The smell of boiling diesel gas automatically awakens my sweet tooth, and you want to know why? It's because that's exactly what the ice cream truck smelled like when it came sputtering to a stop along the street when I was a kid. It's funny how that tingle-toned "Do your ears hang low?" doesn't harken back sweet thoughts, just the burning gas. Either way, summer was made for Popsicles... that's not an 80's or 90's thing, that's an eternal thing (but for some reason I still think they were better then).
We were fortunate enough to live on the end of an L-curve at the time, which meant we had much more time to grab some fast cash and run out to meet him somewhere along the perimeter. Those other kids who only had one side facing a road usually met up with us in our yard once he stopped. The old guy (always old guys) would pop open the hatch and the whole menu would spill out on the back in colorful, hand-drawn illustrations easy for kids. My brother and I loved the snow cones and Popsicles the best... especially the ones shaped like cartoon characters and the classic "red white and blue" rockets (shaped like uhhh... red rockets). And because like the kid on Seinfeld said, I was a "funny fuck" even back then, I used to love the ones with jokes on them, where the bottom of the stick would say something like, "How did the square become a circle?" And then you'd eat down the Popsicle and the other end would reply, "He cut the corners!"
No cymbals? Okay, how about this one... "Why did the window go to the doctor? Because it had panes!" Or this... "What did one tomato say to the other when rolling down the hill? Don't worry, I'll ketchup!" Or... "What do you call a frog that's illegally parked? A toad!"
Yeah, the jokes were corny, and yes, the smell of burning diesel is not what you think of when you think of sweets, but that was all a part of that classic summertime charm I will never forget. The one big regret I remember having about moving to the new house in 1991 was that the ice cream truck would always skip our street. And whenever he did make a run on it, he really was running. Seriously, they could have got him for speeding.
Okay you tough crowd, here's one... [reads] "Why is life like a penis?" "Often gets hard for no reason... Whoa! Whoa! Not appropriate!"
Seriously, you always heard them ask the question: "Why do they call them Apple Jacks if they don't taste like apples?" But that's not even the half of it, because not only are they called what they're not, they're advertised as not being what they're not. Maybe this was reverse psychology or something.
And all this attention on the word "apple," but what about "jacks?" If apples are nowhere in the equation, then the real question ought to be "what the hell is a jack, and why are we eating it?"
All the other boys in my kindergarten class spent most of the year making a 200 piece Ninja Turtles puzzle in a side room, but I opted out of it. Ninja Turtles were the biggest thing around at the time, but they weren't my thing, and the same went for that whole Transformers/ G.I. Joe/ He-Man programming group. Maybe the cars, guns, explosions, and pizza did appeal to me on their own, but not with all the muscles and guns. I was a sheltered boy. My mom was against such things. Plus, I was always scrawny and therefore easily intimidated by anything burly, and I just thought all that chest thumping and general badassed-ness was too intense and not nearly saccharine enough.
I didn't go hungry though, because the 90's served up so much sugar on TV it's a wonder I still have all my teeth. Let's just say, my brother and I had "less badass" interests on lazy Saturday mornings in 1990, and shows like Maya the Bee, The Littl'bits, Shining Time Station, Fraggle Rock, Eureka's Castle (sadly) and Sonic the Hedgehog made up the bulk of it. Anything clean, colorful, mindless, and utterly devoid of muscles was good enough. These shows didn't activate my urges to break into random sword fighting during commercial breaks, but they were sweet enough pieces of eye candy to chew down between commercial breaks and turn my brain off to (which has never been hard for me). They may have been trying to instead stimulate that seldom-used thing called a brain, but then again probably not. If my brain couldn't be compelled by cars, guns, muscles, and pizza... then it probably wasn't going to be compelled by hedgehogs, stupid dogs, exploding eyes, and pizza, either.
So I didn't like Ninja Turtles, Street Sharks, Biker Mice From Mars, Dino-Vengers, Gargoyles, Transformers, He-Man, Thundercats, or even the dang Cheetahmen... sue me! But did I watch them? Well, of course. Who didn't? Who doesn't know their Raphael from their Donatello? Who doesn't love Ripster and Streex? Who can't name T-bone's signature move? Come on. But give me Rocko's Modern Life and Pete and Pete any day. Look, it was a conscious choice. I traded bulging muscles, Kung Fu turtles, and underwear being worn on the outside, for fuzzy puppets, claymation puke, and cartoon animals who go commando... without PANTS! Take that! No, violence was too intense for this little dork, but I could stomach a good "Sonic Sez Says" whenever required. Give me BURPS ("Aw yeah!"), farts ("Awesome!"), toilets ("Elite!"), corn dogs ("Excellent!"), roller blades ("Radical!"), pizza ("Tubular!"). Give me cartoony Loony Tuney violence ("No DUH!"). Give anything that goes good with a couch, my butt on it, and the crunching of Cheetos.
And of course whenever this came up during this schlock, somebody had to say it, and that somebody was ALWAYS me:
So did I watch the girly shows then? Of course. (Once again, who didn't?) They were on TV were they not? When that box is lit up, you obey. And when the commercials play, you beg. That's all there is to it.
So I watched the Care Bears... mostly at daycare when I had no choice in the matter... and I survived. Once again, if the TV was on, my eyes were glued to it, whatever it was. Period. I watched My Little Pony (the old one... the new one I currently watch of course). I watched Clarissa (what kind of name is that anyway?). At daycare I may have had to tuck certain parts in while these shows were going, you know, just to hope I blended in with the rest of the audience, but trust me, my mind was so zonked out by that point I never seemed to notice when the colors started going more soft, more pastel, and the animals started getting more cutesy, more plush and Lisa Frank-ish, with bigger eyes and high-pitched migraine-inducing voices... and the presence of such things like "kindness" and "sharing" and "friendship" and other things that corrode the Y chromosome, and the absolute banishment of all fart jokes, and then that strange conspicuous scene in the middle of every girly show where all the characters would just stare at you and say, in a robot voice, "Okay, now that those boys have left the room, let's roll out plan 67B for world domination!" (Always thought that was a little weird.)
