By Chas R. Andres

I’ve never taken hallucinogenic drugs, stayed awake for 48 hours straight, or been hit over the head with a comically oversized mallet. Thus, I’m reasonably sure that everything I’ve experienced in my life has been more or less grounded in reality.

Perhaps that is why I was so baffled the first time I saw Lidsville.

Who WOULDN'T want to watch this!?

To be fair, my first exposure to the television program wasn’t exactly a sober one. It was around midnight on a Saturday night, and I was drinking rum from a Sprite bottle in the basement of a restaurant in LA’s Chinatown.

I was attending one of the only hip, truly underground events I know about – a secret karaoke party that materializes in the same location every couple of months. The clientele is halfex-Emerson College students and two thirds hipsters despite the organizers being neither. The guy who seems most in charge is a pencil thin white dude with the rock n roll energy of Arnel Pineda and a sincere love of deep cuts from Tears for Fears.

The karaoke lyrics are projected onto the wall from an ancient laptop so that everyone in the audience can drunkenly sing along.

What usually makes the experience surreal, though, are the things that get played on the second projector that is set up in the corner.

This projector has the sound muted, and its image is usually distorted as if the device was simply turned to one side once the singing began. The programs they show range from the truly bizarre to the bizarrely mundane.

It’s not the ideal way to become familiar with a new television series.

Without sound or a clear picture, all I knew of Lidsville when I first saw it was that the basic concept terrified me on an existential level.

In every episode, a credit sequence showed a young boy sneaking backstage after a magic show to steal the magician’s hat. When he picked it up, the hat grew to enormous size.

The boy then climbed onto the brim of the hat and was knocked inside by some sort of supernatural earthquake. He then ends up in a world populated by an evil wizard and a town filled with anthropomorphic hats.

It wasn’t long before I began ignoring the karaoke and focusing on the sheer terror of this boy’s predicament. Had he been banished to some kind of personal hell, an eternity with talking hats as punishment for his attempted theft? Could he ever escape? If not, at what point would one of the hats begin looking like an attractive mate?

Oddly enough, I wasn’t the only one who had a hypnotic reaction to the show. My friend Kyle, a wiry teetotaler with a self deprecating sense of humor and a love of bad television, was hooked as well. We spent the rest of the evening speculating about the world of Lidsville and shouting “don’t go in the hat, you dumb shit!” every time a new episode started.

After several hours of this, we performed a duet of She Blinded me With Science and left.

That was almost two years ago and it really should have been the end of it.

One Saturday night last month, however, I found myself sitting next to Kyle once again. We were on a couch belonging to another mutual friend, Mike, who had agreed to come along on our insane journey for reasons I still can’t comprehend.

We had decided to watch the entirety of Lidsville – every single episode – in one sitting.

Seventeen episodes. Seven full hours. No stopping. No breaks.

For your sake, I decided to keep a running diary of the entire experience. This way, no one else will ever have to watch Lidsville again.

9:10 – It’s go time! Kyle paces excitedly on my left while Mike makes the last adjustments to the Playstation media server. We’ve just finished a pizza, we’re armed with full glasses of soda, and I am legitimately excited.

I wish I could say that we had been planning our trip to Lidsville for a long time, but it actually came about rather suddenly. A few weeks ago, Kyle was flipping channels on Sunday morning and came across an episode airing on PBS. After he described it to me in detail, I knew I had to finally sit down and watch the whole series.

As luck would have it, neither of us had any plans for the coming weekend.

Mike’s fiancée Amy was having her bachelorette party inLas Vegas, and my long-term girlfriend Emma was there with her. Facing the prospect of our first weekend alone in a very long time, neither Mike or I really knew what to do with ourselves.

Lidsville gave us a plan. We could go mad.

9:13 – The credit sequence is even more baffling when you can hear what’s going on.

The kid (whose name, we’ve learned, is Mark) is thoroughly confused by how the stage magician can do so many awesome tricks with his magic top hat. He sneaks into his dressing room after the show and picks up the hat, which immediately grows to immense size. He falls in (a process that takes a full thirty seconds of the show’s 22 minute running time) and ends up in a horrible vortex of puppets and monsters.

All of a sudden, the spooky music stops and we see Mark line-dancing with a bunch of hat people. A bright and cheerful song kicks in, letting us know that “Lidsville is the koo-koo-kookiest,” and, “if you have a chance to go there, you’ll be glad you did.”

Um, wasn’t this place a horrible hellscape just moments ago?

9:15 – The first episode starts just moments after Mark crash lands in Lidsville. He is immediately kidnapped by four hats who have decided he’s a spy. One of the hats is a pirate hat with a hook for a nose. Another is an executioner’s hood with a giant axe. A third is a 20’s gangster hat with a cigar. The fourth is a vampire hat.

I didn’t know vampires wore hats.

9:16 – The evil hats (at least, I assume these are the bad guys based on what they’re wearing.) drag Mark to a giant top hat.

Inside is Charles Nelson Reilly wearing green body paint and a smaller top hat.

His name, we’re told, is HooDoo.

9:17 – To be clear, this man wears a hat, has a hat for a house, lives in a town populated by hats, and the entire world is inside a hat.

9:18 – The show has a laugh track, but the editors didn’t spend much time thinking about where to place the yuks. Gales of laughter crop up after lines that clearly aren’t jokes. At least, I assume they’re not jokes.

9:19 – Lidsville was created by Sid and Marty Krofft in 1971. It was their follow-up to 1969’s wildly successful H.R. Pufnstuf, a similar show about a kid trapped in a horrifying world of puppets. Three years later, they would go on to make Land of the Lost, the program they are perhaps best known for.

Both Krofft brothers have long denied the use of drugs during the creation of their shows. In a 2005 interview with USA Today, Marty Krofft said, “No drugs involved. You can’t do drugs when you’re making shows. Maybe after, but not during. We’re bizarre, that’s all.”

That makes it even more terrifying. No sober person should have been able to dream up the visuals currently on the screen.

9:21 – The inside of HooDoo’s hat house is the most disconcerting set yet.

Everything inside is anthropomorphic, including the books, playing cards, posters, a skull, a stuffed alligator head, and a mannequin that’s been sawed in half and placed inside one of those stage magic trick boxes.

I already have doubts that I am going to make it sixteen more episodes.

9:22 – “I’m not a spy! I don’t even know of any hat people!” shouts Mark. I’m not sure I believe him…

We are introduced to HooDoo’s pet genie, whose name is Weenie. None of us are sure if Weenie is male or female. We learn that HooDoo has a ring, and anyone who wears the ring controls the genie. I wonder where this plot is going…

9:23 – Yup. HooDoo takes off his ring and places it on a table in order to operate his ‘weather bureau,’ a cabinet with a drawer for each kind of weather. He picks ‘snow,’ presumably to torture the hats in Lidsville by freezing them to death in a blizzard.

9:24 – HooDoo’s plan fails. It snows inside his home instead. All of his minions bump into each other and fall down for about three full minutes. Mark grabs the ring and escapes with Weenie.

Mark and Weenie do some stupid shit.

9:26 – Mark and Weenie have two full minutes in which to run for the fucking hills. Instead, they sit around while Weenie attempts to come up with the magic words to allow them to escape.

It’s becoming clear that Weenie is a pretty shitty genie.

9:27 – HooDoo finally breaks free of his stumbling minions and chases after Mark and Weenie, who remembers the magic words just in time. We are treated to HooDoo direct-addressing the camera with the line, “Well, that’s snow business.”

It’s going to be a long night.

9:28 – Weenie’s spell has teleported them to a branch over theShampooRiver. “If we fall,” Weenie tells Mark, “we’ll be suds to death!”

Is that even a pun?

9:29 – Mark and Weenie are saved by a propeller beanie named Twirly. He takes them to downtown Lidsville where they meet the rest of the ‘good hats.’

9:30 – It hasn’t even been a minute, and we’ve already met at least three racist hats: An Asian chef’s hat who mixes up his L’s and R’s, and Indian chief headdress who speaks-um like this, and a French beret who lives in the sewer.

THERE ARE LIDSVILLE BOOKS TOO

Non-racist hats we’ve met: A British pith helmet, a triangular party hat, a nurse hat,  a stovepipe hat with sideburns, a fire hat who is also a fire hydrant, a football helmet, a straw farmer’s hat, an admiral’s hat, and a cowboy hat.

9:31 – Mark argues with the hats about where he’s from. “There’s no real world outside of Ridsville!” exclaims the racist chef hat.

“Oh GOD – Imagine if there WASN’T!?” responds Mike.

9:32 – It occurs to us that all of Lidsville’s décor is just hats hung on trees.

9:33 –  We have met one more good hat – a grandma hat that rides a motorcycle. She makes lewd remarks at the other hats.

9:34 – SOMEONE ACTUALLY WATCHED THIS PILOT AND PICKED IT UP TO SERIES.

Meanwhile, the hats are marching to war. The Pith Helmet, whose name is Colonel Poom, has a cannon.

9:36 – HooDoo has shown up in a flying hat. He strafes the down with some kind of lasers that shoot out of his fingers. The Lidsvillians respond with a barrage of fresh fruit, most of which lands in HooDoo’s flying hat. What happened to their cannon!?

9:37 – The cannon makes an appearance at last. The ball shoots up and sort of drops into the flying hat. HooDoo flips out, throws the steering wheel overboard, and then shouts “Abandon HAAAT!”

He jumps, ending up in the shampoo river.

I thought that was supposed to be lethal. I guess that’s only true for Mark.

9:38 – One episode down, sixteen to go.

9:39 – Kyle has brought cupcakes, but they are Smurf themed cupcakes. He cackles as Mike remarks that there is no end to our terror.

9:41 –Come on, Mark! Don’t go in the hat this time!

9:43 – An ancient map reveals the secrets of Lidsville, including a ladder to the heavens. “A ladder means UP!” shouts Weenie, ever the helpful genie.

9:44 – We’re back in HooDoo’s lair, and good God is that man pissed. He sees Mark on his “evil eye,” an eyeball shaped TV set that is forever surveilling downtown Lidsville. When he finds out Mark wants to escape, HooDoo vows to stop him. Uh, why? Because he pissed him off that one time?

9:46 – The bad hats are on the prowl. “If we don’t catch those guys, HooDoo will rub us out!” says Mr. Big, the gangster hat. “Shall I start rubbing?” Replies HooDoo, who has just appeared next to them.

Mike is horrified. He doesn’t want to see HooDoo rub ANYTHING.

9:47 – The bad hats get the jump on Mark and Weenie. They have a rumble that would have been far more one-sided had the executioner’s hood not dropped his axe at the beginning of the fight and neglected to pick it up until the good guys had escaped.

9:49 – The good hats have escaped…into the dreaded hair forest. We are told that no one survives the hair forest.

After the shampoo river debacle, I remain skeptical.

9:51 – HooDoo has apparently had it with the Lidsvillians too. He tells everyone to “keep this under your hats” because he is planning a “haberdashery homicide” with something called Big Daddy.

9:52 – Weenie and Mark escape the hair forest using the power of love or something.

9:55 – Why does the stovepipe hat sing opera? What does Lincoln have to do with the opera?

WHY DOES THIS SHOW NEED AN OPERA HAT??

9:56 – Notable missing hats: A police hat, Viking helmet, London guard’s helmet, baseball cap, soldier’s helmet, Yachting cap, Australian wide-brimmed hat with corks, sombrero, fez, South American fruit hat, crown, tam, turban, yarmulke, coonskin cap, wreath of laurels, Santa hat, space helmet, shower cap, wedding veil…god, I could probably continue, couldn’t I?

Out of that list, I would most like to see a pompous king’s crown or a top hat wearing a monocle.

