“A long December, and
there’s reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last.”
New
Years is a pointless holiday. It makes much more sense to celebrate the New
Year during a Solstice or Equinox. For most pre-Christian cultures it was the Spring
Equinox. January 1st is a random date. There’s no real cosmic
significance. You can make resolutions any time, why wait? So it follows, 2000
was nothing more than a number. I got swept up in the excitement at the time of
New Year’s Eve 1999, but Nihilism and disillusionment have killed any chance of
me getting as excited for 2020. I’m not even making a mixtape about it this
time. I only pay attention to the Gregorian calendar out of necessity. I have
to because everyone else in the society I find myself in is doing it. You can’t
ever completely divorce yourself from it psychologically. One thing I will say
for the holiday is it works as a time to reflect. I get caught up in that
sometimes, like when it comes to cultural shorthand such as decade nostalgia. I
guess that’s what I’m doing now by writing this blog entry.
It’s
now been twenty years since “the Year 2000”, or “Y2K”. I ranted enough about
the passage of time in my blog about the music I listened to in the 2010’s, so
I’ll save it. I’ll just say though, that it feels strange to have such clear
memories of a night from twenty years ago. Twenty years used to seem a lot
longer of a time to me ten years ago than it does now. The main reason my
memories about that night are as good as they are is that they’re all tied in
with the recordings I made that night, both on VHS and audio cassette. Perhaps
it just gives me a story to tell myself and isn’t really a true memory, but
either way, I know what I was up to. So, this post is going to be a bit of a
double-whammy, I’m going to talk about a mix tape and a VHS tape. But,
since I don’t feel like writing a 25-page term paper, I’ll just talk about what
stood out most, give you a list of what was on it, maybe see what I can find on
YouTube of it.
Anyway, to get a big topic out of the way, I didn’t fully
buy into the Y2K Bug paranoia of the time. I still to this day wonder who
profited off spreading a lie like that. Maybe the media did it for the ratings,
and a few con artists helped spread the paranoia so they could sell their
survival books and videos. It wasn’t that I was a total skeptic. But I was 13.
I didn’t own a computer, I didn’t have a bank account, so I didn’t think it
would affect me even if it did happen. Best case scenario the schools would be
closed, and that’s what I was hoping for. No such luck.
And the people who didn’t think we were on the brink of
technological Armageddon had such high hopes for the coming century. Flying
cars, robots, world peace. Instead the world has only gone downhill in the last
twenty years. The people on this tape had no idea what disasters the future
would bring, starting in 2001. Endless war, ecological disaster, economic
turmoil, an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, and to top it all off, all
the movies coming out suck. It’s kind of sad watching this old VHS tape again,
knowing what happens next.
So,
back to twenty years ago. It was New Year’s Eve, 1999. I was determined to stay
up all night. It was the start of the new millennium. I wasn’t old enough to
drink, and I wasn’t going to any party, so I had to do something
special. Everyone else was making a big deal about the year 2000, so I believed
it was a big deal. My father had gone off to celebrate with his friends, my
sister was at a sleepover at a friend’s house, and my mother went to bed early,
so it was just me. And I recorded myself channel surfing for a big chunk of the
night. I still have my New Year’s 2000 VHS tape that I was recording all of
this on.
Now Y2K compliant and guaranteed to survive technological Armageddon.
The
first thing on the tape is The Three Stooges short “Malice in the Palace”, one
of the four public domain episodes, so it's pretty safe to post it here without worrying about it getting taken off YouTube. Because we ALL own this episode. I love public domain. Anyway, the sad thing about this one is Curly was going
to come back to play the cook (this was after his stroke caused him to have to
quit show business and he was replaced with Shemp), but he was too sick so
Larry took the part instead. I want to travel to the alternate universe where
we got a short with both Curly and Shemp.
And
I must have been channel surfing, after this is an episode of Kenan and Kel recorded
off Nickelodeon. That channel was still watchable at the time. It was the
episode where Kenan’s family is eating at a restaurant and they one by one get
locked in the freezer after Kel switches the sign pointing to the restroom.
It’s a mystery to me why Kenan made it to Saturday Night Live but Kel didn’t.
Kel was funnier. It's not on YouTube, I checked.
Next, I changed the channel to TLC, back when
it was a documentary channel (TLC once stood for “The Learning Channel”, if
anyone even remembers that). The documentary I recorded was 100 Greatest
Achievements of the 20th Century. These “Greatest ____ of the 20th
Century” list shows were freaking everywhere in 1999. On every channel.
But especially on the likes of TLC, The Discovery Channel, The History Channel,
etc. This is just an example of a typical one. When it came to the documentary
channels it was either this or “How Will the World End?” documentaries. Silly
fools, didn’t they know the world wasn’t going to end until 2012 according to
the Mayan calendar?
Throughout
the day the main channels (NBC, CBS, ABC, etc.) showed New Year celebrations
around the world, of course acting like this was some monumental celestial
event. There are bits and pieces of this on my tape too. You get to learn all
about time zones on New Year’s Eve. They would show different cities where it
hit midnight. You’ve got Maori tribes in New Zealand celebrating, this interesting
ceremony going on in New Guinea, cultures that don’t even use the Gregorian
calendar still wanted in on the fun. Then they’d periodically check up on those
poor fools in Times Square in New York City suffering frostbite and wearing
diapers so they could stand there all day and wait for a stupid ball to drop. I
don’t know why people do it every year. Being in Times Square must feel like
being inside an advertisement.
Right
before midnight on CBS, Bill Clinton gave a sweeping, optimistic speech about
the future, which time has shown to be very much overly-optimistic. It’s long
and boring, but it makes me remember that we used to have presidents that were
articulate. After enduring some of this, I changed the channel to the ball
dropping in New York on Fox (I couldn’t find it on YouTube). Apparently, they
dropped three tons of confetti on the crowd. Such wastefulness. How many trees
were mowed down to make that much stupid, useless confetti? How many animals
did that confetti probably kill? And for what?“Woo hoo, year number on made-up calendar different now! Perfect excuse
to get drunk!”
And
one of the sponsors for the event in Times Square was Blockbuster Video. Oof,
that’s like a punch in the gut. If no other moment is symbolic of this tape, of
people being blissfully unaware of the complete disaster that awaited them in
the next two decades, it was that little tidbit.
After
watching the ball drop at Times Square and usher in the new millennium from the
TV that used to be in my room, I remember filling up on sparkling apple cider
and switching the channel to AMC (this was back when every TV channel stuck to
what it’s supposed to be, in this case “American Movie Classics”; I blame MTV
for degenerating first, most of the other channels have followed suit now and I
rarely if ever watch cable as a result) to catch and record the rest of the
Three Stooges marathon, filling up the rest of the tape. It was mostly Shemp
episodes for some reason. I must have been partly disappointed at the time, but
my respect for Shemp has grown over the years, even if Curly is more iconic. It’s
an acquired taste. I never disliked Shemp though. He was his own thing and can’t
really be compared to Curly. Once the tape was finished, I retired to my
bedroom and turned on the radio, determined to pull an all-nighter.
Pay no attention to that mention of "Fatboy Slim", it's not on the tape anymore.
At
any rate, my audio cassette this time was a 110-minute TDK "CD Power" tape. These
were essentially Type II cassettes, which have better sound quality than your
standard Type I cassettes. Has to do with the type of magnetic tape that was
used. It was called Michael’s Music 2000, and was my 15th mixtape. My
second in the “Michael’s Music” yearly series (later renamed “Suren’s Songs”),
like the first, didn’t so much record what I listened to throughout the year as
later ones did, but essentially acted like a “New Year’s” tape. I‘m not sure
how I got lucky enough to record “Anthem for the Year 2000“ by Silverchair as
the first song. This was before I had dual cassette players. Maybe it was fate.
