The forty-firstnd episode of our podcast, Paul and Storm Talk About Some Stuff for Five to Ten Minutes (On Average), is now online.
This week’s episode: personal improvement, regarding sitting up listening; breaking through our passive aggression; our Tron Rifftrax is released; we get serious regarding minion submissions; dunce caps; Storm’s wife is fabulous; and ruminations on childhood experiences (esp. TV and movies) that get sullied upon revisitation. (Is that even a word?) Also: be careful.
AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION ALERT: Please share your own experiences with things that have disappointed you when you revisit them in adulthood; and let us know how people in your area bid each other farewell. Also, make sure, if/when you submit your minion photo, that you include a label of some sort declaring your minionhood.
Featured post-show song: “Land of the Lost” – Everclear
Show #041: My 39-Year-Old Man-Eyes (Some content NSFW)
[audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/www.paulandstorm.com/podcasts/PS_5-10_041.mp3]Enjoy the podcast? Maybe donate, why don’tcha?
21 Comments
So far, the biggest disappointment I can think of is Get Smart. I loved watching that in syndication as a kid. I recently rewatched it on DVD, and man was it cornball. The laughter was more canned than a potted meat food product. Come to think of it, what I’ve seen of HR Pufnstuf hasn’t held up well either.
On the flip side, something that held up amazingly well was Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time series. I reread it just a couple of years ago, and even though the writing is simple, it’s not simplistic. Camazotz and IT were just as creepy as when I was ten. Children’s science fiction at its very best.
I know my picture was missing signage, but I thought I’d earn bonus points by pledging my allegiance while I should have been working.
I have to say that The Transformers original cartoon series isn’t nearly as cool as it was when I was six. In fact, most Saturday morning cartoons are a lot cheesier with twenty extra years of perspective. And yet classic Doctor Who is still wonderful in all its nostalgic, low-budget glory.
By the by, the Land of the Lost marathon was on SciFi. I don’t think I’d seen the original series before, but I did watch the one they made in the early ’90s. Also extremely silly.
“De-lutation” = Valediction (as in valedictory address). Vale [pronounced WAH-lay] = bu-bye in Latin. People I know usually just say “Bye” or “See ya” or “Later”. Sometimes “Toodles” or “Ta-ta” if we’re in a goofy mood. Stuff like “Take care” is usually reserved for sad situations or people driving home when they’re tired, and “Be careful” for more immediate concerns like nearby construction work or a loose railing on the porch.
Was there ever a definitive ruling on retroactive admission to Order of Teh Cloth? I have a minion shirt, but they weren’t available at the time I joined.
The original Star Wars movie. Before it was “Episode 4” and the history of Luke’s father hadn’t been rewritten yet. Watching it as an adult, when the attack on the Death Star begins, and the voice in Luke’s head says “Trust the Force, Luke” and he turns off his targeting computer, I was standing up shouting, “No, you moron, don’t listen to the freaking voice in your head! Turn the goddamn computer back on!”
This is the first time the front-runner for the title mentioned in the podcast actually became the title itself.
One show I loved as a kid was the X-Men animated series. Looking back on it now at even just 20 years old… it just doesn’t work anymore. I know I’m forgetting others, but I can’t think of them. …That last sentence is certainly redundant.
I agree that “be careful” is kinda an ominous phrase.
There is a movie that has haunted me most of my life. The music ran through all my nightmares. Images from the movie even teased me in my daydreams. I didn’t know the name of the movie or anything about it. I was very young, I woke up in the middle of the night and the TV was on.
A few weeks ago I was flipping through channels and suddenly there was the music of my nightmares, so I had to stop and watch the movie. Turns out it was a mild and slightly cheesy ghost story but the music was great. Even though I’ve seen it now with adult eyes, the emotional reaction to the images is strong.
Definitely Voltron and Thundercats. As iconic as the two are when they showed back up on Cartoon network, my god were they awful. I loved them as kids, but looking back the animation was awful, the voices were horrid and the stories were just ridiculous.