I am also struck by the fact that this show could have had WAY more racist hats. While most of them would have made me cry, some sort of jive-talking pimp hat that talked like Franklin on Arrested Development would have been pretty aces. Or maybe that’s just the Smurf-flavored cupcake talking…

9:57 – Big Daddy is just a really big HooDoo. He has arrived in town 30 feet tall and is going to stomp all the hats into dust. Seems like he has this one in the bag.

9:58 – Weenie is looking for the ladder with his spyglass.

“Look, master!” he shouts. “I can almost see downtown Lidsville from here. Hey, I see the hat people!”

After a few seconds, he continues. “It looks like there’s a giant, too!”

HOW WAS THAT NOT THE FIRST THING HE NOTICED!?

9:59: Back in town, Big Daddy stomps around in place a lot. He doesn’t squash a single hat – not even one of the shitty ones.

Mark shows up and launches an arrow at Big Daddy. The giant deflates, and HooDoo crawls out of the wreckage. Apparently Big Daddy was some kind of robot …balloon.

 10:00: “Hey, look! It’s HooDoo! He was inside the giant!”

Everyone laughs as though they had been expecting someone else to be piloting a giant robot HooDoo balloon.

10:01: Two down, five to go.

I remark to Mike that in baseball terms, we’re entering the top of the second inning. “I can’t think about that,” he tells me. “It’s like the size of the universe. If you think about it too long, you’ll go insane!”

Kyle is nonplussed. His biggest issue at the moment is that the hats all live in houses shaped like themselves. “What if we all lived in houses shaped like people?” Kyle rants. “This show does NOT stand up to scrutiny.”

10:03: Back to Mark sneaking backstage at the magic show. Why does the magician’s hat grow? Why would this ever be necessary?

Is this original hat what’s powering Lidsville? Is Lidsville powering the hat? Does the stage magician know about Lidsville? We never see him there…

10:07: HooDoo is angry at the Lidsvillians for not paying their taxes. Is he an elected official, then? Does he provide government services for the hats? Does he pay the fire hat’s salary? I get the sense that there is a larger world here than we’ve seen so far.

10:10: At this point, every single episode has contained the same joke: HooDoo gets angry and calls up his minions on the “hot hatline.” It’s a red telephone plugged into a bright red cowboy hat that is roasting on a bed of molten coals. In every episode, HooDoo picks up the receiver and burns himself before making the call.

10:11: After several failed attempts at summoning a rocket ship, (he did manage to turn the football hat’s feet into rockets), Weenie has conjured a flying carpet! Will Mark get to escape his twisted fate?

10:12: Dogfight! HooDoo on his flying hat vs. Mark bucking around on an uncontrollable flying carpet.

“There’s only one way to stop a carpet!” HooDoo muses, summoning a giant vacuum cleaner. Uh, wouldn’t that just CLEAN the carpet?

10:14: The giant, flying vacuum cleaner sucks Mark right up. It doesn’t touch the carpet. Okay, then.

10:15: Mike is curled up in a ball on the couch, moaning. We ask him what is wrong.

“What if the vampire hat could turn YOU into a vampire hat by drinking your blood?” he says.

We have no good answer to ameliorate his fears.

10:17: The hats have a two part plan to rescue Mark:

1) Rah-rah, the football helmet, will run into the top hat and grab him.

2) The beanie will fly above HooDoo and drop water on him because he hates to get his hat wet.

“Well slosh my teabag!” exclaims Colonel Poom, “what a plan!”

10:18: Mike, still losing it, demands to be called Big Daddy HooDoo for the rest of the evening. Kyle refuses. I am undecided.

Hoooooo-NEY!

10:19: The motorcycle grandmother hat has a catchphrase: calling everyone ‘honey.’

Sounds innocuous enough, right? Well the way she pronounces it, ‘hoooooo-NEY,’ is just excruciating. It’s like the worst, scratchiest accent you’ve ever heard.

The worst bit is that you KNOW a long, drawn out ‘hoooooo-NEY’ is coming every time she rides on screen. Every. Single. Time. She never doesn’t say it.

It’s only episode 3, and I’ve started to develop a pavlovian tic every time I hear a motorcycle engine.

10:20: HooDoo makes her motorcycle disappear, so she demands that Weenie makes her a motorcycle.

Her request is crystal clear, but we all know where this is going. With a wave of her arms, Weenie turns the motorcycle hat grandma into a twisted visage of chrome and wrinkles.

10:21: Mike’s response: “There is no other genie which is as bad.”

10:22: While Weenie rides an old lady hatcycle toward HooDoo’s hideout, the bad hats ponder what to do with their captured prisoner. The pirate suggests having Mark walk the plank.

HooDoo agrees. “Everyone to the roof of that hat!”

10:23: Yeah, there’s actually a plank up here.

Weenie ends up saving Mark in the nick of time. HooDoo, five feet away from the plank, bumbles onto it and falls off.

Yet again, everything lethal to Mark is survivable by the wizard.

“I’d like to see them kill off one of the hats as a midseason shocker,” says Mike. And with that, we’re on to episode four.

10:25: Don’t go in the hat.

10:26: Ah, shit. This one STARTS with the goddamned opera hat. That doesn’t bode well…

10:27: Just as Kyle notes that Mark wears the same clothes in every episode, Weenie summons a handgun to shoot HooDoo in the fucking head. The episode has gotten WAY more promising.

10:28: Nope. A ‘bang’ flag comes out.

10:30: The racist chef’s hat has a better plan for HooDoo: pour pepper on him and ‘sneeze him out of the sky.’

After a lengthy debate on the merits of this scheme, the Lidsvillians agree to give it a shot.

10:31: HooDoo is leaving the Lidsville crew alone for once and focuses on making a fire. Unfortunately, he quickly decides that the fire is terrible because it needs more color.

I feel for him – normal fire DOES need more color! Does this sound like the ravings of a man who needs to be sneezed out of the sky?

10:33: Weenie, pissed off that the town gave up on his ‘shoot HooDoo in the fucking head with a gun’ plan, has packed up his possessions into a hobo bindle and run away from home. “No one ever tries my plans!” he laments in a sad running away song.

Kyle makes a salient point: they’ve tried his plan EVERY time! Even THIS time! And it fucking failed! Now whose fault is that?

Also, he’s a GENIE! He has a MASTER! Genies can’t just run away from home like petulant children!

The show explains this by having Weenie wear a massive set of earmuffs. Apparently if he can’t hear anyone calling for him, he doesn’t have to do their bidding.

10:35: Time for a test run of the catapult! It’s a rousing success…until the chef hat informs them that they only had enough pepper for one shot. And they used that up in testing the catapult.

10:36: HooDoo arrives in town. Now would be a good time to ask for those taxes he apparently cares about…

10:37: Rah-rah, the football helmet, reminds HooDoo about the taxes.

The villain of this series had to be REMINDED ABOUT HIS MOTIVE.

By the football helmet. A character who punctuates the beginning and end of everything he says with the phrase ‘D’urrrrr.”

Anyway, HooDoo shrinks Nursey (the nurse hat) and Scorchey (the fire hat) and puts them in his pocket. If the hats don’t pay their taxes AND give him back their genie within the hour, he’ll kill them.

10:39: The hats find Weenie and rush to HooDoo’s top hat, where he immediately asks his genie to summon him some colored fire powder. Apparently, all of his actions today were sparked by his need for colored fire.

I’m almost impressed by that plot twist. If only I thought it were deliberate…

10:41: HooDoo freezes time. This is apparently a power of his, even though he hasn’t done it up until now. When he unfreezes time, he announces that he will throw all the hats onto the fire.

This could have been accomplished quite easily when time was frozen…

A Google image search for 'Raunchy Rabbit' was a terrifying 35 seconds.

10:45: HooDoo has an anthropomorphic rabbit man named Raunchy Rabbit as an assistant. This is particularly troubling to Mike, who rocks back and forth repeating “Raunchy and Mister Big ARE NOT GOOD NAMES!”

10:46: The old “make HooDoo cast a spell and put a mirror in front of the spell really quickly” plan works, causing HooDoo to turn himself into a frog.

The episode ends without him turning back. Multi-episode arc time? Of course not.

10:47: “My favorite moment of that episode was….uh….uggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” says Mike.

Four down, thirteen to go.

10:50: Don’t go into the hat, Mark! Save yourself!

10:52: The Indian had has-um an old Indian trail map that leads to, ‘the real world.’ Does this mean that the hats know they DON’T live in the real world? At the beginning of the first episode, they made it clear that they had never heard of a world other than Lidsville…but now they’ve come to terms with the fact that they’re essentially fictional characters? Buzz Lightyear might have something to say about this.

10:53: “I frip my rid!” exclaims the racist chef hat.

10:54: The hats’ new anti-HooDoo weapon is a giant bow and arrow. Instead of trusting it to Colonel Poom, who probably has some sort of military experience, the hats put Rah Rah in charge.

10:55: Rah Rah manages to weakly throw the bow in the general direction of HooDoo while holding onto the arrow. Good work, hats!

10:56: HooDoo has decided to evict all of the hats and kick them out of their homes! “That’s not legal,” deadpans the cowboy hat. Uh….and HooDoo zapping you with lightning every day WAS somehow legal? Also, since when does Lidsville have of governing body of laws?

10:57: Mark and Weenie have somehow ended up back in the hair forest. “How could you possibly let yourself wander back in there a second time???” shouts Kyle.

10:58: Back in Lidsville, HooDoo is putting all the houses up for rent. Who else lives in Lidsville? Who could he possibly be trying to rent to?

Weenie is so angry about this, he lets loose with the following insult: “May a crazed water buffalo run amok in his bathtub.”

11:00: The hats have all set up camp in the peroxide swamp. “It’s a bad show,” laments Colonel Poom.

I heartily agree.

11:01: “What if some famous magician that HooDoo has never heard of comes up and challenges him to a duel?” Mark announces.

I guess this is their plan.

11:02: The absolute funniest moment of the night happens when the party hat turns around – totally unmotivated – and blows her party whistle nose right in the face of one of the other hats. Words cannot describe how bizarrely funny this moment is.

Or maybe at the two hour mark the mania is setting in…

11:04: Mark’s magician costume is even more flamboyant than Charles Nelson Reilly’s. Their wizard duel mostly consists of standing around and threatening to turn each other into animals.

11:05: Mark, under the alias of, “The Great Wizzo,” unleashes his greatest trick: making a mountain disappear. He does this by waving his wand at a mountain that Colonel Poom BLOWS UP WITH DYNAMITE.

11:06: Mark/Wizzo threatens to turn all the bad hats into turtles. HooDoo counters with the old, “what’s so bad about being a turtle?” argument.

11:07: Weenie and Raunchy Rabbit have a battle of wits. It’s shocking that I don’t actually know which one of them is stupider. It’s like watching two broken clocks straining to tick.

11:08: Weenie has had enough. He launches fireworks at HooDoo’s house. This accomplishes nothing.

11:10: “HooDoo is going to blow his crumpet!” shouts Colonel Poom. Because all British people substitute ‘crumpet’ for whatever other word they feel like.

11:11: Weenie attempts to outrun a firework in the sky. He doesn’t and it hits him in the ass. Then the episode ends.

11:13: We remind Mike that the words “it’s only Lidsville” exited his lips the previous evening, when seven hours of bad TV didn’t seem like such an obstacle. He responds by actively trying to fall asleep.

11:14: DON’T GO INTO THE HAT MARK! SAVE US!

11:15: The episode begins with the following lines: “Yeah! Taxation without Representation! We should stand up and fight just like our ancestor George Washington’s Hat!”

This makes me believe that the hats know that they should have been paying HooDoo’s taxes the whole time. Who’s the REAL monster, ‘good’ hats?

11:16: Party hat is drunk again. Party hat is always drunk.

11:17: HooDoo wears a referee’s tuxedo in this episode. Is that even a thing?

