television

16 Days of Glory

As of my writing this, we’re about knee-deep in the 2012 London Summer Olympics.  In fact, as I glance over to my television, the NBC Sports Network is showing a U.S.-North Korea women’s soccer match (it was either that or tennis).  I’ve always been a huge fan of the Olympic Games, both summer and winter, especially at how it has me watching and enjoying sports I would never watch otherwise (I went to lunch with some work friends the other day and we watched a water polo match that was on at the restaurant).

This love of the Olympics has its roots in my love of sports, of course, because if I didn’t like sports I wouldn’t care about the Olympics; however, I feel like sometimes I am the only guy who watches the games for the sheer pageantry of it all.  Which is why, by the way, I kept tweeting out snarky bon mots throughout last Friday night’s Opening Ceremonies, pissing and moaning about how badly NBC was mangling their tape-delayed coverage.  In fact, NBC’s fail on this part has been so epic this year it’s like a running joke among tweeters and bloggers, especially those who look forward to the games every four years.

But I’m not going to spend this entry complaining about NBC (that’s what Twitter is for).  No, I thought it might be cool to sit down for a few moments and think about why I am so enthralled by the Olympic Games and why I will spend so much time watching them, even staying up until ungodly hours to watch women’s gymnastics prelims in the summer or a curling match in the winter.  And thankfully it’s not a hard thing to figure out because the very first games I watched were I think the games that people my age think of the most when they think “Olympics.”

Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be speaking for my entire generation but I think that the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics really did come to define “Olympics” for quite a number of Children of the 1980s.

I turned seven in 1984, which meant that this was the first Olympic Games that I actually remember.  I’m sure that people who are even slightly older than me will tell me they have memories of the 1980 Winter Olympics, especially the “Miracle on Ice,” and to that I say that they’re seriously lucky.  Being born in June 1977, I was all of 2-1/2 years old when the underdog U.S. hockey team beat the U.S.S.R. and then Finland to win the gold medal, so if I saw the game against the Russians (which I highly doubt), I don’t remember it at all.  Had there not been a boycott of the Moscow games that same year, I may have seen the 1980 Summer Games, but that wasn’t to be.

The 1984 Summer Olympics soundtrack cassette. This is not available on CD or digitally, so I kind of regret not getting it back in the 1980s when I really wanted it.

So, the summer when I was seven years old and was allowed to stay up slightly later than usual, I saw some of the competition, but most importantly I caught quite a bit of the opening ceremonies.  I don’t know if it was because my parents thought it was important for me to see it or if ABC aired it live instead of on tape delay (which may have been the case — a 3-hour time difference meant it might have aired live; then again, ABC tape delayed the U.S.-Soviet hockey game in 1980 so I wouldn’t put it past them), but I saw quite a bit, including parts of the Parade of Nations (or as my wife put it, “The Model U.N.”).

In my mind, I thought it was the most epic thing I had ever seen (which is saying a lot because I had been watching Star Wars every morning for the past two years).  The audience all had cards on their seats and after a guy came flying in on a jet pack–yes, a JET PACK, which is awesome on so many levels–the PA announcer told them to hold up the cards and the entire stadium was then decorated in the flags of the participating countries.  Plus, you had a theme composed by John Williams that to this day stands as one of my top five John Williams pieces (and next to his NBC News theme, one of his most underrated).  In fact, I loved it so much that when I saw a copy of the soundtrack on cassette at TSS a few years later, I wanted it.  In fact, I coveted that soundtrack so much that I actually took it out of the place where it had been placed and put it behind another cassette on another shelf where nobody but me would find it, not realizing that I probably wouldn’t ever get the money to buy it or that I didn’t have to hide it because it was 1988 and nobody but me was coveting the soundtrack (for the record, I never did get the tape).

(more…)

The Summer of 4 ft. 2

Lisa practices acting like a teenager in "The Summer of 4 ft. 2."

