Post by angilasman on Jun 22, 2011 11:03:57 GMT -5
I've broken up my list into two parts of which this is the first.
I tried to take it seriously enought and trace my obsessions back to when to when I was a little kid (once a nerd...), so this part covers my pop culture obsessions up to about age 15.
Winnie the Pooh
Perhaps my first pop culture obsession. As a wee tike I loved Disney’s Pooh, which was currently featured in an animated television series as well as the widely available on video original shorts (I know the public library as well as any video store would have them). I also had several of A.A. Milne’s original stories which my mother would read to me – though it wasn’t until recently that I took the initiative to read all of Milne’s Pooh oeuvre, and it’s pretty great.
Dr. Seuss
As I said, my mother read to me religiously as a child, hoping to instill in me a love of the written word. Dr. Seuss was the writer (and oh so brilliant illustrator) who made me want to read on my own, and I did. The man was clearly a genius and we’ll never see his like again (no matter how many damn books they release trying to ape his style).
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
It was the early ‘90s. What else in there to say? The old cartoon was basically just a commercial for toys (and not terribly good) and I had dozens and dozens of those colorful characters in plastic form, complete with a TMNT carrying case. I actually didn’t watch the old cartoon very much (as I said, not terribly good), but I was positively obsessed with the original, live action film. I would watch the movie every day, day after day. Somehow the tape held up even while the box it was encased in disintegrated. The film still holds up, largely due to the fact it’s a close adaptation of the original indie comics and not the media fad based of it.
Godzilla/Ishiro Honda Sci-Fi
I was three (almost four) years old and walked into my cousins’ house while they were watching a movie. It was called King Kong vs. Godzilla. I was already invested in Kong because we had the original film on tape, but who was this new, saurian monster? I was in love. Being a fan as a kid probably takes more effort than a rational adult, especially in an age before the internet (of which I’m probably the last generation not to have had during my childhood). Case in point: dragging my Dad to every toy store in search of a Godzilla toy. I simply knew that one must exist; ignorant I was to the fact that just because you want something doesn’t mean it’s available. Eventually we stumbled onto a box of plastic Godzilla’s produced in the mid-‘80s and it was like my holy grail.
In between video rentals and television airings (TNT had Godzilla in heavy rotation those days) I saw every one of the original films sans the then “lost” in the US Godzilla Raids Again and Destroy All Monsters. I also saw other flicks from the same canon, including Rodan, King Kong Escapes, and Mothra. Now I know of the factors linking these films: Toho Studios, director Ishiro Honda, and FX man Eiji Tsuburaya. As an adult I’ve collected and seen a whole lot of Japanese giant monster flicks (as well as amassed a fair share of toys), but despite the recent Godzilla films of the ‘90s and ‘00s as well as the now readily available (thanks to the internet and niche DVD) giant Japanese monster flicks from other studios and talent pools none of them can match the creativity, liveliness, and fun (and dare I say humanist philosophy?) of the great ‘50s and ‘60s Toho flicks directed mainly by Ishiro Honda.
Looney Tunes/Popeye/Tex Avery/’90s Cartoon Network in general
Before me kids had to wait for Cartoons on either Saturday mornings or weekday afternoon syndication blocks, but I got a channel that excluded the fluff and left only the most important part of the television experience: cartoons. They played mostly Hanna Barbara stuff, which I watched the hell out of – but what really interested me, and what continues to wow me nowadays are the Looney Tunes, the MGM cartoons of Tex Avery, and the Fleischer Studios produced Popeye shorts. These cartoons were aired in various blocks (the old Popeye’s were a fixture of a block called Late Night Black and White, a program aimed towards older cartoon aficionados that I was transfixed by). Cartoon Network didn’t have the rights to air the Looney Tunes produced after 1948 for the first few years, which means that while it took me a while to see absolute classics like What’s Opera Doc I was more greatly exposed to the rougher, grittier Looney Tunes of the ‘40s where Bugs and Daffy were more like anti-heroes than the more safe characters they became.
In the late ‘90s and early ‘00s Cartoon Network aired some great original programming like Dexter’s Lab, and aired Japanese animation on weekday afternoons – giving a great reason to hurry home from school, but by the middle of last decade they entered a bit of a creative slump. They had ceased airing classic cartoons and their original programs weren’t up to snuff, but recently I’ve found myself watching the network again thanks to a creative renaissance spurred by new shows like Adventure Time and Regular Show.