11:20: It’s an election episode! Everyone is running for mayor with their own sign. HooDoo sees this as an opportunity and makes Mr. Big, the gangster hat, run as well.

11:22: We see an amazing camera bobble as Mark attempts to organize the election. “Fuck off Mark!,” shouts Kyle. “You’re neither a hat NOR a citizen of Lidsville! What rights do you have?”

11:24: Mark decides to run the election by utilizing the time-honored “show of hands” method. Democracy in action!

11:27: HooDoo rigs the election so that none of the hats raise their hands for their candidate and everyone raises their hands when Mr. Big is nominated. Even though HooDoo basically admits to this and every single person knows what happened, they all decide that the election is binding and allow Mr. Big to be the mayor.

This is probably the most brilliant piece of satire in the entire series.

11:30: Mr. Big’s first piece of legislation: a freeway tax. The hats are pissed they have to pay this despite not having paid any taxes for five straight episodes now.

Also, why is this kids show mostly about taxes?

11:32: Why does Mr. Big want a freeway? He doesn’t own a car. None of the hats own a car.

11:35: “Now normally, I’m not against genocide…” remarks Kyle.

11:39: DON’T GO INTO THE HAT.

11:40: The hats have built a rocket ship this time.

11:41: HooDoo flies his hat, which we’ve learned is called the hatamaran, into a lightning storm. He immediately gets hit by lightning.

11:42: Raunchy Rabbit has HooDoo’s powers now thanks to the lightning. I’ve been waiting almost three hours for a Raunchy-centric episode…

11:43: HooDoo invokes Occam’s razor by deciding to get a finger transplant in order to get his powers back. Yeah, that’s clearly the easiest way to do that.

He’s also kind of given up on getting revenge on Mark at this point in the series.

11:44: The hats stuff the rocket ship with dynamite. Because that’s how rockets work.

11:46: HooDoo tells the good hats that he lost his powers. I don’t know why. He just sort of volunteers the information.

11:47: HooDoo shares a tender moment with a spider.

11:48: The hats completely give up on the whole ‘rocket ship’ plan in order to mess around with HooDoo for no real reason.

11:50: HooDoo has a plan to get Raunchy to zap the lightning drawer in the weather bureau and get the powers to switch back.

It involves a girl rabbit.

11:51: Oh shit!! HooDoo is going to be the girl rabbit!!

He puts on a latex mask and an oddly specific form-fitting costume. It is absolutely horrifying.

“THIS IS WORSE THAN A CLOWN!” shouts Kyle.

“THIS IS NOT WHAT HAPPENS IN A JUST WORLD!” Mike adds.

11:54: Mr. Big thinks that the girl rabbit is hot. That’s like…eight creepy fetishes in one.

11:55: “Out of all the things happening on the screen right now, I don’t like any of them,” says Mike.

11:56: Things have taken a turn for the worse. HooDoo’s costume has changed for no apparent reason, and now his rabbit face is done up with makeup instead of a mask.

“MAKE IT STOP! IT’S IN THE LIGHT NOW AND I CAN’T UNSEE IT!” Mike laments.

11:57:  “Moonlight turns me on” HooDoo croons, finally getting Raunchy to zap the lightning drawer.

12:00: Back in town, HooDoo destroys the rocket. “What did they build that rocket ship out of?” Kyle asks.

“Hats,” I reply.

It is now Sunday morning.

12:01: DON’T GO HAT.

12:02: HooDoo is lovelorn to start this episode. He’s a Romeo without a Juliet.

12:03: Mike has lost it. “Oh god,” he raves, “imagine if the hats turned around and started talking RIGHT AT US?”

12:04: The ‘good hats’ are planning to steal the hatamaran in this episode.

12:05: It didn’t work. Mark gets kidnapped. Again. At least things in Lidsville move reasonably quickly.

12:06: HooDoo gets a mail order girlfriend! Her name is, uh, Gladys Glamourpuss. She must come from the Pussy Galore school of ‘how on earth did this name get past the network censors!?’

Also, the premise of this episode implies that everything bad in Lidsville would be solved if HooDoo got laid.

12:08: Gladys appears to be played by the same androgynous whatever that plays Weenie. Also her real name is Witchiepoo. Apparently she’s the villain from H.R. Pufnstuf.

12:09: HooDoo tells her that he’d rather date an Aardvark. Oh snap.

12:10: Witchiepoo wears the exact same makeup as HooDoo. Kyle astutely points out that both shows have the same villain, but only one of them has a vagina.

12:11: Highlight of the past hour: the hats stick a cardboard moon up into HooDoo’s window in order to prove some obtuse point about sleep or something.

“A moon? In the middle of the day??” HooDoo exclaims with surprise.

At this moment, this is the funniest thing I have ever heard.

12:12: The two villains are actually in love right now. It’s super creepy.

12:14: RAUNCY RABBIT JUST KISSED WITCHIEPOO. WHY???

12:15: A FUCKING SONG. A FUCKING LOVE SONG.

I hate everyone.

12:16: HooDoo, now in love, is on an even bigger rampage. He’s destroyed the statue of George Washington’s Hat that stands in downtown Lidsville just because he’s happy.

The good hats go to the French Beret for a lesson on love in the hopes they can find a way to get HooDoo out of it or something.

12:17: “I played a leading lady in the young boy’s follies!” announces Mark. His plan, it seems, is to dress like a woman and seduce his enemy.

Mind you, there are only two human characters in the entire show. This is now the second straight episode where one of them has dressed as a woman.

12:18: Mike is slightly turned on.

12:19: Mark is rubbing all up on HooDoo. “I’ll be waiting for you under the yum yum tree,” he announces before slinking out of HooDoo’s horrid hat house.

“WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?” Kyle shouts. “WAIT – DON’T TELL ME!”

12:24: HAT NO NO HAT NO FALL MARK NO NEW EPISODE. DON’T DO IT YOU ASSSHOOOOLEEEEE!!!!!!

12:25: LIDSVILE IS THE LIVING END.

12:26: Weenie casts a spell that makes Rah Rah’s spine snap in two. This is funny for some reason.

12:27: Colonel Poom, in his proper British accent, calls Weenie an ‘old bean.’ This somehow makes Weenie summon an old bean.

Colonel Poom thinks that this turn of events is delightful.

12:28: The racist chef hat gets some serious screen time. “I WILL NOT ROOK AT THAT YOU MOTHERFUCKING LACIST HAT!” Kyle shouts at him.

12:29: The old bean is growing into a beanstalk. Whoop de fuck.

12:30: Some stuff happened, but I don’t really know what. The TV was drowned out by Kyle and Mike debating which is a worse name: Glamourpuss, or Raunchy Rabbit.

The debate ended n a tie.

12:31: We’re back on the taxes again. HooDoo is broke.

12:32: Party hat is drunk again. Party hat is always drunk.

12:33: Weenie and Mark climb the beanstalk. Halfway up, the genie asks him if he’s seen any giants yet. Mark has to think pretty hard about the answer.

This seems absurd, but Kyle points out that Weenie has a point. Mark had a very hard time spotting the giant in downtown Lidsville last time.

12:34: HooDoo turns Mark into a butterfly. Seems like he should have tried this sooner.

12:35: “Here comes that mean vampire!!” shouts Nursey, master of the obvious.

12:36: HooDoo ransoms the lives of Weenie and Mark for all the hats’ money. I take issue with this plan for two roughly equal reasons:

• Why would HooDoo give his genie back? Weenie may be the worst genie there is, but eventually he will find a way to make an infinite amount of money, right?

• What do you BUY In Lidsville? There’s only hats! And everyone has a job based on what hat they are! Their currency is probably ALSO hats!

12:37: “There’s only one real world and YOU ARE IN IT!” HooDoo shouts at Mark. “That’s LIDSVILLE!”

Somewhere in the direction of Mike I can hear a quiet weeping sound.

12:38: Oh wow. Mark has convinced HooDoo that our world is real, and HooDoo decides to climb the beanstalk in order to ransom Mark to his parents.

Mark is sad about this plan even though it would eventually lead to his rescue.

I think he secretly wants to be a hat.

12:39: Hat money sighting! Their currency isn’t hats at all, it’s nickels with random numbers drawn on them in black sharpie.

12:42: HOLY SHIT! HooDoo has made it to the top of the beanstalk! AND IT ACTUALLY COMES UP THROUGH THE MAGIC HAT!

HE IS LOOKING OUT OF LIDSVILLE AND OUT OVER THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING!

12:43: Oh No! The beanstalk has been chopped down! GRAB ONTO THE HAT HOODOO!

12:45: The beanstalk, HooDoo still clinging to it, falls to the ground. But it knocks over HooDoo’s house in the process!

Could this be the beginning of a multi-episode arc? HooDoo’s house is destroyed. He knows about the real world and has designs on conquering it. Will hats be marching down the streets ofNew York Cityby the end of the next episode?

Saddle up, friends! Things have finally gotten interesting!

12:48: Jump into that hat, Mark! Go for it! I’ve got my second wind!

12:49: Lidsville is back to status quo. Our spirits are immediately crushed.

12:50: One of the true horrors of Lidsville is something I’ve yet to describe to you: the hat band.

Inside HooDoo’s top hat house, he has a tiny band of hat creatures that burst into song at random times throughout the episode. The songs are always exactly the same: the band picks a random word that was just said and sing it over the same incessant melody.

So, if the word was ‘rabbit,’ they’d sing, “rabbit rabbit rabbit, rabbit rabbit rabbit, rabbit rabbit rabbit yeeaahhhhhhhhhh.”

The hat band is so horrible that even HooDoo hates them.

I bring them up here because they’ve already shown up TWICE this episode, and we’re only a minute or so in. Between that and the fact that the events of the last episode have been ignored, this is the most depressing start to a Lidsville since the first one.

12:51: “Those hats are a cagy bunch,” HooDoo opines.

I’m not sure I’d call them cagey…though the ‘moon in the middle of the day’ plan was pretty savage.

12:52: “My word! What a strange looking female! She doesn’t look anything like a hat!” says Colonel Poom, upon seeing HooDoo cross-dress for the second time in three episodes.

12:53: Why is HooDoo hitting on Mark while wearing an old lady costume? Why does he even need to lure Mark into a trap if he can freeze time?

12:54: Hat band AGAIN. Fuck this episode.

12:55: FOURTH TIME HAT BAND! MY SPIRITS ARE FULLY BROKEN.

12:56: HooDoo has just made Mark a genie instead of Weenie! This can’t go well…

12:57: HOODOO IS READING PLAY HAT MAGAZINE.

First, there are only THREE female hats in Lidsville: Party hat, Nurse hat, and Grandma Motorcycle hat.

WHO WOULD WANT TO SEE THEM NAKED? AND WHAT DOES A NAKED HAT LOOK LIKE? HATS ARE BY DEFINITION CLOTHES THEMSLEVES.

Second, HooDoo is NOT a hat! Does a hat fetish explain his presence in Lidsville to begin with? Has it developed over time due to too much hanging around with hats? Or perhaps he’s just feigning interest because he thinks ‘Gay Wizard Weekly’ would seem MORE creepy?

If that’s true, HooDoo should just come out of the closet and accept who he is. There is nothing wrong with being a gay wizard. Sir Ian McKellen proves that and so much more.

There is, however, something truly wrong with being a hatophile.

12:58: HooDoo continues to read Play Hat magazine in front of his minions….he’s just sitting there reading it…

1:00: Weenie, fully human now, is wearing the costume of a Dickensian orphan. Oh shit, was he kidnapped by HooDoo a hundred and twenty years ago and turned into a genie?

1:01: The increasingly misnamed ‘good hats’ brew up a ‘deadly sleeping potion.’ Uh, a potion can only be ONE of those two things.

