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Hello My Children. Your den Mother Colleen is feeling fond and nostalgic. Tonight Syfy was actually playing a genuine Scifi movie: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Now I have a particular fondness for the movie...its my favorite trek film after Wrath of Khan, which any Trekkie will tell you is the BEST Star Trek Film. Its a Time Travel film, where we get to watch the crew of the Enterprise deal with 1980s San Francisco. Its the film where we get to see Spock mind meld with a whale..."Maybe he's singing to that man!" -Thanks sweet little old lady... And most especially, its getting to watch Spock Vulcan Neck Pinch a Punk Rocker after he's flipped the bird. A great movie and a wonderful time capsule to the mid 1980s.

Hey there folks

Around this time, I spend time youtubing old Christmas specials that my mom taped off the tv for me. Many times I have recounted these stories to my friends, who look at me cockeyed when I tell them my favourite Santa movie is the one where 'he is raised in a forest by wood nymphs'.

A lot of holiday specials I really enjoy were Rankin-Bass. Rankin-Bass really had it going on in my childhood. Not only did they produce The Last Unicorn, The Flight of Dragons (a often passed over fantasy flick I plan on writing about in the new year), The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings cartoon, they were heavily involved in the holidays. Not just Christmas mind you, as they also produced one of my favourite Easter cartoons too about a stuffed bunny that became the Easter Rabbit (of course, tying in with their Christmas theme, the stuffed bunny was given as a Christmas present from Santa).

Ranking-Bass made the most well known of the holiday specials. I am sure you have all seen:
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Frost the Snowman

But do you remember these?



Puppet based
The Year Without Santa Claus
One year, Santa is sick with a cold and decides to cancel Christmas because he believes that the children don't care anymore. Mrs. Claus sends two elves, Jingle and Jangle, to a southern US town where it never snows to find out why people have stopped caring about Christmas. This movie is famous for its Miser Brothers, two sons of Mother Nature. Most people were reacquainted with this movie when Mister Freeze forces his henchmen to sing the Snow Miser's song in Batman & Robin. Not exactly one of my favourite specials but it is alright.


Rudolph's Shiny New Year
After Christmas, Father Time sends for Rudolph's help to find the missing new year baby who ahs run off because everyone laughs at his unusually large ears. With a clock soldier and a camel with a clock in its hump named Quarter After Five, Rudolph travels to many different islands looking for Happy, the baby new year (oh the puns kill me). Each island belongs to a Year after he retires. My personal favourite is the island belonging to OM (short for One Million BC) who yes, lives on an island of dinosaurs and sings a delightfully happy song about "raining sunshine" which my mom always started sisnging whenever it started raining with the sun out. The movie is a little dopey but it was one of my favourites. Rudolph was always a personal hero of mine. My mom's theme for Christmas decorations for me was reindeer, specifically Rudolph. When I was in daycare (which was at a nursing home), we had to sing a little Christmas concert for the old folks. I think I was about 4 at the time, and I had terrible stage freight. When we started singing Rudolph, I burst into tears and all the daycare supervisors started pointing at me, indicating that I was "Rudolph". My mom used that reasoning to associate me with the character I guess haha. My brother loved snowmen, so he got a lot of Frosty stuff. Anyways - as I was saying, Shiny New Year was one of my favourites because it's slightly weird and not many people remember it.


The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus
A hands down favourite Santa movie of mine. It starts out with the council of Immortals, who must decide that night whether they will grant Santa Claus the mantle of Immortality. This was a big deal for them, as no mortal had ever been given immortality. The Great Ak, the master woodsman who had a hand in the raising of Santa Claus, tells of his life among the forests, raised by a woodland nymph and a lioness. The baby, Claus, is sent out to live with mortals once he becomes a young man. He is joined by a friend, a sound imp who teaches him all languages of man and beast. He becomes well known for making toys and acts of kindness. Ther eis a lot more to this movie and I do not want to give it away at all! Let's just say it was described as a very dark Christmas movie. The best part is it's a novel of the same name by L Frank Baum - the man who wrote the Oz series. This movie is hard to find because it is not on DVD. Apparently it is now, but I question the quality haha. They tried to do a cartoon remake of the story, without the songs and it was terrible.. terrible!!


