Days of Saturdays Mornings Past (Kevin's Interlude)

Currently, I'm in Portland, Oregon for the Comedy Sportz World Tournament, so I've been without electronic sustenance for close to 5 days. While I've been gone (and ever BEFORE I left), my husband Kevin was been writing e-mails worth of blog notice. So until he decides to host his own blog, I've decided to post his ramblings here for everyone's enjoyment:

It's 7:00am on a Saturday morning. Daina won't get back from Portland until this Monday morning, so I figured that I'd visit an old friend.... Saturday Morning Cartoons. Only.... my friend wasn't there. Oh, there was something for kids 5 and under on PBS but that's ok. Long has PBS been the venue for the more junior execs of the Saturday Morning living room. Sesame Street, The Electric Company, The Great Space Coaster, etc. That's fine. I always believed the shortest of the shorties need orientation programs before they can understand the complexity of navigating the vast array of the more advanced viewing fare that they will face on Saturday Mornings. Rather than spend my time warming up with PBS, I decided to go right to the powerhouses.... NBC, CBS, and the venerable ABC. Now you're talkin'! These are the titans of Saturday Mornings! Who could escape their black hole strength pull on the eyes and minds of millions of Saturday Morning viewers across this great nation of ours.... who’d want to?

Ok, let’s just work up the channels then. NBC…Nbc…nbc… ???? Let’s check this remote to see if I’m on the right channel because this is the Today show. Hold on a second. The Today show DOES air on NBC! What the….!? Ok, let’s go to CBS then…. What the hell is Weekend Wake Up!? I’m already awake! I don’t need an hour-long program to tell me that!! Ok, ABC then! Good ol’ ABC! You won’t fail me! Long have you been the mightiest bastion of Saturday Morning Cartoondom! Who could match your unrivaled power when you drew the mighty sword of Warner Brothers? Hah! Animation! I knew you wouldn’t fail me! Let’s see….The Emperor’s New School? Ok, don’t be too hasty to judge, Kevin. After all, you really liked The Emperor’s New Groove. (30 minutes later) Ok, that wasn’t too bad. Kronk was pretty funny.

Quick check back with NBC….Nope, still the Today show. If I remember right, that damn thing is two hours long so there’s no point checking back with NBC until, at least, 9:00am. Hmm, CBS is still showing Weekend Wake Up! Well…yay them. Ok, then….back to ABC! The Replacements? Hmm, this isn’t based on that football movie with that thespian tour de force, Keanu Reeves, is it? Well, let’s take a look at it ‘cause…. (5 viewing minutes later) ….’cause I have to pass this channel on my way to another one. HEY!! What about WUTV!? The home of Astro Boy, Prince Planet, Ultraman, Battle of the Planets (G-Force), and the time honored Star Blazers! Ok, so what do we have here…Archie’s Weird Mysteries? Look, the Archies were, at best, a mediocre cartoon back in the day. And the only mystery with Archie is that he’s had two FINE-ASS women chasing him for what….four or more decades…and never tapped either of them! Supports my theory of Archie’s unrequited homosexual love for Jughead. They should move the whole gang out of Riverdale and drop them in Rivendell ‘cause Gimli would take Betty & Veronica into his bed chamber and knock something loose down there….he’d totally RUIN those chicks!!

Ok, it’s now 8:00am. The Today show is still going strong on NBC. On CBS I have a difficult decision…. Care Bears: Adventures in Care-A-Lot followed by Strawberry Shortcake. I lost the remote so I have a difficult decision on whether I want to keep looking for it or actually get up off of the couch and go over to change the channel! Here’s the real killer! On ABC there’s Good Morning America: Weekend Edition, which goes to 9:00am followed by A.M. Buffalo, then House Smarts, then back-to-back episodes of That’s So Raven, then Hannah Montana, and the torture ends with Suite Life of Zack & Cody. Great! More canned filth from Disney….Nazi douche bags! Which finds us at high noon where ABC launches into the delightful land of paid programming…You’re dead to me ABC!! DEAD!!

