JOT

So then there's this little bit of 1960's weirdness, a religious cartoon that they used to toss in among secular cartoons when I was a kid. The five-minute animated shorts centered around the adventures of a little white blob called "Jot." He'd do something evil like break a toy or not wash his hands before Sunday school and then some off-screen authority figure would make him answer for his sins and wrap it all up with a Bible verse at the end. There was also--weirdly enough--some very flower child psychedelia thrown in with his escapades, like in this short where he lies to his mother about stealing a cupcake and then has some sort of trippy freakout when his conscience gets the best of him. 

Due to his meltdown, Jot never gets around to eating the cupcake. Personally, I think it would have awesome if they had the little guy eat the cupcake and then start tripping balls. That would send a fun message: "Kids, don't steal sweets from authority figures because they'll put hallucinogens in the ingredients to catch you out, you thieving little bastards."

I'm pretty sure I hated Jot, probably because I resented having preachy morality lessons crammed in between secular weekday cartoons. It would have been one thing if they'd confined it to the Christian channel, but having to endure creepy religious crap when you just wanted to watch Caspar the Friendly Ghost really sucked.   

My most significant Jot-related memory was playing ping-pong with my friend Heather, age 8 or 9, in the basement of my neighbor's house (our elderly neighbors across the street regularly invited us kids in for snacks and games; if I remember correctly their grandchildren lived out of town, so us neighborhood urchins were sort of their grandkid surrogates). Heather and I would take turns slamming the ping pong ball across the table as hard as we could, pretending it was Jot the Biblical dot-goblin.

Well, what do you want? We didn't have violent video games back then. We had to use our imaginations. 

I'd still probably wear this t-shirt, though. For kitsch value.

WIN PARIS!

From (Everything Is Terrible vlogger) ohmy70s because they are the awesomest....

Remember when Charlie Sheen's brain broke and he was all over 20/20 and Piers Morgan and whatnot babbling about his "goddesses" and "tiger blood DNA" and--of course--"WINNING"? I mean, he was/is clearly bonkers, but now that I've seen this I wonder if the "WINNING" thing came from a late night infomercial hallucination fever dream Chuck fell into after a 48-hour hooker/porn star/freebasing bender and was visited by an apparition of this Win Paris dude. 

Makes sense to me. 

Everything about this clip is so 1970's insane. The skin-tight jeans hiked up to the nipples. The orange tracksuit. That nightmare leisure suit. The fact that Win looks like a creepier version of Hugh Hefner with a bad bowl haircut. (Not to mention the Midday Movie "Son of Kong." WTF?)

I have vague memories of these '70s fitness/motivational gurus. There seemed to be a lot of them back then. They used to pop up on afternoon talk shows my mom would watch (Merv Griffin, Dinah, etc.). These odd little guys confused me, the way they bounced around the set, screaming at the camera and the studio audience. I'd be like, "What is that man so mad about?" And the king of them all was Richard Simmons, crying and shrieking and hugging all over the fat women.

I couldn't find an illustrative Richard Simmons clip from the '70s but I did find this gem. If you ever wanted see Richard Simmons molest a PM Magazine reporter and drop the f-bomb, well, you're welcome.

  

      

Music videos That Scared the Shit Out of Me

A companion article to the popular feature
Shit That I Didn't Get (1980's Kid Edition)

Greetings, modern 8-year-olds! Does Lady GaGa frighten you? With the whole alien-hooker image, buttloads of space glitter and upsetting shoulder pads, I can see how she may creep out the average second-grader.


Let me tell you something though, kids: I came up in the seventies and eighties. You don't know from creepy.

Take a look at what I had to deal with:

Split Enz
"Dirty Creature"

I love Split Enz. Not as much as I love Crowded House, mind you, but as far as I'm concerned, early-80's quirky new wave kiwi pop doesn't get any better than these guys. They were awesome. "Message To My Girl" is one of my favorite sorta-love songs ever. And when I saw The Finn Brothers for the first time in 2004, Tim's goofy, spastic rendition of "I See Red" gave me a new appreciation for a song that until then was my least favorite of the Enz tunes. And speaking of Tim, I've met him. Yes I have. Twice! In fact, the second time I met him (after the Finn Brothers show at the Vogue, the one I attended with the great Marcus Waye), Tim gave even gave me a once-over and an approving "how you doin'?" smile and nod. Okay, it doesn't sound that impressive on paper. But trust me, we shared a moment. You had to be there.