But I think I may have cheated and recorded it early. If true, I would probably
have heard the DJ say he was going to play the song and madly scrambled for the
tape. It was so long ago I don’t remember. It was a song that I listened to a
lot in 1999; its lyrics encapsulated my disillusionment with the world. "Never knew we were living in a world where our innocence is so short", and all that. Middle School was awful. This song was my turn to the dark side. My childhood ended with that guitar riff in the beginning.
But
by the time 3am rolled around, to stave off my sleepiness I relocated to my
bedroom and turned on the radio to record any good songs playing. I was at it
for the rest of New Year’s day. Live 105, a San Francisco alternative rock station that I think might still be around, did a “Best Alternative Bands of the
Millennium” countdown that day, giving me a lot of material to work with.
Unlike the near-identical countdown they had the previous summer, this one also
included bands from the 80‘s. As with Michael’s Music 1999, it’s hit-or-miss
with me these days, with quite a few old shames that I don’t really like
anymore, per se. To be fair, I’ll still listen to Silverchair and Oasis for old
time’s sake. They’re inseparably attached to my childhood and preteens. Rage
Against the Machine’s music is something I understand a lot more now than I did
then. And Powerman 5000, whatever happened to that band? They were pretty good.
Korn, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, these are all classics. But then Weezer,
Sublime, and Smash Mouth? What was I thinking? I had a thing for the Beastie
Boys around that time too, I remember. Ehh, I still think they’re okay, I’m
kinda neutral on them now. And then there’s that “Pretty Fly for a White Guy”
song that everyone was listening to at the time. I don’t even really remember
why I liked it. Oh well, I was 13 and it was basically still the 90’s. What
were you listening to at 13? Probably a lot of stuff you hate now. But because
I’m feeling shameless, I’ll share the playlist and recreate it on Spotify. Maybe
someone out there is morbidly curious. It definitely captures what a lot of
people my age at that time were listening to if they weren’t either into pop or
whatever their parents listened to, at least if they lived in the United
States, specifically the San Francisco Bay Area. So, if that was you, maybe
you’ll be interested. But it’s not as fun without the DJ’s, old radio
commercials and station bumpers.
At
some point during New Year’s Day I finished the 110-minute tape, but I remember
having lasted until shortly after dinner that day before finally dozing off. I
was quite proud of myself for conquering the night. The sad thing was I had to
be back at school in two days, with a screwed-up sleep schedule. I couldn’t
have been the only one though. Probably even some of the teachers were in the
same boat. They were old enough to drink, so most likely.
It was twenty years ago last
February that I made my first mixtape: Michael’s Music 1999. In February of
2019, I commemorated this by creating what I consider to be an updated version; calling it Michael's Music 2019 despite that I stopped going by “Michael” once I turned 18. While my first
mixtape was a mainly a collection of music I had been fond of for the first
twelve years of my life, this one would cover my late 20’s to early 30’s. I
tried to choose songs that had a similar energy to the songs on my first tape,
even if they were a different genre (under the "goth" genre umbrella, mostly). Anyway, first I’ll go ahead and tell the
story of my first mixtape, because 2019 is ending soon and I want to get this out there before it does.
Michael’s Music 1999
We begin our story in the year
1999, the definitive BC/AD moment in my life. Everything before February 1999
is prehistory; I hadn’t begun to record my life yet. In 1999 my name was still
Michael. But Michael might as well have been some other kid. Up until 7th
grade I used to go by Mikey, however I had decided based on the amount of
teasing I got over it at school that the name was too childish, and had come to
loathe being called by that name. My real first name is Suren, but if I went by
that name at school, I’d have been even more of a target for bullying than I
already was, being shorter than everyone else in 7th grade, having
to wear glasses, and a bit shy and bookish. It was as if no one had seen a
short person before. “Did you skip a grade?“ “Are you legally a midget?“ And so
on. Middle School kids will look for anything abnormal about you to make fun
of. So you see, if I’d have gone by some strange Armenian first name, it
would’ve been just one more thing for people to go after. So I kept that name a
secret and went by my middle, much more American-sounding name. Better to be
one of as many as four Michaels in one class, than to be unique and become a
target. Michael became a sort of shield. They couldn’t do much with Oganessian,
though watching my teachers try to pronounce it on the first day of class was
always amusing. But there was nothing they could say about Michael.
One day in February I was watching
TV with my sister and mother. I remember it well, it was a new made-for-TV
adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. I‘d anticipated it for months. And I
kid you not, it is the only time you will ever see Gene Wilder in a turtle suit
playing a balalaika. Still no match for the 1985 made-for-TV Alice on
Wonderland which I am going to cover another time, but still pretty good.
As we were watching though, the speakers on the TV blew out. It made this
really loud, horrible noise, and then silence. I didn’t get to see the end of
the movie until YouTube was invented.
Though I protested greatly against it,
my parents resorted to taking my TV out of my bedroom and moving it to the
living room, taking away my ability to play my beloved Sega Genesis games (Even
back then, I relied on outdated technology. It was another thing for me to be
ridiculed over. “You don‘t have an N64 or a Playstation?” I’d get asked
in disbelief. These things mattered in Middle School.). I had my books, but
they weren’t enough to keep me entertained for long. So, my mom relented, and
instead gave me her boom box.
The boom box had a CD and cassette
player. I didn’t have very many CD’s. Most of the CD’s I had to listen to were
my mom’s. I could listen to Smashing Pumpkin’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Weird Al’s Bad Hair Day (my only CD) or Journey’s
Greatest Hits for a while, but eventually that got old, as much as I liked them.
So I began surfing radio stations. Only ones that played alternative rock of
course. Back then there were at least four to choose from in the San Francisco Bay
Area. And I eventually came to 90.5 The Edge, a local student-run rock station.
This would be my new home for the coming years.
And then, I noticed that the boom
box had a record button. My mother graciously let me go through and choose a
tape from collection of blank cassette tapes from the 80’s, and I was ready to
record all my favorite songs from the radio. “Michael’s Music 1999” was born. I
developed a list of songs I wanted to record, based on what I’d grown up
listening to during car rides or while watching MTV, and I sat and waited for
the radio to play them. It became a constant waiting game. A game that would
eventually become a testament to those endless days, sitting in front of the
radio alone in my bedroom, on my favorite chair that while dumpy-looking I
refused to let my dad throw out. My radio would become my best friend; at
times, my only friend. And each melody on those cassette tapes contains a
memory. Melodies which enable me to relive those dreary Middle School days
every time I listen.
The first song I recorded was “Oh
Yeah” by Local H. Essentially a random pick, there wasn’t any special reason I
recorded it first. I even recorded over it later, but I eventually restored it
for posterity once I got it on a CD. I also recorded over the rest of
the tape throughout the year, particularly over the summer, only officially
retiring it on December 31st, 1999. Some songs survive that had been
there from the beginning, but they are few. A lot of the songs are something I’d
never really be into today (Alanis Morsette for example), but my excuse is that
I was 12. In the process, Michael’s Music 1999 became a curious testament to
both my past and future. Music from my childhood in the 1980’s and 1990’s evoke
bygone days of accompanying my mother in the car on errands, or her job
managing a paper route, while listening to the radio. Peter Gabriel’s
“Sledgehammer”, which came out the same month I was born, was a favorite song
of mine as a toddler and would have been the first song on the tape had I any
control over the song placement. Songs such as “The Impression That I Get” by
Mighty Mighty Bosstones, “Sell Out” by Reel Big Fish”, and The Prodigy’s
“Firestarter” were songs that I loved in the mid-90’s and remind me of some of
the best years of my childhood from ages 9 to 11. Except I didn't start fires as a child. At least not often.