Star Wars
I was 9 years old in 1997, the year George Lucas re-released the original Star Wars trilogy theatrical as “Special Editions” (don’t worry fellow nerds, I prefer the originals), meaning I was watching the hell out of the films on video and anticipating the hell out of seeing the same films on the big screen. It was an onslaught of merchandising, and I had my fair share of Star Wars books, comics, and toys. I ate, slept, and breathed Star Wars that entire year. Of course, Star Wars was what discovered the crippling fact that the real money to be made in movies is to create merchandise. Later there were the much merchandised prequels that threatened to destroy all interest in Star Wars for anybody, but I still adore those first three movies and chuckle at “It’s a trap!” no matter how many times I hear it repeated.
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Just as MST3K was ending on the Sci-Fi channel my family had moved and I found myself in a friendless neighborhood without any other kids around. I was 11 and at that point I discovered MST3K – which was like having very funny friends who watched movies with you. I got such a kick out of it (still do) that I began taping the episodes – the first time I ever did so – not only to rewatch but to share choice episodes when going over to friends’ houses. MST3K feels like a communal experience when just one person it watching it, but it’s even better in a group. After a few years of Sci-Fi channel reruns I started collecting the DVDs from Rhino Home Video (which were usually about $60 back then) and properly discovered the whole history of the program and not just the last three seasons. MST3K is my pop culture comfort food, and I probably have a bigger collection of episodes (and spinoffs like Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax) than any other of my nerdy collections.
I’d like to take time out to say that I think MST3K is unfairly conflated with the rise of negative, snark culture that’s now become prevalent. I think this is brought up by people who don’t really watch the show and don’t know how playful and whimsical it is. There’s very little about it that’s ironic – it’s a guy and some puppets making jokes and giving no apology about it.
Space Ghost Coast to Coast/ adult swim
When adult swim premiered it was a revelation to my 13 year old sensibilities. It was like alternative television, not your father’s TV (I had no knowledge that every generation had that, whether it was the Smothers Brothers, Python, Night Flight, or early Letterman). It was speaking to my generation and if you weren’t hip you were old, man! I had undying devotion to this block of programming for the first few years, with its shoddy production values and outsider sensibility. It was only natural I should feel this way, since I had been a fan of Space Ghost Coast to Coast since I was far too young to understand it. The show was basically adult swim in embryonic form and a lot of the folks responsible for it went on to forge the identity of the adult swim block. I think I had more conversations about adult swim in high school than any other pop culture thing – did I say conversations? I mean an endless stream of quotations. It was our Monty Python. We’d chuckle knowingly at a line (or strings of dialog, with one person saying a line and waiting for the reply) from Aqua Teen or Sealab or (for the connoisseur) Home Movies (“My name is Walter.” “And my name is Perry!”). I suppose it was when the network shows, Family Guy and Futurama , joined the adult swim block that a blow was struck in my young mind. They had sold out (though I’ve come to love Futurama).
It was also on adult swim that I became intensly acquainted with Japanese animation. The sheer hours spent watching these shows – these sagas which could last months even with an episode airing ever weekday, and the taping! Stacks of VHS tapes of Big O, Trigun, FLCL, and Cowboy Bebop. There are two shows that really left an impression and now stand out as the best I watched: one was FLCL, a short (6 episode) mish-mash of Looney Tunes-style slapstick, science fiction and coming of age story (this was the show that taught me to watch out for visual symbolism as there was some sort of metaphor going on in every other shot), the other is Cowboy Bebop, the rightly legendary genre combiner and salute to all things western (Jazz, Blues, film noir, cowboys, gangsters, American Indian mysticism) that the Japanese creators found cool. Watching Cowboy Bebop as an American made me want to go back and rediscover things from my own culture (“Who’s Charlie Parker?” – 14 year old me). Cowboy Bebop is one of those ners things that seem to be enjoyed by everyone, even people who hate anime or for that matter science fiction.
I don’t think of myself as an anime fan (otaku?), because it seems to me a lot of them are obsessed only with anime, leaving ‘em pretty dull conversationalists.
Of course, nowadays I can hardly watch some of my early adult swim favorites – but some shows like Space Ghost and Home Movies remain favorites to this day. And my adult swim viewing has never stopped, only become sporadic, like when a new season of The Venture Bros. is airing (did I mention GO TEAM VENTURE! -?)
The Daily Show/Colbert Report
Awakening to political thought is a strange experience, at a certain age you stop just repeating your parents beliefs and build up some of your own. Near the end of my first year of high school I began watching The Daily Show and was taught some necessary facts about politicians being corrupt, the media often being full of crap, and the fact that a lot of people are just cruel. In many ways The Daily Show taught me how to think for myself, to not accept everything I was told. At that point I needed The Daily Show. I don’t technically need it now, but it (and its companion piece, The Colbert Report) still makes the world a little saner every night.