The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold
I gotta say, this one is pretty bad. It's like they were trying to make a St Patrick's Day Special but decided that they had to throw Christmas in there somewhere. There is nothing Christmasy about this at all. A Banshee needs to have gold given to her before Christmas or she turns into tears. That's all there is about Christmas in this one. View at your own risk.


Nestor The Long Eared Christmas Donkey
A donkey with unusually long ears is made fun of (running theme for these movies) but finds his purpose as the donkey that carries Mary to Bethlehem. This movie used to make me cry, but it really is a tamer version of Disney's Small One (youtube that one if you want to have a misty-eyed night).



Oh hell, Here's Small One too


Frosty and Rudolph's Christmas in July
I haven't seen this one for awhile, but Frosty and Rudolph help a cowgirl (yeah...) have a Christmas circus/rodeo thing in July. You need to have seen Frosty's Winter Wonderland for the story of his wife in this clip.



Little Drummer Boy
A Drumemr Boy and his band of animals in another sad movie. Drummer Boy goes to the Wise Kings to heal his dying sheep. I haven't seen this one for awhile either.



Cartoons
I guess at one point they got tired of using puppets and claymation and did the animation thing. Which was fine by me!

Frosty's Winter Wonderland
The following winter, the kids miss Frosty. As soon as it is winter time again, he comes back and enjoys playing with them. But at night when the kids go home, Frosty is left alone in the snow. The kids decide to make him a wife. Jack Frost, jealous of Frosty's popualrity, tries to thrwart all their plans. Short and goofy, but Paul Frees is the king of voices as usual. Apparently this one still gets shown on ABC during the 25 days of Christmas.



The Stingiest Man in Town
My absolute favourite version of A Christmas Carol (Muppet's Christmas Carol is a close second. A remake of a live action musical done on the Alcoa Hour. This one has so many great voice actors in it (Tom Bosely, Walker Matthau) and I find the songs really catchy. It's hard to find because I guess a lot of stations don't have the rights to it. The whole thing is uploaded on Youtube and you CAN get it on DVD - it's on a Christmas Classics collection. They won't let me embed this one, so here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykm-nZ6bIoI

Bonus!!

I don't know where this one came from, and it is strange ... I do remember the intro vividly. I don't remember what else happens in this Christmas Special because I can't get myself to part 3.
Candy Claus

Um..That thing that Colleen just said? That.


So my roommates are off Thanksgivinging with their family, and I'm here by my lonesome, watching the MythBusters Marathon(nerdiest of the many available marathons on cable today), and trying to come up with something to write so as to make relatively constructive use of my day.

(I also seem to be developing some weird variation of Dyslexia--I keep having to re-edit what I write and remove improperly placed spaces, and capitalize or uncapitalize letters. It's darned unsettling)

I was going to write a long overdue new entry in my long-running series: A FIELD GUIDE TO COMMON FANFIC AUTHORS. Folks seem to like that. But re-reading the fics that my new entry addresses was too depressing for what is ostensibly a holiday, so I thought I'd instead share with you peoples some music. I'll do the field guide tomorrow--it'll be a nice accent to Abraxas' planned nugget of FF joy.

That's right! The Destroyer himself will be filling the void left by Mr. Bricken's holiday break and bringing us a fic!


Ok, on with the show!

I pulled five of my favorite videos from my Youtube channel for to share with you (those that aren't DEVO, that is--they get their own articles, as you've seen). I'd be quite surprised if many of you were familiar with these songs or even have heard of these bands: That's ok, I'm used to it.

On the other hand, I am playing to an international community here--three of the bands I'll be featuring, though they never amounted to much stateside, were (and for all I know, still are) pretty well-known in England, and another had a respectable following in their native Ireland.


