TV

[mmcirvin]

urbeatle was talking about his childhood memories of TV. What strikes me about mine is that my parents didn't follow the usual received rules of adult supervision over kids' TV viewing, but they were pretty clever about it anyway. They let me watch adult programming, some of which was remarkably raunchy and/or violent, but not most kids' programming apart from wholesome quasi-educational shows on PBS. Or, more precisely, they wouldn't let me watch crappy commercial kids' shows on the TV at home (this was a distant bygone age and we only had one), because, they said, they didn't like those shows and didn't want to see them there. They were, in short, molding my tastes by example.

That didn't entirely work. My friend John loved nothing more than the cheeseball Japanese imports on WDCA-20 (presented by the immortal Dick Dysell as Captain 20, complete with the pointy Spock ears), so I'd go over there and watch Ultraman and Speed Racer all the afternoon long. My parents were fine with that as long as I knew they weren't big fans of Ultraman. But I ended up being fascinated by giant rubber monsters.

On the other hand—for this I will always be grateful—they let me stay up and watch Saturday Night Live in the late seventies when the show was at its absolute all-time creative peak. They figured that I probably wouldn't get the sex and drug jokes anyway, which was true. They did a remarkable amount of humor back then that I could get, though: people forget how much of SNL's early humor was pure surrealism and imaginative science-fictional stuff. And jokes about Gerald Ford are fun for all ages.

Comments

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

My parents let me stay up late and watch SNL while Eddie Murphy was in the cast. I had just stopped watching Mister Rogers' Neighborhood when I started watching Mister Robinson's Neighborhood. That and Wallace and Ladmo got me indoctrinated quite early to satire. He left the show in 1984, so I couldn't have been older than 7 when I started watching.

Unfortunately, a few years later, MTV would air Monty Python's Flying Circus. And I was quite immature for my age, and thought "William Shakespeare's Gay Boys in Bondage" was the funniest phrase in the universe and repeated it over and over. I couldn't have been younger than 10. But I was already reading bad erotica on BBSes at that age. You know what else is a funny word? "Dildo".

[arsonnick.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit younger, but roundabouts the time we first got cable...say 1982-83 somewhere in there, the USA network used to show Night Flight. That was where I was first exposed to the Church of the Subgenius. It haunted me for years until the internet finally allowed me to figure out just what the hell it was that I had been watching all those years ago. Also, for about a year or so in third or fourth grade I watched Mousercise every morning on the Disney Channel. I was, and am still intrigued by the fact that the host, Kelly (or Callie or Kellen...I never understood), had very small breasts, but a very large ribcage, and thus gave the appearance of having four boobs. Oh...and for the year or two that we had HBO, I think Porky's I or II had to have been on 10-15 times a day (in between runnings of Fast Times). I'm sure that my ability to quote any of those movies nearly word for word attests to the fact that I was not exactly supervised in my television viewing.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

I also remember Night Flight, but definitely not as early as 1983. It was around the time I first started staying up late all through the summer.

[wiblur-the-once.livejournal.com]

I started watching Night Flight in 1982 when Cable first became available around here. My wife was pregnant with our first child and went to bed early every night, and I spent many hours enjoying their friday and saturday shows without worrying that all that weirdness would bother her.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that a major exception was that I could watch pretty much whatever I wanted on Saturday morning, because they weren't paying much attention to the TV then (or weren't even up yet). So the Sid and Marty Krofft oeuvre was well-screened.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...There was also one summer vacation that I spent almost in its entirety watching reruns of brain-damaged 1960s sitcoms like Green Acres and I Dream of Jeannie. My parents tried to get me to think about going to summer camp, but they didn't force the issue.

[urbeatle.livejournal.com]

which is good, because you learned a whole lot more about culture by watching Green Acres and I Dream of Jeannie. it enabled you to get the jokes on MST3K, for one.