Hey Storm – I know you mentioned Lebanese, but I’m going to add Jordanian to the list (which really isn’t all that different, at least ethnically). One of the staff at the hostel in Amman this week looked so much like you.
Am I the only one that WANTS the dunce cap?? I actually signed up for minionship without reading the fine print (which I’m sure is how all minions/man-servants, etc. get sucked into that gig in the real world). Now it looks like my non attention to detail might just pay off. The only drawback of the cap is having a picture of myself in a clan type hat circulating on the interwebs. But I guess if I go into politics being outed as a paul and storm minion would kill my career as quicker than any hate crimes or anything else would. (Oh, and Porky’s….just not the same 25 years later, married, and having seen actual boobies in real life.)
I feel most of my childhood things get better as years go by. Maybe it speaks to my upbringing, but a lot of the things that trigger childhood sentimentality are the kind of things that just get riper as I get older/more sophisticated. I never really watched or listened to anything that was directly targeted at my age group except for maybe Sesame Street and Raffi.
Starting when I was about 3 or 4 I used to sit at the foot of my parents’ bed and watch Mystery Science Theater with them. I didn’t understand most of the jokes but I remember laughing at SOMETHING, and I remember the Joel/Mike switch didn’t faze me as much as it fazed my parents. Every time I watch an episode again it gets better because I understand something else I didn’t catch when I was 3.
We used to watch Dr. Katz that way too, all piled together on the bed in the dark. I didn’t even laugh at what the comedians said when I was little, I just thought it was funny when someone yelled or did funny voices. I’m STILL rediscovering comedians we found on Dr. Katz.
Jim Gaffigan? Brian Regan? Louis CK? Really?
I had a 16-tape box set of Pee Wee’s Playhouse, and would pick one tape at a time and watch it over and over again in one sitting as kids are wont to do. Infamously, a lot of the bluer references went over my head. “You know what they say about guys with big feet, Pee Wee?” “I don’t know, Cowboy Curtis, what?” “They have biiiiig boots.”
My dad introduced me to Monty Python when I was about 5, and for whatever reason he started with the Black Knight scene. I wasn’t allowed to watch The Simpsons because my mom thought it was too violent, but somehow this was okay. Now I’m one of those people that obnoxiously recites along with most episodes and films when they’re playing within earshot.
There are exceptions, of course. Captain EO [Michael Jackson’s 3D adventure with the Max Rebo Band] used to be really awesome to me, but now it’s just kind of lame – but I’m lucky enough that kids my age really STRONGLY value irony, and so Captain EO isn’t as dorky as it is kind of great in a retro terrible way.
And with Pee Wee, the Playhouse Christmas Special also frequented my VCR for a good few years until the tape degraded beyond use. I’m the only person I’ve met who has sentimental associations with kd lang, the Del Rubio Triplets, Grace Jones, Zsa Zsa, Joan Rivers, etc., because they were all guests in the Christmas Special, and this was their only context to me. It wasn’t until last Christmas when I watched the DVD with OTHER PEOPLE that I realized how bizarre the whole thing was.
(and for years, I thought kd lang was a spazzy man in a dress. Imagine my shock when I learned the truth.)
Something happen to the mp3 of this show? I can’t connect. =/
Thoughts on the podcast:
I’m 39, and though I tried, I could never get into “Land of the Lost.” It was simultaneously too creepy (when I was younger) and too lame (when I was older); I’m pretty sure there was an actual overlap at which I would have characterized it as both scary and sucky. YMMV.
“Be careful!” reminded me of several dead chicken admonitions: “Beware the Ides of March!” (Julius Caesar) and “Beware Macduff!” (Macbeth). That’s just me, though.
Disappointments:
I’m with Richard. While it remains a groundbreaking film in many regards, I’m acutely conscious of no longer being seven years old when I watch “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.” Luke is forever trapped in my mind as a whiny toddler.
