From my childhood: shitty Star Wars spinoffs

When I was a child, Star Wars was popular.  I was too young to have watched the movies in the theater, but the movies were popular none the less.  I knew the story and probably watched the movies on TV at some point.  I even recall watching a droids TV show and eating terrible tasting Star Wars cereal for the C3P0 cutout mask on the back of the box.  But even as a child, I remember Ewoks:  The Battle for Endor being a big pile of shit.

First, where is Luke Skywalker?  That was the whole point of Star Wars for me as a child.  Watch Luke cut things up with a lightsaber.  The force.  Spaceships and blasters.  Instead it was magic and wizards and Ewoks.  Total crap.



Who wants to watch some old dude?  Where is the adventure?  Bullshit.  Even as a child I thought it was crap.  And it was.  Throwing in scenes from Empire Strikes Back in the trailer?  Talk about bait and switch.

Champion of the internet

First, a refresher on the original you all know and love, the Airwolf theme



Airwolf on electric guitar



Awesome!  Please make one for Streethawk.  Thanks!

collective memory

I've been thinking about memories since reading this weird trip on the old Crow blog.  It is weird because I've never heard of the sitcom Too Close for Comfort before.  That itself is kind of weird because I was raised on sitcoms.  I remember watching Small Wonder, the show with the little girl robot.  Sure everyone claims they liked that show because VH1 I Love the 80s mentions it.  But I can remember episode gags.  Like how the robot girl Vickie was super strong and could drag the dad around.  And how they used green screens to show the dad demonstrating how he'd make the robot girl age with the girl getting bigger via green screen.  And just to show you how much I love sitcoms I'm going to drag up a sitcom from the 80s that only I seem to remember:  Down to Earth.  Thank God for IMDB or I'd probably go crazy, but I remember the sitcom about the flapper who dies in the 20s and comes back as a guardian angel for a yuppie family.  The catch phrase of the show was "wacky do".




Thank you youtube, for giving me my sanity.  Nobody seems to remember the show but me.  Wacky Do!

Collective memory is a weird thing.  Growing up in metro Detroit lots of old people told grand stories of old Detroit.  School teachers told me this tall tale more than once:  back in the day (the 50s and 60s) if you got off the train in Detroit you'd be immediately accosted by Ford and GM recruiters just begging you to come work in the factory.  No really, many people told me this story with heartfelt sincerity.  Back in the day they were so desperate for workers that the car companies sent recruiters to canvass the streets like some hobo looking for money for St Ides.  Just begging you, no matter who you were, to come work for middle class wages with no skills or education.  Please baby please!

To this day I've never really found any hard evidence for this.  It is such a tall tale that it is hard for me to take seriously.  People say this went on through the 70s even.  Could this really have happened?

Memory lane

Recently I moved, and after packing my life into boxes I decided to share a few musical gems from yesteryear with you boozehounds.

First up is a band from Ann Arbor called Youthcorpse. They have a decidedly Heartwork sound, with hints of classic Megadeth and whatnot. The bassist gave me a copy of their disc. I'd upload it for everyone but I don't have one of them upload accounts, and I'm not buying one anytime soon either. My life is a Johnny Cash song.



Busted!

Not sure if they are still active but according to myspace they haven't logged on since 2008 so I doubt it.



They have a youtube video? WTF?

Next up is an East Lansing band called Summer Dying. They formed out of the remains of Somber, which was At the Gates worship before all the gringos knew where Sweden was on a map. I saw Somber open for In Flames back on the Colony tour. You know, before they were terrible. Somber was actually pretty solid ATG worship, and I'm sure the album is impossible to find so if I ever find the pegs to my CD rack I can unpack it and if I ever get some extra cash that I don't spend on weird whiskey I can upload it for you.

Anyways Summer Dying's first album was pretty great, but their second one had really irritating vocals where the bassist would shriek in the background over everything. Oh well. Still pretty solid musically. They broke up a while ago. Nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain.



Next up is more Heartwork worship from Texas by the band Deep (not even a myspace page). I bought their first album The Reach of Envy from them when they opened up for Arch Enemy and Nevermore way back when Johan was in Arch Enemy and Time Calvert was in Nevermore. Ancient times! They sounded much better live than on the album. Live their singer was an exact double of Jeff Walker. Anyways they put out a major label album that had half the songs from The Reach of Envy called Pieces of Nothing. Not bad stuff, but too bad they never were able to capture their live feeling on record.