When my yearbook staff puts the finishing touches on its last deadline, we have a few traditions.  First, we take the ladder–a poster-sized “map” of the yearbook–and pass it around the room, each staff member tearing it until it’s completely shredded.  Second, we have a pizza party.  Third, we watch the Simpsons episode “The Summer of 4 ft. 2.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the episode, I don’t blame you.  It originally aired on May 19, 1996 and along with the star-studded episode “Homerpalooza,” capped off season 7 of the series, which means that it was an episode from back when the show was not only good but amazing.  Flipping through my copy of The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family, I see that season 7 is incredibly strong: “Bart Sells His Soul,” “Radioactive Man,” “King-Size Homer,” “Team Homer,” and “Bart on the Road” are just five episodes in a year packed with gems, and I have to say that I have to consider myself lucky because this particular year (1995-1996) was when I first started watching The Simpsons on a regular basis.

You see, I actually wasn’t allowed to watch the show when it first premiered in 1990.  Not right off the bat, anyway.  I remember watching the first regular episode (not “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” but “Bart the Genius”), but when the show took off and the merchandise started hitting the shelves, my mother didn’t think that the image of Bart Simpson holding a slingshot and proclaiming he was an “underachiever and proud of it” was a good image for her kids.  Therefore, me–the 13-year-old–and my sister–the 10-year-old–were forbidden from watching The Simpsons.

Now, let’s think about this for a minute.  I had spent the better part of my childhood watching festivals of violence–from Tom & Jerry cartoons to Commando.  I was also a straight-A student who never got into any trouble at school.  How a cartoon character that was about as harmful as Dennis the Menace was going to make me rebel in some way was completely beyond me.  So I was stuck watching The Cosby Show instead, at least until the beginning of season two when I was able to watch “Bart Gets an F” because it was about that underachiever trying to achieve; and then wound up catching most of that and the next season.  Then my viewing fell off as I became more involved in school and found myself spending most of my nights holed up in my room doing homework or listening to Rangers games on the radio. (more…)

All You Have to Bring is Your Love of Everything

It’s been a mild winter, so skiing is the last thing on my mind (granted, I’ve only been skiing twice in my life, so it’s not on my mind very often), and based on what I have been seeing on the local news, it’s been the last thing on everyone’s mind because ski resorts are struggling.  In the same vein, I find myself wondering if any other vacation spots are struggling.  The economy isn’t exactly doing the best, and airfares are insane, so travel to anywhere for a period of time longer than a weekend seems to be costing a year’s tuition at Harvard.

Still, I keep seeing commercials for those ever-popular destinations for people who don’t find hitting the slopes and then curling up in a snowflake sweater appealing–the Caribbean.  Specifically, resorts like Sandals and Beaches.  My son loves the latest commercial for Beaches because Cookie Monster is in it (although I’m not sure that he realizes that Cookie Monster might not be at Virginia Beach when we go in July).  But the Sandals commercials always amuse me because they make a vacation to that resort seem like the most epic romantic time ever imagined.

That’s the best example of a couple frolicking outside on an apparatus that’s not in a Cialis commercial.  And actually, it’s kind of appropriate that the ad agency used “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warrens (but not the version sung by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warrens) in the commercial because the movie it comes from is Dirty Dancing, which takes place at a resort in the Catskills and mentions several times the decline of such resorts as popular family destinations.  Indeed Sandals and Beaches have sort of become the new Catskills or Poconos and the commercials are the perfect evidence of that because that Sandals commercial is very much like a commercial from my youth:

Ah, beautiful Mount Airy Lodge, which was, by the time this commercial was airing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a deteriorating shell of its former self.  What was once a popular getaway for couples in the 1960s and 1970s was by this time (at least according to Wikipedia) hemorrhaging money and wound up going into foreclosure in 1999 before being bought by Harrah’s and turned into a casino.  But this commercial aired before the great decline and if you were watching one of the syndicated channels in the New York metropolitan area (WPIX or WWOR) during the day, you wound up seeing the Mount Airy Lodge commercial at least a few times, enough that you knew the “All you have to bring is your love of everything” slogan by heart. (more…)

Taking Off

A screen shot of the end of “Taking Off,” the two-parter surrounding Wheels’ grief over his parents’ deaths. Image courtesy of Degrassi Online.

I know that I wasn’t the only person surprised by the news that Neil Hope, who played Wheels on Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High not only died, but died back in 2007 and this was just discovered now.  In fact, I probably would have never heard about it at all had I not “liked” his onetime co-star, Stacie Mistysyn, on Facebook and read a post of hers.

