Fanatical Food Fighters

My nine-year old son has started a band with three of his fourth grade buddies called The Fanatical Food Fighters. As far as I can tell this mostly means the four of them get together at recess and make jokes and sing. Song titles include "I'm Weird Guy Of The Year," and "Sugar Ruuuuuush!"

This is what happens when schools ban dodgeball.

The Boy Who Invented Himself

I walked into my eight-year-old son Will's room tonight to tell him it was time to go trick-or-treating and I found him singing along while Robyn Hitchcock's "The Man Who Invented Himself" played on his stereo. I've never been the kind of parent to push my idea of "cool" music on my kids--whatever they want to listen to is fine by me. Still, I have to admit it's kind of nice to see Will take an interest in one of my favorite artists.

Happy Fourth Birthday

Ultraman

It all started innocently enough. I spotted a budget Ultraman DVD set at our local Target, and thought my eight-year old son Will might enjoy it. He's crazy about dinosaurs, and I figured most of the kaiju (Japanese monsters, or "strange beasts") that Ultraman tangled with were kind of like dinosaurs, only cooler. But, I wondered, would a post-millennial American kid familiar with today's CGI generated fantasy worlds be able to enjoy a 40+ year old Japanese TV show that featured a couple guys in rubber suits trying to wrestle with each other? Probably not, but the DVD was cheap and, if nothing else, I figured I would get a kick out of seeing my old pal Ultraman again.

For those readers unfamiliar with Ultraman, the basic premise is "giant alien melds with earthman to protect planet from a different monster each week." The show was created by Eiji Tsuburaya, the special effects director responsible for Godzilla and most of Toho Studios' other kaiju. Even as a child I noticed that many of the monsters featured in Ultraman bore more than a passing resemblance to those featured in Godzilla films (this was no coincidence, beyond sharing a common creator, some of costumes were recycled and adapted from the films).

Thanks to our local, budget-conscious, independent UHF station (WDCA 20), I grew up hooked on Ultraman and lots of other Japanese kiddie shows (Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot, Kimba The White Lion, Marine Boy, Speed Racer, etc.) during the 1970s. The steady diet of violent, non-educational Japanese children's programs that WDCA pumped into the ether almost cost the station its FCC license, but I loved it. Although my parents were not responsible for the official complaints, I don't remember them particularly sharing my enthusiasm for all things kaiju. I can remember a lot of snarky comments from my Dad ("Congratulations son, your IQ just dropped 10 points in half an hour"). It may be for this reason (or perhaps because we were the only family in my neighborhood that didn't own a color TV) that most of my memories of watching Ultraman are from times I was hanging out at other kids' houses.

So can today's American kids dig Ultraman? If my children are any indication, the answer is a resounding "YES!" Will is now on a mission to get his hands on every possible Ultraman show he can (there have been over 20 series in Japan since 1966). He also wants to watch every Godzilla and Gamera movie every made. My three-year-old daughter Amelia is nearly as obsessed, with a special love for "Pigmon," the small, friendly monster who tragically dies in two separate Ultraman episodes (and if you have to ask how such a thing is possible, consider the possibility that kaiju is not for you). Amelia is apparently not alone in her Pigmon obsession, as there is an entire (awesome) blog dedicated to him and his more destructive alter-ego, Garamon.


Although we are bit more careful about how much of this stuff we let a three-year-old watch, most of the violence in these shows seems relatively benign. I believe this is a happy byproduct of having to use suit actors to portray the monsters and heroes. There is only so violent and graphic a show can be when the actors are constrained by 200 pound rubber suits. By contrast, King Kong from 1933, a film that utilized stop motion and robotics for its special effects, is far more graphic and disturbing in its depictions of violence.

One of the things my kids' current kaiju obsession drives home to me is the extent to which today's youth are growing up in an information saturated culture. Yesterday at the bus stop Will shared his opinion that "The Ultraman series that were made during Eiji Tsuburaya's lifetime (Ultraman and Ultraseven) are better than the ones that came later." He has also been known to opine on such topics as who composed the best scores for Godzilla movies (Akira Ifukube is by far his favorite). He can tell you which monsters are from films released by Toho Studios and which ones are from films released by Daiei. I could go on. Will loves to know all the details about anything he becomes interested in, and he was born at the right time.

