One of my earliest memories is of going downtown to the Smithsonian National Zoo with my aunts. Strangely, I don
Flashback Fridays
Flashback Friday: Twilight of the Cockroaches
It’s been a long and lovely day, denizens, so I hope you’ll forgive me if this week’s Flashback Friday entry is a bit short and to the point.
(Don’t think I didn’t hear that collective sigh of relief just then…)
Here is the trailer for one of the very first anime movies I ever saw. When Cartoon Network first started up over here in the States, they used to play all kinds of different anime movies way into the night on Saturdays. It was thanks to these anime marathons that I first fell in love with that enigmatic Vampire Hunter D. It was also when I discovered…Twilight of the Cockroaches:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MFg2tg274w&w=640&h=480]
And all that time I thought that MTV was being original with Joe’s Apartment. Also, with an original release year of 1987, Twilight of the Cockroaches beats Who Framed Roger Rabbit? as an earlier example of animation and live action combined into one movie. It also wins as being a superior film with more likeable characters than any other film containing the word “Twilight” in its title.
Ahem.
Flashback Friday: Baby Laugh-A-Lot
I make no secret of the fact that I hate dolls. I think they’re creepy as sin. Only nowhere near as fun.
When I was little, relatives insisted on buying me dolls for Christmas…you know, because I’m a girl. And girls are supposed to want to play with dolls. It’s good training for when we grow up and have real babies.
…
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The road to my personal hell is paved with creepy plastic baby effigies. Like Baby Laugh-A-Lot. At least, I thought that was the name of this particular doll from my past. She was creepy and blonde and when you squeezed her, she giggled uncontrollably for about a minute and then sighed, “I wuv you.”
Yeah, I bet you do, Baby I’m-Gonna-Snap-Your-Neck-While-You-Sleep.
However, when I looked up “Baby Laugh-A-Lot” on YouTube…I came across this:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtnESCiZRnw&w=640&h=480]
Sweet Baby Meat Jesus, this is even creepier than the doll I had! Who the hell would buy this for anyone, let alone someone they supposedly cared about? This doll is one step away from being a Twilight Zone episode.
Now if you’ll excuse me…I’ve got a corner I need to go rock quietly in…
Flashback Friday: My Puppy Puddles
Coming in down to the wire for this Flashback, but that’s all right since I really don’t have a whole lot to say about this one. I hadn’t thought about this particular toy in years…and then an ImagiFriendTM from another part of my online universe posted a link to a YouTube video for Pipi-Max, which is apparently a robotic dog that drinks water and then “pees” on people’s shoes…or heads.
Do what you will with this statement, but this toy idea is not new.
True, the version that I remember from my childhood was not robotic. Instead, “My Puppy Puddles” was nothing more than a plastic dog with furry fabric ears and wheels in its paws so that it would roll behind you when you pulled it along with its leash. To get Puppy Puddles to “drink,” you had to stick its tongue into a bowl of water and squeeze the collar. It would draw water up through the hole in the bottom of the tongue and store it in whatever reservoir it had inside for its “bladder.”
When it was time for Puddles to…puddle? Well…here, just watch this:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5unAvwnOaYQ&w=640&h=480]
They were far more innocent times, those plastic-loving 70s and 80s…
Photo Fun Friday: The Donner Party
Sometimes, I dip deep into the twisted core of my being…and this is the kind of stuff I pull up…
Happy Halloween weekend, denizens. Celebrate well. Celebrate safely.
Flashback Friday: I Took a Lickin’ From a Chicken
Bet you thought that October was going to be all Halloween-themed Flashback Fridays, didn’t you, denizens? Perhaps the majority of them will be…I still haven’t decided yet. However, today’s Flashback is dedicated to one of the silliest and strangest toys I had as a kid: I Took a Lickin’ From a Chicken.
Of all the toys from my childhood, this was one of the few that transcended age boundaries and captivated anyone who came in contact with it. I’m sure that anyone born after the video game console revolution would look at this as something antiquated and quaint. But back in the early 80s, this was something akin to magic.
Okay, it was probably just magical to a 5-year-old who found herself being regularly beaten at Tic-Tac-Toe by a tiny animatronic chicken…but to adults, it still held a sense of curiosity and wonderment. This was one of the earliest examples of a hand-held electronic game. This was my generation’s GameBoy.
Chew on that for a while.
I know that the game was able to things other than Tic-Tac-Toe, but I don’t really remember what. I just remember sitting and pecking away (haha) at the multicolored number pad, trying my hardest to beat that stupid little plastic chicken…or at the very least, to keep it from beating me. Yet again.
Yes, I did, indeed, take many a lickin’ from that chicken.
I wish I still had my version of this game, if only for the pure kitsch of it all. However, I will have to suffice with photos and videos like this one. Welcome to how I spent hours of my childhood, denizens…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsq-zCD9wIw&w=640&h=360]
Flashback Friday: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
It is that time of the year again, denizens. The most wonderful time of the year. All Hallow’s Eve will soon be upon us. I’ve said it before and I shall say it many, many more times: I love Halloween. I love ghost stories, vampires, the paranormal, werewolves, mummies, monsters…I love being scared.
I suppose you could say that it’s been a life-long obsession. One of my earliest memories? Being introduced to the magical storytelling skills of one Mr. Washington Irving, through his classic tale The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (which, by the by, is available from the Amazon Kindle free library…bet you can guess what I just downloaded, right?).
