Whoops, I’m Crying

I just had the frustrating experience of seeing that someone’d hosted a “favorite cartoon theme song” poll and that all the voters had failed epically. ::points to the door, eyes closed:: GET. OUT.

So, seeing as this is the most recent display of wickedness witnessed, I knew what I had to do. I had to correctly identify the best ones. Part of the problem, I think is buttoning down the era. I’m 29 and when I say childhood, I mean MY childhood, not my 25yo brother’s. Yes, four years makes a difference in cartoon-ville. If you take the late 80s out or go as far as mid 90s, you’ve ruined it.

Without further ado, the top five (because three is just stupid):

(5) Darkwing Duck

This one secures its rightful place for two reasons. (1) In 1991, everything had to be funk-ay! If you couldn’t do the running man to it, was it really cool? Ask yourselves that question, friends. This might even be classified with early hip hop. ::ducks:: (2) The super hardcore “Let’s get dangerous” is said BY the duck, WITH the slight lisp. ::shakes head:: Awesome.

(4) Gummi Bears

This one? Seriously, this was an era where jingle singers took their jobs *deathly* seriously. Was one vocalist enough? NO. Hit those harmonies! I mean, does he take it up or does he take it UP? Now let’s take it down a notch and let those synthesized instruments carry us. Now bring it home, guys!

(3) Ducktales

Aaand my husband and I sing this on something of a regular basis. It’s pretty nectar. (“Did you just make that up?” – “It’s a volleyball term.”) NOT PONY TAILS OR COTTON TAILS, NO DUCK TALES!

(2) Jem

As you can tell, we’re getting to the good stuff here. Pretty sure they need to play this on the radio. I’m still singing songs from this show and from the cassette tape that came with my sister’s Misfit doll. Man. I can’t even pretend. This. Was. Our. Jam. Couple of years ago, I started watching this show from the beginning? Man. WHY was I not doing it ironically. (Because it rocked.)

(1) David the Gnome

“It was an act….of whiiiimsy.” No, for real. I might cry. All ridiculousness and half-joking aside. ::straight face:: This is the most magical, beautiful, wonderful thing ever. In every wish… and dream… and happy home, you’ll find the kingdom of the gnomes. DO YOU HEAR THAT? That is PRECIOUS! (Um…Christopher Plummer narrated. So.) O_O

 

::sniffle:: I’m glad we did this.

 

Thank Heaven For Little Girls

I must learn to enjoy even what cannot be shared. Amazing, poignant, illuminating moments that words cannot translate. I think this must be more of a problem, not because I’m a writer, but because I’m a documenter, a historian in the loosest sense of the word. I think it’s that part of me that’s most tied to having an audience. I document for the people I love or will love, so how can I be satisfied with the inarticulate-able?

Having said all that…I shall now attempt to record an account of what transpired yesterday.

Maybe it had to do with the Indian girls named Unwanted. I don’t think so and it wasn’t on my mind, but I won’t pretend to know exactly what my mind is up to. (And not just because that would disregard 99% of the basis for psychology and sociology.) Anyway, I’d been writing in my wip and suddenly decided I wanted to know the title, which hadn’t come to me yet. I started with looking up famous quotes (and not so famous) about memory. (It’s relevant.) By the time I got distracted and turned my attention elsewhere, I had some lovely half-phrases that would make an effective title – just not mine. Anyway, eventually I was attempting to go to bed.

I just remember saying to Josh, “I almost want to call it Keepsake.”

Keepsake is the only thing I ever remember my godfather calling me. I remember walking up the aisle to greet him after attending a service at his church and he would hug me to his side and say, “Hi, Keepsake.” He died before I became an adult and no one has called me Keepsake since. Which part of me appreciates. But the other part misses it.

I guess my mind applied it to the news story after the fact because when I read it, I was heartbroken. Maybe more honestly, I was stunned and sort of incredulous. As in I don’t understand how that is possible. I can’t speak for my siblings, but I think our parents made it clear that we were individual to them. I remember in the computer room there was a poem hanging that my mom wrote after giving birth to my sister, Anastasia. My sister, Jen-the-twin, has always been Bubble to my dad. We didn’t run together, let alone feel unwanted. The disparity between a girl being literally named Unwanted and my godfather replacing my name with one that meant I was treasured is too great.