1:03: It takes Colonel Poom, the pith helmet, only about 12 seconds to accidently prick himself with the poison dart.

Kyle has decided that Colonel Poom is an Ass Hat.

1:04: HooDoo has been shot with the dart and Colonel Poom has made a full recovery. Clearly the potion is not deadly. Sigh.

1:07: The episode ends with someone dumping a pineapple on HooDoo. This is not a series first.

1:10: DON’T GO IN THE HAAAT……

1:12: This episode is about some guy called the Imperial Wizard. Isn’t that a rank in the KKK?

1:13: Raunchy is dressed as a maid. And he has a new voice. Did the old Raunchy quit? Or die?

1:15: The Imperial Wizard is coming to inspect HooDoo’s hat house, but it’s pretty messy. We are supposed to care about HooDoo’s house being clean. That is what the conflict in this episode is so far.

1:16: Weenie is sad because he didn’t get any mail.

Stop being drunk, Party hat.

1:17: Party hat is drunk at 8 AM.

It’s Weenie’s 1600^th birthday, though, so that’s a better excuses than he usually has.

1:18: They’re going to throw a party! Does Party hat finally get an episode all to herself?

1:19: Song time! “Happy 1600^th birthday to you…”

Opera hat nails the solos. And by that I mean I hate everything oh god why am I watching Lidsville right now…

1:20: The song ends with a creepy hat birthday hug. I tell Kyle that we need to make this happen for his next big day.

1:21: Everything I could find about Lidsville before we began made it seem like a fanciful but trippy show beloved by thousands who fondly remember it from their childhood.

I’ve recently gone back and watched some of the shows from MY childhood. All of the Disney Afternoon toons like Duck Tales and Chip ‘N Dale. All of the classic Nickelodeon  sitcoms and game shows. The younger stuff like Reading Rainbow and Sesame Street.

Guess what? All of it ranges from ‘boring and passable’ to ‘interesting and funny.’

Now, maybe I can’t possibly have the correct perspective because those are part of who I am and Lidsville was not.

Maybe it’s a generational thing, and the fact that I spent my teen years on AOL Instant Messenger instead of mescaline has something to do with it too.

But for the life of me, I cannot figure out why this show has become beloved. It should be spoken about with the same wary tone as trauma-inducing dream crushers like The Brave Little Toaster and All Dogs Go To Heaven.

1:23: I love that the hats are shocked whenever HooDoo comes to town. Even though he comes to town in every single episode.

CALLING ALL BAD HATS!

1:24: The hot hatline makes a SECOND appearance this episode, including the whole production where HooDoo almost burns his face off. They really must have been scrabbling for running time.

1:25: Mark dresses up as the Imperial Wizard. To be fair, the whole “dress up to fool HooDoo” plan has worked very well so far, despite Mark being the only other human in the known universe.

1:30: Even though Mark has never seen the Imperial Wizard before, when the ACTUAL Wizard shows up at the end of the episode we learn that Mark’s costume and portrayal was dead on.

This fact bothers no one but Kyle.

But it REALLY bothers Kyle.

1:31: “Holy Carrot, what’s that?” Raunchy Rabbit asks HooDoo.

“HOLY CARROT INDEED, RAUNCHY RABBIT!!” Kyle shouts at the screen. I think he is still angry about the wizard costume.

1:33: HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTT NOOOOOOOO

MAAARRRKKKKK UNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

1:34: Weenie is hung over from his birthday party in the previous episode. This is actually a story arc.

1:35: The bad hats are angry that HooDoo is making them clean their slums. This is the other plot this episode I guess.

1:37: HooDoo turns Raunchy into a motorcycle. This is the second time on Lidsville that someone has been turned into a motorcycle.

1:38: HooDoo’s in town! Nursey warns the citizens by running in circles and shouting the word ‘alarm.’

1:39: Wow! Mark has stolen the hatamaran! But he won’t even think about escaping because Weenie is too hung over to travel.

Weenie’s bedroom is inside the magic ring that controls him and he is too ill to come out. So Mark decides it’s clearly time to shrink Nursey down and make her go into the ring to treat Weenie’s hangover.

1:42: The plan works!

“How did you get small enough to get into this ring?” Weenie asks.

“I have an in with women’s lib,” Nursey replies.

Is this some kind of sexist remark? None of us can figure out what it’s even supposed to mean. Nevertheless, we’re offended.

1:43: Mike wants death. And also death.

1:46: Nursey alludes to having a bikini. What do the hats look like under their clothes? How do they procreate? Kyle realizes that conversation is taking a dark turn and stops us before too much damage can be done.

1:49: Weenie has been saved!

1:50: The fucking party hat is ALREADY throwing another party. There’s a song and a montage where the film is sped up and everything.

Weenie is just going to get drunk all over again, dammit.

1:51: New plan! A party plan! The hats are going to shrink the hatamaran Or maybe HooDoo.

1:52: They shrunk HooDoo. He didn’t get all that small, though.

1:54: DON’T SHOUT ABOUT THE SHRINKING POTION ANTIDOTE IN FRONT OF HOO DOO YOU DUMB FUCKS!

1:55: Aaaand they spilled the antidote on HooDoo. That victory lasted about 35 seconds.

End of episode, too. Less than nothing happened in this one.

1:56: Fuck it, Mark SHOULD fall into the hat this time. He deserves Lidsville. Jump the fuck on in.

1:58: ANOTHER FUCKING PARTY.

1:59: It’s a party for the gross southern farmer hat’s pet pig. Let that sink in for a moment.

2:00: HooDoo crashes YET ANOTHER party. He shoots lightning at the cake and steals the pig.

Believe it or not, the overall quality of these episodes has taken a HUGE dive. At least in the earlier ones something would happen, even if it was horrifying. Now it’s just parties.

2:01: The hats have a plan: Use the fucking cannon (and where has THAT been lately!?) to blast a hole in HooDoo’s hat and get the pig back.

They were never this upset when Mark and Weenie got kidnapped.

2:02: Seriously – it’s revolution over this damned pig. They even have a drum and fife!

2:03: Whoa – Twirly sighting! How long as it been since we’ve even SEEN that guy, let alone seen him do something? He’s a fucking helicopter!

2:03: HOT HATINE SIGHTING

2:04: Another pearl of wisdom from Mike: “The executioner’s hat looks like a poop that has a butt in its mouth. I don’t like anything.”

2:05: HooDoo’s twin brother has just showed up. His name is Bruce HooDoo, and he’s a straight shootin’ southern gentleman in a crisp white suit.

I CAN ALMOST SEE DOWNTOWN LIDSVILLE FROM HERE

2:09: Mike is still mad about that pepper bomb from a dozen episodes ago. “I really think that was the thing that would have stopped HooDoo for good!” he shouts.

2:17: Bruce gives the pig back to the good hats. HooDoo shows up and tells his brother never to darken his hatstep again. Then the episode ends.

I’m really sick of the word ‘hat.’

2:18: By all means, Mark. Go back in to the fucking hat, you intolerable motherfucker.

2:20: At this point, the good guys are barely even in the episodes. Mark hasn’t had a chance to cross dress for like two hours. The whole show has just become HooDoo monolguing for minutes at a time.

2:22: It’s a fucking amnesia episode. Goddamn it, HooDoo.

2:23: THE VERY LAST EPISODE WE JUST WATCHED had ‘polite HooDoo’ when his good guy brother showed up. Now he has amnesia and the bad hats have convinced him he’s a butler named Reginald.

IT’S THE EXACT SAME THING.

2:26: Kyle is making creepy faces at Mike. “I don’t want to slosh your teabag, Kyle,” he says, “I don’t want to slosh your teabag at all.”

2:28: The plan this episode is for all the girl hats to seduce the bad hats so that Mark can do…something to HooDoo? I don’t even know. Everyone is really mailing it in at this point.

2:31:  “Those be some good hat broads!” the Pirate hat exclaims. I disagree.

Also,  why haven’t the bad hats been interested in the female good hats before? It’s not like they don’t fight every single week.

2:32: Why are the bad hats so bad at walking? They fail to stay in a straight line and fall all over each other wherever they go.

2:35: ‘Avast ye wench, drop anchor!” the Pirate hat shouts while chasing the girl hats around and around a fountain. I cannot quite wrap my brain around his metaphor, but sure.

2:40: I attempt to convince Mike that one of the lyrics in the closing theme song goes, “I see people put on hats, and then they die up in ‘em….”

I’m beyond the point of knowing whether or not I actually believe this to be the correct lyric.

2:41: I am oddly calm about Mark falling into the hat. I may have gone through every stage of grief at this point…

2:43: ANOTHER FUCKING PARTY – this one is a benefit show for the old hat home.

“This is old hat you guys,” says Kyle, clearly still in mid-season form.

Mike just looks over and flips off Kyle silently.

2:44: How many midgets did they need to hire to make this show??

2:45: HOLY SHIT THE HAT BAND IS BACK. I HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT THEM AND NOW I HATE THEM TWICE AS MUCH.

2:47: The good hats hand out flyers for the benefit show. They make a point to walk up the mountain to HooDoo’s house (which is the only thing up there, mind you) in order to hand him the flyer to a show THAT HE ISN’T INVITED TO. No wonder he hates them.

2:48: HOO DOO HAS SUMMONED THE HAT BAND TO DOWNTOWN LIDSVILLE. THIS IS A NEW LOW!

2:49: HooDoo BEGS to be a part of the benefit show. C’mon guys, he clearly belongs on stage! Let the man perform!

2:50: HooDoo, rightfully pissed, turns all the hats into old people. WHY DOES HE HAVE THIS POWER!?

2:51: Gristled, old Party hat’s nose is all unfurled now…it looks like a piece of limp beef jerky. Mike is about to vomit.

2:53: The bad hats announce that they are building a road to PANTSVILLE.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?

LIDSVILLE IS JUST THE TIP OF OUR NIGHTMARES.

2:54: Mike says he wouldn’t mind living in Brasville.

2:55: “That old HooDoo really FFFFFFFFFFFsocked it to us,” Mark says.

2:56: “I have WILD idea,” Mark says.

“You’re going to dress up as…?” I mumble at the screen.

“We’re gonna need a lot of costumes,” he finishes.

2:58: So HooDoo, having felt bad for them or something, has turned the hats young again. But instead of being happy, these little shits have decided to dress up like old people so they can demand that HooDoo pay them ‘social hat security’ and ‘haticare.’

No, I am not making that up.

3:00: In an attempt to de-age the hats, HooDoo AGAIN falls for the old ‘Mark wheels a large mirror in front of HooDoo’s spell’ plan again. Now he’s a baby. Which is just a foot tall HooDoo with a pacifier.

Seems like the end of yet another horrible episode.

3:01: Nope. It’s sng time, apparently.

3:02:Tex is rapping. This is ten years before rap.

“Hats hats…famous hats. Abraham Lincoln in his top hat,” goes the song. Um, how on Earth do the hats know about Lincoln!? The Krofft brothers did NOT think this mythology through.

3:03: Only two episodes left! And this one is called ‘The Great Brain Robbery!’ We’re predicting Mark and HooDoo having a brain switch. Regardless, we’re pumped. This is a can’t-miss title.

3:04: JUMP INTO THAT FUCKING HAT MARK! GREAT BRRRRAAAAIINNNNN ROBBERY!!!!!!!!

3:06: ALARM! ALARM! HooDoo is in town!!

3:07: Have the good hats figured out a new anti-aircraft plan for the hatamaran? Nope, they’re just throwing fruit again. Reusing footage from the pilot, in fact.

3:08: IT IS SUPER EFFECTIVE. HO-NEY.

3:09: HooDoo has a new plan: a brainwashing machine. Well, there you go.

3:10: Mark and Weenie attempt yet another escape on yet another flying carpet. While doing so, they sing a song about friendship for no goddamned reason.