In light of this, I watched the Degrassi Junior High third-season two-parter, “Taking Off,” which while not the next episode I wanted to watch for the purpose of this blog (that would be “Food for Thought,” which I think I’m going to get to anyway even if it is out of order), is one of the more important points of that season because it continues two crucial stories–Wheels’ parents’ deaths, and Shane and Spike.  It also puts the spotlight clearly on Hope and his acting, as Wheels continues to struggle with his grief and does so not just by acting out but running away altogether.

We begin by finding out that Wheels has been skipping school and hanging out all day at the arcade; furthermore, he’s sold his bass guitar to get money to play video games like Konami’s Main Event, much to the chagrin of the rest of the Zit Remedy (especially Joey, who’s still in his Zack Morris “scheme to get us some airtime” phase … yunno, when he’s not flirting with Caitlin).  His grandmother is concerned and he is not just stand-offish to her, but downright hostile and wishes that he could be anywhere but home and school.  Then, the possibility presents itself when his birth father, Mike, sends him a postcard from a town called Port Hope, which is where his band has a standing gig for the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, most of the DJH crew is going to the Gourmet Scum concert that Saturday night (love the band’s name, btw), including Luke and Shane, who buy acid and then drop it before going inside.  What’ll happen is that Shane will disappear and the police will spend the better part of the two-parter looking for him, even asking Luke if the boy was under the influence (and paranoid Luke will lie his ass off).  He is eventually found underneath a bridge, having fallen off, and at the end of the second part is comatose, leaving Emma completely without a father (something that is explored in both Degrassi High and Degrassi: The Next Generation).

But that’s really a subplot and it’s Wheels who takes center stage as he hitchhikes through Ontario and at one point winds up getting picked up by a guy who seems okay at first–in fact, he kind of looks like Sam Waterson–and that guy tries to molest him.  But he makes it to Port Hope to see Mike, and his hopes for a happy reunion are dashed when Mike more or less wants very little to do with him (in fact, he’s got a pregnant fiancee) and his grandmother ultimately tracks him down. (more…)

Rock like you rocked twenty years ago!

When I was younger, I lived for year-in-review specials; heck, I still really enjoy anything with a good retrospective attached to it.  But as December 31 drew closer, I always found myself getting psyched for two things: being able to stay up past midnight, and watching whatever special was on that looked back.  Even if it was a badly produced local news special, I would look for it in TV Guide and if I wasn’t going to be home to watch it, I’d pop a tape in the VCR and set the timer.

Unfortunately, throughout those years my year-in-review options were limited by my not having access to cable, so I missed what the kids in my generation considered the definitive retrospecticus, which was MTV’s Year in Rock.  I don’t think that the channel does this anymore, but I’d say that up until maybe the late 1990s or early 2000s (when TRL had basically taken everything over), the news department was pretty steady with its programming, bringing news every hour (set to the bass of Megadeth’s “Peace Sells”), and The Week in Rock every single Friday.  So the Year in Rock made total sense.

I am sure that I saw at least one of these Year in Rock specials at one time or another, because my sister and I would often spend New Year’s Eve at my grandmother’s house and would go to bed shortly after midnight.  Some years, we stayed up listening to 106.1 WBLI play their “Top 106 Songs of the Year” coundown; others were spent watching a hockey game or reading books.  But as I went through my rather disastrous first few years as a teenager and my sister inched closer to adolescence, the two of us would sit in the back room with MTV playing, watching whatever was on it (or sometimes flipping to VH-1) because we were fully ensconced in trench warfare with my father over whether or not we would ever get cable, and at the time were taking heavier losses than at the Battle of the Somme, so we took our cable where we could get it.

Anyway, YouTube being the beautiful thing that it is, someone took the time to put the 1991 Year in Rock special up in seven parts and since it was twenty years ago–a huge year for music as well as the year I finally escaped junior high and headed to high school–I thought I’d take a look at it for my last entry of the year.  Usually, I’d spin a few paragraphs here about the various things in it and provide a link or two, but I felt like doing a bit of commentary because the entire special is available for viewing.  It may be unethical in a way and I am essentially piggybacking off of someone else’s upload … so H/T to YouTube user 1BigBucks1, whoever you are.

Okay, let’s get started. (more…)

Can’t Live With ‘Em

Wheels finds out his parents have died in “Can’t Live With ‘Em, Part 1,” the third season premier of Degrassi Junior High (pic courtesy Degrassi Online)

There were very few moments during my two years of junior high when I felt cool.  I spent most of both the seventh and eighth grade on the lower rung of the social ladder and I think that I did what I could to avoid the harassment and other crap that came with being in junior high school.  But like I said, there were times when I felt like I was kind of cool, in a way.

