Strollerderby : pop culture

Yet Another Generation of Young Girl Popfatuations

Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:09:00 GMT

Like a lot of teenage boys, I had a poster of a professional male racquetball player next to my bed. At the time, my friends were adorning their walls with posters of Cindy Crawford drinking from that Pepsi can or some vestige from their older brother's Jane Fonda fixation.

But I went to sleep each night staring at the visage of some nobody I can't even remember nowadays, thinking that if I practiced really hard, every day, for hours on end, I'd still never fill out eye protection goggles like that dude.

At the time, however, I knew that if he had ever visited our local mall -- maybe for some spiffy new Ocean Pacific corduroy PE coach shorts -- I'm positive I would have talked my mom into driving me over to see him, and we probably would have ended our day in jail, arrested for either harassment or stalking. Or if I was really lucky, both.

What I like to call my Humiliating Racquetball Period came back in full, embarrassing waves the other day when I was reading a New York Times story about these young girls' obsession with the new vampire movie Twilight and one of its stars: sweet, sweet Jawbone Pattinson.

Pattinson was making an appearance at a mall in Pennsylvania, and a thousand young girls lined up to see him, if only for a fleeting, passing moment. Many drove long distances. Many more screamed. A few appeared to almost pass out with glee.

A surprising number seemingly confused the actor with his character, wondering whether if they got too close, would he bite them on the neck -- just like his character in the movie.

From the story: “It is bizarre,” Pattinson said. “People come from three states away and walk up to you trembling. I feel that I am at a disadvantage here because I can’t provide this mystical thing that they came for in the two seconds we have.”

Having once obsessed over everything from middle aged, short-court tennis pros to the Guess jeans triangle, it never surprises me to read these stories -- the pandemonium of the Beatles at Shea Stadium was referenced. Or the 400-mile treks through the snow to see Tiffany at the Mall of Middle America or wherever. I swear I can recall kids passing out and needing medical attention on Michael Jackson's Japan tour.

And didn't Don Johnson cause riots in Germany? Over Heartbeat?

Ouch.

Now, you hear similar stories about Avril Lavigne, Miley Cyrus or, far, far worse on the future humiliation scale, the Jonas Brothers.

What, exactly, is wrong with our girls?

Why do they go bat-shit crazy over these passing pop infatuations and how can we stop them?

Or ... do we?

I'm reminded of that girl who said during the New Kids on the Block craze that she'd take a bullet for the Cute One, Joey McIntyre. Later, probably on some VH1 then-and-now documentary, they caught up with the same girl 10 years later and she was all, like, Joey who?

My depth of concern doesn't go deeper than a desire to avoid someday driving my daughter and her shrieking friends to see Britney Spears's child perform at the Warfield, while I stand in the back with all the other dads pretending not to actually enjoy the music. I survived my infatuations with remarkably few official charges and incarcerations and I'm sure she'll survive hers.

But I frequently wonder what I'm going to say to my daughter when these obsessions begin and she cries behind locked doors while I knock gently, apparently not understanding "what true love is!"

Oy.

I can wait for this.

Sure, part of me will want to impart the wisdom of age and break out YouTube videos on the evolution of a NKOTB groupie to perform something akin to an anti-cult re-education program, proving to her that time will cure all.

But part of me, I'm sure, will remember that nameless racquetball player and the way he always seemed ready, poised with his graphite Pro-Kennex, to knock my heart right out of my chest. In the end, I hope I'll remember these are innocent, adolescent thrills and do what parents have done for generations: just shut up, drive and keep that smirk to myself.

-- Mike at Cry It Out!

RetroFitted: Does Anyone Still Care About Garfield?

Jen Chaney — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:02:00 GMT

Welcome to RetroFitted, a new feature that focuses on pop culture phenomena from the '70s, '80s and '90s, and assesses whether they still resonate with today's kids.

First up: "Garfield."

The comic strip about an overweight cat and his dork of an owner made its debut in 1978. In the early 1980s -- when "Garfield" creator Jim Davis founded the company Paws Inc., effectively launching the "Garfield" brand -- Jon Arbuckle's best friend transformed from mere cartoon to full-on feline franchise. The cat was everywhere: On the cover of best-selling books, in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, in animated TV specials and stuck to a hell of a lot of back windshields in the form of a stuffed animal with suction cup feet.

I was in elementary school when Garfield first got hot. I adored him, and I have the plush Pookie and an original copy of "Garfield Weighs In" to prove it. My friends and I traded stickers with Garfield and Odie on them. We lovingly referred to that sarcastic puss as "Garry." We thought every one of his lasagna jokes was freakin' high-larious.