Can you imagine their socialization experience? Being called that? If we can pretend the disdain ends with the name, which the article makes clear is not the case. (Little girls die from NEGLECT?!) I never remember thinking, “When he calls me Keepsake, it means I am treasured, that I am something to be set apart.” But I never thought, “I’m not.” And I never thought it had to do with appearances, thank God. Because when in high school, I was pretty much alone with my dad and no one thought things like, “Hey, she’d probably like to go to the salon”, I might have questioned whether I still was. It made no mention of achievements, either. He just meant me.

And of course I never got to tell him that I think he is a huge part of who I am. Even though I’ve only just started thinking about it as an adult and without discrediting the household I actually grew up in, that one word seems to have made a huge and lasting impression, subconsciously or otherwise.

Now I have a title and more than that. A lot of people believe, I’m sure, that writers are constantly funneling their own lives into their work. I guess on the most molecular level I could agree – once again, I can’t know what my mind is doing all the time – but only insofar as we all agree on Locard’s Exchange Principle. (I’m gonna assume we’re all forensic technology nuts.) But this is the first time that I am using something that is a big part of me, and in a deliberate homage. And I’m really excited about it.

 

 

It’s The Celebration of my Prodigious Birth

“Here you are, Nelson!” (And of course I can’t find the clip of Martin passing out birthday invitations when I SO need it!)

Happy Birthday, me!

Bye.

 

Movies I Loved As A Kid

Labyrinth, Willow, Neverending Story, Neverending Story 2, Return to Oz, The Secret of NIMH, Beauty and the Beast (not talking about the cartoon, btw), Flight of the Navigator, The Boy Who Could Fly, Starman (which of course we then watched as a television series and loved), Not Quite Human, Dream A Little Dream…

Seriously, you guys. Recalling my favorite 80s pastimes? Science fiction. was. king. At the least, fantasy elements made even what on the surface appeared contemporary enchanting. And yet SHOCKINGLY development was woefully absent in SEVERAL of my favorites, I’m realizing. Plot and characterization were debatable or incomplete. The money was almost always on concept.  Which is surprising seeing as (almost) everything was based on a book. The Secret of NIMH was particularly depressing in its unfinished-story-ness. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the animation of the 80s and I suppose I always will since it was my childhood brand. I take old school animation so much more seriously, despite the apparent flaws in story construction. There was still more going on, the plot was never thin….just…not quite resolved? What I mean is the story elements were intriguing whether or not they went the distance as far as logic flow. (NIMH is a prime example. So much to love there, despite the unsatisfying anticlimatic resolution and lack of explanation.) Or maybe I’m just prejudiced? Maybe I’m becoming the delusional aging belle.

This strikes me – what I could love despite ridiculousness – because it is *not* how I experience novels. Films I experience to be convinced, whether intellectually OR emotionally. It doesn’t have to be both. And literature, yeah no. You make sense or you get put down, my friend. I will never claim to love a book like that because I would never *finish* a book like that.

Which reminds me. Logan’s Run. AWESOME concept, awesome dystopian elements (Caroussel! Sandmen!) Zero explanation of the world, zero explanation of who was in charge, calling the shots, programming the central computer or the inexplicable-wheelie-robot on the way to the sanctuary that didn’t exist. What HAPPENED? HOW did no one related to the film production go, “Oh, wait, this makes none of the sense.” And yet, like all the others, it totally makes you wanna read the book because you just know it’s gotta be amazing sci-fi that just got bare-boned on its way to film.

Invaders From Mars

I can’t figure out if this is a kid’s horror film or if they seriously thought this would appeal to everyone. Oh 80s. You’re so difficult to understand!

I’m afraid to rewatch the ones I was honestly obsessed over. I remember there being depth and complexity (::cough::SecretOfNIMH::cough::). I remember being so emotionally gratified. I know it can’t all be a lie, but LORD. The ones that sucked (not the experience but seeing all the failings) truly suck.

What I love (or maybe the explanation for my lifelong love of it) is the fact that even the stuff meant for kids was allowed to be dark and eerie and all around awesome, whether literally or thematically. You know, like children in danger. O_O Even when they claim it’s comedy, there’s something dark about it. (Dream A Little Dream, Heathers) Yeah, whiny angst seemed to peak in the 80s,too…spunky girls were a dime a dozen and they all seemed to have the same intonations and strange dialogue tags…but aside from the funky dialogue. Yeah.

Abyss, Cocoon. Sorry, they had to be mentioned and I LURVE them. But I shall go before I just start making a list of everything I ever watched ever.

 

Fair or Unfair? UNFAIR!

(Re title: remember that tv show?! Same host as Double Dare.)

Time moves on and you can’t fake it.