I was going to continue on with the rest of the morning up until noon when the kids should be outside playing by then anyways. However, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. NBC is pretty much adult programs until 11:00am where they have Jane and the Dragon. I’ve seen this show before. The story lines and dialogue are actually passable at times, however, there’s something in the CGI’d movement of the characters that makes you want to kick them until they’re all dead! CBS has Cake, Horseland (don’t ask me I don’t know but I don’t need to know), then Sushi Pack, Dino Squad, and Teen Kids News. YES….Yes, they’re every bit as awful as they sound. That leaves WUTV. Unfortunately, the fare on WUTV is little better than 30 minute animated commercial slots to sell the toys and cards that these cartoons are based upon. Remember, when cartoons use to come out first and then the related merchandise would follow….not the other way around? Let me give you an example. Between 8:00am and 9:00am are back-to-back episodes of a cartoon called Viva Piñata. Viva Piñata is a game for the Xbox 360 that eventually spawned (pretty accurate description) this cartoon of the same name. Here’s a brief synopsis:

In a garden on Piñata Island, a multitude of happy, colorful Piñata species live, frolic, dance, and grow. The goal of the piñatas is to fill themselves with candy, so they can be chosen by Piñata Central to entertain at birthday parties or retirement parties and other special celebrations. The piñatas have their own gardens and love to party. Each species is a blend of an animal and a sweet type of food.
It is here in the garden, among the burrowing Profitamole, the bovine Moozipan and the tree-swinging Cinnamonkey that we will find a small band of Piñata friends that have known one another since they were children when they first came to the garden.
Being a piñata means something different for piñatas. Some Piñatas can’t wait to reach their maximum candy level so they can leave the Piñata Factory over and over again, bringing joy to children and partygoers all over the world. Others are not happy about the prospect of being shipped off to a strange place where happy children in festive hats hang them from a tree, bludgeon them until their limbs fall off, and devour their innards. Still others physically train for the parties as if they were off to the Olympic Games — hardening their bodies to create a challenge for the children clamoring to get at their candy.
Why is it that Piñata Island is the only place in the world Piñatas can be found? Even the Piñatas don’t really know—but with so much happening in the garden, what with weird new Piñatas arriving all the time, crazed black-market Piñata poachers trying to muscle in on Piñata Central action, mysteries to solve, violent garden pests known as sours to contend with, and constant opportunities to dance—who has time to worry about it?

Yes, this is for real! Yes, I looked this shit up! No, I’m not feeling all that proud of myself at the moment! I feel the need to get into the shower and scrub my skin until it bleeds!!
Anyways, my point is that, Saturday Mornings are no longer the brief escape from the normal woes that accompany childhood. There’s nothing to look forward to in regards to Saturday Morning Cartoons. Can they still be found on cable? Of course, but that taints it somehow. I dunno why, it just does. Kind of like chasing that inexpressible dream that was out there somewhere but time has passed it by. Cartoons have no substance nowadays. Kids walk away from them with absolutely nothing or some cheesy lesson that their parents should have taught them in the first place. Cartoons are entertainment and an escape and even an enrichment! There are those who would say to me, “Aww, c’mon! Look at what you watched! How are you gonna tell me that, after watching cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny & Daffy Duck, that you came away with anything more than the kids watching Pokemon & Yu-Gi-Oh?” Easy! Bugs Bunny & Daffy Duck were my first exposure to Beethoven, Mozart, Rossini, Wagner, and many other classical composers. Hell, Daffy even showed me that you don’t always win. Sometimes life just plain sucks but you rebound and come back next time.
I guess I just got overly excited at the prospect of spending a quiet Saturday morning watching cartoons for a change. I’m serious….I was REALLY looking forward to this last night as I went to bed, each time I got up in the night to pee, and when my alarm clock this morning was a cardinal perched on the hemlock right outside my bedroom window singing in the gentle morning rain. This all came crashing down on me when I realized that the days of broadcast television’s weekly high point, the Saturday Morning Cartoons, a part of my childhood was gone. Ya know what? That just plain sucks. I guess I’ll just have to stand back up, brush the dust off, and move onto something else I really like.

Kevin