Other songs capture what was then the present, who I was at
the time, a shy awkward preteen who was dangerously close to being pushed too
far. And still other tracks seem to speak to my later teenage years and beyond;
two Rammstein songs appear on the tape, recorded the first times I ever heard
them. They seem to foreshadow the influence German music would have on me in
the future, as well as heavier music in general once I got further into my
teens. And then at the end of side A is a song by Velvet Acid Christ, “Fun With
Drugs”, recorded from 90.5’s Goth Industrial show. So ahead of it’s time was it
that I never quite bothered looking the song up and finding out its name and
who made it until I was into my late 20’s, by which time I was fond of the
genre. After that, I began to listen to and like other songs by Velvet Acid
Christ. It was almost as if I’d recorded it there fifteen years in the future,
but it had been there all along. Before then the song was merely a dark
curiosity that I never pursued.
Two songs on the tape that really
seem to capture who I was when I made it are “Anything, Anything” by Dramarama,
and “Freak of the Week” by Marvelous 3. With “Anything, Anything”, it isn’t so
much the lyrics themselves that bring me back to Middle School, no. It’s the
constant guitar riff in the background; the energy it has. There’s a sort of
innocence and light to it, mixed with melancholy. Perhaps it is the upbeat
guitar riff coupled with sad lyrics that reminds me of being 12 years old, a
mixture that evokes the happiness of childhood dissolving into a tormented
adolescence. With “Freak of the Week”, the feeling is very similar, though the
lyrics applied to me more. A song about being ridiculed, being the center of
cruel, unwanted attention. Being a freak. Yet the music itself still contained
a light, innocent energy. No other song really captures the end of my childhood
quite like that.
Michael’s Music 2019
For the twentieth anniversary of my
first mixtape, I wanted to put together something special. Something that would
mimic the same feel and energy of the first tape, using only songs I’ve liked
in recent years, recorded on the same style of yellow Memorex tape (lucky finds
at the thrift store has supplied me with a few extras of these). I wanted to
find a suitable counterpart for each song on the original tape. Where there’s a
slow, emotional song on Michael’s Music 1999, I chose a newer slow and
emotional song in the same spot on Michael’s Music 2019. Where there’s a fast
and energetic song on Michael’s Music 1999, there was a similar song on
Michael’s Music 2019. At the end of Side A is another Velvet Acid Christ song.
The 1999 tape ended with Orgy’s cover of the New Order song “Blue Monday”, so
at the end of Side B on the 2019 tape is Noir’s cover of Ministry’s “Same Old
Madness”. “Damned” by Brotherhood symbolizes trying to find happiness while
undergoing stressful times and slowly losing hope, just like Marvelous 3’s
“Freak of the Week” made me feel when I was 12.Michael’s Music 1999 didn’t have a lot of rhyme or reason to it, because
recording off the radio gave me very little control. So, the songs in the 2019
version don’t always quite flow well together either, on purpose.
This mixtape was made shortly after
the birth of my son, so there are some songs that remind me of those times. I
remember that it really made me come to terms with the idea that I'm not as young as I used to be, and that’s what
“When the Night Meets the Day” by Stratovarius is about. Kill Shelter’s “Get Down” is actually
the song I had stuck in my head in the delivery room. The lyrics didn’t fit the
situation, it was mostly just the tune. Just as Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”,
the second song on the 1999 tape, is a song I associate with my birth as it was
released the same month I was born, this is a song I can associate with the
birth of my son. [:SITD:], a German EBM and Industrial band, is my modern
Rammstein, carrying the torch of German music. The Hot Dad synthwave cover of
“I’m a Believer” is my modern answer to “Anything, Anything”; as the latter is
about a troubled love life, “I’m a Believer” is about finally finding love
after years of wondering if it was ever going to happen to you, which is
actually quite relevant in my case. For the record, I’m not really a fan of the
original by The Monkees nor the cover by Smash Mouth, this is the first version
of the song I’ve actually liked. Because synthwave makes everything better.
Anyhow, if you listen to both
tapes one after the other, you might draw parallels between the songs yourself.
Below is the playlist for both tapes. The tapes are 90 minutes long, for
reference. Keep in mind the 1999 tape is padded out a little with radio commercials,
and not all of the songs are complete because I had to press record on the
radio to get them. I wasn’t going to go that far to make the 2019 tape
like its predecessor, although I threw a Communion After Dark intro on there at
one point as a callback. And because I just love my audience so much
(especially those of you who want to read about my old mixtapes), I started a
Spotify account just so I could reproduce my mixes on my blog for your listening
pleasure without having to embed 40 YouTube videos. Spotify didn’t have
everything though. I’ll just link those to YouTube if you click on the song and
band title. The songs not on Spotify includes “Goth Kids Song (Dear Rosie)” by Daniel Guerra Caballero, which is a cover of the song that the goth
kids from South Park listen to, with lyrics added. It sounds quite good, kind of like The Birthday Massacre if you know that band. And
then "Ecoutez et Repetez" by Spiritual Sky
is a strange Acid House song from 1989 I encountered on YouTube.
“The flow of time is always cruel. Its speed seems different for
each person, but no one can change it. A thing that does not change with time
is a memory of younger days.”
Sheik – The Legend of
Zelda: Ocarina of Time
This quote popped into my mind suddenly
as I was writing this. Time really was a central theme in that video game. And
it had something deep and profound to say about it. Time waits for no man. The
Earth has completed another orbit around the Sun since the last time it was
close to New Years, and by the abstract Gregorian calendar most (but not all)
of humanity uses, it’s going to be the year 2020 soon. And this is considered
significant, although not quite as significant as 2000 was. The years 2010 and
2000 don’t feel all that long ago. But in some ways, they feel like they were
an eternity ago too. Maybe they’re never going to feel like that long ago to
me. One day my son, born in January 2019, will look at the year 2010 the way I
look at 1977. It is going to all seem like ancient history to him. And to me
2010 was like a couple years ago, in my mind. Getting old sucks. Yes, as Sheik
said the flow of time is indeed cruel.
But
I suppose since everyone else is taking stock of the last ten years at the
moment, I might as well hop on the bandwagon. I have little idea what music was
actually popular in the United States during this decade. I stopped keeping
track of that after high school (Class of 2004 if you’re curious). I suppose
once you reach adulthood it gets easier to shelter yourself from all of that irrelevant
nonsense. You might still have to hear the irritating popular music at the
store or something, but most of the time you can avoid it. What did the kids
listen to this decade? There was it that dubstep noise, that prima donna Justin
Bieber, Katy Perry and Gangnam Style became the Macarena of the decade. That’s
about as far as I know about the music that was popular in the 2010’s, and it
sure wasn’t what I was listening to. Come to think of it my lack of knowledge
about it makes me understand why so many people over 50 seem to think young
people still wear baggy jeans that show off their boxers like it’s 1998. You
get more sheltered from all of that foolishness the older you get. I hope I
don’t ever get quite that out of touch.
As it so happens, another weird
tradition I keep (I should have started blogging years ago so I could share all
these), is to keep track of my top two songs each year. The ones that remind me
the most of how my year went. I do this so that I can eventually make a mix
tape covering the years. These songs needn’t have been released that same year
as they’re listed, in fact some of these are from the 1980’s and 1990’s, but
it’ll be the year I discovered them, and the year they impacted me.
“Time passes. People move. Like a
river’s flow, it never ends.”
2010
·Ayria
– Lovely Day
A
song I associate with sitting in my room at night having no one to hang out
with and nothing to do, when I wish I did. But “I fear rejection more than
being alone”, very true of myself at the time and why I had neither a
girlfriend nor many friends in general save for a small core that I still have
today. At this point I actually had to return to Community College for the last
couple of classes I still needed for my Bachelor’s degree, which weren’t
offered at my University. So, I was back with my parents in Martinez,
California, doing mainly nothing else but write. I was in limbo at this time.
