Archived comment by Arlene:
Has everyone heard some variant of "Idiot, bringing a knife to a gunfight"?

Yes? Good. In a recent read, Doc Sidhe, someone comments, after seeing his compatriot remove a gun-toting enemy's head with her sword, "Next time I'll remember not to bring a gun to a knife fight."

Archived comment by triticale:
namelink - cool points google; means nothing to me.

Archived comment by daen:
"Love... needs a shave."

Anyone?

Archived comment by triticale:
Love soaked men? Why would love want to do something like soaking people?

Archived comment by steff:
pan, you have just made my entire day by using the phrase "love soaked men" in a sentence. =) cheers!

Archived comment by Montygirl:
Matt - walk toward the light! I would not banish anyone to the lurking corners of darkness - I have to save that slot for myself!

Although I agree with Ben on the Howdy Doody thing, I agree with you on some of the shows being a rehash of earlier shows - like Barney (Barney is the anti-christ). He's just Mr. Rogers in a big purple suit. And who thought it was a good idea to send all of the neighborhood children to play with the strange old single guy at the end of the block? "C'mon kiddies, come inside, take off your shoes and put on this sweater. We'll play games, and I'll take you to wonderland ... but don't tell your parents."?!?!?!

me thinks bittergirl has escaped! ;^)

"It's Howdy Doody time, it's Howdy Doody time..." Now I'll be singing *that* all day long. thankyouverymuch.

Archived comment by Ben:
Matt, I'm not quite sure I see GI Joe or the Transformers as being a repackaging of Howdy Doody...the addition of violence and a definite plotline in a animated format as opposed to a loosely tied live-act variety show with a daily moral lesson is different... We got the latter from Pee Wee's Playhouse (well, that was a little late and a little lost on me).

I'll agree the hoakey way they got to the moral or lesson of the day was similar, but the method of transfer was different enough to cleanly separate the two.

We were the end of live network studio audiences for children's programming. Yes they did reappear on nickelodeon (eventually) but that was a cable channel (and a premium channel where I grew up - heck I didn't even have cable let alone any of their premium channels).

Howdy Doody was also lost on me. I didn't understand how my parents watched it (there was an attempt to rerun it at one point). The dolls were obviously fake (Space Ghost was waaay more realistic to my prepubecent childhood mind).

Culturally I look at some of the cartoons which make reruns on late night Cartoon Network and am amazed that I watched them. I now know that I only watched hong kong phoey because it had the best animaton at the time it was on (towards noon when TV would suck and switch over to sports and news). But the smurfs (except for the later years when they added the kids and dog) held a strong storyline and relatively decent acting for all of its years (cutesy but not completely stupid).

But I watched cartoons like Dungeons & Dragons and the 80's Spiderman/Hulk cartoon, the tail end of StarBlazers, The Ewoks and Droids, Galtar on sunday morning (like at 5:00AM - Good Morning Mom!), the inhumanoids, Mask, Robotech, Voltron and Star Blazers (did I say that already - guess what I just ordered on DVD - now to get a DVD player), The laugh olympics, Rocky And Bullwinkle, bugs bunny/roadrunner (Can you tell yet that I'm reading through yesterday land?), and yes I watched the Snorks...D'oh! Superfriends - all incarnations - were awesome. So was Visonaries, and Starcomm.

The funniest thing about saturday morning tv (in retrospect was my sister, she had a crush on Shazam - every time a camper would drive by the house she would say - "look there goes Billy Batson" and wanted mom and dad to take her to meet him (one of the few live actions we watched).

I was a cartoon kid, with few exceptions, live action was for rainy afternoons, when you couldn't go out and pretend to be Spiderman.

Archived comment by triticale:
And she'll have fun fun fun now till her Daddy takes her Thunderbird away.

Or her Ripple, or Boone's Farm...

Archived comment by dave:
Oh don't worry Matt, we get plenty of your culture, I think it was just one small aspect that I managed to miss out on!

Of course, I am currently addicting my kids to the Thunderbirds all over again. Ahh the fun.