Understand, I'm not writing the bios of these groups here--rather, my intention is to share a bit of the soundtrack of my misspent youth(not that my adulthood is particularly well spent, but I digress)

This is the music I first got into at the age of 12. Now, unless teenagers have changed drastically in 20 years, High School and Junior High kids tend to form cliques around their shared musical tastes: The Metalheads over here, the Rap/Hip-Hop fans over there, The Pop/Top 40 crowd elsewhere, and so forth.

But the time period I'm concerned with (circa 1989-1990) was a transitional phase for Rock music: Punk and New Wave were all but dead as popular movements, and Alternative (which the music I love would eventually be lumped in with, justly or not) had yet to emerge. In between was a short lived movement known alternately as Post Modern or Post Punk, or simply Modern Rock. Often, such music would be described simply by citing where it was most commonly played and called "College Radio".

This was, and to a great extent still is, my music.

Now I don't mean to imply that back then this music didn't have a following, or that such fans were absent from my community. They were there, but I was a hundredfold shyer at this period in my life than I am now, and I never had the nerve to introduce myself to this crowd and share my music with those who could appreciate it. My own circle of friends were either Metalheads,  indifferent to music, or listened to whatever was popular.

I didn't meet people who really shared my musical tastes until after High School--and the few I knew during my school years were much older and outside of school.

I used to hate it when a friendly, well-meaning individual would ask me what I listen to--often I'd try to change the subject as I was so weary of the blank stares I'd get when listing my favorite bands. It got worse in the mid-90s: I could've simply told people I was into Alternative, but that meaningless umbrella term encompassed a great deal of music I found abhorrent--and I had no real interest in explaining how the music I liked was different.

What's the point of this rambling? Music has always been, for me, an intensely personal and solitary pursuit. I just wanted that understood before I presented my selections.

I wanted it known to all what these songs mean to me--They're not simply entertainment, they are dear old friends.

Come with me and meet them, after the jump...


(off-topic note: after several months with no reply from her site, I've decided to post THE CATHEDRAL OF YAYA. If asked to by her I'll certainly take it down, but seeing how I'm not making any kind of profit from posting her images, I really don't think she'd mind--somehow I doubt every site that's posted her pics has gotten her express permission. So feel free to visit and worship Divine Grace made Flesh)




We'll start with "For Love", by British Shoegazing outfit Lush ("Shoegazing" being a term for a short lived subgenre so-called for its extensive use of effects pedals, resulting in guitarists spending a lot of time looking down at their shoes) the only thing more gorgeous than the song are they who sing and perform it:

That's Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson--they look even better in the video (how can a nerd not melt at the sight of a smokin' hot half-Japanese British girl with dyed hair?)






Next is "Sensitize" by the oddly named That Petrol Emotion. This is one of the most upbeat tunes I've ever heard, and a guaranteed mood-lifter.

Here's what an Irish band NOT run by a self-important douche sounds like:




Guadacanal Diary is the only American band I'm featuring today. A relatively unknown group, they were part of a critically accclaimed, if not commercially successful movement of Modern Rock acts from the American South. They hail from Athens, Georgia--a college town known to music buffs as the home of REM and the B-52's. This is probably their most well-known tune--and a really nifty video: "Always Saturday"




This one, "You Keep It All In" by The Beautiful South, another Brit act, was off probably the last cassette tape I ever purchased--1990's "Welcome To The Beautiful South"(though I bought it a decade later on clearance--best quarter I ever spent!). The album, and this song in particular, is catchy as hell and features some of the cleverest and most darkly humourous songwriting I've ever heard.



And finally, one more Anglo outfit: The Primitives with "Secrets". Sort of a poppier, British version of Blondie, The Primitives were a fixture on the UK charts--but never quite made it in the colonies, all they're really remembered for over here is the song "Crash" as it was featured on the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack. This is another of my personal feel-good tunes, and if the song itself wasn't enough to perk up my spirits--gazing upon lead singer Tracy Tracy and sighing certainly helps:



(sigh)

I was born in the wrong country--I so very much should've been British!