By contrast, when I was a kid I was vaguely aware that there was more than one Ultraman. This was in large part because I had an Aunt who lived in Hawaii, and she would send us some of the cool Japanese toys that were available there, but virtually impossible to find on the mainland. I knew about Ultraman and Ultraseven, and another really weird looking Ultraman called "Kikaida" (who I only recently discovered was not an Ultraman at all, but an android from an unrelated Japanese show that was extremely popular in Hawaii during the 70s, but never shown in the other 49 states). But that was pretty much all I knew, and I have no idea how I could have found out more at the time. Granted, I knew about something called a "library," but I seriously doubt the guardians of information known as "librarians" would have agreed with me that kaiju was an important topic for me to learn about.

Unfortunately, beyond the original Ultraman, most Ultra series are still very hard to find in the United States. I believe this is in part due to a lawsuit that has been resolved in favor of Tsuburaya Productions. Episodes of Ultraman Tiga, a mid-90s Ultrahero, can still be found on DVD in the U.S., although they are out-of-print. The complete original series is available from budget DVD company Mill Creek. Beyond that, there is a scattering of region free DVDs from Hong Kong that can be found on eBay. I recently acquired a set of Ultraseven DVDs this way. Unfortunately, these discs only feature Cantonese subtitles. The lack English subtitles or dubbing does not seem to bother the kids in the least, as Ultraseven is their favorite Ultraman of all. I hope some enterprising U.S. video company will acquire the U.S. rights to some of Tsuburaya Productions' more intriguing shows, including Ultraseven and Ultra Q.

Patches

This is currently my 2 year-old daughter's favorite video. I can see why.

Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street

Thanks to Guy for pointing this YouTube video out to me. It's Stevie Wonder doing an epic take on "Superstition" live on Sesame Street. Guy remembers being completely freaked out by this as a four or five year old. I can understand why, I am not sure children that age should be exposed to music this funky. I have to say, this version completely crushes the studio version of the song from Talking Book.

Unfortunately, I don't remember seeing this. I would have been three years old on April 28, 1973, so I would have been the right age. Perhaps it's buried somewhere deep in my subconscious.

It's always been a bit disappointing to me that neither of my kids has ever shown much interesting in Sesame Street (although as I type this Will is wearing an Elmo t-shirt that Amelia picked out for him to wear today). Will also completely wore out a Cookie Monster shirt (Cookie Monster is pure id, so of course children love him). But just a couple weeks ago, I could not talk Will into letting me buy him a Bert t-shirt. "Come on," I said, "you'll be the only kid in school cool enough to have a Bert shirt." He told me if I could find him another Cookie Monster shirt, he'd wear it, but Bert wasn't happening (Bert is all superego, so I guess he's a tougher sell).

Anyway, from the little bits of Sesame Street I've seen over the past several years, I can tell you without a doubt it is nowhere near as cool, or dangerous, as this. Check out the kid with the long hair in a full-on funk freak-out on the fire escape. Awesome!

And here's Stevie teaching Grover a little bit about soul.



Finally we have a Wonder's vocoder drenched classic written specially for his Sesame Street appearance.

Parents Get Homework Too

I was asked to write about what I could remember of Kindergarten for a project related to my son Will's kindergarten class. Here is what I wrote followed by a couple appropriate tunes:

Memories are inherently unreliable. We change and distort our memories to suit our own needs and create compelling narratives that help us make sense of our lives. My memories of kindergarten are at best hazy and fragmented. Thinking back on kindergarten it is difficult for me to distinguish between things that really happened and things I may have imagined or dreamed. I doubt the memories of kindergarten I carry with me bear much relation to events as they actually happened at time.

I vaguely remember feeling nervous on my first day of kindergarten. When I got to school, my teacher, Mrs. Tolson, mispronounced my name and I had to correct her (a ritual that would be repeated for the next twelve years of my life). My Elementary School (which housed grades K-6) seemed enormous, and so did most of the other children in comparison with myself. At first, everything about kindergarten was intimidating and unfamiliar. Even the word “kindergarten” sounded strange to me. I had misheard it as “kindergarden.” If this was a garden where were all the plants? Not much about the experience made sense to me initially. But once I had been in school for a few days, it was hard to remember what I had been so apprehensive about in the first place.

Mostly, I remember having fun in kindergarten. I remember playing a lot. The boys in the class favored wooden building blocks that we would use to construct tall fortresses, which we would proceed to knock down with great fanfare. The girls were always doing something else, but I never knew what. I don’t recall the class doing much in the way of academics, although I’m sure there must have been some of that.

I didn’t find everything about kindergarten fun though. One unpleasant thing that sticks in my mind these many years later is the fact that whenever the class had to go somewhere, we were forced to line up by height, shortest to tallest. I can still faintly recall my perpetual embarrassment at having to be first in line. I realize now that this arrangement made it easier for our teacher to keep an eye on all of her students, but at the time it seemed arbitrary and cruel to me.