3:12: HooDoo summons a magic flute that is actually a recorder.

Kyle poses a serious question: if the magic flute makes creatures follow you, isn’t that the worst possible thing to have in Lidsville? Would you want to be followed by ANY of those things?

3:13: Hats go into the machine and come out angry. This isn’t really a brain robbery…

Also, why does a wizard need to invent a machine?

3:20: The Imperial Wizard shows up and tells HooDoo to destroy the brainwashing machine. So he declares war on the Imperial Wizard.

3:24: The Good guys switch the machine to ‘adorable’ and send HooDoo and all the bad hats through. This means they dance around and say the word ‘adorable’  a lot. The end.

3:26: LAST TIME INTO THE HAT, MARK

3:28: It starts straight off with the hat band. This show will not go quietly.

3:30: And another party! This one for HooDoo. His mother, Mommy HooDoo is here for the celebration. Even she hates the hat band.

3:31: The plot of this episode is that HooDoo’s mom is worried that HooDoo is turning good. This plot blows.

3:32: Mike sees someone walk across the screen who wasn’t there. Our first sleep-deprivation hallucination? Good thing we’re on the last episode.

3:33: OH NO!

IT’S A FUCKING CLIP SHOW.

WE’RE GETTING CLIPS.

MOTHERFUCKER.

3:35: It’s Raunchy Rabbit as a bike again. WHAAARGH.

Raunchy Rabbit rubs his foot for good luck.

“STOP SAYING RUBBING!” Mike shouts.

3:37: Another clip. Mark’s walking the plank off the top of the hat again. God damn is this an unsatisfying end to the series.

3:38: …and we finally get our first shot of the good hats and Mark this episode. They’re doing jumping jacks in the center of town. Mark is basically a hat at this point.

3:39: Wow, it took Mark WAY too long to figure out who HooDoo’s mother was. Even though she’s just HooDoo but an old woman.

3:40: FUCKING MOMMY HOODOO HAS A SONG

SHE’S NOT EVEN TRYING TO SING

SHE’S JUST TALKING NEXT TO A PIANO.

3:42: Why are Mark and the hats going to all the trouble to convince Mommy HooDoo that HooDoo is a bad guy!? Why do they care!?

3:33: CLIPS! Now it’s a big daddy clip….

3:34: Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

3:36: “Well, this is ONE mothers day we won’t forget,” Mommy HooDoo direct addresses at the camera. Uh…wasn’t it HooDoo’s birthday!? You know what? It doesn’t matter.

3:47: IT’S OVER! WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Looking back on this sick, sad night from a journalistic perspective, I’m not entirely sure what we accomplished.

“I’m going to look at this experience like going to boot camp,” Mike told me a few hours before we began. “It’s going to be terrible. And I’ll never want to do it a second time. But it’ll be kind of cool if we actually make it through the whole thing.”

In combat, it doesn’t take long for your comrades to become your brothers. And while our loved ones were out bonding in some seedy part of Vegas, the three of us bonded as only three nerdy, television obsessed men can.

Trial by fire.

This came as a shock because it meant that my favorite album of the year actually WAS the “Best Album” of the year! And this got me thinking – has this ever happened before? Was this the first time in the history of The Grammys that my pick for best album actually won “Best Album?”

Unlike The Oscars, I had very little knowledge about what bands have won Grammy awards in the past. I’ve debated various best picture snubs for hours at a time, but what about best album snubs? I know that most people consider The Grammys to be a joke, but are they? Do they pander to the lowest common denominator? Do they ever get it right?

What follows is part one in a series of posts examining the history of the past 40-50 years of music. For each year, I am going to look at what won the “Best Album” Grammy and see if it lines up with the album I feel should have taken home the trophy. Will the Grammy winners stand the test of time? Will I prove once and for all that my taste in music has never been mainstream? Let’s find out!

Even though the first Grammy awards was in 1959, I am going to start in 1970. Because modern rock music didn’t start until the late sixties, I’m going to leave that era alone for now. Analyzing it will be much harder. The 70s, however, should be fairly straightforward. I mean, EVERYONE can agree on what the good seventies albums are.

Right?

(Please Note: Years have been changed to reflect the years in which the records were released. For example, the ’1970′ category is for albums that were released in 1970, even though the year the Grammy was given out in 1971.)

1970

Winner: Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel

Should Have Won: American Beauty by The Grateful Dead

Bridge Over Troubled Water is a superlative album, and I certainly can’t argue with this pick. Of course, 1970 was a hard year to get wrong. After the Gold Rush, Led Zeppelin III, Deja Vu, Moondance, Loaded, Let it Be, Layla and other Assorted Love Songs, Bitches Brew, and Tea for the Tillerman were all released that year, too.

There were many good Simon and Garfunkel albums by this point, though, and my nod for best album of 1970 goes to American Beauty. It is the Grateful Dead’s best studio album, and arguably the only record of theirs that attempts to draw in listeners who are otherwise be put off by the band’s usual 20 minute jams. I love the production values on this one, too -  it’s not studio spotless, instead feeling like a warm, intimate concert in someone’s living room. The Grateful Dead were also one of the most influential bands of all time, spawning an entire genre of music by themselves.

1971

Winner: Tapestry by Carole King

Should Have Won: Blue by Joni Mitchell.

Tapestry is probably a pretty good album, but I’ll admit to having not heard of it until making this list. I’ve always relegated Carole King’s music to the “reasonable artist, but fairly bland” category, which is why I was stunned to learn that Carole holds the record for longest time at #1 and longest time on the billboard charts by a woman – both for this album.

People REALLY liked Tapestry in 1971.

Of course, 1971 was one of the most loaded years in music history. You had Led Zeppelin IV, Who’s Next, Hunky Dory, Sticky Fingers, Blue, Imagine, Meddle, Aqualung, and The Yes Album, NONE of which received nomination. It is nearly impossible to choose a winner from that group. David Bowie’s best album is up against one of Zeppelin’s best, one of The Who’s best, and my favorite Rolling Stones record. I have to choose, though, and I’m going to give the nod to Joni Mitchell’s generation-defining Blue.

Start to finish, Blue is one of the rawest, most emotional listening experiences out there. Joni deftly captured many of life’s nearly inexpressible feelings on this record, and did it in such a way that it is universally relate-able. Blue is rock poetry at its finest, and each time I listen to it I understand a little more of what she was trying to express just by the virtue of having lived a fuller life. It is as real now as it was when it was first pressed in 1971.

1972

Winner: The Concert for Bangladesh by George Harrison (feat. Bob Dylan)

Should Have Won: Harvest by Neil Young

Long before Live Aid, long, long before Live 8, there was George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh.

It was a pioneering event, paving the way for the benefit-concert-palooza of the mid-to-late 1980s. It helped get a reclusive Eric Clapton and an even more reclusive Bob Dylan out of hiding, and there are some pretty great live versions of good songs on this record.

I can’t see, however, how a live album can ever be the best album of the year.

Looking over the track list, I see a lot of songs I recognize from other great albums. Here Comes the Sun, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Mr. Tambourine Man…all great music, but all previously known bu practically everyone. (And Abbey Road lost ‘best album’ to Blood, Sweat, and freaking Tears three years earlier!)

And if you don’t own The Concert for Bangladesh, have you ever heard any of these versions of those songs? I highly doubt it.

To me, the three clear standouts of 1972 are Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars, Exile on Main St, and Harvest. All three are arguably the best albums by some of the biggest names in rock history.

I’m going to give the nod to Harvest, but it is close. I think that Ziggy is only Bowie’s second best album, while Harvest stands alone atop Neil Young’s catalog. Exile, meanwhile, was considered one of the Stones’ great critical failures for years before people actually gave the album a second listen. It is certainly one of their least accessible records, but many musicians and music lovers consider it one of the two or three greatest recordings of all time. I know several members of Phish consider it their favorite album ever.

Harvest, on the other hand, is a more intimate record. I’ve chosen a lot of quieter, poetic music for the early 70s, which I feel is a stark contrast from the frenetic experimentation of the late 60′s and the “fuck it, let’s dance” fun of the 80s. In many ways, the early 70s represented an emotional crisis for the generation of musicians that invented rock & roll. The world had steadfastly refused to change based on the hopes and dreams of the Woodstock age, more kids were dying in Vietnam than ever, and most of these artists were old enough now to realize that it was time to examine their lives in a very real way. That’s what the best music of this era was about – growing up.

1973

Winner: Innervisions by Stevie Wonder

Should Have Won: Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd

I have nothing against Stevie Wonder. And this is probably a pretty good record. I don’t know any of the songs from it, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it…heck, I don’t think I’ve ever even seen it. Or heard of it. And this was a #1 record? Really?

Oh – and the album that it beat out? THE BEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME. EVER. BY ANYONE.

And also Quadrophenia.

1974

Winner: Fullfillingness’ First Finale by Stevie Wonder

Should Have Won: Pretzel Logic by Steely Dan

The winner that year was another Stevie Wonder record I haven’t listened to. It was probably pretty good. Did it deserve to win best album? Maybe. I mean, not too many good records came out that year. After nearly a decade of absurdly good music years, 1974 was almost empty. When talking about ’73, I didn’t even mention Alladin Sane, or Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, or Houses of the Holy, or Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. In ’74, though, the best record was…Court and Spark? Diamond Dogs? Queen II? Apostrophe? Pretzel Logic? The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway?

Damn you Blood on the Tracks for not getting released until January 1975!

In the end, my gut tells me that it’s a two-way race between Lamb, which is considered one of the greatest albums ever by music snobs but which I don’t particularly like, and Pretzel Logic, which is one of Steely Dan’s many good albums (but not their best) in their most fertile period.

I decided that a good tiebreaker would be to go with the album that I actually enjoyed listening to the most.

Steely Dan, congratulations on your Best Album win for Pretzel Logic. I hope you enjoy it, because I doubt you’re going to get to keep your win for Two Against Nature once we get to 1999….

1975

Winner: Still Crazy after All These Years by Paul Simon

Should Have Won: Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd

1974 was a poop year for music, but 1975 was utterly fantastic. You had Bob Dylan making the first of many comebacks with Blood on the Tracks, my favorite album of his. Then you had Bruce Springsteen taking his music into the stratosphere with Born to Run, which I think is his best ever. You had Queen’s best effort (A Night at the Opera), another classic Led Zeppelin record (Physical Graffitti), Neil Young’s raw and underrated Tonight’s the Night, and Patti Smith ushering in punk with Horses. And I’m not even getting to some great records by Aerosmith, The Who, and Jeff Beck. Heck, even Steely Dan’s ’75 album (Katy Lied) was arguably better than the one I just called the best record of 1974!

The album of the year, though, goes to Pink Floyd with their outstanding follow-up to Dark Side. I don’t even have words for how great Wish You Were Here is, other than to say that Pink Floyd’s classic albums shouldn’t even be allowed to compete in this contest. They’re just another level better than anything else ever produced by anyone else ever.

Oh, and Paul Simon’s album? It’s fine. I own it and like it. But compared to his earlier work in Simon and Garfunkel and his later work in the mid-80s, this one is kind of a snoozer.

1976

Winner: Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder

Should Have Won: Boston by Boston.

This is honestly the first truly deserved winner, though Bridge over Troubled Water was too close to really argue about.

Only six years in, too. Good work, Grammys!

Other choices in this weak year for music include the Ramones’ debut album, which is the one with all the songs you know by them. Then you had The Eagles’ Hotel California,  which means that Hotel California is now stuck in your head. Ha-haw! (Now Nelson Muntz’ laugh is stuck in your head too.)

There was also some other stuff, including another decent Dylan album and the first good ELO record.

