TV

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.