Archived comment by Matt:
You have no idea how much that brings a smile to my face, Dave. The last thing the U.S. needs to be doing is exporting more of its pop culture.

Sure, G.I. Joe was cool to us 80's kids, but that's because we were infantile and it spoke to us in the way only demographically-oriented content can. One slowly begins to realize that G.I. Joe, Thundercats, Superfriends, Transformers (and their pale imitators, the GoBots), et cetera were nothing more than a repackaging of Howdy Doody or Captain Kangaroo or whatever else the hell it was our parents watched when they were still feeling the residual effects of that day, not so long ago, when they woke up one morning and Blankie (or Teddy, or whomever) was gone, never to be seen again.

(*gingerly steps off of soap box and slowly returns to the dark corner to which Montygirl, steff, and the rest forced him to retreat*)

Archived comment by dave:
You're right Matt, I am not from the US. I am an 80's child, but obviously the whole GI Joe thing eluded me.

Archived comment by Kelly:
Hi Marv,

Actually you are a baby boomer, the range is 1946 to 1964. I guess that would make you a baby baby boomer!

: )

Archived comment by CAM2:
That second quote would be Teddy Roosevelt.

Archived comment by Bonzo:
I can think of only two quotes relevent to this off the top of my head:

"Knowing there's a trap is the first step in evading it." - Duke Leto Altredes - Dune

"Speak softly and cary a big stick." - I forget

Archived comment by Oldman:
Somewhat related to the discussion in progress.
The questions of the ages:

Circa 1900:
Who am I and what am I doing here?
Where did I come from?
Where am I going?

Circa 1990:
What's happening?
When will it end?
Can I make a few bucks off of it?

Circa 2000:
Wazzzup?

See namelink for Superfriends/wazzzup parody (best on high speed connections).

Archived comment by CAM2:
Many cool points to you, WSPanic. Many, many cool points . . .

Archived comment by WidespreadPanic:
CAM2 I have to chuckle. When I read Jozxyqk comment I too thought of Chevy Chase, political candidate.

If that wasn't were your comment stems from then disregard this comment altogether.

Archived comment by Ben:
Well, gleeking in elementary school was when you roll your tounge against the roof of your mouth and shoot spit out of it... Maybe he was a spittle monkey. Instead of flinging dung he just spit a lot.

Was anyone else curious why the monkey wore pants more often than Robin did?

Why did everybody understand gleek yet only aquaman could talk to the fish?

Archived comment by Jon:
Isn't gleeking something you do with spit?

Archived comment by CAM2:
The monkey-pet from Lost in Space was Way cooler. He seemed to be on serious Valium, but The Bloop was way cooler than Gleek.

Archived comment by CAM2:
Not to mention having to hang around with a "space monkey" who's only power seemed to be to get in trouble and be annoying.

WTH kind of name is Gleek anyway?

Archived comment by Ben:
Well, for truly caustic views on the superfriends (especially Apache Chief, Aquaman and the Wondertwins, Seanbaby is the site for you.

Archived comment by Suplexia:
Lord knows how many afternoons I wasted watching Superfriends during college.

Jon, the guy you're thinking of is Apache Chief. He spoke a lot like Kevin Nealon's Tonto from SNL. Here's a site that pretty well outlines everything Superfriends.

And what about the Wonder Twins? One could turn into an animal (such as a purple gorilla), one into a water-something-or-other (such as a wave). What kind of power is that? He could be defeated by a sponge. It wouldn't even have to be an evil sponge (thank you Cartoon Network).

Archived comment by Matt:
Okay, sorry. It was late and I probably shouldn't have said anything about ages. Like someone said; it's just an 80's joke. I'm sure there are cultural minutae involving *NSync (or however the hell you spell that thing) or Kiss, or whomever. That's all.

Archived comment by Pan:
Knowing may be half the battle, but getting starry-eyed love soaked men to do your dirty work with the gun is the better half.

Archived comment by Jon:
While we're on a "Superfriends" tangent...
There was one episode that involved the size-changing Native American guy. If I did a search, I could probably find the guy's name.