My first encounter with this tale and that peculiar Master Ichabod Crane came to me in the best possible way: the animated way. I was around 7 years old and my parents rented a Disney double feature for me (on Betamax, yo), which included The Wind in the Willows and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Strangely, I don’t remember The Wind in the Willows at all. But, oh, I do remember Ichabod’s encounter with the Headless Horseman. Animated in 1949 and narrated by Bing Crosby, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is classic animation done right…gorgeous and atmospheric and able to get under your skin in the best possible ways. Of course, being voiced by Ba-Ba-Ba-Bing, it’s gotta have a song or two as well…a couple of those inescapably catchy Disney tunes that inevitably become more insidious than the tale accompanying it.
To this day, this is one of my all-time favorite Disney animations. It was also undeniably the inspiration for several aspects of one of my favorite full-length Disney animated movies, Beauty and the Beast. Gaston himself might very well have stumbled right out of Sleepy Hollow and into that charming French village that was home to Belle and her father.
I hadn’t thought about this cartoon in years, and it’s been even longer since I’d seen it. Imagine my surprise, then, to find it in its entirety on YouTube. I imagine it won’t be there for very long. Disney has eyes in the back of its mouse ears, if you know what I mean. While it’s here, though, I encourage you to tuck in for a viewing or two. Just make sure it’s late and the lights are down low…oh, and don’t forget: You can’t reason with a headless man…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhV4HDGJg5Y&w=480&h=360]
Photo Fun Friday: CSI: Bajor
Crossing streams again, denizens. This one started about a month ago with a conversation I had online regarding which Star Trek alien Jorja Fox would look best as (yes, my world really is this geeky…and, consequently, this fabulous). I contend it’s Bajoran all the way. Then again, I think nose ridges make anyone look smexy.
I love Bajorans.
Then, yesterday, I may or may not have received several CSI graphic novels in the mail, as I mentioned in my BookBin review of my first CSI comic series. As I casually flipped through said novels to check out the artwork, I started once again to think about how similar in marketing approaches CSI is to Trek. Which got me thinking again about a CSI/Trek crossover (what, you thought I’d forgotten about that request?).
Since I’ve already set a precedent regarding dragging my favorite CSI into other geeky forays, I figured why not? If she can be a vampire investigator, why can’t she be a Bajoran investigator next?
And so I give you…
Buckle up, denizens. It’s bound to get geekier from here…
Flashback Friday: Lite Brite
There were very few things that were obviously designed with the introverted only child in mind when I was a wee pup. You had board games, card games, athletic games
Flashback Friday: Square One Television
Ha! I bet you all thought that another Friday would pass without the inevitable lupine flashback, didn’t you, denizens? Yeah, sorry about last week. I was caught up in a bit of packing. No, not that kind of packing. Honestly, you’re all so filthy sometimes. Another reason I love you so. No, this was actual luggage packing. For to see some super-smexy ImagiFriendsTM up in the Great White North. I should probably write a special post about my trip. Yes, I do believe I shall.
But not right now.
Now, it’s time to hop in the lair’s WABAC Machine (did you know that’s how you spell this? My boy Sherman knew) and visit the late 1980s, those care-free days of big shoulder pads and even bigger hair. The Gipper was still in office, Jean-Luc Picard was confusing nerds everywhere with his French name and English accent, and Children’s Television Workshop was showing mercy on the math-deficient of America with its newest 100-percent math-centric show: Square One Television.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPvOthnDj6I&w=480&h=360]
Could that theme be any more 80s? No, Miss Chanandler Bong, I don’t think it could.
I both loved and hated Square One. It was cool and clever (for a math show)…but it inevitably always made me feel a bit stupid. I’m not going to do my usual thing of putting myself down (shocker, I know). I can do math. It just takes me a little longer than more mathematically inclined minds. Sue me, I’m right-brained. All I need is a patient teacher and a lot of time. And erasers. Lots and lots of erasers.
However, Square One was a relatively fast-paced show, as most vignette-driven kids’ shows are. There was no way in hell I was going to catch on to some of the things they were teaching in a 2-minute sketch. So, really, I just watched it for the fun sketches. Like Mathman, which was a silly parody of Pac-man:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUhpIS8YTfc&w=480&h=360]
Or spoofs of 80s-style music videos:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqIki33mTgs&w=480&h=360]
Okay, is it just me, or was that song a bit dirty? Just me? Okay then.
My favorite recurring sketch, though, and the one that kept me coming back to Square One every weekday, was Mathnet, a cutesy rip-off of Dragnet, with cases that played out in 10-minute snippets each day of the week and starred Beverly Leech as Kate Monday and Joe Howard as George Frankly, two math detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department (they later relocated to New York). Both actors have been in numerous things throughout the years. I’m actually quite pleased that I immediately recognized Howard on an episode of CSI from a few years ago. He was also on West Wing at some point, although I can’t pinpoint his character at the moment. Leech showed up on Quantum Leap and Northern Exposure among other things and then later made the ultimate in Geek Girl moves when she appeared on the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Nightingale,” which most fans probably won’t remember because it was a Harry Kim episode. Sorry, Harry.
I loved Mathnet. But only the version with Leech as Kate Monday. She was later replaced by Toni DiBuono as Pat Tuesday, which never really worked for me. Of course, by that point I was a bit too old for Square One anyway, so it didn’t really matter. But when I was the right age? It was all about Monday and Frankly:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl8aIizUBNI&w=480&h=360]
Seriously, how do you not love that? So 80s. And, hey! I actually followed most of what they were talking about! It’s only…24 years later.
Yeah, I was going to try to come up with a funny math pun to end this on, but, seriously, denizens, my brain really doesn’t work that way. So I’ll instead leave you with a link to this Zazzle Mathnet T-shirt, which I’m almost tempted to buy. It’s acute shirt…even if it would make me look like a square.
Heh. See what I did there? You’re welcome.
