Tuesday, September 07, 2004

The Golden Age

There needs to be more made-up holidays like Labor Day. Having a day off is a beautiful thing. I spent it at a cabin in Causey resevoir, among the pine trees and Pinesol scented air. You can't beat the mountains. Green things and relaxation go together naturally, like peanut butter and jelly or stomach pumps and Arbys.

The activities were uniform: hiking, stargazing, dvd watching, cheesy game playing. There were ten of us, a perfect number to fill the ten beds up in the loft. But think about it; when there's a bunch of single twenty-somethings, five guys and five girls, sleeping in a tight space in the middle of the woods, certain things are bound to happen...

Like long conversations about Eighties cartoons, for example. As a child of the Eighties, I never miss the opportunity to reminisce about the good old days. How could any boy claim to have had a horrific childhood when there was He-Man, Transformers, Thundercats, and Garbage Pail Kids? And girls had it good too, what with My Little Pony, She-Ra, Strawberry Shortcake, and Jem and the Holograms. Pity the female pre-teen today, with her Gangsta-Skank Barbie and complete lack of Kid Sister dolls.

It was the golden age of Saturday morning cartoons, unequaled by previous decades or any decade to come. What other decade had such catchy theme songs that can be so easily remade into techno songs? I mean the only thing the Nineties offered were thousands of Power Rangers spin-offs and those tended to cause severe mental retardation, or so I've been told. Today we have nonsensical shows like Sponge-Bob Square Pants. He lives under the sea, yet somehow he can go sailing on a boat on TOP of the water. I'm sorry, that's way too trippy.

Times are changing. What are my future kids going to watch? She-He-Man? The Adventures of Girls-Gone-Wild-Endless-Spring-Break Barbie? I say bring back the Eighties cartoons, or at least something like them. Kids need the stability, what with all the dangers that they face from terrorists and Michael Jackson. Who would you trust to protect you: a ripped, panther-riding super-hero or a talking dish sponge? Tight-pink shirts or not, my money's on He-Man.

2 comments:

mark said...

my personal fav was voltron without a doubt. and i still have fond memories of watching the intro to He Man on schumways computer back in 99 in absolute shock, as i realized that one of my childhood heros was the main character in perhaps the most homo erotic type cartoon to ever grace the 80s. skeletor was rad though. and so was castle greyskull.

Jer said...

I too came to this sad realization about He-man at a later age. It's so obvious now, so in your face, you wonder who those cartoonists thought they were fooling. I still have some pretty hilarious He-man images that I found online that, when placed out of context, look more like a porno than a children's cartoon.