@Molly: In a recent conversation, I asserted that yes, contemporary youth (I think in the original it was “kids these days”) quote Monty Python. It’s good to be able to cite some evidence of this. 😉
I had just the opposite reaction when viewing the old Land of the Lost for the first time this week. I thought it was really good for something that old and that childish. Yeah, it was cheesy and utterly incomprehensible at times, but I really could see myself getting in to it if I were a kid again. If I were 10, it would definitely be the most awesome thing ever.
I’m having a hard time thinking of anything from my own childhood (late-1980s through 1990s) that could compare to that.
One thing that many people never realized when watching the original Land of the Lost shows are that they were pretty deep for a kid’s show with “guys in a rubber suit”. Alternate realities, weather control, time travel, uploading of a mind, universes merging and warping, alot of heady stuff that was watered down for the kiddies. The reason for the high-brow subject matter? Take a look at the writers. Many famous science fiction writers of the day wrote many of the episodes. (example- Ben Bova not only wrote several episodes of Land of the Lost, but also an episode or two of the animated Star Trek series of the same era.)
I used to love the Spice Girls when I was in elementary, and I made it a ritual to watch the “Spice World” movie every year. Finally, this year, I introduced it as my pick for Bad Movie Night, a tradition since senior year of high school with my guy friends. Through watching it MS3TK style, and with the help of my buddies, I’ve been able to let go of my embarrassing habit.
On the other hand, though- the original Batman series has just gotten better and better for me. It’s corny and silly and wacky- and I love it! I loved the Grant Morrison Batman when I was first introduced, so I was really snobby when it came to my Batman. Now that I’m older and can appreciate that it was just two guys having a fun time making a crazy television show, well… Holy Hole in a Donut, Batman- I’m sold.
Because I’m greedy and I like to take up two posts, here’s my dunce cap story.
My Geography teacher in middle school (the guy you loved to mess with) unearthed some old cheerleaders’ songleading cones from the atomic bomb bunker under the school (this thing was built in the forties and still had the original lead pipes up until 3 years). It became a class project to repaint them as dunce caps. Once they were finished, one was distributed to each teacher, and they were used rather liberally. I ended up in them at least 20 times while going there.
While this is not a dunce cap story, it’s certainly a creative equivalent. My mother lived in a very small, “Leave it to Beaver” kind of town in the fifties growing up. She was caught talking and passing notes in the back by her teacher one day, who, instead of punishing them, asked her equally guilty accomplice and her what song they knew backwards and forwards. The answer- “The Oscar Meyer Wiener” song. She excused them without anymore on the matter. When my mother and her friend arrived at school the next day, the teacher had wooden signs to wear around their neck painted with “I Wish I Were a Wiener”. She then had them go around to every class in the conjoined elementary/junior high/high school and sing the Oscar Meyer song. After what I can only assume was a very long trip home on the bus, my mom arrived home to find her mother dressed to escort her around their neighborhood to serenade their neighbors. Only after eating, sleeping, and going through another day of school with the sign on, were the two allowed to take them off. It is because of this I’m glad teachers are almost forced to be nice nowadays.
There are some things that I appreciate on a different level now such as The Monkees, Get Smart, and Adam West’s Batman.
Thundercats, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, and the old SCTV shows have lost something for me. Oh sure, there’s still some great highlights from all of them, but watching a full episode of any one of those leaves a gaping hole inside me that cannot be filled.
Of course, it could just be wrong that I expect so much of a show that features Snarf.
For me Ren and Stimpy I loved as a little kid and the various reshowings and reincarnations did not live up. The other was Bevis and Butthead.
This isn’t listed in the participation guide, but both of my Grandma’s say “you be careful” when I leave either of their houses. My mom and dad say it every now and then too as an extension of their moms. I don’t foresee myself carrying that on to my son, but who knows.
GARFIELD. Garfield sucks when I look back on it.
I’ve heard that “Be Careful” is a common salutation in the south of the U.S. Sorry I didn’t hear where you were when this happened, but that could be what was going on.
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