·And
One – Years
A
song about time. It makes me think about how the years roll by faster and
faster, growing “colder” as they pass, as I look at the world through an
increasingly jaded lens. And when they’re gone, it’s “just memories left
behind”. The cruel passage of time. Like a river’s flow, it never ends. Fits in with my introduction to this blog entry quite well.
2011
·Epsilon
Minus – Just Another Long Shot
So this song was done by the band Jennifer Parkin was in before she went solo and started Ayria, but the song appears on one of her later albums anyway as a bonus track of sorts. In
spring 2011 I was trying to get accepted into Graduate School, throwing my bets
on that being what would provide me with a financially stable future. *cue
laugh track* It was another long shot. This song was there when my anticipation
was at its highest. I was holding my breath, waiting for the answer for months,
wondering if I’d be good enough. I’m still wondering if it was fortunate or not
that they accepted me. As I’ve discussed, if there was a year that I could just
do over, it would probably be 2011.
·And
One – Save the Hate
A
song I associate with trying to put your negativity aside and enjoy the day.
Don’t let the depression win, save the hate for another day, just seize the day
and don’t let anything get you down. “Don’t bring me down it’s far too late”.
I’d been through the worst of it, nothing that life could throw at me was going
to be something I couldn’t handle. It was a song that pumped me up as I
prepared to enter Graduate School.
2012
·And
One – The Sun
This
song will always remind me of my first trip with my girlfriend to Florida (my
wife now). I see it as an ode to the Sun, the star that gave us all life, which
I personally have a love/hate relationship with, but have to remember that
without it, life wouldn’t be here.
·Light
Asylum – Heart of Dust
I
wouldn’t say this song has a whole lot of personal relevance to me, but I was
obsessed with this song back in late 2012 and early 2013. By the lyrics, it sounds like a song about a haunted house, or trying to get a spirit to leave your house. Interesting subject choice, not something I can say I've had personal experience with. I want Light Asylum
to come out with a new album already. They had what, a single, one full album,
and then they were gone. We miss you and need you, Light Asylum.
2013
·Light
Asylum – IPC
Yes,
this band again. I bought their album in early 2013 after having heard “Heart
of Dust”. This song is even catchier than Heart of Dust. And its
anti-authority, which is always fun. It stands for "Industrial Prison Complex" and is about people being arrested for petty crimes for the profit of prison owners. Nobody's innocent in their eyes. It's true. The tune of this song is going to get
right up in your brain and never leave though, so be careful. Here's a live version for you to watch.
·The
Jetzons – Hard Times
It
was this year where in the Sonic the Hedgehog community, someone finally put
two and two together and realized that this song was the basis for the theme of
the Ice Cap Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. The song had been recorded in
1982, but went under the radar along with the rest of The Jetzons’ catalog.
Their music was rereleased in 2009 but remained obscure, and it took four full
years before someone listened to this song and realized it sounded like the Ice
Cap Zone theme, and discovered that the singer of The Jetzons, Brad Buxer, had
worked on the soundtrack for the game, so it was obvious. Before this the main
theory was that Ice Cap Zone was based on Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal”,
since he also worked on the soundtrack, but that turned out to be a red
herring. Ice Cap Zone was always the best song from that game, and to hear a
New Wave song done to the tune of it? A part of my childhood was completed. Any
time I feel like I’m going through “Hard Times”, it makes me think of this
song. The hard times can still be the “happiest days of our lives” when we look
back on them, even if they felt hard at the time.
2014
·And
One – Missing Track
This
song is inseparable in my mind with my first trip to Armenia, a two-week
excursion with Fresno State’s Armenian Students Organization. I afforded it
with a scholarship and a generous donation from my aunt Sharon (thanks!). I had
this song on my MP3 player while we were on the tour bus driving through the
beautiful mountain landscapes. But the lyrics are about writing to someone far
away that you miss, like a long-distance relationship. I still missed my
girlfriend Deborah while I was on the trip and it reminded me of that. The song
came back the next year when I went to Armenia again for some internships,
becoming even more relevant to me. And wow, the "Missing Track" is missing from YouTube! How strangely appropriate. This was all I could dig up.
·Aurelio Voltaire
– The Night (1988 Deathrock version)
This
version is my favorite, as Voltaire had an earlier version that was heavier on
the violins, but somehow not as dark sounding, nor as heavy. I suppose I just
prefer it in this style. It’s a song for those of us who prefer the night to
the day, despite others telling us it is unhealthy or wrong. The perfect song
for any goth, really. I relate to it quite well.
2015
·And
One – Nyctophiliac
This
is one of my favorite songs of the decade, really. I can remember listening to
it on my MP3 player on a tour bus driving from Armenia into Artsakh, the
unrecognized country I visited during my trip. It was night out, the roads were
winding through the mountains, tossing us back and forth. Through the windows I
could only see an inky black night, with the rugged mountains only slightly
darker than the sky above. If you live in America, you probably rarely see
landscapes this dark. No city around for miles. A village passes briefly every
now and then, but these aren’t very bright either. Only the major cities in
Artsakh have street lights. They have to conserve. As I pressed my head against
the glass of the window in fatigue, I thought about how much blood was spilt
over this land in the early 1990’s, when a war was fought between Armenia and
Azerbaijan over it. I thought about the history of conflict here over the
centuries. Night had fallen over this land. It was peaceful, but the peace is a
fragile one. Will it survive? “Will I survive?” The lyrics seemed to me to be sung
by the land itself. I'm also a nyctophiliac myself, which is a lover of night, so that's another reason I relate to it.
Garegin
Bingyol – Done Yar
This
is the catchiest Armenian song ever. I first heard of this singer when I was in
Armenia and one of their songs was played on the bus during one of our trips. I
discovered this one after I returned to the US, late in 2015. It kept me
connected to Armenia at a time where I felt sadly severed from it.
This
song reminds me of my tortured inner artist, who must subsist in a world where
it is so hard to be heard, so hard to be noticed, and you often have to endure
rejection. This could be the theme song of this blog, really. It certainly felt
that way to me around the time I uncovered this song, when I was finding out that self-publishing was a
lot harder to make money from than I had anticipated.
2017
·Brotherhood
– Damned
This
is a catchy song I was really into in the spring of 2017. Reminds me
of how life feels sometimes. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, there is no
hope. Life after graduation with a Master’s degree. This song has stuck around
with me too. The description on the official upload describes the song as being about the pursuit of elusive happiness, among other things. And happiness is elusive.
·The
Midnight – River of Darkness
This
was the year I discovered synthwave, a revival of the synth music of the 80’s.
The Midnight is my favorite band in this genre, with the great vocals and 80’s
sax, and melodies that many times feel magical. It was something different from
what I’d been into before. I don’t adopt new genres often but this song here
was a gateway drug. It’s probably dark enough to get played on one of the goth
podcasts out there, but a lot of the rest of this band’s music probably is not. It hooked me in though.
2018
·The
Cure – Cold
Yeah
this one’s an oldie from 1982, and unlike "Hard Times" by The Jetzons, which also came out that year, this song wasn't almost completely unheard of for almost 30 years; but for some reason it eluded me until 2018 when
I started buying albums from The Cure. The album this is on, Pornography,
is my favorite album from The Cure. A lot of people say Disintegration
is their favorite, but I just like this one better. The songs are more raw, I
suppose. Disintegration was The Cure’s return to darker music, but
Pornography is the sound they were returning to. The origin.I love the lyric “Your name like ice, into my
heart”. It helps that I discovered this song right around the time I started
the worst job I ever had, at that call center. It made me feel like this song
inside.
