A Fools Utopia 1.14.10: Technology vs. Nostalgia

Posted by Ron Martin on 01.14.2010

Thoughts on the new Late Night Wars, The Cleveland Show and The Simpsons Anniversary Special, videos of the Muppets, the Bangles, Karnov and Guns N Roses, and then we ask whether or not today's youth has it better than the previous generations!

I totally had a different idea for a column topic. Even had it planned out before the calendar flipped to the much harder to say 2010. Then this bastard Monty had to write a short novel in the comments section and get me thinking on a different topic. Actually, Monty bought up some really good points and it got me to thinking which is always a good thing – for me. Not so much for you. The question posed by Monty (and that I've heard before) is while we "old-timers" as he put bemoan the simple joys afforded us by a youth not plugged into the world for today's kids, that, in reality today's kids have it better than we ever did.

Do they?

The short answer to this is, of course they do, let's not be buttnuts here. They have virtually the entire world (and the pop culture of our own youth) at their fingertips. They can literally watch anything they want to watch; listen to anything they want to listen to and do it at any time they want to. It's riches of entertainment that we couldn't even fathom in our own youth. At first, I thought this was a ridiculously one sided case. I thought Monty is totally right. Upon further thought, however, I began to form an argument. One that started to swing the pendulum the other way. Do today's kids have it better than back in the day? Let's take a look and see.



Saturday Morning Cartoons. This was the genesis of the argument. I wrote about some old Saturday Morning cartoons all the while bemoaning the loss of such an institution in today's market. Of course there aren't Saturday morning cartoons any more. Why would there be? As Monty pointed out, there are half a dozen networks that play nothing but cartoons all the time. There's even room for a network that plays cartoons from my time. The cartoon you want not playing at the moment? Perhaps you couldn't catch the latest episode? I am sure it will be ON DEMAND in the near future. We don't want our kids to have to go without seeing the episode of Spongebob where Spongebob and Patrick do something stupid. If that's not good enough, you can see just about any cartoon you damn well please on video sharing sights. I didn't see The Fat Albert Halloween Special until after it had been banished from the airwaves for over 20 years!



The flip side? Saturday is another day where you do the same thing you do every day – you just don't have school. The fondest memories old guys like me have of Saturday mornings have little or nothing to do with the cartoons themselves (despite my unhealthy obsession with the Pac-Man animated series). Ask anyone in their thirties about Saturday morning cartoons and all will give you a similar story involving getting up before their parents, lounging for hours in front of a TV, usually involving a gigantic bowl and unethical amounts of cereal. Hell, some might even give you a sob story about a favorite blanket. I don't have such a blanket story, myself, but I still harbor fond memories of Saturday mornings being more than just a day I can sleep until 11. Saturday mornings were measurements of one's coming of age. When hitting the local mall so you could get a glance of Sandy Lawson hanging out with her friends became more important than The Scooby Doo Hour, you knew there was a change of the times afoot.

I am sure we all know people who tell us Halloween, Thanksgiving and even Christmas is "just another day." I feel bad for these people. We have 350 "just another days" a year. Why should we take the ones that are special and try to dumb them down? That is truly a sad life. For kids, Saturdays were special – now they're just another day.

Onto MTV. Yes, there are several MTV channels, some of which even play music videos. MTV.com has a rich library of music videos as well as video from various programming available at your leisure. You can see just about any video you could ever ask for on youtube, or other video sharing websites. I've taken full advantage of this, looking up everything from "Plantman" by Gary Young to "Lovefool" by the Cardigans to the Muppets version of "Bohemian Rhapsody." Watching music videos is great. Too bad that wasn't really the point of MTV.



It may have been beaten into the ground by multiple sources (even here in this column) but MTV was a cultural revolution for those of who lived through its formative years. The MTV of the 80s changed not only the way the music industry worked, but it changed TV. I'm sure you've heard of the short attention span of the "MTV Generation." Let a kid today play their favorite music video (are music videos even mandatory for singles any more?) over and over again as many times as they want. For my taste (and admittedly, I am product of my generation) I would gladly keep the TV on MTV all night long and watch longingly at the outtro of one video for the intro to the next hoping that it's the one I'm looking for.