As the '80s wore on, I, like many of my peers, grew up and realized that "Garfield" wasn't high-larious. He was actually repetitive, corny and kind of dull. While the comic and its numerous related products were still prominent on the cultural scene, the trend seemed to have passed its prime.

Yet here we are, 30 years later, and "Garfield" is not only still around -- the comic holds the Guiness World Record as most syndicated strip -- its popularity, or at least profitability, is still strong. In 2004, "Garfield: The Movie" (I can't say this too many times: Shame on you, Bill Murray) came to theaters and earned almost $200 million worldwide. A 2006 sequel, "Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties," brought in $141 million worldwide; last year a direct-to-DVD movie, "Garfield Gets Real," was released. The cat has inspired multiple video games. A new "Garfield" TV show is poised to launch in France. And so help me, sweet Mother of Mothers, there is actually an annual convention called the Garfield Gathering, where collectors get together each year in search of obscure Nermal-related items they don't already own.

According to this Slate story from 2004, the "Garfield" corporate machine generates between $750 million and $1 billion each year. In other words, someone is still buying this stuff and it's fair to assume that at least some of them are parents with tabby cat-obsessed kids. "Garfield" does still resonate and there is one simple reason: Because new children are born every day. And some of those new children will eventually go through a stage where they, too, think lasagna jokes are terribly witty. Like Slate suggests, Garfield continues to stick around because he keeps on doing the same old crap.

With one exception: In what might be the best thing to happen to "Garfield" ever, a repurposed version of the strip has recently developed its own following on the Internet. It's called "Garfield Minus Garfield," and it's exactly what it sounds like: The daily strip, but with the familiar feline removed from every panel. It's twisted, disturbing and often gutbustingly funny, finally making Davis's comic appealing to adults. Wow. There really is no stopping that darned cat.

RetroFitted appears on Strollerderby every Thursday morning.

Photo: Ty

The Internet is Not the Devil

Kelly Mills — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:31:00 GMT

It seems that every generation views bashing the up-and-coming one as a kind of sport, and this one is no exception. Where older folks once lamented rock music and long hair as markers of the end of civilization, now we have teenagers who are ignorant and narcissistic and spend so much time online that they can no longer interact with real people in the real world. Well, Emily Goldwasser at Salon isn't buying it, and she says the internet is not a danger and a disaster for our kids. She's responding in part to a phone survey of teens that showed a "stunning ignorance" of history and literature.

Boy, does she make some good points in this excellent article: She highlights that with blogs and social networking sites, we now have a generation of kids who are (gasp) voluntarily writing. The internet has "created a generation, perhaps the first, of writers, activists, storytellers" and all our screaming isn't going to stop that juggernaut. In addition, the kids today also know how to find information online, and therefore google has freed up their brains to dig deeper into topics. The real problem, it seems, is that this makes us very nervous. "We're afraid. Our kids know things we don't. They drove the presidential debates onto YouTube and very well may determine the outcome of this election. They're texting at the dinner table and responsible for pretty much every enduring consumer cultural phenomenon: iPod, iTunes, iPhone; Harry Potter, 'High School Musical'; large hot drinks with gingerbread flavoring." You know, I do believe she's right. I just hope when my kid is a teen, she'll have my back.

Could We Lose These Parenting Terms In 2008?

Kelly Mills — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 14:33:00 GMT

The annual list of terms that deserve to be banned just came out, and I think it falls a litle short on the parenting lingo. When the mom and pop terms first appear, they maybe seem funny or twisted or innocuous or entertaining or whatever. Then they appear more and more, until finally you start to think if one more person refers to, say, "MILFs" you might have to barf--especially if it's in the "MILPH" sense. (Note to mommys making lingerie calendars--don't try and reclaim these terms in a faux-empowerment way, please.) They get overused and nauseating and when MSNBC uses them in a headline, you know the whole thing has so jumped the shark. It's over. Done. Let's erase the term from the lexicon and move on.

My nominees for this year's overused parenting terms: "baby-daddy" and "yummy mummy". Baby-daddy just got used here: "Jamie Lynn's baby-daddy a 'lying, cheating dog'." Sigh. Kill me now.Maybe you haven't seen "yummy mummy" as much as I have, because I have to troll both British and U.S. papers for parenting stories, but believe me, this U.K.-originated one is supposed to be a softer version of MILF, it's used regularly, and I didn't like it to begin with. So for 2008, let's start with a clean slate and replace these with something better, something you'll have to come up with because I don't invent language, I just bag on it. And nominate anything else you'd like to see stricken from the record for good.