·Ministry
– Game Over
If
“Cold” represents my depression from that year, “Game Over” represents my
escape from that depression. An old Ministry track from when they were
synthpop, I mentioned before on this blog that it just feels adventurous. It
feels like a fantasy, an escape. I got heavily into escapism while I was
working full time at this call center, and it was partly fueled by this song.
And the Land of Oz books.
2019
·Boy
Harsher – Fate
So
this year is over, and I might as well pick my favorites from this year. It’s
hard to pick just two, it really is, I’ve heard all sorts of music this year.
It’s easier to talk about the years when they’re in the past, not when they’re
not quite over yet. I’ve been jumping from band to band this year thanks to
listening to Communion After Dark and other music I find on YouTube. But, let
me first go with “Fate” by Boy Harsher. I saw this husband and wife duo in
concert last April in Ybor City, Florida, with my wife, and we had a wonderful
night out. I bought their album Careful on cassette too, which I should
review sometime. This song was running through my head for a couple months
earlier in the year.
Buzz
Kull – Avoiding the Light
This
song came out last year and I’m kicking myself for not hearing it sooner. It’s
dominated my top 3 songs of the month for two months straight. It’s one of
those songs that I feel like was written for me in a way. And I bet I’m not the
only one who feels that way. I want them to play this at The Castle nightclub
in Ybor City so I can dance to it. Somewhat sadly, I’ve moved this year so I won’t
be able to show up there as often anymore.This song just makes me think of dressing up and having a fun night out
at a Gothic nightclub.
I’ve been making playlists for my CD
mixes of my favorite songs that were released year by year since 1981, and I’ll
be sharing those soon if you’d rather see a list of songs going by the year
they were released. I’m currently up to 2007 on that. I like to decide the best
songs released during a decade after a little more time has gone by, because I
may not have heard it all yet. I’ve only recently been able to put together a
comprehensive list of the what I consider to be the best songs of the 2000’s in
the last couple years, and well over half of the songs on that list are ones I
wouldn’t have discovered yet in late 2009. But that’ll be for a later blog
entry.
2022 Update: Earlier this year I digitized this tape and put it up on Internet Archive! So you can watch the tape yourself here. Another thing I did was upload the commercial breaks on YouTube, so I can embed those here and they’ll be from the actual tape.
Thirty
years ago, in December of 1989, when I was three years old, my mother recorded
some cartoons off the TV for me. Given the time of year, they were mostly
Christmas cartoons, and included the very campy He-Man and She-Ra - A
Christmas Special. I would watch this tape again and again, no matter the
time of year, sometimes more than once a day, for years to come; driving my
mother quite mad. I basically knew this whole three-hour tape word for word.
Eventually I got older and grew out of wanting to watch the same things over
and over, and I now only watch it yearly. It’s one of those things that I feel
like has always been there. I imprinted on this tape at a subconscious level,
and will remember things from it at random times whenever I’m reminded of
something from it. A constant companion throughout my life, and a reminder of
my beginnings. It is interesting to think that after everything I’ve been
through, all the moves, the different schools, graduating, getting married,
having my first kid, it’s still there. After thirty years the tape is still in
working order, despite the repeat viewings. The picture is as nice as the day
it was recorded. Being recorded in SP mode might account for it, but it was
also recorded on a Scotch cassette, which is very high quality. VHS tapes were
just built better back then. It has now survived into my own son’s lifetime;
and while he currently lacks the attention span to sit through it, being just
under a year old now, I hope that it will become a part of his childhood too.
For now, he’s driving me mad with repeat viewings of the same YouTube playlist
I made for him several times a day. Seems familiar. New technology, same basic
function. Perhaps this is what they call karma. What goes around comes around.
The shoe is on the other foot. If you choose to have kids, they’ll do the same
thing to you what you did to your parents.
But
in any event, it’s just not Yule time to me without watching this tape. Of
course, this being its thirtieth anniversary, this will be a special viewing.
One which I would like to finally, after all these years, write about. Let us
delve into every cartoon, and every commercial, looking at it through my modern
perspective. Whatever I can find on YouTube, I’ll embed for your viewing
pleasure, so you can watch along too if you like. Keep in mind that you never
know when YouTube is going to take something down, so if you’re reading this
long after I post it, the videos could be gone. But I’ll try to keep it
updated.
Duck
Tales – The Money Vanishes
The
first thing on the tape is an old episode of Duck Tales. I used to love
this show as a kid. As a jaded adult, embittered by the years, who understands
more about how the world works, with disdain for the super-rich, I just can’t
look at it the same way. I just can’t see a multi-billionaire as a “good guy”. Every
year that goes by makes it harder for me to watch Duck Tales. Scrooge
McDuck isn’t even as redeemable as fellow fictional billionaire Bruce Wayne/Batman.
Sure, Bruce Wayne dresses in bat costumes and fights mentally ill criminals
instead of paying fair taxes, but at least that’s something! All Scrooge McDuck
does is swim in his money hoard and go on adventures to look for more money
than he could ever possibly spend. Aw, but he loves his nephews, right? So
we’re supposed to forgive all that. I wonder how many in Duckburg are homeless?
How many poor duck children starve while he swims in money? Where’s their
billionaire uncle, hm? And how little does he pay his employees? How much more
money does he have secretly stashed away in tax haven countries? What this show
was trying to do was normalize economic inequality in the minds of children and
make us see our rich overlords as protagonists, so that we would not question
capitalism and be obedient little robots for them to exploit. Perhaps that’s
what the original Carl Barks comics Duck Tales is based on were doing
too, I don’t know because I haven’t read them. I know that in the comics,
Scrooge apparently has some “rags to riches” backstory that would never happen
in real life. Leave it to Disney though, to take the lesson of Charles Dickens’
A Christmas Carol, which was supposed to be a lesson against greed, and
completely subvert it to make it pro-rich by making their Scrooge greedy,
money-hungry, AND the protagonist we’re supposed to sympathize with. It was
only life experience that undid the brainwashing this show’s propaganda did to
me as a kid. I’m not falling for that bollocks about a benevolent billionaire
anymore.
Criminals, or freedom fighters?
Anyway,
in this episode the Beagle Boys are looking to escape jail; they’re in jail
because of course, anyone who tries to take a single dime of Scrooge’s zillions
of dollars is either a criminal or a super villain in this show. Their mother
gives them a shovel not-so-carefully hidden in a cake, and they use the shovel
to dig tunnels all over town in a montage, including digging back into their
very jail cell, hilariously. I root for them now when I watch this, by the way.
They end up at scientist Gyro de Gearloose’s house and see that he’s working on
a Furniture Mover Ray; a teleportation device, basically. They get rid of him
by posing as doctors and telling him he needs a jog, and swipe the ray for
themselves. Of course, they decide to use it to steal Scrooge’s money. Why not?
He stole his money from his employees and society at large anyway. They should
steal all his wealth and redistribute it. They convince Scrooge to spray his
money with this special gas that makes the Furniture Mover Ray work by doing a
funny commercial warning about “money moths”. I seem to have a bad case of
money moths myself, sigh. They give their phone number as 555-5555; this is
still an in-joke between my mom and I whenever a phone number comes up in
conversation.
That's: 555-5555.
Scrooge is greedier than he is smart, so he orders the spray and
sprays his money. The Beagle Boys teleport all Scrooge’s money into some
abandoned building, in a slummy part of town not far from his money bin which
exists because of economic inequality caused by Scrooge. Duckburg clearly isn’t
seeing a penny of Scrooge’s wealth. “Trickle-down economics”, my ass. Seeing
Scrooge squirm at the bottom of his empty money bin and look through newspaper
want ads is hilarious. “Uh oh, I don’t have any actual skills and my money’s
gone, now I’ll have to become a wage slave just like the employees I’ve
exploited! I’ll have to be on the other end of the oppression! Whatever shall I
do?”