Ok, that's about enough for one day--time to go figure out what I'm gonna be eating tonight.

And Remember: 7:00 PM Central Standard Time, Tonight: MST3K Night of the Blood Beast--Turkey Day Edition! Be there! find it at my youtube channel in the Favorites, then come to the blog for chat and commentary.

See ya there

DJ Scoot

Hey,


Guess what readers--You're looking at my first ever truly journalistic piece!

Yep, did an interview, took pictures, the whole deal.



Now before we get to the main event, Old Man Scoot would like to regale you young un's with a tale of Halloween in the 1980s:

Seriously, Those of you who were just recently of trick-or-treat age, or still are--you've got no idea how good you have it as far as retail costume shopping is concerned.

(and if you are still young enough to trick-or-treat, does mommy know what you're doing on the computer? That content warning is there for a reason, kids.)

You guys get costumes made of actual cloth, masks made of real rubber, and not from some specialty shop(I'll get to those later), this is the stuff the local drugstore or Wal-Mart carries.

We had to make do with flame-retardant vinyl smocks and thin plastic half masks with elastic bands that sliced into the back of your head like a straight razor. And if you wore glasses, like me, you were fucked--no way in Hell were you getting one of those lame-ass masks on over them.(80s kids--remember these names? Ben Cooper? Don Post? Collegeville? Imagineering?)

I was lucky, I had a mother with a background in theater who did excellent make-up jobs, so I'd usually go the greasepaint route.

Full head rubber or latex masks certainly existed, but the ones for sale at the department or drug stores where I did my usual Halloween shopping were of poor quality and generally too expensive.

But the kind of costumes available to us 15 years ago is beside the point, what's important is the establishments where we bought them.

Now I can't speak for the rest of the country(or world), but in my neck of the woods there's been a Halloween specialty store in pretty much every shopping mall in the area for at least the last ten years. Sometimes they're even in simple plazas or strip malls.

As a kid who was raised on getting my costumes from(here's some Chicagoland name-dropping)Osco, Walgreens, K-mart, Venture, or even Zayre's(God, I'm old), any one of these Meccas of all things Ghoulish and Creepified would have caused instant death by fatal nerdgasm. My geeky little body just wouldn't be able to withstand such wonderfulness.

But even without specialty stores, and even with the added handicap of growing up in a shithole suburb like Waukegan, the Halloween Gods still managed to bestow their blessings on little Scooter.

Here's how:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you: THE COSTUME SHOP!


For over fifty years this little jewel has been tucked away in a residential area just outside of downtown Waukegan. It is truly in the middle of nowhere, blocks away from any major street or commercial district. I thought it'd be damn near impossible for anyone who is not intimately acquainted with Waukegan to just "happen upon" this marvelous building--but the owner assures me that more than a few people every year find it purely accidentally(I credit this to the aforementioned "Halloween Gods").

I grew up less than three blocks from the Shop, and I'm still amazed that a kid as obsessed with Hallowen as myself didn't start living and breathing this place until I was 11 years old. Granted, they don't carry small children's costumes, so I wouldn't have been able to use any of their wares until--well, about 11 or 12. I guess, then, I really didn't miss anything--but even if I was too small for their costumes and masks,  still would've gone just to gaze in awe at such a place, this cathedral of masquerade, this palace of disguises.

The Costume Shop cemented me as a lifelong customer when one of their wonderful masks won me the school-wide costume contest in 6th grade. I wish I had a pic of this mask, it was just the traditional Grim Reaper-type hooded skull, but it was a masterful, proffessional-grade piece of work--not one of the aforementioned dime-store crap masks.

I can, however, show you the second mask I ever bought from them--I traded it back to them later, so they still had it:



Beautiful, isn't it?

Interesting thing about this mask--it marked the last time in my life I threw a temper tantrum. I was 12, and I'd made some kind of deal with my Dad to get the money for this mask($25). I don't remember the details, but I didn't do or do completely whatever it was I said I'd do, so my Dad said no.

