From the Vaults: Cap'n Howdy and the 80s Nostalgia of Doom!

I see the advertising from 300 is now gone and replaced with Transformers. I could go on a rant about Michael Bay ruining my childhood memories, but that's actually not going to happen in this instance. Why, none of you ask?

Well, I never watched Transformers. To be honest, I've never seen the movie, nor do I believe I've watched a single episode of the half hour *coughcommercialcough*, ahem, show. The truth is that I have very few memories of television shows from the 1980's, period, despite being born in 1979 and being a child during what is considered the "peak" era of kid cartoons.

I wasn't allowed to watch GI Joe, didn't find He-Man very interesting, having fleeting memories of Voltron and Thundercats, and no memory whatsoever of Transformers. Accordingly, unlike many people my age obsessed with the eighties, I also have never seen Dallas, The Golden Girls, Who's the Boss, Charles in Charge, What's Happening, Growing Pains, or Silver Spoons. In fact, I really don't know much about eighties tv programming. Again, things like The A-Team, Alf, Punky Brewster, Moonlighting, and Family Ties are lost on me. Never watched them. Don't have an overwhelming urge to go back and find out what the deal was.

To me, Mr. T is Clubber Lang, the guy who killed Mickey in Rocky III. Bruce Willis is John McClane, the guy who blew up the Nakatomi building in Die Hard. Names like Scott Baio, Soleil Moon-Frye, and Tony Danza mean nothing to me. I think it's pretty clear that the name Marty McFly means more to me than Alex Keaton.

But I wasn't just soaking up movies at a young age. Yes, I was very much aware of things like The Goonies and Tron or Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones as a youngster, but I did see some tv. Just not what everyone else was watching. I have fond memories of watching Lost in Space on USA, and the old game shows that followed it, like Press Your Luck. I watched Danger Mouse and You Can't Do That On Television, and when Nickelodeon stopped going off the air at 8:30, I watched Nick at Night. Well, except for Donna Reed. But Dennis the Menace, Mr. Ed, The Patty Duke Show, My Three Sons, Bewitched, and Green Acres? Sure.

I also know I watched Fraggle Rock for a brief period, and The Muppet Show is embedded in my memory from an early age (the first two movies my parents took me to as a baby were The Muppet Movie and The Empire Strikes Back, if that helps clarify why I am like I am). Scooby Doo was in the cards, too, but even at a young age I remember preferring episodes without Scrappy.

I was very late in the game when it came to the Disney Channel, so I was behind on things like Ducktales, Gummi Bears, Darkwing Duck, and Talespin. Rescue Rangers never did it for me. Actually, neither did Gummi Bears. I could go look, but I'm putting Tiny Toons in the later bracket of 1980's cartoons, which exempts it from discussion, much like shows like Twin Peaks (which I was aware of but didn't really see.)

A really, really vague memory is floating around in my head of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy mini-series and some episodes of the Tom Baker Dr. Who on PBS. I clearly recall being disgusted at them eating the talking cow in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

There were also things like Mr. Wizard and sort of randomly assorted Nickelodeon programming floating (Double Dare) around, but by and large I didn't know characters on what folks consider the big 80's cartoons, and I certainly had no idea whether the toys were good or evil. I was really into Star Wars at that age, and watched a lot of Disney movies.

Speaking of which, I realized recently while talking to people who were born in the mid eighties why something like The Black Cauldron has no meaning to them whatsoever. I saw The Black Cauldron when I was six, and every time we went to the video store I asked if it had come out yet, and it hadn't. I saw the movie once, and then not again for another ten years, when it finally came out on VHS while I was in high school. Whereas many of these movies were around for people to see, Cauldron simply vanished, and if you didn't see it in theatres, it meant absolutely nothing in the interim.

Who knows? I know that certainly movies were not the most impacting influence on my young life (I didn't mention this before but I read a lot too), and yet the Sacred Cows of the 1980's mean almost nothing to me. Michael Bay turning Transformers into some crappy action movie doesn't bother me the way it might bother some. Or does, I should say. But if he decided to go after The Goonies or Back to the Future, there'd be hell to pay.