That's my confession. But who the hell cares? In the 80s and early 90s, all children's television existed for the sole purpose of selling you toys. That was what it was all about, whether it was a new Transformer, a new Sonic game, or all the ponies on their way to Flutter Valley for the "Sun Tuesday" celebration (hell yeah I know what that is). And there are just two different types of boys wanting those toys... the "hoo-ra!" ones who dream of driving a jet across a desert at high speeds only to morph into a robot that can shoot lasers from its shoulders, and the "uber dorks" like me. In the end, it was all good, because it was all cheese... worth biting into so long as you held your nose. And if you waited for the commercial breaks, you knew just what to pester your parents for. See? That makes it simple. Kinda how I like it.
Before Discovery turned into the "poor career choice" channel, it had shows like this. The animated opening actually was eye-popping, only because computer animation wasn't used for everything back then. So I got to admit, this show actually had me thinking the future would be cool.
This is probably more for the six-year-old me, but I came across this book one night (on one of my all-nighter web wanderings) and the memory of it was so vivid I knew I had to post it. Having said that, I don't remember at all what this book was about besides what can be gleaned from the cover: a muffineer and his living truck drive all night, and thus we have, The Truck That Drove All Night.
I guess they didn't want to make anything about the night look scary, because nothing ever goes awry in a story about muffins, even if it's also about a late-night trucker burning the midnight oil. I remember the headlights shining out the "eyes" of the truck and the cozy little interior, and that shiny grill. "Just drop those off at my house!" This book made me want a muffin. This book makes me want a muffin.
When I was a kid, staying up all night was some mystical thing. It's almost like you weren't sure day and night were connected, because you'd fall asleep and suddenly it's be day again. What happens if you don't fall asleep? Does night go on forever? Do night people live in the house at night while everyone's asleep? How can you be sure? Well, books like these made the night seem mystical and oddly well lit, but seeing as I've grown into a night owl, I've had plenty experience staying up all night and something about the magic is lost.
My grandparents' campground was nestled in a Cape Cod pine grove. It was a rocky, piney land where walking to the pond barefoot was the most hazardous thing you could do to your feet and you couldn't so much as breathe without sucking in a mosquito. Nothing could be done about it either, even with the citronella bucket lit on the picnic table. Seriously, if that was supposed to drive the bugs away, why were there always a few floating in it?
Anyways... we weren't allowed to barge in like we did, seeing as it was a private campground and my parents weren't paying up (we just happened to know people who were--our grandparents), but for a few days each summer, we all got a run on the place. We usually came by to "visit" unannounced and to help ourselves to all the amenities. Needless to say whenever we all rolled up, our grandparents were already dragging out the inflatables to send us off to the lake (in a last ditch effort to have a grandkid-free vacation I guess).
That was okay, because we kids got to have a blast taking turns knocking each other off our balloon perches into the pond's mucky black seaweed scum for hours at a time. If not that, we were hitting the still chop with the paddle boats. I learned how to wear a life jacket at the campground (you had to wear one to get on the paddle boats). One summer my brother and I even paddled all the way out to the other end of the lake to find the even smaller clump of untrodden sand and overgrown brush on the deserted opposite shore. Civilization looked soooo far away from out there in bug-dom.
Coming back from the lake was far more perilous though. My feet were fine in the water, but then I'd have to cross the beach to get to the pavement, and since I didn't want to get my shoes all sandy, there was no choice but to walk back barefoot. Now we're not talking just sand, we're talking gravel roads like shrapnel, sticks like thumb tacs, and stones like Lego bricks, all buried under a thick layer of prickly needles, pine cones, and... oh the hell with it... "I can live with sand in my shoes!"
"Can we go in the camper now?" I'd ask. There was something so cozy and bug-free about that RV... being an enclosed space away from the bugs, that is. They never let us kids in unless we were getting a cookie or something because they were smart, so we had to stick it out under the retractable awning with the multi-colored luau "lantern" Christmas lights on the splintery deck. My brother and I sat there shirtless and dripping, fresh from the pond late into the evening with the mosquitoes.
The filthy plastic tablecloth was clamped down, the blue bug zapper was blitzing, those vintage Noma coach patio stringed lights were glowing, the screen door on the RV was super spring-loaded, and the citronella still wasn't working. The murky black pond water stuck to our skin with the scum as our shorts slowly dried into the late evening. We never had to change our shorts at the lake, we'd dry off by the glow of the citronella candle, and summer was everything summer should be.
2:30 seconds? Yeah... after you die on level two, three, four...etc.... the first three dozen times, trust me, you'll be doing this level in a minute or less. You'll be doing it in your sleep.
Ah, back when games based on movies were good, and challenging, and weren't just scene-for-scene re-shoots of the movie: exploding bugs, prickly porcupines, and hyenas that jump TWICE after you jump on them (do NOT forget), it's all good.
My brother and I went to our cousin's birthday party sometime in 1994, saw this was on, and plunked ourselves down. From there on out we had the living room commandeered... all day, afternoon, evening... we were probably the last to leave. Screw pool party. Screw presents. Screw birthday cake... this was all we were interested in. Okay, perhaps we breaked for cake.
This game is just damn tough. We never defeated Scar.