I flew into a screaming rage, ran up to my room and cried and yelled for God knows how long. Not my proudest moment, granted, but Halloween was two days away, and I had no backup plan--no way in Hell was the big day gonna catch me uncostumed!

Long story short(er), My Dad caved, and I got the mask--I think it was worth my twelve year-old dignity.


I also got back from them a piece of my dissolute teen years:





I borrowed that cross from Gary, the former owner whom I'd gotten to know fairly well over the years, it was a prop for a zombie costume. I was 16, me and my best friend had won tickets over the radio to see the Ramones on Halloween. We both went as zombies. I'd go on, but this is a memory that deserves it's own post. Anyway, I bought it from the owner for ten bucks, and I'm delighted to have it.


Right, now for some useful information:

The shop is open year round by appointment, and open to the public throughout October--depending on volume of business. In other words, if it's slow, they may not be open all of October. This year, the weather out here is unseasonably warm and sunny, and for some reason more people come by during this area's traditional cold, wet, and miserable Fall weather. My young self hated this schedule--I wanted the doors open 365 days a year. I would've moved in if they'd have let me.

As well as a large selection of traditional Halloween costumes, they also carry Santa suits for Christmas and Bunny outfits for Easter.

Here's the website, it's got better directions on it than I could give, as well as hours of operation, and more pics of their merchandise.

Here now, are the rest of the photos I took, and a bit of scintillating commentary:




Here's a long shot, to give you all an idea of the size of the shop and a look at the surrounding environs.

According to Audrey, the currrent owner, sometime back in the Cretaceous Period, the original owners once had a custom-made costume shop in downtown Waukegan on Genesee St.(which might mean something if you lived here). This building was an old corner store of some sort,and it so happens that the owners of the original Genesee shop lived right across the street. I assume they bought it so they could work closer to home, which is Audrey's theory as well.





That's Audrey, the owner(I forgot to ask her last name--I'm one hell of an investigative journalist, huh?)

She bought the place from Gary, the aforementioned previous owner back in 1996. She's very cool and was nice enough to humor me long enough to take these pictures and ask some questions. Come visit her if you're ever unfortunate enough to find yourself in Waukegan.




A couple friends I made during the interview. The Tiki God rocks!






These folks are the main mask rack, sorry about the quality, the sun was coming right through the window there--should've waited til dusk.

Notables:  Predator, Hilary, Freddy, Joker's clown mask from Dark Knight.




This is a photo of a photo, which is why the quality is for crap. It's from the shop's little hall-of-fame corkboard, and it depicts Gizmo and Stripe, ready for a night on the town. The Costume Shop is excellent at coming up with creative ways to use a mask.





Some racks of costumes--that's pretty much all there is to say about this.





Pac-Man and a Clone Trooper. This article's Minimum Daily Allowance of nerd content.






A glass case. Featured:  Another Clone Trooper, Lady Liberty, Yoda, and Gizmo sans evening wear.




Well, that should do it for this visit from the Ghost of Halloween Past.

The Costume Shop is at 643 Center St. Waukegan, IL 60085

The Main Line is (847) 344-9600

The Shop Line is (847) 336-2299

And, once again, the website is: http://www.the-costume-shop.net/



Night of the Living Scoot

Hello Peoples!



I got two blogworthies to yammer on about today, so I decided to consolidate:


Friday night I was away from the safe, warm womb of Cyberspace and had to spend most of the day in the cold, lonely wasteland that is "real life".

Some friends asked me to babysit, and as I have no real obligations to prevent me, and I could really use the $20, I happily accepted. I would've done it for free--they're good people and their kids are no trouble. Basically I got paid to watch movies and make sure the house didn't get swallowed up by the Earth while my friends were out.

Not a bad deal.

I ended up watching two of the most iconic films of 1980s Nerdery: Tron, and The Princess Bride. But since it isn't the 80s anymore, I saw more than just the movies.