Call me a big bi-polar, call me easy to please, call me a romantic, but there's something to be said for the spike of adrenaline that comes from waiting for an hour to see the video you've been waiting for pop up on the screen. Believe it or not this was a time when MTV could make or break any star they wanted. In the formative years, MTV would make the careers of Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince. While all would have had various levels of success without MTV, all three used the medium to their full advantage and shot themselves into the stratosphere of superstardom. Is MTV even on the radar of today's youth? Are marathons of last season's America's Top Model that important?

MTV was something teenagers could call their own. It wasn't for their parents and not quite ready for their little brothers and sisters. There was a time when at least once a day, you stood next to you locker and started a conversation with your best friend that started with the sentence "Did you see MTV last night?" I am pretty sure that is no longer the case unless in my old age I have completely undervalued the cultural impact of Teen Mom.

Are things better for the youth of today? I'm sure they think they do. There are a lot of people my age who may think that they don't. I'll take Saturday mornings and culture changing TV over The Cartoon Network and reality TV, because that's the card nostalgia has played me. In fifteen years there will be some writer (or what passes for writing by then) crying for the days of DVDs and Guitar Hero.

IT CAME FROM MY IPOD



I am sure that you are all aware of the Gilbert Arenas gun waving incident. Now there are all these crazy stories coming out about all this weird stuff that Gilbert has done, including dropping a deuce in one of his teammate's shoes. While this is common "hazing" in wrestling, I feel this is something new for the NBA and its fans to digest, thus is the topic my IPOD has decided to expel this week.

1. "Self Esteem" by The Offspring
2. "Little Bribes" by Deathcab for Cutie
3. "Down with the Sickness" by Disturbed
4. "Toxicity" by System of a Down
5. "Why is Everybody Always Picking on Me?" by the Bloodhound Gang


FIVE RANDOM THOUGHTS


1. If we call NBC loyal is it a convenient half truth? On one side of the argument, they will let Jay Leno have a slot in their lineup until he drops dead on the air. On the other side they were quick to bail on both David Letterman and Conan O'Brien in favor of Leno, just 16 years apart. I knew when they were forcing Leno into the lineup last fall that this was going to be bad news for Conan, I just didn't realize that Leno was actually going to bump him from the timeslot. There's only one logical explanation for what's going on – NBC wants to ditch Conan and put Leno back in the old spot to go up against Letterman.

That's the only thing that makes sense. When Leno first got The Tonight Show he got his ass handed to him by Letterman for almost two seasons before turning around. Conan only gets six months? Maybe Conan is too quirky for 11:30, but you have to give him at least a year or two to prove it, right? And what's so great about Leno? This is a classic "sold your soul" situation. I tried to watch The Tonight Show when he hosted a couple of times to see what the big deal was about, but I just couldn't sit all the way through it. I was embarrassed for the guy.

The bottom line for me is that I am going to end up having to make a nightly decision at 11:30 for the first that I can remember between CBS and FOX. It'll be interesting to see .

UPDATE: That was written last night. At this point, it looks like the plan is to give Leno The Tonight Show again just as I suspected. I sincerely hope America is fed up with the drama. Leno comes out of this looking sleazy, but that's not always an indicator of which side America is going to be on, unfortunately. NBC should get some award for screwing things up so bad that they get Leno and Jimmy Fallon while Conan O'Brien and Letterman ply their trade elsewhere. Amazing.

2. Why is Mike Tyson not on a regular character on Monday Night Raw? They asked this on PTI Tuesday, and I have to agree. What he said to Hornswoggle was easily in the top ten interview segments in the last year. What else is he doing?



3. Half a season in and I am still impresses with The Cleveland Show. This is a stunning turnaround for a show that I gave no chance whatsoever. With it being delayed and Cleveland being the least interesting friend on Family Guy I was convinced this show was going to be DOA. I couldn't have been more wrong. The show avoids the randomness of Family Guy while staying away from the odd lessons we get on American Dad. If there weren't a walking, talking bear The Cleveland Show could be a live action sitcom – and a pretty good one. I loved the "Balls Deep" song from Cleveland Jr. on Sunday, but love more the fact that it made sense in the storyline of the episode and wasn't just forced in so Seth McFarlane could get his weekly show tune fix in (for examples of this see any episode of Family Guy since it was brought back). I think it's telling that with one half hour slot left due to the Simpson's 20th Anniversary Special, McFarlane chose to air The Cleveland Show instead of one of his other, more established shows.