One of those moments was when I was standing at the bus stop one morning during the seventh grade.  I was one of five or six different kids at that bus stop, which was in the driveway of my neighbors’ house, and while I had grown up around most of them, by the time we were in junior high school together most of them were ninth graders who were bright, popular guys, the type that even though they were still the guys from across the street or next door were guys I looked up to.  I overheard one of them say, “Yeah, so Spike had the baby” and my ears went up as if I was a cat that had just heard a can opener.

Someone else watched Degrassi Junior High?  I thought I was the only person in the world who knew that the show existed (well, maybe me and Nancy), and not only that, but a couple of the cool kids liked it.  And not only that, they were talking about it in public!

What they were referring to was the two-part season 3 premier that I had just watched that week, which was called  “Can’t Live With ‘Em.”  It was the first of a few seasons worth of ground-shaking premiers, all of which involved something monumental happening to a major character.  In later seasons, these premiers would deal with abortion and AIDS, but this first one’s issue was drunk driving and would be the one with the biggest repercussions down the road, as Derek “Wheels” Wheeler’s parents were killed by a drunk driver.

Of course, the two-parter does not start off that way, and even the title itself is misleading.  When we open, the members of the Zit Remedy are practicing in Joey’s basement and when he comes home a little later than he said he’d be home, Wheels winds up being forbidden to see Joey and Snake.

After the credits roll, we get the first day of school at Degrassi Junior High, where the returning characters catch one another up as to what happened over the summer.  The two most significant changes are that Arthur’s mom won the lottery and Spike had Emma and is now a single mom.  Both of these storylines would become central to most of season three, as Arthur’s having money would cause a fair amount of tension between him and Yick, and Spike would have to deal with raising her daughter and with Shane trying to make an effort to be a father.

But the immediate concern of the episode is how Wheels is ticked off at his parents and is lobbying them to allow him to hang out with Joey … well, until he decides to simply sulk around and waits until they go to the movies one night and sneaks out of the house to go there.  The band records a “demo” (I guess it’s kind of an inside joke that this band only ever had one song … in what amounted to five years of Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High, the guys played a gig, recorded a demo, and even shot a music video of ONE SONG.) and Wheels comes home to see a cop car parked in front of the house.  At first, he thinks his parents called the police on him, but then he sees his grandmother and she tells him the awful truth.

Joey and Wheels reconcile at the end of part 2. (pic courtesy Degrassi Online)

The credits roll and it’s not until the next episode that we get the aftermath, which deals with Wheels’ grief.  He seems to be in shock for a few days and won’t talk to Joey at all (meanwhile, Snake doesn’t know what to say), then loses it in the hallway and punches the crap out of him.  But after talking to his grandmother about how much he blames himself, Wheels is able to deal a little more with this tragedy and reconciles with his friend.

It’s an episode that has a few cheesy moments, even in a story that’s very honest and realistic.  I’ve never been unfortunate to lose either of my parents, but it does seem that the grief is portrayed in a pretty accurate way.  Neil Hope overdoes it a little in the fight scene (the way he punches Joey is a little silly, like he wasn’t very good at it), but you do feel like he’s a step closer to healing when he and Joey hug at the end of part two.  However, in the middle of all of this, Wheels has a dream wherein he sees his parents coming home from a movie and when he tells them he thought they were dead, they say, “We are” in a bad horror movie sort of way.

But like I said, the shock of the deaths (not even hinted at until the cop car is outside his house) and his anger as well as how his friends handle it (Snake, the awkward guy, especially) is done almost quietly and even with subtlety at some moments, which is something that many other television shows featuring teenagers often fail to accomplish.

And then there are the subplots and other storylines that are getting off the ground.  We have Spike, who was the focus of the end of season two and whose baby everyone obviously wanted to know about, but instead of showing the baby (we do see some pics of Emma in the NICU) and having a full baby-oriented episode, we have some moments where Shane tries to talk to her and seems to start making an effort as a father.  Lucy meets a guy and it becomes evident that there will be tensions between the two of them over a guy.