My soon-to-be seven-year-old is done with his homework. This means he immediately drops to the floor where his dinosaurs and wild animals are waiting. In less than a half a minute, he is whispering non-stop. As an adult, I want to say “whispering non-stop to himself” but the cool thing about being his age – his age in particular because he has yet to develop his internal voice and therefore says everything out loud at some decibel – is that he’s totally not talking to himself.

He is the dinosaur currently riding the tiger whose head was clearly designed to go on a panda but craftily painted with stripes and sent to the wild cat section instead. He is talking to the soon-to-be-felled rhino or the triceratops. Sure, he’s doing both sides of the conversation plus action sounds as he rolls from his stomach onto his side, but that’s not what’s holding my attention.

I’m a creative person, right? I write new(ish) worlds and grow characters and relationships therein. So why can I not get lost in the battles of my son’s dinosaur/wild cat/occasional lego humanoid fantasy? I can be creative in my head or aloud, in a scripted role. I cannot be amused by whispering “pew” sounds intermixed with short, punchy dialogue. (I know. I’ve tried.) Even if I play along with him, I get bored pretty quickly. It’s lame.

So, for my next prayer request, I want 24 hours without my interior voice. I’m sure there are other aspects of childhood development that come into play here, so this may be a royal disaster and I may just suffer a series of comically tragic interactions with authority figures who mistake my new situation for evidence of sociopathy…but that’s a chance (I think) I’m willing to take. I want to play with dinosaurs, darn it.

 

THE BIG REVEALZ!

But not yet. (This is called building suspense.)

So speaking of PC games – they’re basically all I play (except I love Dr. Mario and I used to love Mario Kart). So my husband bought me a CSI game last week.

Me no likey.

Not sure why I would hate the television show and then want to play the PC game. Have I also mentioned that I own and have played (and replayed) all three Law and Order games and the Criminal Intent game? Okay, the CI game I didn’t finish replaying, I’ll admit. A few reasons. But FIRST. This is NOT a criticism. I love everything Law and Order does (other than liberally apply their heavy hand of bleeding heart liberalism to Olivia’s character especially and also being totally ridiculous when it comes to portraying EVERY Christian as the inevitable perp or at least having some horrible scandal. Grow up.)

Wait, where were we. So the things about the CI game. I am NOT saying that Vincent phoned it in for his character’s voice. But he may have recorded it while lying on his back. Seconds after waking. Or having been administered a Quaalude. And on top of that, his character does this bad posture slothful glide for some reason, which only adds to the whole blah-zay of it all. Which is NOT to call it blah! I’m just saying, one *could* ask what the hell. But not me. >.>  <.< And the cases themselves are pretty fun, though one might say it’s really about busy work and puzzle solving – but I mean this isn’t Ender’s Game. The trajectory of the game can’t really honestly be determined by or personalized to the player. Can it?  There’s also one instance in the game where there is no way (as far as I could tell after playing three L&O games previously) I could have known what the next move required/what resource was suddenly and inexplicably available – and had to go to a forum.

So, long story short. Hubby bought CSI game. Had him return it. #Nothankyou #Iamloyal

So REVEALZ.

And guess what that wheeled robot is all about?! The game over which I was obsessed yesterday (and in yesteryear)!! And yep. You really can’t go home again. Graphics were bright like I remembered….and also not JAMAZING and smooth like I remembered.

So the backwards cap is a forward cap. The backpack is a camera. The mansion is a school (which I totally remember because he passes the library, the principal’s office, etc but come on – it’s totally a mansion). The big wheel mechanism only applies to 1 of the 5 robots. The paint gimmick relates to the plot AND the mechanics of one of the robot. It came out in 1989, not the 90s. (Though they did repackage it in 1995, I can tell by the box art that we had the original.) Aaaaand the husband found it by doing that needle in a haystack search he suggested I do. Well. Technically, he found it after googling something like “90s pc game robots with paint”.

And what game could possibly entertain both a 7 year old and a 14 year old?! Right. But I think you can see the trend in the kind of games my father bought us.

#win

 

What Do Tigers Dream Of…

If you’re anything like me, you have vivid images from the past imprinted on your brain and trying to derive enough clues to create a fruitful Google search drives you to the brink of insanity. You all remember when I finally figured out that daggone Robots game. Or finally finding images for Where In TIME Is Carmen Sandiego – which isn’t really the same because I knew what it was called, just couldn’t find images to share. Which reminds me: my memory of the smoothness and general appeal of the graphics may be just as false with regard to this next bygone PC game.