My personal favorite of ’76, though, is the debut album from Boston. We shouldn’t hold it against them that they never again made a record even 1/100th as good – this one’ll still blow the socks off you, and may be the best debut album by any band ever. Every last song on this record still gets radioplay, and I still love most of them despite hearing them over and over and over again on classic rock radio. Now that’s staying power!

1977

Winner: Rumors by Fleetwood Mac

Should Have Won: Animals by Pink Floyd

Again, the even/odd thing bears out. 1977 was another monster year, and there are tons of good choices. Nevermind the Bollocks changed the face of music forever. Rumors made Fleetwood Mac an international sensation. The Clash released their first disc, and Elvis Costello’s My Aim Is True is maybe the hardest snub I’ve had to make yet. And then there’s Aja. And the awesomely fun Bat out of Hell. And Kraftwerk, and the first great Billy Joel record, and the first Talking Heads record,  and on and on and on.

In many ways, 1977 was a sea change in rock music. Punk was here, and it wasn’t going away. (Until like a year and a half later…) Many of the great artists of the next decade put out their first record this year, and the different genres of ‘rock’ were beginning to splinter fast. There were so many good albums this year that could have won the award.

If, you know, Pink Floyd weren’t still making records.

I remember reading a baseball preview column back in 2000 that was attempting to guess the Cy Young (best pitcher) award winners for that season. In the American League, the prediction wasn’t “who will be the best pitcher this year?”. It was “Who will be the best pitcher this year other than Pedro Martinez?” Pink Floyd in this era is like Pedro was around the millennium. A once-in-a-generation talent that was just heads and shoulders above everyone else. If the actual Grammys can hand out three awards to Stevie in the 70s, I can give three to Pink Floyd.

1978

Winner: Saturday Night Fever Movie Soundtrack by A bunch of shitty disco bands but mostly the Bee Gees

Should Have Won: Darkness on the Edge of Town by Bruce Springsteen

Yet again, an even year doesn’t provide us with too many options. Darkness on the Edge of Town is a good record, but it’s probably only Bruce’s third or fourth best. Blondie had a decent album, as did Elvis Costello. Van Halen debuted this year, but I’ve never been the biggest fan of them. The Rolling Stones entered their disco phase, which I feel was an unfortunate career decision that I still pay for every time I hear “Shattered” on the radio.

The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack was an unforgivable win. If this award didn’t go to Bruce, it should have gone to The Cars for their first album. Or at least Van Halen.

Anyone but the freaking Bee Gees.

1979

Winner: 52nd Street by Billy Joel

Should Have Won: The Wall by Pink Floyd

This exercise ended up a little lopsided, considering Floyd’s four best albums were all released within the 10-year window I decided to examine. I wanted to avoid the Beatles’ dominance over the late 1960′s, and instead wound up getting blindsided by Pink Floyd’s dominance of the 1970′s.

Of course, this is the last Floyd album to get my vote, so if I ever continue on to the 80′s there will be other artists mixed in too. I promise!

At any rate, 1979 was another great ‘odd’ year for music. The runner-up to Floyd is The Clash’s outstanding London Calling, which may be the best punk album of all time. Michael Jackson first appears in 1979, too, as do post-punk darlings Joy Division. There’s also a great Tom Petty album, a great Police album, a great Frank Zappa album, the B-52′s best album, Supertramp’s best album, and Gary Numan’s legendary Pleasure Principle.

Billy Joel’s 52nd Street, 1979′s actual winner, was released in 1978. This marks the beginning of a long and storied tradition of the Grammys nominating albums for ‘album of the year’ in years other than the ones when they were released.

That’s all for now! Join me next time (perhaps) when I start to wade into the 1980s.

I read an article yesterday that Time magazine published back in 2005 about how the path from adolescence to adulthood had changed in recent years. The general thesis seemed to be that kids these days don’t want to grow up. While people in their twenties a few decades ago were settling down, getting jobs, and getting married, our generation has decided to eschew formality in favor of frivolity. We’d rather whimsically frolic in our hip, urban surroundings, sleeping with whomever we please, and trying out dozens of jobs until we find the one that perfectly expresses us. Oh, what a joyous, carefree life!

In this entry, I am going to attempt to explain the forces that have shaped our generation, and why I think we are so misunderstood by those who came before us. I have no qualifications for speaking on behalf of Suburban-American twenty-somethings beyond the fact that I was born in 1985 and want to write about it. Please note that all of this is taken from my experience and observation as a white, privileged kid who grew up on the East Coast and moved to the West Coast. Your own experience may differ wildly from what I say below.

We Were Conditioned to Expect Easy Answers and Happy Endings

Life follows this formula, right?

More than any other generation, we were raised by media.

In the fifties and sixties, kids went to the cinema on weekends and watched Walter Cronkite with their parents. Then they went out and played, or got a summer job.

In the seventies, TV was still more or less a family activity. Folks crowded around the ‘set at dinnertime, and then went off and experienced the rest of their lives away from the tyranny of the  networks.

Those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s? We had whole CHANNELS marketed right at us. We had cartoons all morning on Saturday and all afternoon on weekdays. Due to the fact that the majority of households switched from one-income families to two-income families, a whole lot more of us came home to an empty house after school. And what was waiting for us? TV.

Most of the shows and movies we watched for hours on end had similar messages: Things tend to work out. The good guys win. If you deserve something, you will get it. Underdogs will prevail. Anything can be accomplished in a five-minute training montage.

There’s a great article by Cracked’s David Wong called “How The Karate Kid Ruined the Modern World” that I gets at the crux of the problem. The author brings up a problem he has deemed “effort shock,” which is the gap between the actual effort it takes to complete or master a task, and the amount of effort that you think it will take. Wong argues that years of “very special episodes” and training montages has instilled our entire generation with the belief that it doesn’t take too much effort to become good at something. After all, if Daniel-San can become the best karate kid in the valley in a few months, you can become the best at whatever you want just as easily!

Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way. Life is hard, and everything that’s worth doing is next to impossible. I want to be a writer, but I will often get discouraged the minute I open up a new document and see that flashing cursor. The 80′s New Wave track doesn’t come on, spurning me on to write world-changing dialog in a matter of seconds, so I often put the task off until some nebulous “later” that never actually happens.

The same thing happens to me whenever I try to make a concerted effort to lose weight and eat healthier. I go to bed at night thinking through the montage of what it would be like to run on the treadmill every day after work and limit my fat consumption, but the next day I invariably have a tough morning at work, so I want a really good lunch to compensate, and then before I know it I’ve just eaten a giant sandwich and some chips.

The idea that self-discipline is the most important thing one can possess is an art that was never passed down to us. Instead, we were told that we were all special, unique, and smart.

We Were Told we Were Smart, Damn It!

Another common trait of being a kid in the 80's: Stickers.

We are the children of the baby boom generation. These guys, by the way, are the biggest sell-outs in the history of selling out. In the late sixties, they were on the cusp of changing the world. They started a revolution that was supposed to tear down the establishment, bringing about a new age of peace, harmony, and equality. They marched to bring equal rights to all of humankind, regardless of gender or color. They started imminent nuclear annihilation in the face, and tried to find an end to war and hatred in the face while we were teetering on the brink of destruction.

Then something happened. I don’t know what. Maybe the drugs went bad. Maybe shit got too real. All I know is that these people went on to elect Regan twice, destroy small town America, elect Bush, elect Bush’s stupider son, elect his stupider son again, and create our current culture of fear. Next time you think about how the world is going to be a better place when all the old fear-mongers die and we get to take over, remember that today’s fear-mongers were yesterday’s indignant youth.

Anyway, the one place our parents did decide to hold on to their flower-child roots was in how they raised us. Most parenting philosophies of the 80′s and 90′s were centered around how important it was to tell your children how great and smart they are. The theory seems to hold water: self-esteem is important, so if you tell your child they are smart than ipso facto they will become smart.

This only served to cement the image of self that TV constantly reinforced: You are unique. You are smart. You are destined for great things.

The problem is that, uh, it did way more harm than good.

A 2007 study detailed in the article “The Inverse Power of Praise” shows how harmful it is to constantly reinforce the idea of “smartness” into a kid. What happens is that the kid does, indeed, think they’re smart. So smart, in fact, that when a problem comes up that they can’t solve they start to panic. “How come I can’t solve this?” they think. “I’m smart! I should be able to figure it out! What’s wrong with it? What’s wrong with me?”

On the other hand, if you praise your child for being a hard worker, they will be much more likely to attempt to solve a puzzle, no matter how hard. And this translates to a much higher success rate in facing the problems that come up in day-to-day life.

I know that I have my own issues with failure, and while I will never blame my parents for mistakes in raising me, (I believe they did an excellent job) I still have a hard time dealing with my own mistakes. I am far to willing to blame luck, or timing, or someone else for things that are my own fault. And, of course, this means that often times I am unable to fully learn from my mistakes because I am often so unwilling to take responsibility for them.

I still find myself internalizing the same old message, “I should be smart enough to do this right the first time!”

We Weren’t Raised to be Reliant

There are nine of these on every street in suburbia.

When you were a kid, how much did you hear about “stranger danger”? If you were in my generation, it was probably a whole hell of a lot.

Like most things, our current dilemma grew from very innocent roots. The bond between parent and child is the strongest in the world, and most parents will do anything in the world to protect their babies. The idea of a strange person with a heart full of malice taking your kid is the worst, most horrifying thing in the world. For mothers, it is a fate worse than death.

Does that sound dramatic to you? It does to a hell of a lot of TV writers, too.

If there is one thing that America still produces well, it’s TV. And most of what’s on TV are shows about crime. Killers-as-entertainment got so pervasive in the 80′s that thousands of (mostly) women banded together and demanded tougher broadcast standards to protect their children from be exposed to so much violence on television.

They should have been equally worried about the affect that it had on them.

One of the most powerful ideas in the art of TV drama is getting your viewer to think, “this could happen to me!” This allows the viewer to forge an emotional connection with the protagonist and become further invested in the show. And since the idea of criminals snatching kids is such a powerful one, a propensity of crime shows started hitting that note pretty hard.

This had a major affect on our society. While previous generations of kids were given free range of the neighborhood, we were limited to heavily supervised “play dates”. Our parents told us how prowlers were waiting behind every bush, kidnappers hid in every unmarked van, and to never, ever talk to someone you don’t know.

Despite the fact that no child has ever been killed by candy on Halloween, we were forced by our parents to not accept or throw away anything we received while trick-or-treating that wasn’t pre-wrapped. And now, trick-or-treating has almost completely disappeared. Kids either trick-or-treat in their local mall during the day or not at all. So much for Halloween.

The cost of keeping a generation of kids slightly safer from non-existent serial child abductors? We grew up relying on our parents for everything. Instead of walking or biking to and from school, we were driving in a carpool. After school was either TV by yourself at home alone (if you were poor), or an endless parade of extracurricular activities (if you were rich). We didn’t learn how to take the subway by ourselves. We didn’t get to explore the beauty of nature with a herd of friends and some sticks. We weren’t allowed to go to the park alone.

And somehow I would guess that the few child abductors that there actually were didn’t just give up and go home.

For further information about this phenomenon, check out the excellent blog “Free Range Kids”. We shouldn’t subject our own kids to the same culture of fear that we were brought up in.

We Were Never Allowed to Develop Our Own Culture

This guy *really* thinks he's cool.

Earlier generations had a unifying culture that bound together everyone of a certain age. Sometimes, everyone banded around musicians of incredible talent, like Jimi Hendrix or Elvis Presley. Sometimes, they banded around musicians that had no talent, like Sid Vicious. Regardless, each generation had their own secrets – a set of things that were uniquely theirs, that no one else understood or even really cared about.

Check out this episode of Frontline from 2001 called “The Merchants of Cool”. It is about people hired by nearly every company to go around the country and speak to teenagers in order to find out what is cool and what is not. They then take this information back to the folks that market things at teens in order to make sure that their company is at the cutting edge of what today’s youth is interested in buying.