Speaking of friendships, Arthur and Yick are telegraphed as having a break in their friendship this season, even though they seem pretty close. They misdirect Bartholomew Bond, a seventh grader, into an eighth grade classroom in a moment that is supposed to be funny but just shows how kind of dumb they are; and Arthur reads the business pages while in the cafeteria line so he can check out his stocks, which is a little silly.  Granted, this is actually pretty true to Arthur’s character but off the bat it is pretty irritating especially since we find out that Stephanie’s mom shipped her off to boarding school and that Arthur is going to give his little cousin Dorothy the same treatment Stephanie used to give him.  Finally, Kathleen begins a run for class president, which calls back to that first season premier where Stephanie does her “All the way …” campaign and is eventually ousted by the kids in the grade below her (Kathleen among them).  You can really see that her perfectionism is going to get in the way this season.

What is great about introducing all of these storylines in the first couple of episodes of the season is that it’s done more organically than so many other television shows.  Yes, there are moments where every character gets a little screen time, but most of the conversations that start off these various tensions take place in hallways or in classrooms before the bell rings, which is where most of the important conversations in a school take place.  It’s a great way to get you interested in more of the show while keeping you focused on the plot at hand.

I, of course, am realizing this now but didn’t have this in-depth analysis of the show when I was twelve years old.  I simply knew that I didn’t have cable to TV to watch at the end of the day; I simply could turn on PBS around 5:00 or 5:30 and watch a pretty cool show about teenagers.  Oh, and as I was finding out at the bus stop that day, I wasn’t alone.  As those ninth grade guys continued talking about Degrassi, I considered jumping into the conversation, but I didn’t want to be accused of eavesdropping and the bus was about to pull up, so I never did get to say anything, so my moment was lost.

But oh well, I could still watch.

Part 1

 

Part 2

The Teamwork to Make a Dream Work

It’s been a few months since I’ve written about the 1986 Mets.  Put simply, it’s been hard to find many memories of the regular season that really are worth the space I usually devote to an entry around here.  My most vivid memories–as I think is the case with most people–center around the postseason, although when I think hard I do remember a few great regular season moments.  For instance, there was a four-game series against the Braves in mid-July where I watched Darryl Strawberry charge the mound after Dave Palmer plunked him after Gary Carter launched one into the seats en route to an 11-0 win.  It was the first time I had ever seen a brawl in a baseball game live on TV, and I didn’t really understand why Straw charged the mound but it was cool to see a fight.

The Sunday game of that series featured a tribute to Rusty Staub, where the team came out during the pre-game ceremony wearing red wigs and a 2-0 victory which featured Gary Carter tagging out Ken Griffey, Sr. at home plate, a tag that was so awesome it wound up in promos for at least another year or so (it shows up in the music video at the 3:30 mark).  But aside from those and the whole mess in Houston where Tim Teufel, Ron Darling, Bob Ojeda, and Rick Aguilera were arrested for a bar fight, I spent the summer watching games and checking the paper whenever I could to see how far ahead the Mets were.  Then, as August started to drag on, I started checking their magic number and then learning what a magic number and “clinching” meant (I was nine and new to following baseball, so sue me).

There was no magic number in the daily news yet when we went to a game against the Expos on August 2, and I honestly don’t remember much about the game, except that Uncle Lou and Aunt Geri took us, it was the first time I had ever been to a night game at Shea Stadium, and it rained.  My aunt and uncle will at least be able to confirm that–it seemed like it rained every single time we bought a bunch of tickets to go as a family.  But still, sitting in the upper deck, watching the Mets win 4-2 under the lights was pretty cool.  Plus, my dad and I had tickets for another game a few weeks later, against the Cardinals, a team I had hated since last season when they downed the Mets en route to a World Series appearance.

However, by this time, the Cards were toast and the Mets’ magic number sat at 33.  We had tickets to the first game of an impromptu doubleheader (meaning that one of the games was a makeup of a rainout) and my dad took me and my “cousin” Vic (“cousin” meaning that our families were such good friends we might as well be related).  It was a 2-1 loss and made me concoct a theory that perhaps I’d go to one losing game and one winning game every season.  Anyway, it was a “down” time for the team–Gary Carter had just been placed on the DL the day before with a torn thumb and Ed Hearn hadn’t completely started to rise to the challenge of being the everyday catcher like he would.  Rick Aguilera started the game but wound up leaving with an inflammed right knee (I always thought Aguilera was a decent pitcher with the Mets but not as steadfast as Doc, Darling, and Ojeda … Aguilera would wind up hitting his stride with Minnesota years later), and it was one of those games that just sort of sputtered out.