It's funny now to think that back in 1982, when I was an impressionable 8-year-old watching MTV with my older sister in the basement of our beloved house on Sherman Drive, I wasn't at all charmed by Tim and the boys. Honestly, their video for "Dirty Creature" scared the holy hell out of me. The whole clip is creepy, but the worst part happens around the 2:35 mark, when the titular dirty creature leaps out of the water and beheads Tim with a giant sword. Yep, lops his melon right off. Sure, now it looks like a cheap editing trick in a low-budget music video. But to a sheltered 8-year-old who was severely spooked by the jerky stop-motion special effects in Clash of the Titans, the sight of some poor guy being decapitated by a cloaked figure (and Tim's eyes are still open when his head hits the ground! TIM'S EYES ARE STILL OPEN!), it was the most disturbing thing I'd ever witnessed.



My 8-year-old self would never have guessed that over twenty years later, I would one day flirt with this man. She also would have been surprised to learn that I didn't marry Ricky Schroder and go on to become a world famous horse trainer.

Rainbow
"Stone Cold"

This was another video that conjures memories of hanging with my older sister. I remember parking myself next to her on the basement couch, watching MTV, munching potato chips and drinking Welch's grape juice (no soda in our house!) while she gabbed on the phone to her friends. Then this video by Rainbow--one of Ronnie James Dio's many bands, as it turns out--came on. I remember staring at the chick in the video. Something about her wasn't quite right. I turned to my sister and asked "What's wrong with that lady's face?" My sister looked up, squinted at the TV screen, and replied, "Nothing, she's just ugly." She then went back to her phone conversation, which was probably with her friend Kathy K. from down the street, and was probably about the new Police album or one of the bitchy cheerleaders at her high school.

Luckily this video was on heavy rotation on MTV, so I had another chance to study the ugly girl's face a few days later. That's when I realized that it wasn't her face that was so revolting: she was wearing a clear plastic mask, the kind bad guys in cop shows use to rob banks. The mask was made even more hideous by the make-up artist's decision to paint mascara-ed eyes and pink lips on the mask to crank up the creepiness factor. Ew.

From then on, I hauled ass out of the room any time that video came on. I still find it fairly icky. I mean, what is up with that fucking mask?



Meat Loaf
"You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth"

In fourth grade, I had an insane teacher. Her name was Ms. Beard and she was a neurotic basket case who had no business being anywhere near children. The bitch was nuts.

One time during indoor recess, this girl Shonda got sick and barfed into the trash can. Typical fourth-grade barfing kid chaos ensued: children plugged their noses and made retching sounds, the janitor was called to haul away the trash can and Shonda was quickly ushered down to the nurse's office. When the smoke cleared, Ms. Beard made us sit down at our desks and called the class to order.

She paced in front of the classroom, all pinched-faced and fuming.

"What just happened with Shonda?" she asked us.

We sat in confused silence for a few moments. Then a kid named Kevin raised his hand.

"Um, she puked?" Kevin offered timidly.

Ms. Beard turned the full force of her fury on him.

"NO!" she howled, eyes blazing. "We do NOT use that filthy word." She scanned the rest of the class. "Who knows the right word to use when someone gets sick?"

Another kid raised his hand.

"Uh, is it upchuck?"

Ms. Beard hurled a chalkboard eraser to the floor in disgust.

"NO!" she spat. "That's disgusting, filthy language!"

We cowered in our chairs, hoping she wasn't going to start systematically beating us one by one. You never knew what was going to set her off. The woman was extrordinarily high strung, perpetually angry, and (probably) very sexually frustrated. It was a fucked up class.

Ms. Beard took a deep breath. "When someone is sick," she began, folding her arms, "they do NOT 'throw up.' They do NOT 'puke.' They do NOT 'upchuck.' The word we use," she paused, staring us down, "is regurgitate. That is the only acceptable word. Re-gur-gi-tate."