Anyways, there was this deal where a giant *who was bigger than the Earth* comes around, and the Earth *gets surrounded by his beard*. If I could make this stuff up, I'd sell it! You wouldn't have to take hallucinogens.
Needless to say, this was a scary moment for myself as a child. The fact that I still remember it(from many years ago), when I often forget my cell phone in the car, is a clue.

Shall we have a poll for creepiest "Superfriends" episode? Then I'm sure we'd get a better rating on Blogdex[a new MIT blog-rating page].

Archived comment by Ben:
Mike, maybe El Dorado didn't appear from nowhere... Ever wonder why he never appeared in any spinoffs or tittle issues? The reason - the sexual assault charges brought on him by that very incident. Years later El Dorado was released on parole and became a school bus driver in a small southwestern town.

Archived comment by steff:
ok, so i'm a few hours late for the gi joe discussion. happy to see that i'm not the only one that had that knee jerk reaction to the post. =) it's even become a kind of a short hand with the ppl i talk to - every time someone says they know, we have to ascertain that they know what knowing is. if they don't, we hand them a gun and tell them at least that's the other half. sheesh. really though, anything can be a weapon, used deviously enough. *slow evil grin*

Archived comment by Mike:
KID 1:"There's a freight train coming!"
KID 2:"Hurry! We can beat it!"
JOE APPEARING FROM NOWHERE: "Hold on there, kids."
KIDS (*in unison*): "It's Roadblock!"

Ah, GI Joe, how we miss thee.

Actually, though, pretty much all of the 80s cartoons had those odd "special messages." I remember one in particular for its pure weirdness: the one from "Superfriends" where this little girl wakes up in the morning and says (to no one in particular) "Uck! My mouth tastes terrible!" and then freaking El Dorado, the Mexican superhero with the power of invisibility, appears in her bedroom and lectures her on oral hygiene.

WTF? Superheroes watch us as we sleep? They slip into little girls' bedrooms?

Damn traumatic life lessons....

Ow, a hangnail! Huh? Batman?

Archived comment by CAM2:
Uh, it was my understanding when I came in here there would be no math involved.

Archived comment by Jon:
As far as I can tell, there are not age limits to posters here... you'll just not get jokes known to certain generations. Which, of course, happens everywhere.

Did I have a point? Probably not. I'm resisting the urge to put in an emoticon(*insert Transformers sound here*).

Archived comment by Suplexia:
So if you know you have a gun, things will pretty much work out from there...

Archived comment by Jozxyqk:
A friend of mine used to say:
"If knowing is half the battle, and getting there is half the fun, then getting to the battle is 3/4 of the fun."

Archived comment by Obsidiana:
God, please grant me the serenity to live with the things I can't change, the strength to change the things I can...

...and the weapons to make the difference.

Archived comment by Marv:
I just turned 40, does that mean that I can't post here anymore? Am I only allowed to lurk now (like a dirty old man)?

What am I?

Too old to be a Gen-Xer.
Too young to be a Baby Boomer.

Am I a Tweener?

I don't know.
Help me GI Joe! Show me the way!

Ah well, at least I have the 70's.

Archived comment by Matt:
Dave, you're not from the U.S. are you? Or maybe you're just younger than I realize. Okay, here goes, part 1 jillion where Matt dates himself by his knowledge of cultural history.

When G.I. Joe cartoons first appeared in the early 80's, there was a general hue and cry from parents that it exemplified the kind of wanton violence that was influencing their children (sons) to be violent people in real life. Increasingly, pressure was put upon TV stations and such to do something about it. To that end, beginning with the third season of G.I. Joe (the Real American Hero), a kind of animated public service announcement was placed at the end of each episode, in which a boy would do something he didn't know was wrong. A G.I. Joe character would witness the behavior, approach him, enlighten him, and the boy would always end with, "Now I know." To which the G.I. Joe character would always reply, "And knowing's half the battle." Go Joe! Or something equally inspiring to 9 year-olds.

In a related sense, the phrase, "And knowing's half the battle" has become a Generation-X (is that what we are? I get confused sometimes) cliche' of the lowest sense, when used in any social context.

Archived comment by dave:
and then the _other_ half is knowing how many halves you have left to deal with.