Scrooge’s
bratty nephews want to save their inheritance and not have to get real jobs
when they grow up, and look down their beaks at poor people and act like they
actually earned their wealth when all they did was win the birth lottery, so
they go after the Beagle Boys and manage to swipe the Furniture Mover Ray. It’s
a big chase all over town where everyone gets teleported around, but they end
up teleporting the Beagle Boys back to jail, and returning the money to
Scrooge’s money bin, of course. How else would the plot go? Then when Gyro
shows up and mentions his next invention, the Furniture Flotation Ray, Scrooge
has a horrifying hallucination of his money floating away into the city for
people to grab freely, and actually having to share his wealth with the rest of
society. It’s every billionaire’s nightmare. He then chases Gyro around and the
episode ends. This end part is so over-the-top it must have been some writer
slipping social commentary under the radar. That’s really the only tolerable
way to watch this episode now that I’m an adult; assume it’s a piece of subtle
satire. It might just actually be.
An actual screenshot, as in a picture of my TV screen
Gods I hate Scrooge McDuck though. I’ll stick to Chip n Dale’s Rescue Rangers when
it comes to old Disney Afternoon cartoons from now on. At least I can get
through an episode of that show without becoming idealistically enraged. Duck
Tales is yet another example of how everything I was taught as a child was
a big lie. But, maybe it’s actually satire. Maybe you have to not take it at
face value to enjoy it.
Not
that three-year-old me cared about any of the socio-economic implications of
the media he consumed. Funny how time changes your perspective on things. I
wasn’t even thinking about this ten years ago.
The
New Fred and Barney Show – Physical Fitness Fred
The
recording for this starts mid-episode, skipping any sort of a theme song and
opening credits, so for the longest time I never knew much about this episode
from a Flintstones revival on my He-Man She-Ra Christmas Special tape,
but Google and Wikipedia have at long last revealed all. It came from a 1979
revival called The New Fred and Barney Show, so it’s older than I
thought. I knew that it couldn’t be the original series because the animation
is a little better and the lines aren’t as thick. Not that I care all that
much. I’ve never really been a fan of The Flintstones, nor really any of
Hanna-Barbera’s post-Tom and Jerry output, except maybe Top Cat. The
Honeymooners, the show they were ripping off, is infinitely superior. Fred
Flintstone is thick-headed and unlikeable, with none of the humorous charm of
Jackie Gleason’s Ralph, who could still somehow get you to like him and
identify with him in spite of his negative traits. And if Fred is merely a
hollow echo of Ralph, Wilma doesn’t compare to Alice at all. While Alice is
snarky, sarcastic, strong, and at times harsh but deep-down loving, Wilma is
but a flat, boring housewife devoid of personality. The Honeymooners is
such a timeless show, 65 years later. The Flintstones is dated and
unfunny. You laugh with Ralph because you can imagine how you would react to
whatever situation he’s found himself in. Fred fails at this. Fred Flintstone
rarely if ever had to undergo economic woes like Ralph, making him even less
relatable. He’s backwards in his thinking, like the caveman he is. It’s
appropriate, actually, that the show is set in a stone age fantasy with
cavemen. It’s the past that conservatives long for which never actually
existed. Everyone’s white, middle class, lives in the suburbs, the men work
while the women stay home and raise the kids. An “American dream” lifestyle that
is only possible in a fantasy version of the distant past.
But, three-year-old me would happily sit
through this cartoon, and I suppose it’s mostly harmless, if rather dull.
In
this episode, Betty and Wilma get back from seeing a movie starring Clark
Gravel, and Fred gets jealous over them gushing over how muscular the actor
was. He decides to become a body builder to impress Wilma, while Barney
chuckles at Fred’s futile efforts. Fred is an out of shape weakling, and only
ends up hurting himself with everything he tries. Barney tries to talk him out
of it but Fred won’t listen. Yawn, I wish I were watching The Honeymooners.They decide to get some actual exercise
equipment at a store and buy a pair of enormous dumbbells, and to get it home
they have to roll it up a hill, which goes horribly wrong when it rolls down
the other side and crashes into a fire hydrant. The scene goes nowhere, they
just go back to the store for more equipment. Later they try to do yoga and get
their legs stuck in a knot. I’m sure the show’s creators did their research on
yoga before writing this episode. When they’re about to give up, they see that
there is a casting call for the next Clark Gravel movie. They apply hoping to
upstage Clark Gravel, but only manage to get a bit part wearing a dinosaur
costume. Betty and Wilma visit the set and find out their husbands are in a
dinosaur costume, and they’re humiliated. But then they see the real Clark
Gravel step out of his limo, and guess what. He’s short! HAHAHA! He needs extra
steps to get out of the limo, then they show him walk into his trailer to put
stilts on to look taller. The laugh track goes wild. Wilma and Betty can’t
believe they ever thought of this short man as attractive. Everyone points and
laughs at the short man and makes jokes like ”Our movie career was almost as
short as he is!” And all this time they thought he was someone worthy of respect!
Imagine anyone under 5’5 being subject to anything but ridicule! HAHAHAHA!!!
I’m
5’2 by the way. I got made fun of for being short all through school. And it’s
partly thanks to crap like this. You know what, screw The Flintstones. I hate
that show. Geez, for something I have such fond memories of growing up, this
tape is really pissing me off. Maybe this is the first time I ever really
stopped to analyze these shows. I normally just put this tape on in the
background while I do something else each year.
Commercials
And now for the best part of
any really old VHS recording, the commercials. Normally I hate ads. I’ll do anything
I can to ignore them. But old commercials are such time capsules. They’re
fascinating from a historical perspective. Kind of just takes you back to the
time it was made. I’d say a commercial has to be at least 15 years old before
it becomes fascinating in any way. These are the commercials seen during that Flintstones
episode.
A USA Cartoon Express bumper:
I loved this cartoon block on the USA Network.
Before Cartoon Network existed, this was the best place to watch cartoons if it
wasn’t Saturday morning. He-Man, She-Ra, Ninja Turtles, random cartoons like
The Flintstones and Pac-Man, it was all here.
Bouncin’
Babies:
Back when every commercial had to have a catchy jingle and the company
had to come up with it themselves instead of licensing the music from some
sellout musician. Although, from what I’ve seen of today’s kids commercials,
things haven’t changed all that much; anything aimed at girls is bright pink
and sickeningly sappy.
Honeycomb:
These commercials did everything right to appeal to 80’s kids. You got a robot,
a multi-ethnic group of kids hanging out in some clubhouse in the woods, a
monster truck, a catchy jingle. All of this effort to convince children to eat
your tasteless puffy cereal. I wonder if it was worth it or not. The one on
this tape features a big muscular guy named “Monster Mac” who looks like he’s
having roid rage or something, demanding honey cereal to satisfy his cravings.
This situation would go down a lot differently in real life, I’d imagine.
Beyond
2000 promo:
The next commercial was a promo for the show Beyond 2000 on
the Discovery Channel. Back when that channel was actually educational. I
tracked this show down many years later on YouTube out of curiosity, so the
promo did get me to watch this show, 20 something years later. It’s about
whatever was new technology in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and predicting
where that technology was going to go “beyond the year 2000”. Definitely
nostalgic. If you weren’t alive before 2000 then you weren’t around for all of
that futuristic optimism everyone had for “The Year 2000”. And yes, everyone
had to say “the year” before they said “2000” for dramatic effect. I want to do a blog on that soon. This show had
a great synthwave theme song too. Would fit right in on New Retro Wave. Is this
Timecop 1983? Here’s the full theme.
