Home Improvement

After Rocko, Home Improvement was my favorite show. It was the show I listed in my 4th grade portfolio under "favorite show," so I guess that makes it official. Every few weeks I tuned in to ABC to see what crazy shenanigans Tim could put his house through again and again, and I don't know if it was all the unbridled guy-isms on display, but something about it just "spoke to me." From that intercom, to the exploding dishwasher, to the always-disastrous rooftop Christmas light displays, something had to break to keep that unbridled machismo in check, and that law of the universe is what sustained the show. 

Even the opening used to get me with the grunts, the fake video game with the kids getting chased by power tools (seemed like a pretty cool game!) (and much better than the actual Home Improvement video game... (real men don't need instructions!)), and the fact that the house logo always turned into some flying contraption. I remember thinking about how cool it would be if they actually did make the house sprout propellers and take off! ...Speaking of which, what was with all those surreal logo guys running around between scenes? I kept waiting for one of the people to just look down and go "what the heck is that thing?" or even just acknowledge that a little Home Improvement logo guy just jumped off the counter, or swung on a light fixture, or painted the screen blue... but I don't know, I guess they were all blind to it. The show was surreal at times.

In any case, Home Improvement taught me what being a "man" is all about.... blowing stuff up, trying to hide it, and saying something funny when people get mad about it. I blame Tim for all the bone-headed stuff I've tried to get away with or just barely escaped from in one piece over the years, like this cautionary tale. It's really just cuz I'm a guy, right? Yes. We all are... we all are (or at least, 50% of us). Unlike me though, his poor choices were always rectified by going out to the fence to seek the wisdom of their wacky neighbor without a lower face, stomping back only to fumble at reiterating what he just heard, and setting it all right somehow just in time for the end of the episode. To say that this show was "formula" is just too... formulaic at this point in the description. But just like being a guy, it's only fun if you don't take it serious. 

More importantly though, to say that this show had me grunting along in total amusement is just too... absolutely correct, I'm afraid. People still say I grunt, but it's more like a lazy "uh...", which is just Manspeak for "uh-huh." Grunting is a language all its own that only guys really get, you see, because when a grunt is less belch and more nasal, it's a "yes". When it's more belch, it's a "what?". And when it's a deep throated "oh no!"... well, that's self explanatory. Besides that, I also thought the Tool Time "Man's Bedroom"/ "Man's Kitchen"/ and "Man's Bathroom" segments were pretty cool, and quite accurate. What man wouldn't want a bed that becomes a pool table, a dirty-laundry compactor to make room for ever-more dirty laundry waiting for a "10th of Never" wash, or a toilet you could recline on? Why those aren't real things, I don't know.

There were other characters besides Tim though, like the nagging, feminist wife Jill who had this inability to cook like it was a genetic dysfunction... and those boner-ific toolgirls on Tool Time who just... handed Tim power tools (and boy did they ever!). There was also that wacky neighbor Wilson Wilson who was smarter than everyone combined but had no lower jaw for all I knew, and was also black sheep cousin of the Beach Boys apparently. Then there was Tim's sensible and non-macho (and even slightly effeminate) sidekick mama's boy Al with his typical 90s flannel shirt, but all he seemed to do was wait for Tim to say something stupid, wait for the audience to pipe down, and then deliver the five words we ALL knew were coming: "I don't think so Tim."

I am not Mark...
oh wait, I am!

There's no question which of the brothers I related to: the dork, the punching bag... the one who is unfortunately also named Mark. Coincidence? Are Marks just doomed to be dorks? At least I wasn't like the oldest one, Brad, who got all the worst lines and then got dumber as the show went on... but Mark was no smartalec like Randy (who got all the best lines and then got whinier as the show went on). Mark only got creepier. JTT (Randy) was HUGE in the mid-90s, and I can't express this enough. Girls loved him. I even once heard a girl in my (4th grade!) class say she wanted to touch his butt! I was never able to figure out exactly why, but I had other reasons to want to be him. I remember in one episode Randy went to a monster truck show and, according to Tim, "let out a burp so big one of the drivers thought he blew a tire!" Now that I had no trouble getting behind.

Like I said, most of the show was either built around corny jokes-- the only ones I was capable of getting... ("what rhymes with matrimony? schmatrimony!")--  or blowing things up like a 21-nail-gun salute gone wrong, or a whole house-- or dropping a beam on a car, or driving a riding mower at highway speeds (cutting many lawns in the process), or dancing a washing machine across the garage, or launching a BBQ grill into orbit (all thanks to Tim's "improvements"). The other part of the show was built around pure Stooges-style slapstick, usually involving Tim gluing something to his forehead. And while there was always some kind of life lesson tacked on somewhere, some moral, and even a couple "Very Special Episodes," those parts were the "talky bits" as far as the 8yo me was concerned, and this little man's mind was eagerly awaiting the next random explosion or mechanical malfunction.