What this meant, ostensibly, is that our culture was co-opted and marketed back at us before we had a chance to make it our own.

Luckily, this process started around the same time that the internet took over all of our lives. While we weren’t able to have a collective culture that spanned our whole generation, we each got to split off into our own subcultures and explore the best pieces of culture from all eras of modern human history. You didn’t have too many kids in 1970 who thought that Frank Sinatra was actually pretty rad, but in our generation you can be in to 50′s classic country, late 60′s psychedelic rock, American disco,  British punk, or Peruvian flute music. I can press a few buttons on my computer, and watch an episode of TV that was produced and aired in 1989, 1998, or several hours ago. If I want to, I can go on a message board and only speak with those people who have seen the same kinds of shows as me and have generally similar political beliefs. And I can yell at them anonymously if they say something I don’t like.

If you’re angry about hipsters, well, this is their origin story. When we lack a common bond, we devolve into one-upsmanship of who can find the next, coolest, most obscure “thing” that gives you an edge over someone else. Since nothing is actually cool anymore, we must constantly seek to find something that seems cool. Then, once it has entered the zeitgeist, it can no longer be cool and you have to move on to the next thing. Coolness has become an elusive, moving barrier that can never be reached.

Our culture has become a fractured amalgamation of whatever we want. There are people who were born in the same year as me, perhaps several towns over, with whom I have almost nothing in common. Thus, our generation’s ideas of friendship and companionship are far different than even a decade ago. I am more likely to have a friend who has a ton in common with me 3,000 miles away than become friends with the guy who works in the cubicle 5 feet from me. It is important that you understand this fact to understand who we are.

This is not necessarily a good or a bad thing. It does mean that we are simultaneously far less lonely and far lonelier than those who came before us. We are drowning in friends, yet friendship no longer carries the same bond that it once did. While I have a few choice friends with whom I am close, I feel that I am the exception.

We Got Schooled

School or jail? The game is especially hard in LA.

What is the purpose of school?

In an ideal world, school is designed to prepare the next generation of kids for a stable, happy, intelligent adulthood. The first few years are designed to teach you the fundamental building blocks that all humans need to know: how to read, write, add, subtract, and multiply. Then you are supposed to learn skills that will help you make informed adult decisions; History, rhetoric, strategy, and so forth. Some are then tasked to learn the entirety of current human knowledge of on specific subject so that they can teach or make discoveries, while most learn a trade that they are interested in so that they can become productive members of a working society.

This, of course, is not at all what happens.

From an early age, school is merely about memorizing facts and repeating them back to your teacher. Sometimes you have to repeat facts back on a test, or a quiz, or on a paper, or in a presentation, but that is really about as far as the variety goes.

Unless you have a truly excellent teacher, very little context is given for most of these facts that will relate them to your actual experience of life. Math’s “word problems” can usually be solved in about seventeen seconds if you are smart enough to keep a calculator (or, now, a calculator app) nearby. History is rarely related to modern day. Even science often becomes an endless parade of meaningless facts without context. How much of what you learned in seventh grade do you still remember or use? Eighth grade? Ninth?

School – the place where we spent nearly all of our time growing up – has become something like a cross between a prison and a chaotic day care center. The truly scary thing is that our generation had it much better than the one currently slaving away in our nation’s public schools. No Child Left Behind mandated that schools must teach to a series of standardized tests or risk losing funding. This has made already failing public schools fail completely, while ‘successful’ schools have only stayed that way by eliminating the last vestiges of original thought in favor of teaching to the test.

And you know what we didn’t learn in school? Anything that actually helped us become healthy, functional adults. We didn’t learn how to balance our checkbooks. We didn’t learn how to buy cars. We didn’t learn how to get (or keep) jobs. We didn’t learn how to properly speak to superiors or subordinates. We didn’t learn how to clean. We didn’t learn how to cook. We didn’t learn how to buy a car. We didn’t learn the positive and negatives of buying a house vs. renting a house. Out of all of those hundreds of thousands of hours we spent staring at the clock, not once did any class teach us what the world outside is actually like.

We Got Colleged

You are not a special or unique snowflake for going here.

And then we all went to college.

In previous generations, college was a ticket out of poverty. It may have been expensive, but it guaranteed you a leg up above everyone else in the job market. College men and (the very few, in those times) college women were destined for the upper class.

So everyone decided to go to college.

This bothered the previous generation, even if they didn’t admit it. Imagine, if you will, that you graduated from High School in 1950. You got a job at a newspaper working nights on the printing press, and after 25 years you worked your way up to middle management. You may not have had a fancy college degree, but you’ve had a lifetime of know-how and you can get the job done right.

Then your neighbor’s punk-ass kid graduates from Dartmouth and applies for the same job you’ve been angling for. “Hell no!” you think. “That punk should start at the bottom – same as me. Let him work his way up the damn ladder.”

So, in effect, college graduates in my generation have to start out in the exact same place as high school graduates in the previous generation had to start. Only we’re four years behind. And fifty thousand dollars in debt, because everyone goes to college now, so there aren’t many scholarships anymore. And if you don’t go to college, you can’t even get entry level jobs in most industries: you’re banned to retail hell forever.

This is also a result of America no longer being a manufacturing nation. In previous years, anyone with half a brain could get a reasonably-paid union gig. Now? It’s Wal-Mart if you’re lucky.

If you want to find the biggest reason for why our generation isn’t buying houses and starting families in our twenties, this is it. Not graduating from college has become a sentence to a lifetime of poverty unless you start your own business, and graduating from college leaves you in massive debt at the absolute bottom of the labor market. These are not ideal conditions for which to become a self-reliant adult.

Oh, and the skills you learn in college? Unless you go to a trade school or major in something tangible like computer science, the chances of you learning something that will actually help you in your chosen field are pretty much nil. You have to go to graduate school for that.

For more on this, check out the book My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Yes, it has a talking gorilla. It also has the most intelligent deconstruction of the American education system I’ve ever read.

We Are the Lost Generation of the Financial Crisis

Of all the 'financial crisis' images I could have leeched for this section, this one has the most fire.

The day I moved to Los Angeles to seek my fortune as an adult, the local NPR affiliate reported that several of the biggest financial firms in the country had declared bankruptcy, and the marketplace lay in ruin. Two years later, the country is at over 11% unemployment and LA county is almost twice that.

While the economy has been hard on everyone, I think most people are forgetting just what it means for those of us who graduated in the years between 2006 and 2010.

There are no jobs for us. Seriously. None. Not even crappy, horrible ones at places we would hate to work at.

Far from Time Magazine’s report of twenty-somethings trying on jobs like pairs of pants, the experience I’ve had is that most people I know are completely unable to hold down a job at all. There are fifty or sixty people applying for each position, and most are going to people who are significantly overqualified. It is impossible to build a resume when no one will give you a shot. I am very lucky to be in a great position right now, and I am one of the very, very few.

You want to know why people in their twenties are moving back in with their parents? It is because ten years ago, worst case you could move into a tiny apartment with a couple buddies and get a job working construction for a few years. That option is now gone.

Many have described the current economy as a game of musical chairs where everyone sat down in the jobs they were in and held on for dear life. Those of us who happened to be just entering the labor market when ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ stopped had nowhere to sit.

In Defense

So you Boomers and Xers want to lambaste our generation as a bunch of whiny, immature Peter Pans who don’t want to grow up because we were raised as Toys R Us kids? Fine, but remember: we are all a reflection of you. Just as society is a mirror of our collective hopes, fears, and attitudes, so are we a product of what you made us. You wanted us to believe that we could be anyone and do anything. You wanted us to think we were really smart and special. You wanted us to be afraid of dangers around every corner. You wanted to completely control our culture. You wanted us to go to school until we were 23 before entering the workforce. You wanted us to sit tight until the economy improved before getting a job.

So here we are.

- Chas R. Andres, a self-reliant adult despite everything thrown at me.

Ever have one of these? I sure did.

Like many in my generation, the internet grew up around me.

My dad, unsurprisingly, had a home computer before my birth in 1985. I don’t remember much about it other than the fact that it had a black screen with green text and I never got to use it.

After that came the first in a long series of Macintoshes, one of which ended up on my desk by the age of 8. By that point, it was 1993 and the little square Mac was almost ten years old. I named it “Caveman Computer”, and it required you to hit it on the side over and over while it was turning on or else it couldn’t find the hard drive.

Caveman came with a whole pile of floppy disks, each of which had a bunch of games. There was one where I had to drop a man out of a helicopter and hope that he landed in a horse drawn cart full of hay. There was another where I had to beat a bunch of aliens in billiards. There was, of course, the venerable Oregon Trail. I spent hours switching the disks around, playing game after game until I had seen as much of each of them as I could. I even fired up a copy of Hyper Card, and tried to make my own games for a while.

Of course, Caveman Computer did not have a modem. It did not even have a phone jack where one could attach a modem. Hell, the modem I had ever even seen was my dad’s 14.4 that was sitting underneath an old rotary phone in the basement. He had gotten it from his office a few years previously, no doubt in the hopes that we would one day get a home internet connection, and it had collected dust ever since. When I asked him what it was, he told me that you could use it to connect your computer to another computer far away. To me, this meant that it was some kind of cool, illegal hacker tool, so I loved it even though I didn’t really understand it.

A few years later, our house finally connected to the information superhighway.

My dad had purchased a new computer at this point, and it came with a brand new 28.8 kbps modem. We hooked it up to a phone line, put in an AOL floppy install disk, and after a few moments we heard a soon-to-be-familliar bedoo-bedoo-bedoo-whrrrrmmmm-shhhhhh-SHHHHHHHH noise that signaled our connection to the world. A little egg-timer next to the monitor ticked down the first of our 50 free hours as my dad and I typed phrases into the search bar and read whatever pages they sent us to. After a while, we discovered what I now know is called a MUD: a Multi-User Dungeon, the clunky, text-based forerunner of today’s MMORPGs. This one allowed you to navigate different rooms of text – some containing other users! – and type in commands to move around. I think the end goal was to be some kind of space trucker, though my dad never let me play long enough to find out.

Still, it was revolutionary. For the first time, I could type something into a box in my basement and broadcast it for anyone in the world to read.

The following years were basically a series of arguments over whose turn it was to use the phone line. My dad’s old computer moved upstairs and became the family computer, which mostly meant that it became my computer. We upgraded from a 28.8 to a 56k, and eventually to dedicated line and a monthly plan. For Christmas in seventh grade, I got an iMac and had my own internet connection in my room for the first time. With WiFi still years away, my dad wired our whole house with Cat-5 Ethernet cable so that a port to the internet could be found in any room we wanted. By eighth grade, I was communicating with my friends on AIM for hours each evening, talking about anything and everything in a series of 3×4 windows scattered around my desktop. This, I guess, was the start of my experience with what is now called social media.

My first blog entry was posted at 6:01 PM on December 21st, 2003.

I was actually fairly late to the blogging game, at least compared to most of my female friends who had Livejournals and Deadjournals since Middle School. Of course, these were people who made the switch from a physical journal to a digital one. Since I had never kept a diary, (a big regret of mine) the idea of chronicling my day seemed a little bit alien. But since this was a time in my life when I didn’t have too many friends, so the idea of sending my thoughts out into the aether was a romantic one. What if the person who I most wanted to read my thoughts (some idealized fictional woman, naturally) was hanging on my every word? (Ironically, this turned out to be somewhat true. In the early days of my blog, Emily was reading every entry and hoping that I would drop some kind of hint about liking her. And, of course, the catalyzing moment that got me and Emma on our first date happened in a blog entry three years later.)