Last I heard of them their web page (on hypermart) expired so I can assume that they are quiescent. Yeah, and looking back on that Nevermore show I still owe Big C for the trip (through a blizzard!) since my carless ass had no way of getting there and now that I have a car I hate driving so much that I don't know if I would make that drive for someone else.

Finally there is Sauron. Another East Lansing band, they were classic thrash metal. Not like these new school thrash bands though. These guys played fast and loose like Motorhead. They were filthy dirty just like thrash should be. I hung out with these guys a number of times and they are all class. I have one of their demos on cassette tape, so for you kids out there it looked like this:



This is what a cassette tape looks like. You could record music onto it and play it back in a "tape player".

Weird I know! The only way I can listen to my tape is if I bring it in my car, because my car is now "vintage" from 2002 and has a tape deck. My copy had a cover of The Return of Darkness and Evil. Damn straight. You can actually find their stuff available for purchase online. What? Not cult enough for you? Too mainstream for you?



These guys kill live

I even had an opportunity to play bass in the offshoot band Harbinger, but I could not afford the drive to Lansing. Then I moved a couple states away and lost contact with the fellas. You know how it goes. I never got a chance to see them live so this is actually the first I've heard of Harbinger outside of their demos five years ago, and again you can actually buy their album online. Which you won't because it isn't cult enough for your CD collection down in mom's basement.



Hand numbered demos only! Cvlt!

From my childhood 7: Art

When I was a child I watched the most excellent show Commander Mark and the Secret City. Youtube now has my weird childhood memories available. Let's learn how to draw with Commander Mark:



Check out the secret city mural



I always liked his pseudo flight suit with pens and markers everywhere.

There is an ice cream shop in town with a secret city mural that is an entire wall. It has space aliens and weird stuff. I should take some pictures of that. Speaking of ice cream...

From my childhood 5: Spuds McKenzie

When I was a child, beer was sold by beer drinking party animal dogs. Today I see beer commercials where they sell coolers and foam crap instead of beer. Whaaa? Listen kids, this is how it is done:



Here is another classic Spuds, sorry embedding was disabled.

Anyways, this is so brilliant I wish I thought of it. If I were an ad executive I would do crazy stuff like this to sell beer. I'd have keyboard cat beer commercials. I'd have commercials that laud beer's "beer goggle" abilities. It would be crazy. And it would work because, well, it is only beer. Seriously. First of all, beer should theoretically sell itself. If you have to advertise for it you are probably doing something wrong. Second, all pisswater beers like Bud and Miller are interchangeable anyways. So the only difference between the two is brand advertising, hence the need for party animal dogs or some other crazy crap. Amirite?

From my childhood 4: crazy lamps

My grandparents had two crazy lamps in their living room. It is hard to describe them to people. There was a top and a bottom part, connected by little pillars. There was a light on the top which illuminated the bottom portion, which had a greco-roman statue of a partially nude woman. When you turned the lamp on (which they never did), little beads of oil were pumped down little wired strands to give the illusion of rain. I had never seen anything like it since, until the other day.



Click through to embiggen.

This is basically my grandparents lamp exactly. My question is, what the fuck? My grandparent's lamp was sold at the estate sale many years ago. If it was still in our family's possession, it probably would have gone down like this:

Here's my Grandma Fern's rain lamp. If you've never seen one of these before, mineral oil runs down the fishing wire to make it look like the statue is surrounded by rain. My theory is that in 1970, all future grandmothers were issued one of these lamps.

One of the lady's breasts and her buttocks are exposed. Needless to say, I found this very fascinating as a young boy.

Grandma Fern gave it to me while I was in college. Many a wacked-out visitor spent hours staring at the droplets running down the wires. They were usually pretty scared by it, as the lady has no pupils and it gives her eyes an evil-zombie sorta look.

From my childhood 2: talking cars

When I was a child, cars could talk. Sure, you might pretend that you remember watching Knight Rider. I do remember, and not understand the intro story at all. "This is a story of a man that doesn't exist"? What does that mean?

But more than that, real cars talked as well. My uncle worked for Chrysler, and he had a car that talked. When you left the doors open, the car would say "the door is ajar". It had a few other catch phrases too.

For some reason talking cars didn't catch on. Oh well. But that's how it was, kids. Back in my day, cars talked.



Oh, did I mention that back in my day cars could travel through time?