QUESTION 1: Do you ever find yourself flipping through channels and being drawn into watching a show that you have already seen dozens of times, or a program that is really not that good, or both?
QUESTION 2: When you were a kid, were you afraid of something or did you believe something that was utterly preposterous?
17 comments:
1) I hardly ever watch TV nowadays and on the rare occasion that I do watch TV it's always on my tablet via BBC iplayer - I have sometimes clicked on a programme that looked interesting but turned out to be a bit dull.
2) I don't know if this counts but when I was about 5 or 6 I was convinced I would live to be 100 years old - I just knew it would happen. Of course, at the age of five I had no understanding of my family longevity - nobody on either side of my family ever lived longer than 81 and both my parents died in their seventies so me living to 100 is unlikely :)
1) It was always funny for me that, for those seldom shown shows you finally find showing on some channel, that for some cosmic reasoning, the-very-same-episode you've seen several times in the past will, yes, be the same one you end up watching again.. Annoying.
Several years ago I posed the topic to Doug for folks to list shows or particular episodes that really REALLY hurt your eyes, like a bad car crash, but you simply have to watch it, just for the novelty, but you cringe when some novice bystander comes in and sits down with you...
Mine was 'Spock's Brain'.., one of those episodes soooo bad you have to just watch.
2) When I was really-really young, it was the Anderson's and their '60s puppet shows.., I always thought the faces were a bit too creepy. Ironic that I love their live action shows (UFO, Space:1999), but those super-marionation puppets creeped me out.
I will sometimes stumble onto a bad movie that I can't help but watch......Road House comes to mind.....I can't really watch a bad TV series though. I won't even take the time.
When I was a kid.....I'm talking 3 or 4 years old, my mom read me this story, one of those Golden Books I'm pretty sure, about a pig who ate so much that he exploded. I think the pig's name was George. Anyway, that book scared the bejeezus out of me and if that book was in my room, I would not go in there. My mom had to hide the book. She actually still has it at her house and it still sort of freaks me out. Thanks, I feel much better getting that off my chest. :)
1. I can't resist watching Columbo or Monk. If I'm channel surfing and one of those is on, I'll usually watch it even if I've seen it several times.
2. When I was a kid I wasn't really afraid of anything that I can recall (besides spiders), but I did believe some pretty dumb things.
For example:
I didn't think that doctors or teachers could get sick. (Like they had magic powers or something).
I also thought it couldn't rain on Sunday. I assumed that's why it was called SUNday.
Someone told me I could grow up to be whatever I wanted, and so I wanted to be a mouse. (Don't ask me why, because I couldn't tell you).
I also used to believe that if I was ever really in any actual mortal danger and I yelled "SHAZAM!" I would turn into Captain Marvel. (But thankfully I never got to test that theory).
Graham, its "What Happened to George", its a Rand Mcnalley book. You can get it on Amazon.
1. I have the entire collection of Wild Wild West on DVD. I know its awful, but I still love it.
2. I was certain that Bigfoot lived in the woods near my house
1. a. There are definitely certain TV shows that I will stop and watch at least a few minutes of ... The Beverly Hillbillies ... Get Smart ... The Dick Van Dyke Show ... Leave It To Beaver ... Jonny Quest ... many of the old H-B cartoons ... Bugs Bunny cartoons ... Sheesh! It's a good thing most of my TV watching is done from the DVR, so I don't get tempted by all of these!
1. b. Same way with movies ... Raiders of the Lost Ark ... most of the James Bond movies ... Planet of the Apes movies ... Star Trek II ... 40 Pounds of Trouble ... most old Disney movies that star Hayley Mills, Dean Jones or Kurt Russel.
2. Growing up when Monsters were so popular, I really don't think things scared me ... or, if they did, I enjoyed it. My room was filled with glow in the dark posters of Frankenstein's Monster, skulls, monster model kits, Dark Shadows magazines and scenes from Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean & Haunted Mansion.
1. Not tv so much, but movies- yes. Especially 60's Beach Party movies. They say confession is good for the soul, right?
2. Like David_b, those marionettes gave me the creeps. Fortunately I'm too young for Howdy Doody, that would have scarred me for life.
Otherwise, the only thing that caused me to 'look over my shoulder' was, of all things, bulls. As a very young news watcher (started reading the newspaper at age 5), I saw a story about a boy who got gored walking by a field of cattle. For years after, I wouldn't go near them...
1) I can't think of any TV shows that automatically draw me in, but if I'm flipping channels and either Princess Bride or Breakfast Club are on, I almost always start watching, even though I've seen them both a hundred times.
2) Remember when the second Skylab blew up, around 1977 or 1978? I was so scared the pieces were gonna fall on me that I looked up every time I went outside. When I saw on the news that the pieces fell into the ocean, I was so relieved.