See, I'm a Special Features buff. Commentaries, making-of documentaries, blooper reels, interviews, deleted scenes, alternate endings--I eat that shit up.

The 20th anniversary edition of Tron that came out in 2002 has some great stuff--you get not only a crash course in how one of the most influential technical achievements in cinematic history came to be, but you get to sit and gape in total awe at how far CGI has come in the last two decades.

But as awesome as Tron's bonus goodies are, they're not what really got to me that night.

Naturally, I've seen The Princess Bride a few hundred times or so--It's brilliant, hilarious, magnificently nerdy, and the most quotable movie not made by Monty Python or Quentin Tarantino, but I'd never seen the Special Features:

I only watched the interviews--it was getting late and I still wanted to have time to watch the movie. The actors featured were Mandy Patinkin, Robin Wright Penn(who's aged beautifully), Fred Savage and Chrises Guest and Sarandon.

After a bit of random reminiscing they shared their memories of Andre The Giant:

In accordance with everything I've heard about the man, the actors were of one mind concerning the late wrestler--specifically, that he was one of the kindest and most charming individuals any of them have ever known.

Mandy Patinkin shared a lovely anecdote about working with the big man:

It concerned the "Cliffs of Insanity" scene, which was filmed at the Cliffs of Dover in England, and actually involved the actors being pulled up a cliff on a winch.

Wallace Shawn(Vizzini)was more than a little concerned about this scene--for the diminutive actor suffers from extreme acrophobia. But even more than the actual act of being pulled up such a high cliff, Shawn feared that his phobia might ruin the film--such was his terror that he was convinced that he'd freak out and blow the scene.

Andre saw how nervous and fearful Shawn was. In response, he reached down with one of his dinner plate sized hands and patted the little man on the head like a child saying: "Don't worry--I'll take care of you" (Patinkin does a spot-on Andre The Giant impression--try to imagine his voice as you read this)

I couldn't help tearing up at that--regular visitors probably know I'm a sentimental bastard, and that was just too much for me. There just aren't enough stories out there of simple, heartfelt kindness in Hollywood. I'm not talking about big charitable gestures or impressive humanitarian acts--just basic, honest sweetness. Why do we lose people like this so quickly and easily?


I'm gonna give everyone a minute after that, seriously, take a moment--get yourself together. I'll wait. You don't wanna get into what's next while you're all melancholy.





So the new season of quite possibly the nerdiest hour of programming in history--Mythbusters, just started. And as much as I love the show for it's pure unadulterated, geeky goodness, one aspect of the show's appeal managed, amazingly, to slip my mind:





Kari Byron--KARI GODDAMN BYRON!!!


I'm so very, very, embarrassed. See, since starting this blog I've endeavored to offer my readers the nerdiest of eye-candy. I'm not just a pig, folks--I could have decorated my blog with Sports Illustrated Swimsuit models or Playboy centerfolds, but I choose to celebrate Nerdity as well as Beauty in my little corner of cyberspace.

Up 'til now I thought I'd done a good job--but how I managed to let the lovely Ms. Byron slip by unnoticed is beyond all comprehension.

How in Krom's name did I manage to...Y'know what, forget the bullshit--just three words: Hot. Geeky. Redhead.

HOT!

GEEKY!

REDHEAD!

Who doesn't love Hot, Geeky Redheads? SOHB even has one on Staff.
So here's a few pics to make up for my laxity, one or two will eventually be going up on the sidebar, but for now--enjoy them all:

Allo,

Since it's come to my attention that a few of my regulars have an affection for this show, I thought I'd dust off one of my very first SOHB articles for your education and amusement

(plus, it gets me out of having to write a new article! just like when sitcoms do clip shows!)

