As children of the 80’s, we grew up in an environment oversaturated with TV that, while probably boiling our brains, created for us a unique, shared, media-infested pop culture.
When you meet someone remotely your age, you realize that you have this immense thing called the 80’s in common, and with the 80’s comes an obscene amount of TV-related knowledge.
I was saying to someone the other day “Did we do anything but watch TV as children? I think I rode my bike too...”
We watched every cartoon and every sitcom. Everyone watched Growing Pains. We were still in the now-deceased era of the family sitcom, and thus found our elementary school selves watching programs like The Golden Girl and Amen.
I had lunch with my Cousin yesterday (age 20) who said that her generation doesn’t have this shared culture phenomenon, because by the time she was old enough to watch TV all that remained was Full House. Seinfeld took over, and family sitcoms were replaced with sitcoms about nothing or sitcoms about the workplace.
She didn’t have wonderful things like Punky Brewster or Small Wonder or Alf or The Charmings or Just The Ten of Us or 227 or Sister Kate. Poor, poor child.
When we were growing up, in addition to sitcoms, we had fabulous sci-fi-drama crime weeklies like Quantum Leap and Alien Nation and The Flash, and we had the cartoons, most important of which were, of course, She-Ra and Jem and the Holograms.
I admit that there are severe gaps in my TV-knowledge. I’ve never seen an episode of Miami Vice, for example, although I remember watching Chips. There are certain cartoons I just never watched for some reason. I never watched any show that involved a car as a main character.
I don’t claim to have a comprehensive knowledge of all 80’s-related TV trivia. If anything, I probably watched less than many of the people I’ve met.
This being said, in high school, I watched a lot of TV, and things started to change. Northern Exposure was there, but all of a sudden there was Beverly Hills, 90210. And soon there would be Friends.
I watched a lot of TV, and I remember LOVING this show that I swear starred Brad Pitt. I am constantly asking people if they remember this show. “It was a show about four friends, one was a cop or something, one was a journalist, I think one was Italian, and I don't know what the deal was with the fourth one...and they all had very different personalities but still managed to stay best friends! And one of the friends was Brad Pitt!”
Nobody has ever heard of this. I’ve been perplexed for the last, like, 15 years, because there are so many people who watched way more TV than I did, yet nobody has any recollection of this show!
“Brad Pitt was on Growing Pains. That’s what you’re thinking of…” people say. “I obviously KNOW THAT HE WAS ON THAT. He was ALSO on this other show.”
Everyone thought me insane.
Last night I went home after work and had about an hour to kill before D came over for dinner. I was excited to cook dinner for us – we haven’t had dinner in together for almost a month, and we normally do this all the time. I played a little piano and became really frustrated (am in over my head with Music Project du Jour), so decided to, whoa, watch TV… again!
This time I watched Entertainment Tonight. I can’t believe Mary Hart is still hosting. Nevertheless… much news about Angelina Jolie’s pregnancy! After the commercial, they said, will be shown footage of Angelina and Brad BEFORE they were stars.
“Oh my god!” I thought. “Could I possibly be lucky enough that they will show footage from the Brad Pitt mystery show? Please please please… Please, Entertainment Tonight, don’t fail me now. Help me, Entertainment Tonight, you’re my only hope!”
Held hostage by Entertainment Tonight, I suffered through post-People’s Choice Awards footage of Jessica Simpson talking about how happy she is to have the support of her family at such a difficult time. Ugh.
What seemed like three hundred commercial breaks later, more Angelina and Brad! They showed footage of large-toothed Angelina from when she was an awkward 12-year-old at some awards show with John Voigt. There was no way to have predicted that she would turn out stunning! There is hope for you all, awkward 12 years old of America!
And then… drum roll… early career footage of Brad Pitt during his time on the short-lived Fox drama… drum rolling… Glory Days!
EUREEKA!!!!
All of my teen angst and sexual frustration came rushing at me when I heard those two words.
Oh. My. God. I loved that show.
Of course I checked to see if it is out on DVD, but it is not.
Damn, son.
Content, I turned off Entertainment Tonight and made dinner.
D arrived, soaked (it rained! but can we really complain given the weather this week?) with a bottle of wine to (a) assist in his coping with his terribly stressful day at work and (b) test out the Houdini corkscrew I got for Christmas! It is truly magic.
