I was sitting here watching a bunch of stuff on YouTube and thinking to myself: being brought up in the time we are, what we watch and have watched all our lives, really has a lot of effect on us as we grow and mature. I thought it was interesting seeing the contrast of stuff that I watched when I was younger vs what i watch now. So with this thought in mind I decided to do a 3 or 4 part youtube inspired blog.

The first edition is going to be my earliest memories of TV and video, the things I watched as a little kid that I often think of and remember how cool I thought it was growing up. I can almost taste the things they ate and have such a sense of pure imagination that you can only have when you're a kid. i have such vivid memories of putting myself inside these shows and tapes that they are some of the most strong memories from my childhood.

These are some of the videos that I'm sure shaped me as a little one:

Huugabunch: One of those things that I'm even surprised I could remember the name of. Annoying little dolls obsessed with hugging. haha, if you know me, you can see where I may have gotten my extremely affectionate tendencies from. I can remember the very first scene of this (Which i couldnt find) where the main character was spreading peanut butter on a pancake, i can still remember what I thought it tasted like. Also, at the end there is a villain who uses these "age berries" to stay young, i can remember guessing what they tasted like too....



The next one is really obscure but I remember it so well. Jim Henson had a show on HBO (i remember it was a big deal getting it in my house) I loved the muppets and my parents sat me down for a new sitcom the muppet people made: it was called the Ghost of Faffner Hall. It was odd, and only lasted a few episodes, but i remember being obsessed with it. I found the intro on Youtube:



This next one is an episode of Fraggle Rock, I was obsessed with the Muppets. I remember having a Fozzie Bear Tshirt I would never take off. I would kill for that tshirt right now. I hope some hipster in NYC is wearing it. Either that or its in a landfill somewhere. sad. Anyway, i remember this episode very specifically because the dragon in the end scared the shit out of me and it gave me nightmares. I actually often had muppet related nightmares even though I loved them. Strange....



The more and more i think of all these things, the more I think about how fucked up childrens shows were in the 80s. This next one was a movie called the Peanut Butter solution. It was really fucked up in the end when some guy kidnapped the main character and made paintbrushes out of his hair, any of you watch this one?:



ok, this one I am REALLY excited about. This movie was called "The Electric Grandma" I thought I was making up the memory of it in my head until about 5 minutes ago. I was talking to Rigel about what we watched when we were little and telling her about this blog when she sent me a link to this next one. I had tried to describe it to friends for a while now and everyone thought I was crazy and I could never remember the name so I couldn't look it up. I always thought it was called the Mechanical Grandma, so i never found it. Check it out:



more muppet related stuff: I was obsessed with watching old episodes of the Muppet Show, but that wasn't until later when I could appreciate the vintage factor of it all. But I can remember being SO into the muppets take manhatten, and loved this sequence:




OK, and then I tried to remember what was the FIRST movie I remember seeing in the theatre? And earliest memory I could come up with was Oliver & Company- a disney cartoon. This was a little later that all the rest, but my earliest Movie memory, I think the only reason I remember it was because the fire alarm in the theatre went off becasue some asshat at the snack stand burned the popcorn and we had to leave the movie and I was BUMMED. I cant remember if i ever ended up seeing the whole thing:




ok, one more: kids incorporated! holy shit. My sister was a little more into this than I was, but i remember this inspiring us to make up dance routines in our back yard to Stacey Q tapes. The weird thing is that eventually in the story of my life I would date someone who dated someone in this clip...but I wont tell you who! haha.



Stay tuned for the next installment: movies and shows from those formative elementary school years. thats gonna be a good one too. Lots of learning about sex via movies I shouldnt have seen so young. haha.

Til next time.
Happy watching.

James

EDITED TO ADD: i can not believe i forgot this: Jem could possibly be credited to my tendency towards punk rock- gotta love those misfits!