I can certainly trace my desire to be a screenwriter – and, it follows, most of my personal and professional decisions of the past several years – directly back to how much I enjoyed writing my in my online journal. My passion for writing mixed with my long-standing passion for filmmaking, and my chosen career was forged in that furnace. I have written over 600 pages of journal entries to date, though my updating was always sporadic and usually correlated with the amount of personal connection I had with someone at the time. This usually meant that if I was in a happy relationship, I would talk with them for hours instead of writing. When I was single or in a frustrating relationship, I would post damned near daily.

Over the past two years, though, I haven’t kept a personal blog at all. The best I’ve been able to muster was a vow a few months back to update my old Livejournal every single day.

I lasted two days, and the second day just had a post with me saying that I’d make sure to do a real update the following day.

I will not promise daily updates now, but I will say this:

I am going to be updating this blog as often as I can. I miss having a space online where I can write whatever I want, and hopefully elicit some kind of interesting discussion about what I have to say. As I am currently in a happy, long term relationship, I am going to have to buck my own trend and save some thought and inspiration for the rest of you. I may not post every day, or even every week, but I will try to post whenever I have something interesting or funny to say.

Bookmark this site, and follow me on twitter if you can (@chasandres). I will tweet my updates as well, so that you will know when I’ve written something new. Feel free to leave comments, if you wish, asking me to write about something you want to hear. Generally, an idea from a reader is all I need for inspiration.

Otherwise, welcome back to my blog! It’s been a while, friends.

He also loved pranks.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he was very good at them. My favorite Sid prank was the time he IMed me pretending to be a girl from a small Eskimo village in Alaska. I played along, and fed right into his game right on up to the point where he started asking me to tell “her” about some of my friends from school. I decided to tell “her” all about Sid, and how she had better stay away from him if she didn’t want to be stalked by the creepiest kid I knew. At that point he just started yelling at me, asking him how I knew it was him. I actually still have part of the chatlog. with me listing all of the things he did wrong:

fennhacker: 1. eagles don’t live in Northern Alaska
fennhacker: 2. The northern lights are never seen every day
fennhacker: 3. they don’t have much snow right now
reallyhotgurl297: FUCK YOU
reallyhotgurl297: EAGLES DO LIVE THERE
fennhacker: 4. The inuits don’t live in Alaska, they live in northern canada
reallyhotgurl297: AND THE NORTHERN LIGHTS ARE THERE ALL DAY
reallyhotgurl297: AND ALASKA
fennhacker: HELL NO!
reallyhotgurl297: HAHAHAHAHA
reallyhotgurl297: THIS IS SOO FUNNY
reallyhotgurl297: SEEING WHAT I DID WRONG
fennhacker: HAHAHAHA yourself
reallyhotgurl297: THIS IS WICKED FUNNY
reallyhotgurl297: SEEING WHAT I DID WRONG
fennhacker: 5. Girls HATE the sex pistols
reallyhotgurl297: NOT ALWAYS
fennhacker: 6. All of them
fennhacker: 7. EVERYONE has heard of Boston
reallyhotgurl297: NO!
reallyhotgurl297: NOT TRUE

It goes on from there.

Anyway, after this I deemed Sid worthy of being the brunt of some of my own pranks. One day in math class, Sid got back a test with a grade that infuriated him – a D+. He was so angry about this that he tore up the test in front of everyone, shredding it and throwing the pieces into the air before stomping out of the classroom. Since class was ending anyway, I don’t think he got into that much trouble for it, but he was infurated when he found out the next day that I had quietly picked up the scrap of paper containing the actual grade and posted it on the internet.

The best prank I ever played, though, happened just before the end of seventh grade. Sid had been bragging about getting top secret emails from someone-or-other high up in the government. We all knew he was lying, of course, but we had no way of proving it.

Until I realized that the security surrounding his Yahoo mail account was really, really lax.

His username was really easy to figure out – it was the same as his instant messenger handle. His password proved elusive, but I hit paydirt when I got to the “change password” section. This was because the secret question, the fact I would have to know about him in order to reach his deepest, darkest communiques, was his zip code.

Yeah. I knew the zip code for the town he lived in.

The next day, Sid was unable to log into his email account and completely blew his top. He didn’t know what had happened. After a few days, he started getting emails in his new Yahoo account from his old one, telling him to stop lying about recieving top secret government files. A few days after that, I gave him his new password and stopped the madness.

I think Sid learned a valuable lesson about online security, and I learned a valuable lesson about taking pranks too far once Sid ran screaming to a teacher and got me in trouble for what I had done. (Luckily for me, this was before the current era of viruses and rampant hacking and phishing schemes I bet kids nowadays get into all sorts of trouble for this). A good time was had by all, and Sid and I remained friends until middle school ended and then we never spoke again.

I hadn’t thought about this for years, but it crossed my mind today because of this news story.

Yep, some crazy 4chan user knew Sarah Palin’s zip code and did to her what I did to Sid ten years ago. It’s too bad a vice presidential candidate isn’t more computer literate than a seventh grader in 1998.

I am quite proud of myself. You see, I left Boston on Wednesday, September 3rd. I arrived in LA 5 days later, on Sunday the 7th. By the morning of the 11th I had signed a lease, and it is now Tuesday the 16th and I am typing this entry from the sanctity of my own apartment, on my own internet, sitting on a new chair in front of a new desk and looking at a new computer monitor. 13 days strikes me as particulary good time to go from homeless on one side of the country to settled on the other.

I only hope finding a job will be so easy, though I know it most likely won’t be. I do hope that one month from now I can consider myself employed, at least on a most-of-the-time basis.

A few lessons I have learned during this process:

- Companies, it seems, don’t expect people to actually do what I did. Quite a few landlords refused to let me even look at places since I have no current employment. Most places were baffled that I had no current residence. I was given a lot of confused, head-scratching looks and the sort of grin that says “good luck, buddy. No one makes it in this town without having a red carpet and a limo waiting for them at LAX.”

- Your credit rating actually is important. I had always heard that I would care about my credit rating someday, and the day finally came when the determination for whether or not I could rent the apartment I wanted came down to my credit score. Oh, and if you want to check that score online, all of the sites that offer the service require you to know all sorts of information that there’s no way you’ll ever figure out, like the numbers to credit cards that you’re not even sure you’ve ever had.

- Money goes *quick* when you are buying all the incidentals needed to make a house run. Toilet paper, paper towels, dish towels, a rug for the floor in the bathroom so you don’t slip and die when you step out of the shower, soaps and sponges and hangars and all the rest…it adds up, not to mention the already insane cost of food, gas, rent, power, water…I will find a way to make this work, but don’t let anyone tell you that now is an easy time to make the transition to adulthood.

- Want furniture? Look online. Furniture stores, even used ones, are monumental ripoffs and don’t have furniture for people who don’t want to spend more than a couple hundred bucks to furnish their entire place. I went on craigslist and to yard sales and ended up paying $40 for my desk, $30 for my TV stand, $25 for my futon, $40 for my combination dresser/sheving unit, $10 for my glass cabiniet, and $5 for my filing cabinet. All of that together couldn’t buy you one dresser in a store, used or otherwise. Also: beds. I spent a whole morning going to different mattress stores, dealing with horrible, mean mattress salesmen, and couldn’t find a single one under $350 – and that one couldn’t be delivered for over a week. One second on craigslist and I found a brand new quilt-topped mattress – REALLY nice – delivered that day for $250.

- You can pack a near-infinite amount of stuff into one PT Cruiser if you do it right. All you have to do is look at the pictures and marvel at how much I was able to bring. And on that note…

Pictures of my new home!

That’s it! Feel free to come and visit, one and all, next time you’re out here in sunny, beautiful North Hollywood. I live right off the Vineland exit of the 101, seconds from Studio City, and will have a decent amount of time on my hands as I look for work and plan job interviews!

]]> http://chasandres.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/it-is-possible-to-pick-up-everything-and-move-cross-country/feed/ 6 chasandres img_0025 img_0026 img_0028 img_0030 img_0031 img_0032 img_0033 img_0035 img_00361 http://chasandres.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/motel-hell/ http://chasandres.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/motel-hell/#comments Sat, 06 Sep 2008 04:48:31 +0000 chasandres http://chasandres.wordpress.com/?p=71 ]]> I arrived at a motel in Amarillo, Texas tonight, bone-weary from thirteen hours of driving down Interstate 40, heading west toward my future. It was a Motel 6, which I usually have good luck at. They generally have fast internet, comfortable sheets, and sometimes even a washer and dryer. I pulled my car up to the front office, and went inside.

The man at the counter reminded me of Dwight Schrute, but only in an indefinable sort of way. “Howdy,” he nodded at me.

“I’d like a room, please. Just for myself. AAA discount if you’ve got it.”

“I can only give you one upstairs,” he replied, flashing me a look of genuine sorrow. “All of ‘em on the ground floor are taken.”

“That’s fine,” I nodded, and he seemed genuinely surprised that I was willing to accept a room that I had to walk up a flight of stairs to get to. Incredulous, he pulled out a map of the grounds.

“Actually, I’ve got this one here. You can pull right up to it an’ park out front. It’s real close. Or I can give you this nice big handicapped room down around the other side. First floor, real easy to get at.”

I looked down, wondering if I had missed some obvious physical handicap somewhere on my body. A missing limb, perhaps, or a third leg. All I could see was my stomach, which didn’t seem all that large by Texas standards. “I’ll take whatever,” I murmured, not really caring much where I ended up just so long as I didn’t have to drive down any more of that godforsaken interstate to get there.

“I’ll give you the handicapped one, then. You’ll like that one.”

After a prolonged hassle that involved handing fake Dwight my credit card and driver’s license several times each, I hastened off to find my room. I hadn’t noticed from the road, but the motel looks EXACTLY like the one from No Country For Old Men. I half expected to find Llewelyn Moss’ body waiting for me on the carpet when I opened the door.

Instead I found way too many cigarette burns and a handicapped bathroom the size of a cattle ranch. The floor is tiled over, the shower is nothing more than a hose and a drain, and a fan makes a terrifying “WHOOSH!” noise whenever I turn on the light.

I also had to pay three dollars for the internet connection in order to write this.

But I am now only two days away from beginning my new life.

For now, I leave you with Barack Obama’s famous chili recipe. I made it last night, and it’s really, really good. I only suggest you add more chili powder or some kind of spicy sauce if you like your chili with any kind of kick.

Obama Family Chili Recipe

1 large onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
Several cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound ground turkey or beef
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground oregano
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon ground basil
1 tablespoon chili powder
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Several tomatoes, depending on size, chopped
1 can red kidney beans

Saute onions, green pepper and garlic in olive oil until soft.

Add ground meat and brown.

Combine spices together into a mixture, then add to ground meat.

Add red wine vinegar.

Add tomatoes and let simmer, until tomatoes cook down.

Add kidney beans and cook for a few more minutes.

Serve over white or brown rice. Garnish with grated cheddar cheese, onions and sour cream.

SONG OF THE WEEK 8/26

Title: Virtute The Cat Explains Her Departure

Artist: The Weakerthans

Album: Reunion Tour

Why You Should Care: This song came on the stereo last night as I drove home, and I soaked it in as I cruised through the empty Massachusetts streets. It is one of the few songs that made me tear up the first time I heard it – a true masterpiece. As the title suggests, the song is from the perspective of a cat who has run away from home, trying to explain to her owner why she felt the need to run away. The part that really gets to me are the lines where the cat speaks about “the sound that he found for me” – which, I can only assume, is how a cat would think about her own name.

Listen When: You are feeling pensive or reflective, or in a general need for some amazing lyricism.

Download Link: Here.

But there was something that the judges didn’t know until after the contest was over.

The work of art that won second place was not created by a human.

It was painted by a bear.

Somewhere up there, Kurt Vonnegut is smiling