In part two: Vonnegut, Kurosawa, the Marx Brothers, and more!
I tried to take it seriously enought and trace my obsessions back to when to when I was a little kid (once a nerd...), so this part covers my pop culture obsessions up to about age 15.
Winnie the Pooh
Perhaps my first pop culture obsession. As a wee tike I loved Disney’s Pooh, which was currently featured in an animated television series as well as the widely available on video original shorts (I know the public library as well as any video store would have them). I also had several of A.A. Milne’s original stories which my mother would read to me – though it wasn’t until recently that I took the initiative to read all of Milne’s Pooh oeuvre, and it’s pretty great.
Dr. Seuss
As I said, my mother read to me religiously as a child, hoping to instill in me a love of the written word. Dr. Seuss was the writer (and oh so brilliant illustrator) who made me want to read on my own, and I did. The man was clearly a genius and we’ll never see his like again (no matter how many damn books they release trying to ape his style).
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
It was the early ‘90s. What else in there to say? The old cartoon was basically just a commercial for toys (and not terribly good) and I had dozens and dozens of those colorful characters in plastic form, complete with a TMNT carrying case. I actually didn’t watch the old cartoon very much (as I said, not terribly good), but I was positively obsessed with the original, live action film. I would watch the movie every day, day after day. Somehow the tape held up even while the box it was encased in disintegrated. The film still holds up, largely due to the fact it’s a close adaptation of the original indie comics and not the media fad based of it.
Godzilla/Ishiro Honda Sci-Fi
I was three (almost four) years old and walked into my cousins’ house while they were watching a movie. It was called King Kong vs. Godzilla. I was already invested in Kong because we had the original film on tape, but who was this new, saurian monster? I was in love. Being a fan as a kid probably takes more effort than a rational adult, especially in an age before the internet (of which I’m probably the last generation not to have had during my childhood). Case in point: dragging my Dad to every toy store in search of a Godzilla toy. I simply knew that one must exist; ignorant I was to the fact that just because you want something doesn’t mean it’s available. Eventually we stumbled onto a box of plastic Godzilla’s produced in the mid-‘80s and it was like my holy grail.
In between video rentals and television airings (TNT had Godzilla in heavy rotation those days) I saw every one of the original films sans the then “lost” in the US Godzilla Raids Again and Destroy All Monsters. I also saw other flicks from the same canon, including Rodan, King Kong Escapes, and Mothra. Now I know of the factors linking these films: Toho Studios, director Ishiro Honda, and FX man Eiji Tsuburaya. As an adult I’ve collected and seen a whole lot of Japanese giant monster flicks (as well as amassed a fair share of toys), but despite the recent Godzilla films of the ‘90s and ‘00s as well as the now readily available (thanks to the internet and niche DVD) giant Japanese monster flicks from other studios and talent pools none of them can match the creativity, liveliness, and fun (and dare I say humanist philosophy?) of the great ‘50s and ‘60s Toho flicks directed mainly by Ishiro Honda.
Looney Tunes/Popeye/Tex Avery/’90s Cartoon Network in general
Before me kids had to wait for Cartoons on either Saturday mornings or weekday afternoon syndication blocks, but I got a channel that excluded the fluff and left only the most important part of the television experience: cartoons. They played mostly Hanna Barbara stuff, which I watched the hell out of – but what really interested me, and what continues to wow me nowadays are the Looney Tunes, the MGM cartoons of Tex Avery, and the Fleischer Studios produced Popeye shorts. These cartoons were aired in various blocks (the old Popeye’s were a fixture of a block called Late Night Black and White, a program aimed towards older cartoon aficionados that I was transfixed by). Cartoon Network didn’t have the rights to air the Looney Tunes produced after 1948 for the first few years, which means that while it took me a while to see absolute classics like What’s Opera Doc I was more greatly exposed to the rougher, grittier Looney Tunes of the ‘40s where Bugs and Daffy were more like anti-heroes than the more safe characters they became.
In the late ‘90s and early ‘00s Cartoon Network aired some great original programming like Dexter’s Lab, and aired Japanese animation on weekday afternoons – giving a great reason to hurry home from school, but by the middle of last decade they entered a bit of a creative slump. They had ceased airing classic cartoons and their original programs weren’t up to snuff, but recently I’ve found myself watching the network again thanks to a creative renaissance spurred by new shows like Adventure Time and Regular Show.
