ever really be known.
Because in my honest opinion, (and I am aware that I could face some ridicule here for admitting this on a public forum by those who are pro-Rickroll, and could possibly be anti-Rick Astley), I think Rick Astley is a very underrated singer.
In fact, I'm going to go on the record to say that there's a hell of a lot more to Rick Astley than what it seems. It involves more than Rickrolling. It involves a young man from England who wanted to have success as a singer, but seemed to hit roadblocks one right after the other.
It seems hard to believe, but why not take a guess as to how old Rick Astley was when he recorded 'Never Gonna Give You Up'? Not released. Recorded. Anyone?
Okay, I'll tell you. Rick Astley was born on February 6, 1966 in England. 'Never Gonna Give You Up' was recorded on New Years Day, 1987.
If I'm doing my math correctly, this means that when Rick recorded that song, he was one month shy of turning TWENTY-ONE!!!
Now, I ask you...do you know any 21 year old males who have such a deep, distinctive voice as Rick Astley? I think not!
It's hard to overlook it though, because for his first two albums, he was under the Stock/Aitken/Waterman production team, which was heavily influenced by synthesizer pop music. It's very easy to lose the impact of the vocals when placed against drum machines and Yamaha keyboards, such as in his 1988 song 'Together Forever'.
Okay, so the lyrics weren't exactly Shakesperian, or even Tori Amos like, and the music video was so bright, you needed those special glasses used to view an eclipse. You can't deny that for someone barely in his twenties, he had one heck of a voice. I'm not afraid to admit it.
Speaking of voices, Rick had a little bit of controversy that was linked to another Stock/Aitken/Waterman prodigy, Kylie Minogue. A crazy rumour began circulating that Rick Astley actually sang Kylie's song 'I Should Be So Lucky', only it was sped up to make it sound like Kylie sang it. I know it sounds completely bizarre, so I wanted to see for myself. First, here's Kylie's original video.
Now, watch what happens when you drop the pitch a few octaves.
Eventually the rumour turned out to be completely false...as it so happened, Kylie Minogue really did sound like Rick Astley when slowed down...but it wasn't exact. Still, you kind of have to wonder what both of them thought of this little rumour.
It seems unfortunate...almost a crime really, that most of Rick's best known songs are fluffy dance hits, when I felt some of his best work was after he left the S/A/W production team. He released two albums after that period, 'Free' in 1991, and 'Body And Soul' in 1993. Both of them were a departure from his pop background, with him moving in towards a more R&B/soul angle. The public weren't as receptive to Rick's new genre, and I find it a shame, because I thought he grew as an artist and his songs afterwards were very powerful and emotional.
In case you think I've lost my mind, I'll post an example. Here's 'Hopelessly' from his 1993 album, which hit #4 on the adult contemporary charts.
Again, some of you might not agree with me, and that's fine, but I really liked this one, as well as most of his later efforts.
He retired from the music scene shortly after this video was released to concentrate on his family at the ripe old age of 27. (On a side note, don't we all wish we could retire at 27? And, people claim he was a one-hit wonder!)
He's done some singing since then, and has released a few songs, but none of them matched the success of his previous records.
Regardless, Rick Astley will probably always be in the public eye for years to come, mostly because of the Rickrolling prank.
But, you know what? I'd like to think that some people out there will remember him for his musical talents, because in my opinion, Rick Astley has what a lot of people currently in the music business seem to be completely lacking.
He actually has the vocal talents to back it up, unlike some others who must rely on an auto-tuner to get through one track on a manufactured pop mess.
I think that should be celebrated, not shunned...no matter who the artist is.
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