Really, she actually sounded it out like that.

Then Ms. Beard then launched into a half-hour long rant, raging against TV shows, movies, comic books, video games--pretty much anything that she felt to be filling our heads with perverted, satanic "filth." These included (but were not limited to): Michael Jackson, "Diff'rent Strokes," Casey Kasem's Top 40, break dancing, "moonwalking," parachute pants, "Star Wars," Cyndi Lauper, "The A-Team," the band KISS, Batman, Spiderman, cable TV, MTV, Pac-Man, Centipede, and--for some damn reason--the C.S. Lewis "Narnia" books.

I'm guessing that most of us blew her off. I know I sure as hell did. As scary as Ms. Beard was, she was still just another clueless, deeply uncool authority figure. Plus, I couldn't trust someone hated everything that made being a kid in 1984 enjoyable. I mean, come on, what did she have against Casey Kasem? Sure, he was a bit weird looking, but perverted? And how could MTV be satanic? Was Martha Quinn satanic? Was Alan Hunter satanic? They were about as satanic as Ms. Beard's twisted self-righteousness.

Fuck Ms. Beard, I thought. I was an impressionable kid, but I still knew bullshit when I smelled it. And she was full of it.

A few weeks later I was at home, sick with the flu (probably a bug I caught from that puking, upchucking Shonda kid!). I lie on the couch with a tray of 7-up and Saltines, watching MTV, thankful to have a day off school.

Then this video came on.

I didn't know who the hell Meatloaf was. If I'd known he was just some harmless seventies holdover with a tendency toward campy, overblown love ballads, this wouldn't have fazed me. But I was still just a kid, a kid who frequently endured bizarre rants about satanism from a bi-polar 45-year-old vigin who clearly hated children.

And after watching this weird intro where a guy in sillhouette shrieks at a frightened looking girl: "ON A HOT SUMMER NIGHT WILL YOU OFFER YOUR THROAT TO THE WOLF WITH THE RED ROSES?" I have to admit, it made me re-think the whole MTV = Satanic debate.

But then the next video came on, and it was something completely benign by Phil Collins. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Seriously though, what is up with this intro?

Shit That I Didn't Get -- Part II

When I was about seven years old, there was a public service announcement on TV about the dangers of high blood pressure. It was a pretty dramatic ad; a shot of man’s naked torso with a ticking bomb device strapped to it. Then a solemn voiceover is heard, warning viewers that ignoring high blood pressure is akin to—-well-—ignoring a ticking time bomb strapped to your torso, which seems like a difficult thing to overlook. As the announcer goes on, the camera slowly moves in for a close-up on the time bomb. Then the voiceover finishes with a dramatic flourish (something along the lines of “Don’t let it happen to you”), the clock on the bomb stops ticking and the screen goes dark, implying that the bomb went off and the poor guy was blown to smithereens.

Needless to say, this ad scared the shit out of me. It also taught me that high blood pressure can make you explode into a thousand tiny pieces and die a gruesome death.

I started asking my mom a lot of questions about high blood pressure. When I asked what caused it, she replied with something like, “Oh, I think people who eat a lot of salty foods get that.” I then became the only seven-year-old on my block to express concern over my daily salt intake, shunning the savory snacks I loved like French fries and potato chips. This phase was short-lived, as I pretty much forgot about the horrors of high blood pressure and spontaneous human combustion when the ad stopped airing. I don’t remember it being on TV for longer than a few months or so: perhaps the Ad Council started getting complaints from parents of other impressionable young children who were freaking out over the possibility of getting blown up if they ate the wrong thing.

I tried like hell to find this ad on YouTube, but no dice. If anyone out there manages to get hold of it, be sure send me a link. Perhaps seeing the ad again will have a similar effect on me, now that I’m at an age where I actually should be watching my salt intake. However, I did come across a PSA that aired on TV around the same time. It is a lot more family friendly—no one blows up and dies in this one—but watch for the creepy clown who makes an appearance at 00:07 and again at 00:38, respectively.



