Hey Remember That!: When the Disney Channel had to be Paid for…circa 1995

First things first: mute the video – it’s Journey.  Might be embarrassing.  Moving on.  I was wondering what I could bring back to people to create a sense of nostalgia.  Most of what I remembered was from Nickelodeon and the Disney channel.  I remember when the Disney Channel was part of cable packages that weren’t free.  No 500 station packages.  You had 73 stations and everyone knew everyone else’s channels.  HD was a myth.  Paying for the Disney Channel was something of a treat that the cable company would toss out for people to subscribe to and then cut it when they wanted to pay for.  Remember the days when NESN wasn’t free and you had to pay to watch Red Sox games?  If your family was upper-lower-middle class and semi-poor, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  TV won’t really ever be like that again.  Not with the new stuff the Internet is churning out year after year.  I’m watching the video and I’m at the 1:40 mark and I forgot how Doug went from being on Nickelodeon to being an ABC One Saturday morning cartoon.  Really changed the dynamic of the whole kids cartoon.  We didn’t need Tween shows.  We had shows about middle schools kids, monsters, talking animals and babies.  And that was it.  The content was what kept us kids glued to the tube.  Oh well.  Those times are something I can only dream about now.  Although I’m sure that all of the shows listed on this video are on DVD or streaming or somewhere out in the world waiting to be bought by my generation years from now and re-consumed just to feel the Edward G. Robinson wanted to feel at the end of Soylent Green.  Adieu. 

Hey Remember That: Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling!

Alright, so there is something revealing about me with this clip from a Hulk Hogan cartoon.  I loved wrestling as a kid.  I loved cartoons as a kid.  Most of the cartoons I watched were on USA network sometime during the weekend mornings.  Now, rewatching this made me so excited.  The ridiculous cars.  The footage of cheering on a wrestling crowd.  The cartoon of Rowdy Roddy Piper (how can anything go wrong after that?)  Who would have thought that someone could write a cartoon about Andre the Giant, Superfly Jimmy Snooka and some other weird wrestlers could take over a French bakery to make Andre the Giant’s mother happy?  Skip ahead to the 4:45 mark to see some calamity involving the remake of an I Love Lucy skit and then turning it into a food fight.  And cue Mean Gene at the 5:30 mark!  I didn’t think that I would ever remember this, or that there would still be footage of this somewhere online.  This is the kind of stuff that PIPA and SOPA would be taking away folks.  Our memories would be the only thing left, and we wouldn’t be aloud to relive the magic or remember the agony.  Save the Internet!

'”Hey Remember That?”: The IM Warn

Ah, yes.  Remember the days before Facebook, when everyone would chat thru AOL Instant Messenger and nothing else.  Chat rooms were a thing that middle school kids would do on a saturday night to find out weird things on the Internet.  Instant messaging random people and try to “cyber”, which sadly, is still around today.  The term “a/s/l pic?” became a popular way to either meet some stranger and/or creep the hell out of them.  Then came the WARN button.  If you clicked on it, it would add 20% of a warning rate to a person’s screen name.  The funny part about the warn button itself, is that it is the only idea that I can think of what a company would institute for its customers to not use their product.  It’s like if every Playstation came with a soccer ball.  However, with the all-but-certain death to AOLIM, the warn button revolutionized how people would interact with each other. 

Recently, cyber bullying has become a recent topic of discussion, yet interacting with each other online has been here for an even longer time.  Since people use Facebook chat, G-Chat, Skype, and everything else between, the number of bullied kids has increased because THERE IS NO WARN BUTTON ON FACEBOOK.  Something easily attainable with a few friends and some time to ambush them with IM’s.  If you warned someone enough, they would be forced offline for at least a couple of hours or at most a whole day.  Meaning that AOL is the only Internet company to address cyber bullying before society knew it would turn into a suicidal pandemic.  This is something that Marc Zuckerberg and other CEO’s that have user-chat platforms have not addressed, but only come out and denounce.  I say, actions, speak louder than words (er, IM’s).    Bring back the warn button and cut cyber bullying out of the equation!