So today I tried again. There’s this recurring… reoccurring… I’m sorry, are both of those words?? …. playback in my head. I used to play this game – possibly educational – wherein a teen boy (possibly with backwards cap but definitely 90s) follows/hunts/chases robots around this mansion. They all roll on one big wheel and there’s …. something with paint? And the point of the game is… something about…. something. Or other. And I remember it being all bright and flashy and pretty and floppy disk newness but I could be wrong and it could be early CD-ROM and also it could be just as ridiculous as Carmen Sandiego, but I don’t think so. HELP.

For the last time, Google - it is NOT Luigi's Mansion

I have just spent way too much time typing in variations of “[floppy disk] [cd-rom] [90s] pc game where kid [with backwards hat] [with backpack] follows [hunts] [chases] robots [on wheels] around mansion”. No luck. NO LUCK. Now my husband wants me to write “90s pc games for kids”….because the only better than finding nothing is finding a ridiculously enormous haystack through which I could riffle without even knowing the NAME.

Seriously help.

Srsly.

 

Fah – A Long, Long Way To Run

So my tiny big twin sister who is two years my senior blogged today about seven random Her-facts. (Click it up, yo.) And I thought, I shall respond blog! So this may be about me, may be about JenJen…we’ll see. (But really, it’ll make more sense if you read her post first.)

(1) She sat on her pet chincilla (by accident). I of course remember this because I got a phone call from a despairing JenJen about the sound that was haunting her. But moreso, I remember the time Breakfast (a freak cat she and her hubby decided to adopt for the sake of their saner, pedigree cat – which lemme just digress and say don’t get a pedigree cat and then a pound cat and not expect hilarity) pooped down her shoulder. THAT phone call was a whole nother ballgame but I may have laughed. Out of holy carp how does that *happen*?!

(2) Oh, JenJen. Your fear of the dark and my love of falling asleep in pitch blackness is the only thing that could have made us incompatible roommates. Of course, we just shared a bed sometimes so. That took care of that.

(3) I still think it’s weird that you drive. Oh and I drove illegally my entire senior year of high school. I got my license when I was like 20?

(4) Man, that woman made the years come alive  with freshness. O_O Sadly, my only comparable story is about two eighth grade boys with Asperger’s. Think of Laurel and Hardy in terms of disparate appearance, add a healthy serving of Of Mice and Men, and add me as a repeat substitute teacher. The skinny, shorter one was the “thinker”; the huge, tall one was not. They were not friends. But the shorter one had this problem where he’d inject himself into any and all communications happening throughout the classroom. The taller one I’d had several times before and other than having to make clear his boundaries in terms of tact and personal space, he was manageable. Until the shorter one decided to champion the taller one’s human rights. I kid you not, he stood up and started yelling to the taller one that he was being disrespected and that everyone was out to get him and that this would not stand and he would not sit idly by while the taller one was “railroaded”. Needless to say, my face looked a little something like this:

Man, that picture never gets old.

So, unfortunately, the taller one decided that with the support of his short defender, he now had the courage needed to confront the world. He threatened my life and ran out of the classroom. He showed up in the front office, threatened to break the necks of about three women and then went home to “get a gun”. So. Needless to say, the school went on lockdown and the authorities were called. When the principle asked what he could do to make me feel safe enough to return as their constant substitute, I kindly explained the ridiculousness of a public school being put in charge of children with diagnosed personality disorders who have acted out violently in the past and told him not to wait up.

(5) Yeees, the double jointed shoulder thing. Oh how I used to love to swing my arms backwards over my head with my fingers laced. Recently I began to wonder if that ability had anything to do with the multiple times my arms fell out of the socket in early primary school. I remember being at Liberty Towers which means it was 3rd grade or before, sitting on the floor watching a movie while resting on the palms of my hands. And I remember the most excruciating pain suddenly setting my shoulders on fire before I fell backward and had no control over my arms. I just laid there crying until the teacher came and picked me up. The next thing I remember was being laid up on the couch in my living room, still crying and aching. That would not be the last time. Good times.

(6) I used to love to record myself singing.

I refuse to elaborate.

(7) Let me just say… “Why you tippin’ in here?”

 

 

Where. In The World Is. Carmen Sandiego.

My sisters and I were normal kids. Whatever. I don’t know if that’s true or not. And I just realized that I’ve already mentioned one of our …eccentricities in this post from ’09. I’ll tell you anyway because you’re not the boss of me.