It's great being a guy. 

This is How I Rolled

I'm certain I remember these. I don't know when exactly, but something about the bright yellow plastic straps...

Berry Berry Kix

It has two "Berry"s in the title, and little berry shapes on the spoon, and I used to love it. Three things immediately come to mind when I recall Berry Berry Kix, the first of which being the tongue-twisting song in the old commercial: "I love those little very berry, those very berry Kix, a very very berry berry bunch!...etc." Secondly, I remember the commercials usually had these parent-whipped kids offering up fuzzy slippers and cleaning the garage just to get their parents to buy them some, and how that always seemed more geared toward the parents. I guess that's the way Kix was in general.

Just reading the Kix box as a kid could improve your vocabulary... from the slogan "Kid tested, Mother Approved" (which had a very adult-like "focus group" feel to it) to the "No Added Colors, No Added Flavors, No Artificial Preservatives." I could barely pronounce half those words, never mind understand what they meant. And it's not like that was the small print or something. That was practically their advertising slogan: "No Artificial Preservatives!" sprawled out in big letters on the front. Let's face it, the grups were feeding us starchy-sweet puff cereal by making our parents think we wanted it, which, I got to admit, worked for me. I liked Kix because they convinced me and my parents that "kids love it."'

That said, at least Berry Berry Kix was more colorful and had these little berry-bunch-shaped pieces in there, so I guess they sort of had kids in mind when they came up with it. And just like I convinced myself to like it, I convinced myself that "reds" actually tasted like strawberries and the "purples" actually tasted like blueberries, but of course they were no different. I used to literally bite them off one by one. Sadly though, however fondly we may remember those berry-shaped pieces, they're most likely going to be confined to memory. The powers-that-be actually took the little things out in recent years. That's right. Pick up a box of Berry Berry Kix these days and all you'll find is Kix-shaped pieces colored red and purple! What sense does that make? How can it be Berry Berry Kix without the very berry bunches?

Bitches...

Sonic on the Genesis

I can't overstate how much of my life I spent playing the classic Sonic games. I was never all that good at them, but I worked my way through them all. The graphics were state of the art for the time, pushing the Genesis to its limits. The music was universally fantastic. The level designs only got bigger and better, and they were damn near cinematic at times too. The bosses were either pitifully easy or crazy hard, but always fun. The original 4 (or 3, depending on how you look at it) Sonic games for the Genesis were some of the best platform games ever made. Let's take a look at them.

Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)  B

This is where it all began. To be honest, I never actually played this one as a kid, so my fondness for it isn't as pure because I know where the series went after this. By comparison though, it's slower (for a Sonic game), the levels are pretty hard and have a lot less variation (3 acts in each level!?) and Sonic is pretty much all you get to see. But the series had to start somewhere! There really isn't much of a story going on, so it's just a faster, above-average platformer at heart. To make Sonic go fast, you have to use physics (rolling into a ball on an incline...etc.), which is fun enough because it works amazingly well.

It's still an impressive game on its own terms, and set the standards for so many things that became staples later on, like loops, rings, monitors, bouncers, baddies, and Dr. Robotnik's insane gadgets... all of which spell great creativity and a lot of good ideas on the part of the designers. It set a new standard for all platform games and gave Mario a run for his money for the first time (literally!).

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992)  A+

Now THIS is where Sonic first hit his stride for me. Sonic 2 is where Sonic got FAST, because this was the introduction of the "speed dash." Now you could get him practically outrunning the screen!  We also get to see Miles Prower, or "Tails," for the first time... Sonic's ever-present sidekick and one of the funniest characters to kill off repeatedly. This game also has a "two-player" feature, which is great if you want to start a fight with your brother. It introduced the "Death Egg" device and Sonic's first time destroying it (a story arc that will connect the next couple games). Sonic 2 has a lot more levels with a lot more color, length, and variation (only 2 acts per level this time), and their replay-ability is extremely high.

I love the Sky Chase Zone (the first time you get to fly the Tails airplane), and the music is some of the best in the series (Chemical Plant Zone is a jam). Heck, I play this game to this day, and it's still as fun as ever. It never gets old. It's a lot easier than the first game, but certainly more fun in my opinion. The final boss is just incredibly fun to die a dozen times on, and the ending is among the best in the whole series. This may have been the first video game I ever played, and it may still be the best. 

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (1994)  A-

This game is even more incredible in some ways, but it also has its minor drawbacks. It was the first game to have the "temporary shield" trick, which is cool, a whole new slew of shield types, and a Tails that can actually fly on command! This is also where my favorite character Knuckles the Echidna makes his first appearance (and in this one, he's a badass!). You can also save your game for the first time, so you don't have to play the whole thing in one sitting! This second sequel follows the reconstruction of Robotnik's "Death Egg" device that Sonic destroyed in the last game (pretty much picking right up after the other one left off).

