Tag: I Remember When It Used To Cost A Nickel (81-87 of 87)

Sep 8 2010 06:00 PM ET

Happy Birthday, Jonathan Taylor Thomas!

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JTTImage Credit: Everett CollectionWe all remember our first love. Mine was particularly memorable because it was very obviously one-sided. He was cute. He was funny. He was perfect. SIGH. And I got to see him once a week…on ABC. And therein lies the problem. I was crushing on Randy from the hit series Home Improvement. Yeah, I’d never met him (minor details, people!) but he was still the man of my house. To solidify my love, I owned and re-read one of those tween photo books full of classy shots of JTT looking pretty fine. I’m sure I still have it somewhere in my childhood home.

Spoiler alert: We didn’t work out. But I’ve grown up since then, and so has he! Today, Jonathan Taylor Thomas turns 29. So happy birthday, JTT! (Makes you feel old, right?)

To celebrate his day of birth, I bring to your attention of my favorite JTT roles: READ FULL STORY »

Aug 24 2010 10:00 AM ET

Which toy from your childhood do you miss the most?

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A few days ago I returned from a week-long visit to my parent’s house in South Texas. When I wasn’t busy trying to think of creative ways to prevent my spontaneous combustion from excessive heat exposure, I found some time to clean out the toy-filled closet in my old bedroom. And by “found some time” I mean I was tired of my mother’s dirty looks.

At some point while sorting through my memories from ages 2-12, I caught myself thinking something that horrified me: “They just don’t make them this way anymore.” Suddenly, a montage of every elderly person on TV I’d ever seen saying the exact same line flashed in my brain, and I felt awful. After about two seconds of feeling like the oldest person on the planet, I snapped the heck out of it because my point was totally valid.

The majority of my childhood has long since been given away to younger cousins and sold at garage sales, but every now and then while sorting through my piles of junk, I would come across a spare piece of a toy that instantly jarred my memory. READ FULL STORY »

Aug 3 2010 05:15 PM ET

'Inception': Only good if you're young?

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InceptionImage Credit: Melissa MoseleyPatrick Goldstein at the Los Angeles Times has an interesting piece today about Inception‘s reception. (It’s just his perception, and preconceptions lead to misconceptions and self-deception.) “If you were a young moviegoer, you loved the visually arresting puzzle-box thriller,” he writes. “But the older you got, according to polling data, the more likely you were to detest its run ‘n’ gun, dream-within-a-dream complexity. ” He compares the film to earlier generation-separating movies like Breathless and Bonnie and Clyde. Multimedia scholar Henry Jenkins argues that familiarity with video games makes Inception easier to understand. That last point is quite interesting: is Inception the first great video game movie? Not based on one specific game, but rather, on the whole stylistic structure of video game storytelling?

READ FULL STORY »

Aug 3 2010 10:00 AM ET

What classic TV shows have let you down?

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St-ElsewhereI have never wanted to love a show as badly as I wanted to love St. Elsewhere. It’s pretty much the grandfather of modern doctor shows, it helped launched the careers of Denzel Washington and Tom Fontana (among others), and it’s widely regarded as one of the most substantive ensemble dramas of all time. My father used to rave about it when I was a kid, and I have a life-long slavish devotion to shows where someone yells “stat!” (Really, anyone yelling “stat.” Come to mama.) And yet… it just does nothing for me. At all. I could not be less jazzed about St. Elsewhere. I slogged through a solid six episodes on Hulu, and still can’t escape the thought that the opening theme song is the most exciting part of the entire show.

Bring it, PopWatchers: What classic (or newly “classic”) TV shows have let you down? Were you never able to see the big deal about Buffy? Does I Love Lucy leave you cold? Is All In the Family all its cracked up to be?

Jul 16 2010 06:00 PM ET

Kellie Martin, pop culture tree ring

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Kellie-MartinImage Credit: Philippe Bosse/NBCWhat is Kellie Martin’s iconic role? The star of tonight’s The Jensen Project (tragically unrelated to EW’s own Doc Jensen) has had some distinctive characters, but depending on your age, odds are one has stuck with you a lot more. Generation X or older? You probably still see her in giganto glasses as Becca Thatcher on Life Goes On. Gen Y, or whatever less catchy term means “younger than Gen X”? You can’t see her without screaming “don’t get stabbed!” for in some sense, she will always be ER’s Lucy Knight. A little younger and a bit squarer, and perhaps she is Mystery Woman Samantha. I’m convinced of it! Age = association.

What other actors fit this kind of model? Jeff Goldblum? Martin Sheen? What say you, PopWatchers?

Jun 29 2010 06:00 PM ET

Disney to revive the radio serial: The bee's knees or hogwash?

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radio-disneyImage Credit: Radio: Dave Bradley Photography/Getty ImagesThe cryogenically frozen body of Walt Disney isn’t the only thing the House of Mouse is planning on resuscitating. Radio Disney has announced its plans to breathe life into the dusty and desiccated form of the radio serial with a scripted series called My Dream, about a teenager trying to break into the music industry. Of course it’s been adapted to match the current goldfish-minded generation: Each episode will only last 90 seconds.

With the upcoming release of the Green Hornet – which began as a radio serial in the 1930s — it looks like ol’ timey radio may be having a comeback. I think it might be cool to see some shows currently on TV try to go after that coveted octogenarian demographic and do some radio episodes. The sexy sultry voices of True Blood would work, and Glee seems custom made for the medium. And think how awesome Lost would have been if we could solve the mystery of the numbers with our Little Orphan Annie decoder rings.

Anyone else want to get in this time machine with me? Do you think any kids even know what a radio is, let alone a radio serial? Hoping Disney has a plan in the works to telegraph a whole episode of Hannah Montana?

Jun 13 2010 02:10 PM ET

Goodbye 'Little Orphan Annie,' fare thee well funnies

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Little-Orphan-Annie_320.jpg In sad news for nostalgists everywhere, today marked the final column of the long-running Annie comic. After nearly 87 years of the freckle-faced orphan’s antics, she has sung her last “Too-mah-row, too-mah-row, I luv ya! Too-mah-row.” Who among us is old enough to remember the pleasure of your mother or father handing you over that brightly colored broadsheet in the morning so you could diligently check in on the happenings of Annie or Marmaduke or Blondie? It makes me feel all of 117 years old when I go on about the old days, but seriously, has orange juice ever tasted better than when washed down with a wistful serving of my beloved Calvin and Hobbes?

Well goodbye Annie… for now. Thanks for the memories, girl. I hope not to see you bastardized on some callous and glossy remake on the Disney channel one day. Tonight I’ll rent the 1982 movie in your honor. (From a video store no less! Take that progress.)

What say you PopWatchers? I wax affectionately and yet I didn’t even realize Annie was still being printed. Am I part of the problem? Do any of you still read newspaper comics, or better yet share them with your kids? Is Calvin and Hobbes the best newspaper comic of all time? Anyone out there care to stage an argument that the 1999 movie is in fact superior to the 1982? Didn’t think so.

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