4. Speaking of, while the episode was lackluster, I really enjoyed Morgan Spurlock's documentary on The Simpsons. There was just one problem – it was way too short. I admire the filmmaker's desire to get everything Simpsons on the show, but there is just no way are you going to get all that info into just over 40 minutes. I am really hoping we get an extended two hour plus version on DVD in the near future.

It's easy to bash The Simpsons now that they are well into their 20th season, but sometimes we forget what kind of influence this show has had. Being on TV for 20 seasons is a feat in and of itself, but we forget that the whole cartoons in primetime phenomenon can be attributed to The Simpsons. On top of that, as the documentary pointed out (by each creator's own admission) there would be no South Park, King of the Hill, Beavis and Butthead or Family Guy without The Simpsons. If I had to give it a grade, I'd give the show an ‘I' for incomplete. I need to see all the great stuff that was on the cutting room floor. We didn't even get to see who the inspiration for The Bumblebee Guy was.

5. Announced on almost the last day of 2009, the National Film Registry has awarded 25 more films the title of "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" to be preserved for all time. There were a lot of really old films. The ones closest to my heart are Dog Day Afternoon, The Muppet Movie and Thriller. Yes, the Thriller music video/mini-motion picture. I am surprised it took this long to get The Muppet Movie preserved. Everybody loves The Muppet Movie, right? Right? Oh, that's it, you bastards…






This week on RETRO…



Ah, yes, the circus freak known only as Karnov.

I've got a story for this one. It was sixth grade and my class was taking a field trip to Kings Island (a theme park near Cincinnati). Me being me, decided to take a bicycle dare a week before the trip and ended up break my foot in three spots. Needless to say, I wasn't on the bus to Kings Island a week later. To make up for it, my mom took the money that would have been used on the trip and bought me a new Nintendo game to make up for it. This is how I received Karnov.



At the time I did not know that Jinborov Karovski was loosely based on a baby-eating myth from Scotland. I just know he was a fat guy with a cool moustache that could shoot fireballs out of his belly. Really, what else would I need to know?

Karnov was like any other platform scroller from the late 80s – you ran across the screen, shot stuff and tried not to get eaten. Only it was different. As a circus strongman you would think that Karnov would fight his way through bearded ladies, evil clowns and ringmasters riding elephants. Not exactly. Karnov's enemies ranged from gargoyles to skeletons to, I think, Poseidon. The creators of the game didn't exactly limit themselves when it came to picking random things for Karnov to destroy with his belly fireballs. For his part, Karnov was an equal opportunity destroyer of all things not him.



I never did defeat Karnov. In fact, I don't even remember getting past the fourth level. It's games like Karnov that are easy to lay down once you get stuck. I didn't know what Karnov's hopes and dreams were. He didn't have a princess to save, ghost monsters to destroy or even Mike Tyson to beat. Karnov's goals and aspirations did not match my own. I just remember thinking that would make a video game out of basically anything at that point. I thought I stored Karnov away forever, but here I am years and years later talking about the old fat guy with the Iron Sheik moustache. Kudos to you, Karnov. Kudos to you.

For your double hit this week, I'd like to explain to you what I have decided is the best half of an album ever. I recently rediscovered this album when I randomly inserted it into the stereo I got for Christmas and remembered how insanely awesome the second half of the album is. All apologies to the Beatles and/or Led Zeppelin, but for my money the second half of Use Your Illusion I by Guns n' Roses is right at the top in the ½ an album category I just made up.


For your information, when I refer to the second half of the album, I mean everything from "November Rain" to the end. That includes "The Garden," "Garden of Eden," "Don't Damn Me," "Bad Apples," "Dead Horse," and "Coma." Of those 7, six remain on my ipod to this day ("Bad Apples" is the one reject). While historically, this isn't going to hold up to some other albums, I can't think of a better half a hard rock album. With "November Rain" and "Coma" both ten minutes long; "The Garden" and "Don't Damn Me" at five minute each, this could have easily been an album on its own.
"November Rain," "The Garden," "Garden of Eden," and "Dead Horse" were all released as singles with varying degrees of success. Just as a reminder, here's the video for my personal favorite from the list…

23 YEARS AGO TODAY

January 14, 1987

#1 Song



"Walk Like An Egyptian" by the Bangles

#1 Album



Live 1975-85 by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

#1 Movie



The Golden Child

I must leave you now.