The levels are even more colorful, more complex, larger, have the best music of the series, and feature all kinds of new ways to play them besides just "running and jumping." Each act has its own boss too, rather than just one per level. All that said, there are only 6 levels in the whole game, making it the shortest classic Sonic game. The final level really isn't all that hard, and the final boss is very underwhelming (and pretty easy). Overall, there's a feeling of "that was it?" at the end, but only because it's so good you want more of it...

Sonic & Knuckles (1994) A

And this game was more of it! S&K was a direct continuation of Sonic 3 (more like a "Sonic 3: Part 2"), and follows what happens after Sonic rides the repaired Death Egg in Sonic 3. Actually, this game and Sonic 3 were supposed to be the same game, but the developers were forced to cut it in half, which is why Sonic 3 felt kind of incomplete at the end. The levels in this game are about as detailed and complex as it gets, although the game play itself doesn't differ much from Sonic 3 (but no complaints here!). Here you can play Knuckles for the first time and soon discover that he can climb walls and glide! There are more levels in this game, way more music, the bosses are harder, and the final boss is about as big and bad as you're ever going to find in a Sonic game.

To add, the really unique thing about this game was that its cartridge allowed you to lock Sonic 3 into it so you could play Sonic 3 and it back to back, which is awesome because it's an entirely different game... suddenly all those inaccessible pathways in the previous game make sense! You could also lock Sonic 2 into it and play Knuckles in the Sonic 2 levels. The only downside is there's no game save feature or even two player when playing it on its own, but play "Sonic 3 & Knuckles" back to back, and it's the best Sonic game ever made. Period.

---

Ouch! Right in my beans!

And yes, before you say anything, I know about Sonic CD, Sonic Spinball, Sonic 3D Blast, and even the dang Mean Bean Machine on the Genesis... okay? I just didn't play them back in the day because they're not the main series of games and I wasn't a total weeb. (But I do hear good things.) (...Actually, I always did want a crack at the Mean Bean Machine...) 

After Sonic & Knuckles though, sadly, the franchise got lost in the land of spin-offs, experimental flops, and cash-grabs for a while and didn't make another game until the "Adventure" series for the Sega Dreamcast... which I never played. The games they made after that have been a mixed bag, and there was a "Sonic 4" made recently, which I said earlier was okay, but didn't live up to the originals. The Genesis games are considered to be the golden age, the world of Sonic at it's best, and they certainly were. I can play them a hundred times over... no, a thousand times... and they never get old.

The Weekly Reader

The only "old one" I could find!

Who doesn't remember having the Weekly Reader thrown in their lap a few times a month at school in the 90s? If it wasn't the Weekly Reader, it was Scholastic (which I also remember), but one way or another, reading some kind of "kid magazine" factored somewhere into our typical school week. To me, this was like, high class journalism. Time, Newsweek, People, GQ....they're all fine, but they're no Weekly Reader. If you don't know, it's a magazine for kids. Back then it was only about 10 pages long at most, and every page had about three different 300-word articles on it with plenty of pictures and games, and other stuff to keep us interested.

The typical issue usually had a "science and nature" section (always something about whales, weather, and volcanoes for some reason)... a "news" section that usually told good news (maybe this was higher class...) unless it was telling us about kids living in poverty or that if we didn't recycle, the rain-forest would "get it"... and a "Kid Power!" section that made you want to go start your own tax-exempt non-profit 501 charity feeding and clothing the baby orca whales... you know, just like that kid on page five! There was always some kid in there who had collected a thousand pennies or made her own hot air balloon, or built his own house out of toothpicks, and it always seemed like your chance was just a week away.

Whenever they wanted to entertain us about stuff we had no idea about and had no say in, they told us fairytales about politicians running for office: "You decide! Bill Clinton or Bob Dole? Mail in your vote!" I'll trust mine was received.

These magazines at first seemed like something only the teacher was into, but the more I dug into them, the more I found myself actually...learning things! And not on purpose either! Perhaps it was because it wasn't trying to be all "hip" and "down" and "dope," but just showed stuff kids are curious about. Up until then the news was only for adults, but these zines took all that "blah blah" out there and turned it into stuff I could understand, and that was pretty cool. It was like, a kid-friendly news channel for my head as I read along, and still a whole lot better than that stuff adults read... (I'm looking at you, New Yorker)!

Update! 7/30 -  It looks like Scholastic is ENDING the Weekly Reader! Sad...