Star Wars
I was 9 years old in 1997, the year George Lucas re-released the original Star Wars trilogy theatrical as “Special Editions” (don’t worry fellow nerds, I prefer the originals), meaning I was watching the hell out of the films on video and anticipating the hell out of seeing the same films on the big screen. It was an onslaught of merchandising, and I had my fair share of Star Wars books, comics, and toys. I ate, slept, and breathed Star Wars that entire year. Of course, Star Wars was what discovered the crippling fact that the real money to be made in movies is to create merchandise. Later there were the much merchandised prequels that threatened to destroy all interest in Star Wars for anybody, but I still adore those first three movies and chuckle at “It’s a trap!” no matter how many times I hear it repeated.
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Just as MST3K was ending on the Sci-Fi channel my family had moved and I found myself in a friendless neighborhood without any other kids around. I was 11 and at that point I discovered MST3K – which was like having very funny friends who watched movies with you. I got such a kick out of it (still do) that I began taping the episodes – the first time I ever did so – not only to rewatch but to share choice episodes when going over to friends’ houses. MST3K feels like a communal experience when just one person it watching it, but it’s even better in a group. After a few years of Sci-Fi channel reruns I started collecting the DVDs from Rhino Home Video (which were usually about $60 back then) and properly discovered the whole history of the program and not just the last three seasons. MST3K is my pop culture comfort food, and I probably have a bigger collection of episodes (and spinoffs like Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax) than any other of my nerdy collections.
I’d like to take time out to say that I think MST3K is unfairly conflated with the rise of negative, snark culture that’s now become prevalent. I think this is brought up by people who don’t really watch the show and don’t know how playful and whimsical it is. There’s very little about it that’s ironic – it’s a guy and some puppets making jokes and giving no apology about it.
Space Ghost Coast to Coast/ adult swim
When adult swim premiered it was a revelation to my 13 year old sensibilities. It was like alternative television, not your father’s TV (I had no knowledge that every generation had that, whether it was the Smothers Brothers, Python, Night Flight, or early Letterman). It was speaking to my generation and if you weren’t hip you were old, man! I had undying devotion to this block of programming for the first few years, with its shoddy production values and outsider sensibility. It was only natural I should feel this way, since I had been a fan of Space Ghost Coast to Coast since I was far too young to understand it. The show was basically adult swim in embryonic form and a lot of the folks responsible for it went on to forge the identity of the adult swim block. I think I had more conversations about adult swim in high school than any other pop culture thing – did I say conversations? I mean an endless stream of quotations. It was our Monty Python. We’d chuckle knowingly at a line (or strings of dialog, with one person saying a line and waiting for the reply) from Aqua Teen or Sealab or (for the connoisseur) Home Movies (“My name is Walter.” “And my name is Perry!”). I suppose it was when the network shows, Family Guy and Futurama , joined the adult swim block that a blow was struck in my young mind. They had sold out (though I’ve come to love Futurama).
It was also on adult swim that I became intensly acquainted with Japanese animation. The sheer hours spent watching these shows – these sagas which could last months even with an episode airing ever weekday, and the taping! Stacks of VHS tapes of Big O, Trigun, FLCL, and Cowboy Bebop. There are two shows that really left an impression and now stand out as the best I watched: one was FLCL, a short (6 episode) mish-mash of Looney Tunes-style slapstick, science fiction and coming of age story (this was the show that taught me to watch out for visual symbolism as there was some sort of metaphor going on in every other shot), the other is Cowboy Bebop, the rightly legendary genre combiner and salute to all things western (Jazz, Blues, film noir, cowboys, gangsters, American Indian mysticism) that the Japanese creators found cool. Watching Cowboy Bebop as an American made me want to go back and rediscover things from my own culture (“Who’s Charlie Parker?” – 14 year old me). Cowboy Bebop is one of those ners things that seem to be enjoyed by everyone, even people who hate anime or for that matter science fiction.
I don’t think of myself as an anime fan (otaku?), because it seems to me a lot of them are obsessed only with anime, leaving ‘em pretty dull conversationalists.
Of course, nowadays I can hardly watch some of my early adult swim favorites – but some shows like Space Ghost and Home Movies remain favorites to this day. And my adult swim viewing has never stopped, only become sporadic, like when a new season of The Venture Bros. is airing (did I mention GO TEAM VENTURE! -?)
The Daily Show/Colbert Report
Awakening to political thought is a strange experience, at a certain age you stop just repeating your parents beliefs and build up some of your own. Near the end of my first year of high school I began watching The Daily Show and was taught some necessary facts about politicians being corrupt, the media often being full of crap, and the fact that a lot of people are just cruel. In many ways The Daily Show taught me how to think for myself, to not accept everything I was told. At that point I needed The Daily Show. I don’t technically need it now, but it (and its companion piece, The Colbert Report) still makes the world a little saner every night.
In part two: Vonnegut, Kurosawa, the Marx Brothers, and more!