We ate dinner, finished the bottle even though I’d said earlier “I can’t drink that much tonight because I have a brutal day at work tomorrow and have to get in early” to which he’d said “Me too – I’m tired, I don’t want to drink,” had fabulous conversations, made and then devoured chocolate chip cookies.
In one of the conversations, D was going on and on about how in some way he wished we’d lose our jobs, because forced motivation to change one's life is the best kind. "It's hard to overcome intertia," he said. I, of course, agreed, my currently wonderful life having been the direct result of my having been laid off a few years ago.
He said “We should come up with a plan.”
“What?”
“We have to come up with a plan. Like, say we go in tomorrow and lose our jobs, what’s the plan?”
“Move somewhere that’s really cheap. We won’t need to worry about jobs for a while because we have enough money saved between the two of us to live somewhere for a decent time without working. We break our leases tomorrow, pack up, and head to wherever. When we get there, we regroup. We figure out if we want to continue our current careers, and if so, where. If not, then we figure out what we want to do with our lives, find a place with a really cheap cost of living but with really good schools, and then I become a photographer, because I really want to.”
“You should! We should move to Savannah!” he said, because of some art or design school down there that would be ideal. He said “You’d really like it.”
Then “Or Northampton… I would love to live in Northampton. I’d rather live there than in Boston,” he said.
WHAT?!?! How did I not know this!??!
“I’d actually love to live there. Seriously.”
“There aren’t many jobs for chemists,” I said. “But you could work in a lab at UMass!!”
“Could I?”
“I bet there are companies. There must be companies! You wouldn't need a car!”
Can you imagine me commuting on the PVTA? Yes! YES!
“It would be actually be quite ideal. Close to Boston, close to New York, there's nature, hiking, there are a ton of cyclists in Northampton, it's cultured…”
“Every show that comes through New York goes through western MA…”
… the record store sucks, though.”
“No it doesn’t! But there are good ones in Amherst… and New York is only a few hours away!”
“Yeah, it would be awesome to live in Northampton.”
“I could get a BA from UMass,” I said. “I wonder if I’d need to give them copies of my transcript since I already went there.”
I could take Social Dance II!
“You’ll have to take the SATs.”
We laughed.
This morning I woke up and said “I hope we lose our jobs today.”
Thursday, January 12, 2006
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13 comments:
"just the ten of us"!!! holy crap! i totally forgot about that show. you're totally right about 80's kids having a unique pop culture bond (i think the kids of the 70's do too.) glad you found out the name of the Brad Pitt show. funny you should mention the 80's, i just found my Outfield cassette while i was at home. and, yes, i am most certainly rocking out to them. brings back memories of watching "mr. belvedere" and "heathcliffe" cartoons.
oh, about Savannah -my friend and i spent a couple of days there last spring. it's so well preserved, full of history and beautiful; but also super small and very sleepy and HOT. not to mention a tad, um, old school in politics and race issues. we heard from SCAD students that the police and old gentry locals can be tough on them, but there is a cool underground arts scene (we didn't stay long enough to check it out, though.) i highly recommend a visit. the food down there is mmmmmm.
rad post, dude, rad post!
oh yeah, how about moving to...philly?! it's super affordable, ya know...just sayin'.
OK, first of all, what the hell are The Charmings and Sister Kate? Second of all, I did not realize that Brad Pitt was on Growing Pains, and I had to go look him up and find out which episode (have you seen TV.com? Perfect for this, when used in conjunction with imdb.com because imdb tells you exactly which episode. How did we survive pre-imdb?) and as soon as I saw who he was I realized I am a moron for not already knowing that. Third, and most importantly, of all, you should TOTALLY move to Northampton. Record store: Media Play! Housewares and clothes: Faces! Screw Savannah, and screw Philly. They are too far away. And doesn't J live in Philly? WHAT IF YOU MOVE TO PHILLY AND RUN INTO J! No. Sorry, Nithya, but Leah can't move farther south. But I do have to agree that Philly is cheap. It's probably cheaper than Northampton.
Ha! That's what I say when I wake up every morning, too!