Also, the Towering Inferno freaked me out ... I was worried about our house catching on fire and having to jump out the window, even though we had a one-story house.
Hiya,
I'll give Gilligan's Island a few minutes of my attention whenever I see it. It was so unabashedly without redeeming content, not saying that it was 'bad', that I can still enjoy it for one very simple reason.
Mary Ann.
As for my childhood fear, well I used to dream that I was trying to cross the local bridge when it would begin to buckle and collapse beneath me. I guess I must have seen the film of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge tearing itself apart.
Seeya,
pfgavigan
For some reason, when I was a child, I was convinced we were living on the inside of the planet and that the sky was actually below us. How I came to this conclusion, I have no idea but it seemed obvious to me at the time.
I also thought the horizon was the limit of human civilisation and that if I set off walking until I got past the furthest point visible from where I lived, I'd be in a place where no human being had ever ventured before. In fact, I would have been in Manchester, which isn't quite the same thing.
As for unlikely fears, I don't know if Rupert the Bear is known in America but it's a cartoon strip about a young bear and his adventures. In the 1970s, there was a TV puppet show based on him. In it, Rupert and his family had totally immobile, blank faces with dead black eyes like a shark's. He had a friend who was a boy with a dog's head and another who was a boy with a badger's head. There was also an old man in it, who used to jump up out of piles of leaves in the woods. When I was a child, the entire thing used to terrify me from start to finish.
Worst of all, there was a character in it, called Raggety, who was a cross between a boy, a root system and a wasp. I was so scared of him that I had to turn the TV off the instant he appeared, so convinced was I that he was going to leap out of the TV and kill me.
This was supposed to be a pleasant, innocent show for children. In reality, it was like watching, "Hellraiser," every week.
Steve, had you been reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar stories?
There was also the case of Cyrus Teed, who posited that the Earth was a hollow sphere, that we were on the inner surface, and that what we perceived as "up" was really down, and vice versa.
Of course, he claimed to have received the knowledge through divine revelation, while he was knocked unconscious by an electric shock during an experiment in alchemy. He also claimed to be the Messiah. So consider the source.
Never saw Rupert the Bear on TV here. I first heard of it when Kid posted some children's book covers on his Crivens blog.
Gerry Anderson's puppets didn't scare me, which seems odd. I was a wimpy kid, easily frightened.
I first saw "Jason & the Argonauts" (on TV) when I was nine or ten, and had nightmares about Talos. And, when I was about four, I saw a trailer for "King Kong vs. Godzilla" at a drive-in. At the time, I may have believed that real gorillas were that big.
TC, I hadn't read them but, when I first outlined my theory, my dad told me that others had had it before me. I felt this proved I was onto something.
Ruuuuupert, Rupert the Bear,
Everyone sing his name.
Ruuuuupert, Rupert the Bear,
Everyone come and join,
In all of his games.
Great theme tune to the TV series Steve mentioned but I didn't have the same traumatic reaction to the show as he did !
I used to watch that show S.W.A.T., and they had a truck that looked, to me anyway, a lot like a UPS truck. One day I was coming home from school one day and there was a UPS truck parked in front of the house. I figured S.W.A.T. was there to finally get Dad.
M.P.
Pedant that I am, it behooves me to point out that, despite the TV theme tune, Rupert's correct title is 'Rupert Bear', not 'Rupert The Bear'. (Aaaah, I feel much better for pointing that out.)
I'm late to my own questions. Thanks all for piping in. Some funny stories all around. I love how kids interpret things and perceive the world. I wonder if that susceptibility to "anything is possible no matter how bizarre" affected our appreciation of comics. My own answers...
1. I found myself inexplicably watching Alf late one night and that drove this column. I was very tired but stuck it out to catch the ending. Why? I have no idea.
2. I have five older brothers and sisters and teasing seemed a way of life. Part of those sibling tricks was focused on trying to scare me. My brother told me the tale of the "butter hand" that makes absolutely no sense in retrospect. A haunted hand carved out of butter would crawl across the floor and strangle people leaving butter on their neck. The police thought they choked on a piece of toast. That scared the bejeebees out of me. It is so illogical and unthreatening but I still slept with the light on for a while.
On a vacation to Alabama during the year end holidays my sister convinced me that on New Year Day the world was going to flood with oil and boats cannot float in oil and we would all die. Wow. Ruined Christmas for sure. I'll have to remind her about scaring four-year-old me. That is one of my earliest memories.
For the shows like Gilligan, I know the wifey cannot stand to watch 'em (despite our shared joy to see the lovely Dawn Wells at cons every so often), but I'm unabashingly joyed to watch comedic pros in action.
Bob Denver and Alan Hale, Jr were soooo good at what they did, and you can tell great entertainers at work, despite the material. They were just a joy.
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