Seriously, what is the deal with that clown? And what is he doing riding with the kids on that Tilt-a-Whirl thingie? I find that pretty disturbing, and I don’t share my generation’s near-pathological fear of clowns. I find clowns to be mildly unsettling—-that scene in Poltergeist where the clown doll attacks the big-toothed kid and drags him under the bed caused me a few sleepless nights when I was a wee one—-but overall that fear hasn’t really carried over to adulthood. I’m not as frightened by something as overtly creepy as a clown. A vacant-eyed oil executive in a $3,000 suit? Now that’s fucking scary.

Aside from the weirdness with the clown, I found this ad to be pretty damn heartwarming. I mean, look how happy that family is. And it doesn’t come across as a fake-y TV commercial sort of happy; they all seem genuinely happy to be together. This is the kind of family that every kid secretly wishes for, the kind of happy family that simply doesn’t exist in real life. It didn’t then, and it doesn’t now. But it is a nice thing to see, isn’t it?

Shit I Didn’t Get (1980’s kid edition)

The video for Foreigner’s “I Want To Know What Love Is”.

It was 1985, and radio-friendly rockers Foreigner were starting to wear out their welcome. It was an era dominated by comparatively edgier artists like Madonna, Billy Idol, and Prince, so Foreigner was getting in touch with their softer side, probably to attract more female fans (for a similar example, see REO Speedwagon and “Can’t Fight This Feeling”). Foreigner pulled out all the stops with this power ballad, complete with lots of keyboards, croon-y vocals, and super sensitive lyrics: “Now this mountain I must climb/Feels like the world upon my shoulders/Through the clouds I see love shine/It keeps me warm as life grows colder”. The capper was the gospel choir they trotted out to belt the chorus mid-way through the song, as Lou Gramm lets loose with “I wanna feel what love is, I know you can show me…” (um—no thanks, dude).

I was 11 years old when this song and video were in heavy rotation. While 11-year-olds in post-Britney 2010 are considerably more advanced than we were back then, I was pretty naïve, even for the time. Although I was officially a pre-teen—-the annoying term “tween” hadn’t yet been coined—-I was a very young pre-teen. Most of the other girls in my fifth grade class had discovered eye shadow, curling irons, and boys, but I was still a horse-crazy tomboy, climbing trees, running around barefoot outside, and obsessing over reruns of “The Adventures of Black Beauty” on Nickelodeon. In other words, I had quite a ways to go before I caught up with my peers. My emotional immaturity probably had a lot to do with my complete misinterpretation of this video’s storyline, making all the nuances about singer Lou Gramm’s romantic woes (as you’ll see) fly right over my head.



The video starts off with a very constipated-looking Lou Gramm in a recording studio, laying down some vocals. We also get shots of Mick Jones, the band’s guitarist, rubbing his face a lot and appearing vaguely concerned. Then comes footage of some city folk going about their day, including a black construction worker who lifts a beam onto his shoulder in slow motion. Then, in a dark room somewhere, a girl wakes up, gets out of bed, and takes a shower. Cut to a black woman working in a restaurant or a dry cleaners (can’t tell which, but it’s a very steamy room). Lou Gramm sits at a desk and talks on the phone with the aforementioned girl, who is now all blow-dried and dressed and silhouetted in a dimly-lit room. They appear to be having an argument. Then Lou Gramm rides in a car and stares gloomily out the window. An apathetic looking Mick Jones is sitting next to him, staring out the window on his side. A lot of black people—-including the construction worker from before and the woman from the steamy room-—board some bus and greet one another warmly. (Note: the black working-class people in this video are a lot livelier and seem way happier than the rich white rock stars. I think that’s intentional.) The glum white musicians and the cheery urban people from the bus converge at another recording studio somewhere. There are hugs and handshakes all around, and the white musicians’ moods all seem to lighten as they get down to the business of recording the chorus of their sensitive hit single. Cut to the girl from before, who is dressed like Mary Tyler Moore for some reason. She walks—-then runs—-down a city sidewalk. At the studio, the white rockers seem much happier now as they play their instruments and Lou Gramm sings along with the assembled choir. Everybody's feeling it. The girl appears at the top of the stairway and gazes down at the recording session. She spots Lou Gramm, who also notices her. The song continues and the girl runs down the stairs towards Lou, who’s suddenly so into the song that he doesn’t see her coming. She runs over and throws her arms around Lou, literally shoving him away from the microphone. He seems surprised but not irritated that his girlfriend has interrupted this important recording session. He hugs her tightly, and then…freeze frame.

