Are you like almost 20 something?
Remember how good the cartoons were back in the day: Hey Arnold, Rocket Power, Wild Thornberries, Invader Zim, Rugrats, hell even As told by Ginger, and some other ones????????????????????????
Remember those frickin, cool, sweet shows like "Kenan and Kel" and then there was this cool show with this girl with rainbow hair?!?!?? That was AWESOME!!!
Recently, during my downtime between studying and just before sleep, I've been re-watching Hey Arnold on Youtube. You can do the same!!: Just type in "hey arnold episodes" on Youtube and they'll come up. Most of them are separated (as in PT1 and PT2) but it's no big deal first, because it is FREE! so you can't argue about it and then second, they conveniently offer it up in the suggestions when the first clip is done. Anyways, its funny as hell. YAH....NOW......----TODAY 2011!!! Its some good, wholesome, funny, entertaining A^S stuff. Granted, some of the material is cheesy (you think "COME ON! Get Over It!!" when Helga keeps worshiping Arnold privately....pssh, he should've figured THAT out by now!!!)....but well its a cartoon so things absolutely NEED to (generally) stay at a state of "originality" or "static equilibrium" (<-lol) so that people will come back to it (simple human nature); You can't just keep changing the scenario, characters, and/or plot otherwise people will very likely be turned off by the outcome.
Why I REALLY like this show is that you can watch it as a kid and be entertained by the cartoons for not just mild entertainment, but a lot of the time you actually learn something or feel or see something dramatic happen in the story or to the characters that can set you to tears (even for kids!). This show was so powerful that I can still vividly remember a winter's day back in 6th grade when school had got cancelled for me and I watched as Arnold was having his own snow day. I just remember that it was truly such a happy, wonderful day for me during that moment.
A lot of the other shows I remember watching back in the day (as listed at start of this post) where of very good quality as well. Do you know what the commonality between many of these shows where? Answer: the Creator!, Klasky + Csupo. I'm going to have to come clean and say that I actually remembered this difficult name from my childhood for the obvious reason that I must have understood that they did a fine job making very good cartoons. Unfortunately, I believe they are no longer in the business of making cartoons (I have yet to even catch a glimpse of their trademark ending on programs). So, consequently, there are no more shows of that type of quality.
This got me thinking as to what they are showing these days. I got a gander at Nickelodeon recently and I thought to myself: HOLY BA-GEEZES!.... everything was just like.......*speeechless*....I was disappointed yet VERY angry and irate that the kids of today will never get the quality cartoons we had in our time!!
(I guess this is on the same parallel as the economy and American prosperity shared by the old-timers back in the '40s and for my ma and baby boomers into the '90s!!).
When I checked out the Nickelodeon line-up, I saw VERY FEW cartoons and mostly pre-teen or teenage reality shows, most of which, in my opinion, appeared marketed and aimed towards girls. There were just all these early teen, preppy girls and guys bickering at each other. So...that can't be for anyone under 13 (or shouldn't!!)...I looked at the cartoons and found a more amiable environment. However, the cartoons I saw had little substance and did not provide any food for thought. I had caught a glimpse of this at the end of my prime cartoon watching days in watching "The Fairly Oddparents". That show compares nothing to the spectacle of Rocket Power or Hey Arnold.
FINAL THOUGHTS: So while you may be mourning the loss of the American dream and our economy, remember that perhaps it is better to have gained and lost then to have never had (a reference to "It's better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all")....for which our kids now face. They will never have seized the opportunity to enjoy even one very good, memorable show-----yet, even with the lack of good cartoon programming, they are still compelled to stay locked in their rooms on the computer or flip through a variety of other TV channels.
---Now you've just gotta cry thinking about that!!
Thanks for reading,
GOOD NIGHT!