Side Note: The new page dubbed My Happy Place is nothing like The Meditation Chamber or The Serenity Parlor. I always go over and read the comments left here when I'm not around--which makes me feel half like an omniscient overseer, and half like a depraved peeper. This time, though, I found a comment directed to me was so wonderful I made it into its own page. Tht way, I can look at it whenever life starts to get me down(I'm also having it carved into my tombstone)

Enjoy the memories,

Rootin' Tootin' Scoot














Much to my surprise I find myself spending a great deal of time on YouTube. Not that I've become an aficionado of farting zoo animals or fat guys rocking out to Romanian boy bands. For me, YouTube has become a digital time capsule chock full of treasured mementos from simpler times. Forgotten music videos, vintage commercials, and old stand-up clips all adorn my Channel (see link at bottom of page). So when I decided to excavate some precious relics from my childhood TV schedule, You Can't Do That On Television was the first treasure unearthed.


Not to alienate anyone, but those of you who did not grow up watching smartass Canadian kids get coated in viscous green glory simply can't understand what this show meant to my generation. It wasn't merely a television program, it was a rallying cry, a flag of anarchic defiance. Finally, if only for a mere 30 minutes a day, we could enjoy a kids show that wasn't trying to:
A. Sell us crappy action figures
B. Teach us how to conjugate verbs, or
C. Explain the difference between "Good Touch" and "Bad Touch"

YCDTOTV was pure, unfiltered, entertainment. No educational content, no hidden morals or messages, no safety tips or sales pitches...no redeeming social, ethical, or didactic value whatsoever. Obviously, we loved it with a passion that could not, barring the onset of puberty, be denied.

Oh, and just in case all that wasn't enough for us to swear our undying devotion--OUR PARENTS DESPISED IT! I mean come on, we had no choice but to adore this show now. Once the parents, teachers, and various other humorless authority figures voiced their displeasure, (with a vehemence that would not be matched until the rise of Beavis And Butt-Head) the deal was sealed. Parents never seem to learn that their hatred may as well be a shining golden stamp saying CERTIFIED 100% AWESOME.


Of course, one might think, "How could adults not revile such a program?" After all, every character on the show over the age of 18 (Christine McGlade notwithstanding) was universally portrayed as inept, inconsiderate, amoral, unprincipled, unjust, callous, cruel, and despicable. But this in itself was nothing new. Children's programming has a long tradition of unpleasantly caricaturing authority figures--it's a staple of cartoons, for example.

Was it the vaunted excessive bathroom humor that caught the ire of the adults, then? Unlikely. Again, it had been done before, perhaps not to the same extent, but YCDTOTV certainly didn't invent fart jokes.

I'd wager that what truly provoked the nation's educators and caregivers is what a show with, as I said, no educational value was actually teaching their children. It taught them something each and every one of them already knew, but none of the shows directed to them had the nerve to say, that is, BEING A KID SUCKS OUT LOUD! 

Most adults have a rather selective memory of their childhoods, and think of them as much more pleasant than they actually were. Even I, who still maintain a vivid memory of an absolutely miserable youth, would go back to being 11 in half a second given the chance. These adults create children's programming based on this rose-tinted memory--shows full of happy, attractive, precocious youngsters who always find a way to overcome any obstacle, who never despair, who inhabit a universe where the sky is always blue, the sun is always shining, and the good guys always win. In other words, a universe which practically no child in the real world can relate to.

In contrast to this picture-perfect vision, the world of YCDTOTV is stressfull, unfair, occasionally bleak, and often cruel. Children here are reminded constantly that they have no rights, no autonomy, no recourse, no independence, and no voice. Adults here make it clear that because they are bigger, stronger, older, "wiser", smarter, and more experienced, they are thus in charge and are free to run things as they see fit.

But the show's not about lamenting the unfairness of an adult-run world, it's about surviving it. It said to us, the viewers: "We know. We understand. It's miserable and unfair and depressing, but you're not alone, if we can make it through this insane world, so can you!" Unfortunately, a certain segment of the adult population would rather force children to conform to their fantasy storybook idea of childhood than see them question authority or face harsh realities, and that, I believe, was the impetus behind the negative campaign against this marvelous show.