He-Man
& She-Ra – A Christmas Special
Here
it is, what we’ve all been waiting for. As I always called it, “The He-Man
She-Ra Christmas Special”.The real meat
of the tape. The recording on my tape started at about the 32 second mark if
you’re watching this on YouTube, where it has an official upload in little
danger of being taken down. I never got to see that very beginning until many
years later. I loved both He-Man and She-Ra growing up, although this was the
only episode I had recorded of either series back in my childhood. Once it was
out of reruns, it was gone. I would get reacquainted with both shows after the
advent of DVD. Throughout the 1990’s though, you really couldn’t find a trace
of the show anywhere, this was all I had. That’s how things were before
streaming. But if you’re only going to see one episode of either series, this
is the one to see.
We
start with various characters decorating the castle in Eternia for Prince Adam
and Princess Adora’s birthday. They’re twins, you see, and the secret
identities of He-Man and She-Ra. The queen begins to wax nostalgic for
Christmas, a “very special Earth holiday”, because as one episode of He-Man
explained, she’s actually from Earth.But this is basically foreshadowing. Meanwhile Prince Adam and Man-at-Arms are
checking out this rocket called the Sky Spy, and the comedy relief character
Orko sneaks into the Sky Spy and accidentally launches it. After that, my
favorite character, Skeletor, appears and attempts to intercept the Sky Spy.
Adam sees this by whatever magic surveillance camera is showing them all this,
and transforms into He-Man, instantly making it over to Skeletor’s ship.
Skeletor tries to use metal claws to catch He-man, but She-Ra appears and
throws a sword, somehow cutting them all. Yeah, throwing the sword always works. Skeletor is foiled, and they continue chasing the Sky Spy, but it goes
off into space. Despite He-Man and She-Ra’s apparent ability to survive the
vacuum of space, they give up chasing it. The Sky Spy somehow travels millions
of light years in mere seconds without destroying the time-space continuum,
ending up where else, but Earth. Einstein must have been wrong about
everything. Or maybe Eternia is Earth but in an alternate universe and the Sky
Spy somehow traveled through a portal between universes. The possibilities are
endless.
Orko
crash lands in a snowy area, and saves two kids from an avalanche. They’re in
the middle of a frozen tundra for some reason looking for a Christmas tree
without adult supervision. I’m convinced their parents were trying to abandon
them because they never shut up about Christmas. Back on Eternia, everyone
realizes Orko is missing. Instead of partying it up at this news, as one might
expect, they’re concerned. Back at the Sky Spy the two children tell Orko all
about Christmas, and it conveniently cuts away before they say anything too
religious. The scenes in this really jump around a lot faster than I remember.
I’m sure when I was a child this must have seemed like a three-hour epic, but
now at age 33 it just rushes by faster than I can write about it.
"Have we gushed over Christmas in the last two seconds?"
She-Ra
needs some plot device to teleport the Sky Spy back to Eternia so she goes back
to her home planet to get it as easily as one drives to the next town over. Her
mermaid friend tells her the very creatively-named Beast Monster has it. “Beast
Monster”, ha! She travels on her Pegasus, Swiftwind, to a polluted industrial
era and confronts the Beast Monster, defeating it by making it walk into a hole.
You’ll find that the villains in this special are nothing more than very minor
nuisances to the heroes. There are no real threats. Her mermaid friend finds
the crystal they need, but before they can head back, they are confronted by
evil, transforming robots! Called the Monstroids, these robots are basically
anti-Transformers propaganda. They have really lame transformations. One of
them just extends their arms and legs and starts flying, that’s their whole
transformation. They capture She-Ra, prompting her steed Swiftwind to remark
“They’re changing into other forms! What evil robots!” Because
transforming robots are evil. Buy He-Man and She-Ra toys kids, and stay away
from those evil Transformers.
She-Ra
gets away pretty easily, and gets back to Eternia quickly. They teleport the
Sky Spy to Eternia with the Christmas-obsessed Earth children.The evil space lord Horde Prime commissions
Skeletor and Hordak (She-Ra’s main villain) to eliminate the Christmas spirit
brought by the Earth children, which he found out about somehow. Why this is
such a high priority for him I have no idea. Maybe he’s afraid it will devolve
into rampant consumerism. Both Skeletor and Hordak compete with one another
throughout the special, wanting to be the one to deliver the children to Horde
Prime.
Back
on Eternia the children are hanging out with Bo and some other minor characters,
and they sing this excruciatingly awful Christmas song that even as a kid
caused me to either fast forward the tape or mute the TV. It’s really the most
awful song you’ve ever heard. Be warned. However, the children are kidnapped by
Hordak’s phallic spaceship. Shortly thereafter, a giant robotic hand grips the
phallic ship in a most suggestive fashion (I swear the animators were doing
this on purpose), and it turns out to be the Monstroids.
Ooh lala...
They take the children
and Orko, imprisoning them. Soon after they’re freed from their cell by the
“Manchines”, colorful and cutesy robots who are all cousins with each other. I
guess this place is like robot Alabama. My favorite Manchine has always been
Zipper due to his ridiculous voice. “Zzzzzzipppah!” They ride away on Zipper,
but the Monstroids confront them. He-Man and She-Ra quickly come to the rescue,
defeating the Monstroids with extreme ease, as if to assure children what would
happen if He-Man ever fought Optimus Prime (for the record I doubt it would be
that easy). The little girl finds a robot puppy just before Skeletor arrives
and kidnaps the children, only to be shot down by Hordak and land in the snow.
This leads to the best and most quotable part of the entire special, where
Skeletor learns about Christmas and gradually becomes more and more attached to
the puppy. He becomes attached to the children too, and saves them from a Snow
Beast (love these creative names). Aww, even supervillains have a heart. Don’t
call him nice, kind or wonderful though. He still wants to deliver the children
to Horde Prime.
"Listen. I am not nice, I am not kind, and I am not, wonderful!"
So
they end up in this strange valley with red circles on the ground, and Horde Prime’s
ship arrives to capture the children. He-Man, She-Ra and Hordak all appear, a
big fight happens, and Horde Prime nearly beams the children into his ship
until Skeletor, overcome with the Christmas spirit, rescues them by zapping the
ship with his staff. I love Horde Prime’s “NOOO!” It should be almost as iconic
as Darth Vader’s. Afterwards, He-Man explains to Skeletor that the reason he
did a good deed was because he’s feeling the Christmas spirit, which makes him
feel….good. “Well I don’t like to feel good, I like to feel evil!” he replies.
Me too, Skeletor.
Thank badness Christmas only comes once a year.
After this, the special wraps up. They have a Christmas
party, send the kids back to their parents who pretend to be happy they’re back
whilst no doubt plotting their next scheme to abandon them. And it’s over. They
should have let Skeletor keep the puppy.
Maybe
all I need is a cute puppy and a couple sickeningly sweet kids and I won’t
despise Christmas so much anymore.
Anyway,
when watching this with my friends for the sole purpose of mocking it, we came
up with a drinking game, and it goes something like this. Take a sip every
time:
·The
He-Man or She-Ra theme kicks in.
·There’s
a time-consuming reusable transformation sequence.
·Orko
does something stupid.
·You
notice one of the show’s many reused stock animations.
·There’s
a sexual innuendo (accidental or possibly otherwise).
·Something
that could be interpreted as homoerotic happens.
·Something
that could be interpreted as incestual happens.
·Whenever
something has a horribly uncreative name (Sky Spy, Beast Monster, Snow Beast,
etc.)
·Each
time Skeletor’s heart warms a little.
·If
you really want to kill your liver, each time those insufferable children
mention Christmas.