I’m not sure what exactly prompted this recollection, but I do remember how often we did it. My dad had not only the published stage play of A Raisin In The Sun, but he also inexplicably had several printed copies of the script. Come to think of it, I should totally ask him what was up with that… Anyway, so like I’ve told you before, my siblings and I liked to perform things. And it always came back to Raisin. Of course, the only real question was who got to be Walter Lee. Because he got to say “Damn all the eggs that ever was” pretty early on in the first scene. I think that’s probably why we “performed” it so many times. Everybody wanted to be Walter Lee. As far as we remember, we all played it Danny Glover style since back then we were just imitating other peoples’ performances.

The thing I actually have to ask my parents. Did they think we were normal? Like, seriously. We were really rather young. This didn’t seem … alarming? Like, hey, my kids might have social disorders that will later preclude them from interacting normally and functioning in this increasingly interpersonal society of ours. Questions for Thanksgiving. (Hah. If my family did huge Thanksgiving dinners like in the movies.)

Second thing. Carmen Sandiego. I’m pretty sure I mentioned how my sisters and I had Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego for our PC. We played it so often – and were such [insert word here] – that we had a binder complete with country profiles (which we made over the course of playing the game, bien sur) so that we solved every game in record time once that binder was done. BUT. There was another game – my game. Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego. And I just remember it being SO amazing looking, graphics wise and so interesting. When you start, you’re in the precinct and you can get yourself a cup of coffee (squee!) which about half of the time falls over on its side in the dispenser and then your character either says or the text just appears: Butterfingers!

ZING!

Anyway, what I remember most about this game is my sisters never wanted to play it with me. (Did I mention we used to play WITW together in the computer room. Meaning whomever wasn’t at the keyboard was manning the binder.) Why? Because it seemed impossible to beat. I’m pretty sure there was a timer. I remember winning once or twice, but it was impossible to record data in our new binder because of the clock issue!

Yep. Those were the graphics over which I salivated. And remember that whole beginning of game being in the precinct? LOOK!

I mean, I was only a child. How was I supposed to reSIST.

Supposedly I can play this on console classix….le sigh. Someday.

 

Whoops, I Already Read That

Okay, aside from the fact that Toni Morrison is on there mul-ti-ple times before the list makes it to 30, I thought I’d just list the ones I read as a child. (Spoiler: I don’t keep to that very well.) Several people are blogging a review of the singular book that really affected them as a young reader, but I’d rather just list the ones I loved.

Bridge to Terabithia – Oh, this book made me cry! I just remember the rope swing. When I went to college at UC Santa Cruz and walked from Media Theater through the woods beside College Eight and leading to Oakes College, I always, always thought about that book.

Summer of My German Soldier – My Anton made the list?! Gawd, I loved this book!

Blubber – I always felt scandalous when I read Judy Blume.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry – This may have been the first title I loved. Like, the actual title. It’s poetry. And I can’t even remember the book. I just remember that I once loved it.

(Okay, at this point, I think they mean to list every ToMo book in print….)

The Handmaid’s Tale - Which I didn’t read until high school but I’ve read more than five times.

A Wrinkle In Time – LOVED. LOVED. this book.

Okay, and if this list is for 2000 – 2009, than IB English 4 must’ve gotten a weird rush from having us read multiple banned or challenged books. Although instead of Brave New World, we just read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin… Oh, and of course we read Slaughter-House Five – after which I read Cat’s Cradle, Slapstick…buying pretty much every Vonnegut I found. I must have liked something about him, though I can’t recall what. I think I liked his voice moreso than anything else.

The subject matter in a few of those books was heavy, substantially difficult. That’s what I liked to read. Diary of Anne Frank. Accounts of young girls who had difficult lives. I remember reading Summer of My German Soldier and being so tense. If I’d have discovered Toni Morrison at 11, I would have been a disturbing little girl – as it was, I only kept my brooding to myself (as far as I can remember). I felt like no one thought the way I did. Probably because at least once I was called morbid by a schoolmate. The point is morbid girls wanna read, too. I would have DIED over The Bluest Eye if I’d read it as a younger girl. Especially with my social experience being the token Black girl at school unless my sisters were still attending the private school I happened to be attending that year. I just can’t decide if reading it then would have been good or not.

I wonder why books like Where The Red Fern Grows and Summer of the Monkeys aren’t on here. I went through a hunter boy in the Ozarks stage in sixth grade. And then I moved on to Hatchet. Back when MG with a singular male protagonist was apparently quite easy to find. To balance it out, of course, I read every Christopher Pike YA.

<Go, go gadget abrupt-ending>