As for the TV -- I don't know if this is the same with everyone, but when I was a kid, very few of the other families in my neighborhood had cable. And even then, the only original programming came from the three major networks, so I wonder if this "bond" thing was enforced by the lack of alternatives. I wonder if it's because there are so many options available now that such a thing doesn't happen with today's generation...
It took me like half an hour to figure out who J was.
Come on, Mo, you know you WANT me to run into J, just for the story!
I wonder if kids play more video games these days... and stare at their laptops... and download music for the IPods... instead of watching things like Heathcliffe.
FYI, Quantum leap was 1989-->1993. I have always felt that the culture of the 80's unofficially ended in 1987. This is because so many things that people associate with the 80's (like punky and transformers, for example) were winding down at this point. Sometimes it's convenient to think of things in chunks of decades, but does anyone else feel like a decade can be a poor measure of an era? Otherwise, I basically agree with everything, but I do think stuff like ipods will offer fodder for nostalgia in the future for today's kids.
Leah, the ideal thing would be for you to run into J while visiting Philly. No! The perfect story would be you running into J while putting down a deposit on a place because she lives next door! But you'd see her just in time to not take the apartment. And I would get to watch through secret footage becuase I'd love to see your face but I would not love having to talk to J myself.
I agree with banalities about the breadth of choice phenomenon today. There are just so many things to choose from! Still, kids today all know SpongeBob and Pokemon, right? Nickelodeon is pretty popular after all. I think kids today have more shared stuff than we realize, because we're not kids and are therefore unaware of the popularity of such shows as That's So Raven or whatever.
This is true, Mo. I was just trying to figure out why Leah's cousin feels like her generation has no similar bond.
Although -- kids' shows and cartoons have always been so. Transformers, Voltron, and Pokemon were all toys before they were cartoons, I think, and they became cartoons only to sell the toys.
Hey -- who remembers Teddy Ruxpin? I remember that it was one of the few cartoons with complex characters, like Tale Spin, which was easily the best of the Disney Afternoon. I wonder if these shows would be any good if I saw them as an adult?
Was Tale Spin the one with Huey, Dewey and Louie? And a pilot duck who was stupid? My favorite was Chip 'n' Dale's Rescue Rangers. As for Leah's cousin, maybe she was only talking about shows in prime time or something? Like, there weren't any real family shows from 8pm-10pm when she was growing up? Because there must have at least been cartoons that everyone watched, or at least pretended to know about.
It turns out that I am apparently dedicating valuable brain cell real estate to the following lyrics:
Sometimes,
Some crimes
Are something something blah,
But these two
Gumshoes
Are giving what they've got!
Ch-ch-ch-chip and Dale!
Rescue Rangers!
Ch-ch-ch-chip and Dale!
When there's danger!
Ch-ch-ch-chip and Dale!
yeah, every generation has their shared bond. the 20-year-olds i take classes with wax nostalgic about early 90's stuff like power rangers, carmen san diego, and "grunge" clothes...
anonymous, i'm with you, the 80's did end in 1987. 88-90 was kinda bleh.
kids who had teddy ruxpins at my school got beat up. those things are creepy.
i watched an old episode of "duck tales" about an year ago...made me wish i could think like an 8-year-old again.
mo, i agree with you about savannah -screw that. but PHILLY is rad. it's affordable, it's revitalizing, it's got great restaurants, museums, Cereality, it's close to nyc, dc, baltimore...uh, wilmington. and whoever this J character is, don't worry, i'll take care of her...sounds like the girl needs a good ass kick. and i will, cuz this is philly and we's all tuff we is.
Nithya, you forgot Newark. Philly is close to Newark. And, of course, I am referring to New-ARK, Delaware.
Hey, I've got nothing agains Philly per se. I lived there for 5 years. But, you see, Philly is too far away from Lowell! (Lowell city motto: It's not as bad as you remember.)
But if you do run into J, feel free to give her a good ass kick for me.
No, that was Duck Tales. Tale Spin was the one with the Jungle Book characters.
Oh, wow. I forgot about the Teddy Ruxpin toys. They were *super* creepy, especially with the eyes blinking. Brr.
Mo: dead right about Lowell. I went to see a play at the Merrimack Rep a couple of years ago and thought I was in Gangs of New York. Fearing a pig sticker in my back, I vowed never to come back again. But I found myself there a couple of months ago, and it was much, much nicer.
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