All the Rage #39

Ah, youth.

*sigh*

Last week, we took a look at some of the pop culture obsessions of my early youth. I'm sure it was as thrilling to read as it was for me to write! Wahoo!

Now it's time to tiptoe cautiously into the later years of my childhood, those years when I continued to be far too interested in pop culture and all its trappings than was healthy, even though I was growing old enough to have hair in weird places. (Though I guess it could be argued that you're never too young to have hair in weird places.)

We take a lot of explosive technology for granted today--stuff like the internet, cell phones and Regis Philbin have become so predominant that it's easy to forget what a big deal something like the VCR used to be. Here was this big metal machine that could record TV shows and then PLAY THEM BACK! No shit! For you whippersnappers in the crowd, VCRs were a big deal once upon a time, back when we walked ten miles to school every day in our bare feet in the snow, uphill in both directions, with thumb tacks in our eyeballs and a song in our hearts.

The Springer family's first VCR arrived when I was about seven years old. It was one of those honkin' huge silver steel beasts that loaded from the top. (Yeah, we were VHS all the way, baby. None of that Betamax shit for us. We knew where it was at from the start.) I don't think I'll ever forget the first movie we rented: Popeye, the live-action version starring Robin Williams. I feel fortunate that thanks to my father's foresight, I now never have to watch that film again, because I saw it at an age when I could be assured that I'd rebound from the intense emotional scarring.

Once we had procured our VCR, the guy across the street revealed that he had a lead on some bootleg dubbed tapes of films, so we quickly grew a mini-library of movies, including the first two Superman films and Star Wars. I'd been a junkie for George Lucas since I was four and saw The Empire Strikes Back at the theater, but this raised the stakes to a new level. I vowed to watch Star Wars as many times as I could, and to keep track of how many times I watched it. Once I got over the initial shock of Darth Vader (there were a few screenings where I had to shut it off when he appeared out of sheer terror), I made it up to seventeen viewings before I lost track. (I'm currently conducting a similar experiment with Lawrence of Her Labia; I'm up to twenty-seven viewings of that fine film. No, you won't find it in your local video store, unless you peer into the section "behind the curtain," if you get my meaning--and I think you do, Mr. President.)

Of course, my early obsession with Star Wars coincided with the 1984 release of Return of the Jedi in theaters. My dad took me on opening weekend to see Jedi; it was Memorial Day of that year, and we stood in line for hours to get our tickets at the River Oaks theaters. When we finally got in, it turned out to be the first truly electric moviegoing experience I can recall. The crowd reacted as one throughout the film, cheering and laughing with abandon, even letting loose with a shocked gasp when Artoo was blasted on the moon of Endor.

Nowadays, when you go to the show you just hope you aren't seated next to some asshole with a beeper or a baby. But before the advent of the VCR, reacting to films was an accepted part of the filmgoing experience. Maybe we're all too shy now to loudly react to films in the theaters, so used to watching movies in the comfort of our own homes that we always assume we're just sitting on the couch in our underwear, even when we're in a crowded theater. As much as I hate to admit it, maybe we need more noise at the movies. Or maybe we all need to strip down to our underwear in public places to feel truly comfortable. I know I do.

My Star Wars obsession remains to this day. The same can't be said of my fascination with WWF wrestling, which I've flirted with on occasion in recent years but have never grown totally involved in. Nothing can match the frenzy that the WWF stirred in my soul in the mid to late eighties. My cousin owns a bar, and they used to get the WWF official magazine for the bar, so he'd slip me the old issues as soon as the guys were through with them. I still have a box of tattered scraps of magazines in my basement somewhere, each cover plastered with such squared circle gladiators as Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage and Andre the Giant.

Wrestling was different then, though. In the late eighties, it was full of pomp and circumstance, a sincere attempt to create a sports-like vibe for what was clearly scripted entertainment. (Not that I believed such at the time--I fell hook, line and sinker for the wrestling schtick when I was younger.) Now it's a soap opera for men, but it used to feel like the Super Bowl mixed with the Oscars every week. I'd keep watching it if I could trick some part of my brain into believing that there was something really on the line, instead of just some vast excuse to watch a guy fall into a pile of thumb tacks.

By the time I had finished with the WWF, I was too busy with my new Nintendo to care. Ah, the sweet Nintendo 8-bit system. That nondescript grey box brought me more hours of joy than any other nondescript gray box I can think of. Our first Nintendo was the deluxe set-up, which at the time included the mostly-forgotten game Gyromite and this bizzare robot contraption who allegedly would "help" you play the game. Only it took ten times as long to tell the robot which buttons to push, so you may as well have been playing with a monkey on crack. (Come to think of it, I did play a few rounds of Metroid once with a crack-smoking monkey, but he quickly lost interest and tried to gnaw off my ear. Damn crack-smoking monkeys!)

My obsession with Nintendo consumed me completely, even moreso than my burgeoning passion for comic books, which would become my lone geeky solace as I weathered the early days of my high school date drought. I subscribed to Nintendo Power, the monthly Nintendo magazine. I recorded fake radio shows about Nintendo games in which I rated them for an audience of me. (Send me five thousand dollars and a blank tape, and I'll dub you a copy.) My buddy Mike Kosinski and I even created our own Nintendo Players' Club, which we then hoodwinked our little geek cult into joining, even though it was simply an excuse for Mike and I to throw around power we didn't have. We even wrote a constitution for the club, a document I'm sure future scholars of constitutional theory will seek out as evidence that people are stupid.

By the time I was full-tilt into Nintendo, it was sixth grade, and I got my first adult crush, on a blonde-haired lass named Jenny. My first crush period was four years before, on Ms. Jill Brylka, who captivated me with her strawberry-red hair and adorable freckles. Jill, if you're out there reading this, I still want to marry you. I hope that's cool.

But we'll save that for next week, which will more than likely be the final installment in my pointless excursion through my childhood and adolescence: a look back at the many loves of Matt Springer before college transformed him into the shameless Lothario he is today. I don't know how glad you'll be to read it, but I sure am glad I'm writing all this down. My therapist will have a field day using it as evidence in my defense when I strut into my local Coconuts music next week and urinate all over the massive stacks of Santana CDs.