More Commercials
This was aired
on USA Network, and quite a few of the commercial breaks survived. Such as:
Fruity
Pebbles
Oh no, not The Flintstones again! This is a commercial that if you
were alive at all in 1989 you probably remember. Barney is a rapper now, and he
wants to steal Fred’s cereal. Fred doesn’t fall for it because Barney’s plan is
right there in the lyrics. Ugh. There’s no way I’m buying anything sponsored by
these short-shamers. Was Flintstones seriously ever that popular? They slapped
their sponsorship on a bunch of products and did a crappy live action movie, so
they must have been. Why? What made this bland and annoying show so appealing? I
don’t understand.
Mega
Force:
These were basically miniature army toys. I don’t know what secret
military base would allow children to enter and play with their toys, but in
commercial-land anything can happen. I wonder if the US military paid for this
toy line to be made. They do it with movies that glorify the military, so its
perfectly possible. If you’re not going to just draft people into the military you can brainwash people from childhood into fetishizing war and they’ll sign up to fight for your oil.
Robocop
toy blaster:
Ah the 1980’s, when rated-R movies could still have toy lines
marketed to small children. If you’ve ever seen Robocop, you know that it is
NOT for children. Reminds me how I had a Terminator toy growing up, but wasn’t
shown the movies until I was a teen.
My
First Sony
This infectious jingle is something I’ve never, ever forgotten. It
will be in my brain forever. “My First Sony” was basically a cassette recorder
for kids. I may have had something like it when I was very young, I don’t know
what happened to it though. I hate when commercials go out of their way to
brainwash children into brand loyalty, which is the reason this product
existed. Of course, when the console wars happened, I was on the side of Sega
thanks to this sort of insidious marketing. Sadly, I’d picked the losing team,
really. I’m no longer loyal to anyone who just sees me as a number or a dollar
sign.
And the second commercial break:
A
trailer for The Wizard:
Now this really makes this tape feel like it’s
from the 80’s. I’ve only ever seen this movie once. To make a long story short,
these three kids go on a long journey to get to a video game tournament, and
there’s tons of Nintendo product placement that dates the movie and turns it
into an 80’s time capsule. And Super Mario Bros. 3 debuts in it; among
one of my all-time favorite video games.
Santa’s
Helper 900 Number:
Santa’s going to leave a nice present on your parent’s phone
bill in January! What a scam these things were. You pay by the minute to talk
to “Santa”, and I’m sure they did every trick in the book to keep you on the
phone as long as possible. I’d really hate to work in that kind of call center.
Isn’t that just what Christmas truly is these days? A scam?
Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Yes,
after a very brief clip of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” that I have no
idea the history of, it’s the Rankin-Bass stop motion cartoon that basically
everyone has seen by now. I suppose at some point I liked this. The story may at first seem like it has a
good enough message, about misfits of society gaining acceptance. Until you really start thinking about it, and realize the moral is that nonconformity will be punished unless found to be exploitable. Santa watched Rudolph get mocked and ostracized as a child and did nothing to stop it, and didn’t give a single crap about Rudolph until he found him useful.
But
there is one thing that stood out to me as I rewatched it in spite of my
misgivings toward Christmas in general.
The
elf who wants to be a dentist, named Hermey, is someone I never identified with
at all until now. He’s an elf that doesn’t want to make toys. He’s been raised
his whole life in a society that encourages this sweatshop labor and he doesn’t
want to be a part of it. He wants to do his own thing. I was raised in a
society where I spent the first 18 years of my life training to be exploited by
the rich. We were taught to be obedient, to show up on time, to get work done
on a deadline. This would mold us into productive workers to maximize the
profits of CEOs. I want to be an artist and a writer, but that’s not what
society wants me to do. Society scoffs at the artist. There are rare instances
where an artist proves useful to the corporate class, if they are producing
something deemed “marketable”, but most of the time they aren’t, and they are
left with the choice of pursuing their passion while being broke and starving,
or throwing their dreams away and taking an awful minimum wage job toiling away
for mere pennies, selling precious hours and days of their finite lives away.
Even though I think dentists are sadistic con-artists, I find myself relating
to this elf. I want to be independent.
The
commercials were edited out pretty expertly in this recording, somewhat unfortunately.
Mickey’s
Christmas Carol
This
starts with that classic Wonderful World of Disney intro that fills you with
nostalgia and makes you forget what an evil monopolistic conglomerate Disney
is. But really, by this point in the tape, maybe I’m starting to feel a bit
like Skeletor holding that puppy. Maybe my heartstrings are being tugged a
little bit. Maybe the magic of Christmas isn’t 100% dead to me. But I am not
nice, and I am not kind, and I am not wonderful! And I’m still a jaded and
disillusioned 33-year-old!
We
start with Mickey narrating a collection of classic Disney shorts, my first
exposure to them in fact. This was probably done to pad out the timeslot. The
first short is “Donald’s Snow Fight”, where Donald Duck provokes his nephews
into a snowball fight and it turns into an escalating war where they build
themselves ice fortresses and start attacking one another. You can’t go wrong
with this short. Watch it while it’s still up on YouTube, who knows when Disney
will finally clamp down on their old shorts being on there.
The
next short is “Pluto’s Christmas Tree”, another classic, where Mickey cuts down
a tree that had been the home of Chip and Dale, and the two chipmunks have a
war with Pluto in Mickey’s home. There’s not that much to it, but it’s just
something that’s always going to be a part of my distant past, this short. It’s
full of color and pure nostalgia.
Here’s the second commercial break on the tape, featuring this old 7-Up commercial. Aw, isn’t
this commercial heartwarming? Now buy our sugar acid that will dissolve your
teeth and give you diabetes.
Then
we have the Christmas Carol proper. Very well-animated, probably among the best
adaptations. Although billed as “Mickey’s” Christmas Carol, he’s barely in it,
playing the part of Bob Cratchit. They should have just taken the leap and had
Mickey play Ebenezer Scrooge. I could totally see it working these days; a
corporate mascot consumed with greed who must come to grips with their past and
remember who they truly are. But no, instead we have Scrooge McDuck’s
prototype. This Scrooge isn’t quite Scrooge McDuck from Duck Tales. Same
voice actor, similar design, but he’s more, shall we say, “human”, though a
duck. This is one of thousands of adaptations of A Christmas Carol of
course, everyone knows the story by now. It’s funny how many big corporations
sponsor these kinds of productions yet ignore the very lessons of the story
they’re producing. Which is, I suppose, that the rich need to be terrorized by the
supernatural before they’ll give away any of their money, merely out of guilt,
regret, and a fear of going to Hell.
You don't get to take your wealth with you to the grave...
Different,
seemingly random Disney characters play all the parts. Goofy as Jacob
Marley might seem to be a strange fit until you’ve seen some of Goofy’s shorts
from the 1950’s. He can play a lot of different characters, good, dumb, or
evil. At the end of it, Scrooge seems to have had less of an epiphany and more
of a nervous breakdown, as he runs through the streets like a crazed man
throwing his money everywhere. How much do you want to bet he reverts back to
his old self in a couple days, shocked and appalled at his own behavior? That’s
what I think probably happens. But I’m just being negative. Or am I being
realistic?
Conclusion
After
this, we have the first five minutes of the first episode of The Simpsons,
the Christmas episode, before the tape ends. Sadly, there’s not a whole lot of
the episode to talk about. I suppose this is the price paid for those
commercials earlier on the tape. I would have gladly traded that Flintstones
episode for The Simpsons though. And
that’s it! Thirty years, and it’s still going strong. I have changed a lot, my
perceptions of the shows on this tape have changed a lot, but the tape itself
hasn’t changed a bit. Will I still be watching it thirty years from now? If so,
what will I think of it then? Thanks for sticking around to read about a 30-year-old VHS tape,
and thanks mom for recording it for me back then!