My interpretation of the video now—-one that I think is pretty much in line with the director’s vision—-is that Lou Gramm and the guys are getting bogged down with all the stress that comes along with being rich white musicians. Lou Gramm seems to be experiencing some additional emotional turmoil, what with arguing over the phone with his lady, who probably doesn’t understand the pressures of being in a famous rock band. The band’s troubles are forgotten when they start jamming with the upbeat working-class gospel choir, proving that music—-as Madonna would later sing—-makes the people come together. Then Lou’s girlfriend comes to her senses and forgives him for whatever they were arguing about earlier. The End.

My interpretation as an 11 year old: Lou Gramm’s girlfriend is prejudiced against black people. (I thought “prejudiced,” by the way, because the term “racist” wasn’t thrown about as freely as it is now and I don’t think I'd even heard that word at the time.) Prejudiced people are icky, which is why Lou Gramm looks so upset about spending time with black people while the mean woman he loves hangs around the house being mad at him for it. The band goes to the studio to record with the black people, who turn out to be really nice. The girlfriend walks the streets and thinks about things for a while, then she comes to the studio and sees how cool the black choir is. She runs down the stairs and hugs Lou Gramm, because she isn’t prejudiced anymore. The End.

Fun Fact: Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones is the stepfather of Samantha Ronson, the popular club DJ best known as Lindsay Lohan’s lesbian squeeze.

Next time: More shit from my childhood that I didn’t get. Check back soon, my memory is long and I’m feeling inspired.

Sneaking in just under the wire (while it's still January).

My "End of Decade" list.
2000 - 2009

Remember when you were a kid, and "the year 2000" sounded really awesome and mysterious and futuristic and cool? Well, it wasn't, and neither was the decade that followed it.

The '00 Decade: Shit That I Didn't Get

In no particular order....

"Dick in a Box"
This stupid Saturday Night Live bit with Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg was one of the unfunniest videos I've ever been forced to watch.

Will Ferrell

Will Ferrell's popularity makes me feel even more out of step with mainstream America than usual. And I'm sick of the go-to stock character that he's been milking for years, the tantrum-throwing, petulant manchild, as portrayed in Anchorman, Dodgeball, Step Brothers, Kicking and Screaming*, Blades of Glory, etc. I mean, doesn't Adam Sandler have the patent on that character?
*(Side note: I watched the first half-hour of Kicking and Screaming on an airplane. It was so awful that I switched it off and stared at the back of the seat in front of me for the rest of the four-hour flight. Yes, that movie was so abominable that I stared at a seat cushion rather than finish watching it.)

Reality Television
Survivor, The Biggest Loser, Project Runway, Big Brother, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, American Idol, The Hills, Who Wants To Marry A 35-Year-Old Failed Actor? The Amazing Race, Flava Of Love, The Real Botoxed Housewives of (Insert City/County), Clean My Disgusting House, Watch These Skanks Fight Over Bret Michaels, Drunk 20-Year-Old Pricks (The Real World), Drunk 20-Year-Old Pricks In New Jersey, Paris Hilton Is Dumb, Donald Trump Fires People, Date This Asian Midget...ad nauseum.

But The Surreal Life? That was cool.

CSI and every one of its bastard step-children.

The Lord of the Rings films.
All forty-seven hours of them.

Britney Fucking Spears
Jesus H. Christ, when will she go away????

The Kardashians. All of them.

Who knew that the (now dead) lawyer who defended O.J. Simpson would turn out to be the least odious of that bunch?

Christian Bale and the Batman re-boots
I miss Michael Keaton.

He was sexy. Shut up.

The Presidency of Dubya

And everyone who voted for him again in '04!

Asscrack Jeans (complete with butt-cleavage and visible thong)
I don't care if you're a 95-pound Victoria's Secret model; buttcrack is never sexy, kids.




Crocs
I have just one question...

Why?