Weekly Reader - 1928-2012  (RIP)

Obligatory Pogs Post

What can be said about Pogs that hasn't been said a hundred times? They were little Poker-chip-like disks with colorful pictures on them, there were like a million of them, and you played some kind of game with them. The 8yo me had no idea what those things were, just that they were down every cool kid's pocket, and that there were a million of them. Some were like the Holy Grail trying to find, but a whole lot weren't worth more than a regular soda coaster. Evidently, it seems that the game originated in Hawaii during the 1920s with kids using milk caps. Over time, some teacher somewhere started teaching kids how to play the game using caps from this stuff called POG juice (Passion Fruit, Orange, and Guava), thus the name "Pog" became forever associated with it. In the 90s, for some reason, the game took off in popularity so much that it became a cultural phenomenon forever linked to the 90s. But I think Children of the 90s said it best:

Still, though, we're just hurling a slightly bigger disc at a pile of smaller discs, so something tells me we as 90s children possessed the inherent trait of being incredibly easily amused. You just couldn't sell that to today's kid. They'd be bored out of their minds before you even got to the word "slammer." 

Slammer? "Hehe... slammer... hehe" --Beavis 

Kids used to trade them on the bus, at the lunch table, at recess, and that's basically how I got acquainted with them. I didn't know what you did with them other than collect them and pass them around, but I was not immune to having a couple kicking around at the bottom of my backpack just in case I ever had to learn. There was no choice, you had to keep a few on you just to say you were cool. I still never really got what they were, just that all the cool kids were into them. And the reason they were cool? Because they had cool pictures on them.

And I mean if you could think it, there was a Pog for it. They came in these endless series, with cartoons, tire rims, sports teams, sports balls, movies, bugs, Goosebumps, states, flags, aliens, planets, cars, Sonic the Hedgehog, Star Trek, crazy 8s, psychedelic stuff, trippy flowers, monsters, eyeballs, skulls, superheroes... anything and everything that could be rendered in glorious 90s neon. If you were into something, there was a Pog for it that would immediately make you cool for having it, and if you actually "won" the entire series of something, then you could consider yourself elite.

The game itself had something to do with stacking your pogs four high and face down and then hurling other pogs into them to scatter them. Those that landed face up were claimed by the kid hurling the pog. Those that landed face down went back into the stack for another round. I'm sure though that there were as many variations on the game as there were elementary schools, but that was pretty much the gist. What made it potentially fun and potentially resulted in you getting an atomic wedgie from your opponent (and therefore interesting), was that (being a game mostly of luck), you always had the potential to start raking in your opponent's pogs just for landing them face up. However, there were two basic ways to play... for fun, and the infamous "for keeps," both of which had to be spelled out beforehand, but depending on the size and ferocity of your opponent, didn't always matter. That's basically how you collected new pogs, but if you had nothing to start, none of the big time players wanted to waste their time with you (unless they wanted to offload a lot of their worthless ones). Playing "for fun" meant the loser got back their pogs after the game. Playing "for keeps" meant that either someone was coming home with some new pogs, or coming home with a black eye, or both. 

Seriously, this was that important. In most cases though, experienced players knew not to let their rarer pogs enter the game play on the off chance they'd land face up. As many in the paranoid media and PTA groups at the time pointed out, it was a form of gambling. They were right, but still, there was no reason they had to try to get the things banned from schools just because they taught us the importance of the gamblers fallacy. That's educational after all, and trust me, these things made or broke you on the hallowed recess play yards of yore. If you had a badass design, or a neon-green or something, you were D-O-P-E, and everyone wanted to "slam" with you. If you had nothing but Care Bears and puppies, then don't even bother going to school. 

Besides the Pog, there was the "Slammer," and those conferred instant cool cred whenever they were whipped out, because they were like weapons. The Slammer was this heavy piece, like a medallion, which could get pretty badass if it was the "circular saw" kind, but it could also just be a plastic checker piece-like thing. If you whipped out your slammer, your opponents knew they were done for, unless they had a heavier one. It was literally an arms race of "mine's bigger" mutually-ensured destruction.

I had to picture that there was some kid somewhere who was sitting on a throne of these things, in a castle built out of stacks of these things, just kicking back, basking in the glory... some kid who was like, the Pog Master, who had somehow managed to land everyone's face down. That kid would've been the king of awesomeness. I wonder where that kid is these days.

Gimme a Break

Kids of the 90s fiercely believe that these new "crunching" Kit Kat commercials just don't hold a...well, Kit Kat, to the "real" Kit Kat commercials. You remember of course... the ones with the song! Give us a break and bring back the Kit Kat song!

Now I was never a big chocolate eater, and I never begged my mom to buy one of these in the grocery store checkout lines, and I don't think I've even seen a full-sized one since the 90s (just the "minis" in the Halloween bags), but that song at least made me want to go crack one. Seriously though, do they even still sell the full-sized?

 Here's the whole song in a very retro commercial:

"Gimme a break, gimme a break...

Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat Bar!

Gimme a break, gimme a break...

I wanna take a break with the Kit Kat Bar!"