These are the things I think I remember about kindergarten, but it’s impossible to know how closely they reflect reality without some immutable record like a photograph or video recording. Fortunately, I do have one such record, our class photograph.


Looking at the photo of my kindergarten class drives home just how many of my memories from that time are lost to me now. There are two adults in the picture, one Caucasian, the other African American. I literally have no idea which one is my teacher, Mrs. Tolson. I had expected to find the face of someone I am still friends with in this photograph, but he isn’t there. My good friend Peter Hennig doesn’t show up in my class photos until first grade. I do recognize a few of my classmates’ faces (or at least I think I do): Peter Munch, Jennifer Rucker, Dwayne Redding, Danita Chase, Kerry French, Holly Pearmon, Lisa Debord, Laura Hughes, Sonya Atkinson, Alan Rourke and Sharonda Maynard. I haven’t seen most of these people in decades, but remarkably I can still put names to their five and six year old faces. Other faces tease the limits of my memory, while still others are completely unfamiliar to me.

The photo also stirs memories of the time period in which it was taken. I can recall some of the popular songs that were being played on the radio at the time: “Kung Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas, “The Streak” by Ray Stevens (streaking was a briefly popular pastime in 1974), “Band On The Run” by Wings, “Mandy” by Barry Manilow and “The Hustle” by Van McCoy (which kicked off the disco craze). By far my favorite song at the time was “Rhinestone Cowboy” by Glen Campbell. I remember trying to sing along to it in front of my father’s KLH Model Twenty-One transistor radio.

Looking at the photograph it is clear that our parents had as questionable taste in fashion as they did in music. It would be unusual today to see so much plaid in one place outside of a family reunion in Scotland. I wonder if Will will find similar fault with the way we now dress him someday. I suspect so, and I’d like to apologize to him in advance.

Fashion aside, the mid-seventies were a different time in many respects. Few of my classmates’ mothers worked outside of the home. When not in school, children rarely participated in organized activities. Instead, we were generally set free to play as we wished around our neighborhoods, and were only expected to return home for meals. I remember playing kickball, tag and games with lurid names like “Ghost in the Graveyard” and “Smear the Queer” with the other children who lived in my neighborhood. In my memory, childhood was a freer and less structured affair than it is today.

But I think it would be a mistake to fall victim to nostalgia and conclude that I grew up during a “simpler” or “more innocent” time than today. In fact, it strikes me that there are a number of historical parallels between the time I was in kindergarten (1974-75) and Will’s kindergarten years (2007-08). Richard Nixon, embroiled in the Watergate scandal, and having sunk to public approval ratings almost as low as the current occupant of the White House, had been forced to resign from office just before I began kindergarten in September of 1974. The earliest thing I can remember watching on television was Nixon’s resignation speech, followed by a helicopter carrying him into the void of history.

Helicopters would again be in the news in April of 1975 as the last American military forces were airlifted out of Saigon, ending an unpopular war with too many parallels to the one the United States is currently ensnared in. Due to an OPEC embargo, gasoline prices skyrocketed, and just like this summer, families were forced to adjust or cancel their summer vacation plans.

As a child, these events were never more than on the periphery of my consciousness, but I’m sure they had an effect on me. More generally, I recall there was a pervasive sense of pessimism about the future. I remember being told on more than one occasion (perhaps in kindergarten, perhaps later) that I belonged to the first generation of Americans that would have less than their parents’ generation. We were constantly being told, in ways subtle and obvious, to adjust our expectations downward. I trust that this is not a mistake that will be repeated on Will’s generation.

Radiohead - Rhinestone Cowboy
Robyn Hitchcock - Kung Fu Fighting
Robyn Hitchcock - 1974

Boo-Boo

My daughter hit her head pretty hard last night and had to visit the emergency room. Fortunately, she is fine. In fact, she was feeling so much better this morning she decided to re-read one of her old favorites.

Happy Halloween

I'll get back to semi-regular posting soon. In the meantime, here is a batch of Halloween themed material. For those of you who missed it last year, I included The Velvet Monkeys' cover of "Spooky." Also included is Mudhoney's cover of Sonic Youth's "Halloween" and two "ghost" songs from Robyn Hitchcock, his cover of the Psychedelic Furs' "The Ghost In You" and his own "The Ghost Ship."

I've really been enjoying the Robyn Hitchcock box set, I Wanna Go Backwards, recently released by Yep Roc. I'll have more to say about it later.