We intended to leave between the games of the doubleheader (after all, we needed to beat the traffic), but we stuck around because between the games, a guy took the field and made the crowd do all sorts of shouting and cheering and even The Wave.  Yes, we did The Wave.  Why was the guy there?  Well, he was doing crowd shots for “Let’s Go Mets,” the official 1986 Mets music video, which premiered later in the season as the team was gearing up for its playoff run.  Unofficially titled, “Let’s Go Mets Go” (because of the “Let’s go Mets go!” shout throughout the song), the video features the team, its fans, as well as some highlights and is set to a tune written by Shelton Leigh (“Shelly”) Palmer, who lately more notable as a technology columnist for sites like CNN.com and The Huffington Post, but composed several theme songs for television productions back in the 1980s.

It is, more or less, a huge PR piece with better production value than the local television promos.  We begin in one of the parking ramps of Shea where three kids are playing some game where you flip baseball cards and the winner keeps all the baseball cards, which is something I never knew how to do when I was a kid.  I’m pretty sure that a relative once tried to teach me but I never picked up on it.  The rules of the game didn’t matter in the video anyway, because after the two kids lose all of their cards to a bully-type who looks like a cross between Scut Farkus from A Christmas Story and Jason Hervey’s character in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Doc Gooden, Gary Carter, and Kevin Mitchell (because they couldn’t sober up Straw and who is rocking 1980s eyeglasses and a track suit that I can only describe as “Sharpton-esque”) show up.

Garysays, “Go ahead, Doc.”

Doc says, “Do it.” (more…)

Pass Tense

Joey Jeremiah, resident Degrassi clown and keyboardist for The Zit Remedy. Photo courtesy of Degrassi Online.

I have to admit, in my half-assed effort to recap old Degrassi episodes, I was going to cherry pick stuff I remembered from Degrassi Jr. High and then go on to cover probably all of Degrassi High because I have all of that series on DVD and have watched it enough times in the last few years that I can probably pick off an episode at random.  Besides, YouTube only had the first 26 or so episodes of DJH available and that was it.  However, Hulu has the rest of them, and as I browsed through the titles I was reminded of how much of the show’s final season (before high school) I actually did watch.

Arguably the most famous storyline on Degrassi Junior High‘s second season is Spike’s pregnancy, which wound up providing the impetus for Degrassi: The Next Generation nearly fifteen years later (but enough about that for now).  The thing is, while I knew that Spike was the pregnant teenager on Degrassi Junior High whenever I managed to catch an episode, I never actually saw the episode where she got pregnant, nor did I see the ones where her pregnancy became a huge scandal and she had to fight to stay in school.  During those first two seasons, I saw a smattering of episodes and all I knew was that the show was about Arthur, Yick, Stephanie Kaye, the twins (whom I couldn’t tell apart), and the guys in the band The Zit Remedy.

Which is why I am probably sure that while I saw some of those second season episodes, I didn’t really remember any until the next season rolled around.  There were few exceptions, and one of them was the second season finale, “Pass Tense.”

When the episode opens, it’s finals and Wheels is freaking out about his upcoming tests.  He’s been having a pretty tough year academically and doesn’t want to risk being left behind.  Meanwhile, everyone else is getting ready for the big eighth grade dance, as it’s their time to graduate to the local high school.  Except, well, they won’t.  City-wide overcrowding has resulted in the administration making the decision to keep the ninth grade at Degrassi Junior High next year, which puts a huge damper on the eighth graders’ celebration, especially when the seventh graders (led for the most part by Caitlin Ryan) decide that they are not going to be decoration monkeys anymore.  But the show must go on (and the seventh graders get to attend as “payment” for doing the decorations) , especially when that show includes the first-ever performance by The Zit Remedy.

I think that anyone with a passing knowledge of Degrassi knows The Zit Remedy, which was the band comprised of Joey Jeremiah on keyboards, Derek “Wheels” Wheeler on bass, and Archie “Snake” Simpson on guitar.  They had one song and only one song, the immortal, “Everybody Wants Something” (which in itself would be the title of an episode of Degrassi High, so when I get around to that one, I’ll talk more about it).  This dance, according to Joey, was going to be their big break and throughout the episode he seemed to have a “Today Degrassi, tomorrow the world!” attitude.  Until, that is, Mr. Raditch pulls him aside and tells him that he has failed eighth grade and will repeat.

