11:29 a.m. - 09.14.2003
The Great HBO 80's Renaissance - a tangent
This is pretty damn funny. And amazingly true. Crazy hipster status seekers. I think they're just waiting to graduate to SUVs, designer labels, and other identifiers of social distinction.
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I've been in this crazy nostalgic funk lately. No joke, I've been remembering things and feelings lately I haven't thought about in years
I think without consulting with myself and against my better judgment, I've decided to go ahead and grow up - and all these things are flooding back through my head one last time so I can let go and move on. Old friends, girlfriends, embarrassing moments, emotions, parties, songs, music, you name it. I'm a little bit scared by it all - isn't your life flashing before your eyes a bad thing? Even if it's in slow-motion and drawn out over a week or two.
I'm just gonna get it out of my system with this one mammoth entry - so be prepared. (Although I'm going to skip must of the personal stuff and go straight to the cheese. mmmm, cheese.)
First off, I'd like to say that I've really been nostalgic for the 80s lately. I do believe it was a mini-Renaissance. Today's clothes, movies, toys, and some music is just a rehash. The 80's were a pinnacle.
Even if you were just a young kid through most of the 80s or an older teenager, you are part of a unique generation.
I'm not denying Tom Brokaw's claim of our grandparents being "The Greatest Generation". The achievement of WWII makes them winners by default.
And the baby-boomers have made some great music and brought about changes of great social and political import - but I think the youth of the 80s will prove to have done more when I our day is done.
We by no means invented the computer or the internet - but we are the ones that ran with the ball and built it into what it is today. Namely, we were the last generation of youth to know what it is like to be young on both sides of the internet's being.
We were young before its implementation, and we're young after its complete saturation. That gives us a unique point of view. Subsequent generations will only know of life with the internet.
You may think I'm putting to much emphasis or importance on the internet - but I think I've said before how I believe it has/will be responsible for some big changes - and it's impact and current freedom and liberal nature is still widely taken for granted.
(warning: tangent alert! After these messages, we'll be riiiight back....)
I hate to be all gloom and doom, but a war is coming people. The one we're in now is the preliminaries. And those that were the youth of the 80s will have to stand up against the establishment of the baby-boomers.
The baby-boomers claimed to reject the ways of their Greatest Generation parents, but they were helplessly instilled with the red-scare. We had the cold war as well, but instead of their fear we grew up with it under an umbrella of levity. We've been able to break away from it and not look back. However, their parent's suspicions have gotten the better of them. After all, these are the people that think you stop terrorism by declaring a war on it.
And that spending billions of dollars to rebuild a country they destroyed for no reason is the answer to all our troubles, not rechanneling that billions of dollars into domestic affairs that are lacking in billions of dollars.
(Ahem. I've left the nostalgia behind, haven't I. ;) Gotta love a good tangent. Okay - back to the show...if you're even with me anymore...)
In this Renaissance I speak of, I believe there was a specific movement that contributed to a number of us.
If you owned and watched HBO regularly (read: 24-hrs a day) between the years 1980-1984, you have a slightly different take on things than the average bear. You knew that you were about to witness magic when the HBO Feature Presentation animation started. The camera would swoop through a small miniature town, and then a silver HBO logo would swing across the screen while funky music played and pink and purple swirls would streak around the �O� in HBO. That opening sequence I so poorly described was so popular in its day, HBO would air a documentary on it�s making between movies. They used it for 20 yrs until finally retiring it.
Take for instance animation on HBO. If you grew up with HBO, we like our animation to border on acid-trip in style. Like the trippy movie where Raggedy Ann and Andy meet up with this patch-work camel and have adventures to an equally trippy musical soundtrack. Or there's that anime-version of Jack and the Beanstalk that HBO would show at all hours. It was the one that also had the trippy music and the little princess who floated around on clouds while under the spell of an evil witch. And it you ever saw it scared the poop out of you.
But HBO embraced the offbeat in everything they did. If you had HBO then, than today you have an innate love for pirate musicals, a Don Knott�s flick or two, and then some really obscure stuff.
Why, HBO even thought it was a good idea to embrace a gubernatorial candidate Gary Coleman movie about a little shoe-shine boy that lived inside of a locker at the train station. The boy comes into some money, so he moves into a caboose instead.
There were musical's about baby-rearing sailors, and movies about musical computers that came alive and fell in love. Movies about an Incredible Shrinking Woman and a very large Richard Pryor.
All this of course mixed with Fraggles, Doosers, and the Great Trash Heap. This is the station that gives us Six Feet Under, Sopranos, Sex in the City, and Oz today. They never did provide typical fare.
I'd have to say the two best HBO selections though were more offbeat than all of those others. One being the story of a hotel full of little people set against the filming of The Wizard of Oz, starring Fletch and Princess Leia, involving a murder mystery and a Nazis midget spy. Hey just don�t write �em like that anymore.
The other being the story of a high school geek who grows pot in his school's laboratory, and after gaining magical powers goes all Carrie at his HS prom by ripping everyone�s clothes off. And the kid happens to be played by Chachi.
If you grew up watching (and loving) any of these - I'm sorry but there is
no hope for you. You are doomed to ramble on for the rest of your life about the impact of these movies upon your life (much like I�m doing now), while the majority, being non-HBO watchers, will stare at you in wild disbelief mixed with not just a little disgust.
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(Tired yet? Cuz there's more. I haven't even gotten into my tribute for the late great John Ritter.)
If/when I ever get around to opening my dream Regal Beagle bar, the John Ritter-factor knob will be turned to 11.
The biggest tribute will be, in lieu of the pass� wet t-shirt contest, a Jack Tripper Memorial Prat Fall contest.
I had this friend in college that was the king of prat falls. When done properly, taking into account timing and inebriation levels, a well executed prat fall is the life of any frat party.
And so the comedy and art of the prat fall will be celebrated every Wednesday night at the Regal Beagle. The winner receiving an honorary Jack Tripper velour or terry-cloth shirt.
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Welcome to the end of the mammoth entry. You made it! Now go reward yourself with the stimulant of your choice.
I'll end by saying my current nostalgic funk has left me wistful for a girlfriend or two of days past. I think this may be the cause for my currently nursing no less than six internet crushes. Which is something I make a rule of not doing.
Coming out of the Peter Pan-syndrome is a lot like Albert coming off of morphine in Little House on the Prairie. Not a pretty sight - lots of profuse sweating and a need for me to be tied down to my bed.
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