It was a very pivotal episode for Joey for two reasons:  first, you could tell that he was being hit pretty hard with reality here, and the fact that he was … well, slower than everyone else would define his character for most of the rest of the series.  He also starts to take an interest in Caitlin, and that would … well, that’s “the relationship.”  It’s a very quick moment at the dance at the end, but enough to suggest that something would go on between the two at some point in the coming year.  And I have to admit that this was around the time that I started noticing Caitlin.  I’m pretty sure that Stacie Mistysyn, the actress who played her, was my first real actress crush, which probably explains A LOT. (more…)

Liberty Enlightening the World

So a week or two ago, I was cleaning up some stuff in my basement and in a huge Rubbermaid tub that was full of old VHS tapes found an old tape labeled “Liberty Weekend.”  I don’t remember grabbing it from my parents’ house when I moved away, but that’s not a surprise considering I grabbed quite a few things from their basement that I am sure they were happy to get rid of.

Still, I had to wonder why we had a tape labeled “Liberty Weekend” (not why I grabbed it–that’s explained by my love of having random crap) and then I noticed that the handwriting on the label was neither mine nor my parents’.  It was that of my dad’s old friend, Chuck, or “Uncle” Chuck as we used to call him.  He was the guy who once copied the entire Star Wars trilogy from laserdisc to VHS for me, so that meant that he’d probably put something together either using the footage from Liberty Weekend or for Liberty Weekend.

After realizing what it was, I had to wonder why he had put together the tape to begin with, unless he had been trying out some sort of editing equipment and decided to have a little fun.  Then, I actually started to watch the tape and remembered how huge the Statue of Liberty centennial celebration was twenty-five years ago.  So much so that not only did I decide to take the time to reflect on the weekend but a lot more.

Because in all honesty, it was very hard to escape the Statue of Liberty’s 100th anniversary, especially if you were a kid living in the New York City area.  The weekend of July 4, 1986 was a four-day party in and around New York City (especially New York harbor) and it was quite possibly one of the hugest things I had seen at the time, or since.  But the story really starts a few years earlier and encompasses more than a fireworks show and a concert that wound up in my basement in Virginia a quarter century later.

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Dance ’til Dawn

When I was a teenager, I spent a little too much time thinking about what my senior prom would be like.  I wouldn’t call it an obsession, but I thought about the big end-of-high-school dance enough to keep my thoughts to myself as if they were some sort of dirty little secret.  If I wasn’t writing about it, that is.  Track down a copy of Collage, the Sayville High School literary magazine from 1995 and you’ll see a story called “Scenes from a High School Prom,” which is some sort of boy-finally-gets-the-girl story that only a lovesick teenager would write, or maybe even dream about (literally, in fact, because it’s based on a dream I once had).   I even incorporated prom (specifically, that story) into a novel I wrote nearly a decade ago; although by then the message wasn’t so much about the fairytale of the perfect prom night but what happens the morning after and the baggage that comes with it.

In real life, I never had baggage concerning my senior prom experience.  In fact, I had a great time mostly due to the fact that I went with someone very cool and avoided most of the bullshit drama that my particular group of friends was involved with at the time (at least for one night — certain friends of mine, if they’re reading this, know that there was drama that I definitely got sucked into during and after our senior year of high school).  So I was never disappointed in my prom night, mainly because I was surprisingly well-adjusted coming out of high school (though I am the first to admit that I was both high-strung and immature … but enough about my issues).  Still, I would be lying if I didn’t say that the prom fantasy definitely factored into my perception of what my prom would be like.

That fantasy, btw?  The one featured in that short story I wrote in senior year creative writing?  Well, boy takes friend on whom he has a crush to prom and at the last chance to finally do it, he tells her he loves her and she says she loves him and they kiss and everyone lives happily ever after.  And where did I get the idea that this is what was going to happen at my prom because this is what happened at every prom?  Usually I would have some long explanation regarding my unpopularity in high school coupled with my testimony of junior high dances being special, magical places; however, all I have to do is say three words:

Dance ’til Dawn.

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