A week in the life for me in '96: I delivered pizza for Domino's Pizza 'til 2am five days. I'd watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 til 4am or so. I might then get up early to do a 10-5 shift. Then on my days off, I'd play music in a basement in Philly with a few friends I met at a night school jam session. We started a blues band called Bad Tyming and then a punky rock band called Lemonloaf. When I wasn't jamming with them, I'd be at my friend Mark's place to play video games. We would go to flea markets and pick up cheap games and consoles. We had PCs, Atari 2600, NES, SNES, Genesis, PSOne and N64. I was also getting into various "cures" like health food, accupuncture and vitamins thanks to the influence of my girlfriend. I was 29.
Dexter's Laboratory
There is something about the brother/sister relationship here that is a little bit like my own. Instead of a big sister though, I had a little sister with the same sort of energy and blond hair. I don't think she ever meddled with my stuff, and I never had a laboratory (although I did have a darkroom), but it brung back fond memories of us doing things together as kids.
I love the art style of this show. This was Tartakosky's first show where he was director, I believe. He went on to make The Powerpuff Girls and the Samurai Jack, both great shows.
Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy
I was a big fan of Canadian skit comedy show Kids in the Hall when I finally saw them in the early 90s on cable television. When the movie came out a few years after the tv show ended, I was so excited. I wasn't disappointed either. It's great. I love all the players in this comedy team and still follow them all to this day. Like Monty Python, I could probably rattle off the dialog from many of their skits on demand.
Duke Nukem 3D
At the time, Mark and I were into FPS games. We played Doom, Heretic, Hexen, and Quake a lot. When Duke Nukem came out, though, that became our favorite game. We must've played it start to finish so many times, either solo or co-op, on many different systems. We had it on PC, PSOne, N64 and wished we had a Saturn so we could have the version that had the full end cut scene like on PC. Duke's lingo, extracted from many an action movie, beame a constant part of our language when we played and it still is. .
Jamiroquai - Traveling Without Moving
I distinctly remember telling a friend about Jamiroquai, and he said, "They're just a rip off of Stevie Wonder". Well, who hasn't ripped off Stevie Wonder, I thought. I didn't care. I liked their style, as marginally different from Stevie as they might be. My favorite song off this is "Cosmic Girl" but the video for "Virtual Insanity" is a lot of fun to watch.
John Keegan - Fields of Battle: The Wars For North America
Are we in the midst of another one? Anyway, I got into John Keegan from reading a book of his on a vacation with my dad. I still can't track down what it was I read, but it was a collection of journals from soldiers in wars all throughout recorded history. I must've stayed up almost all night for several days reading until I finished it. John Keegan's name was on this book. Maybe he just edited it, or wrote the introduction, I'm not sure, but his association with it wasn't a mistake because he is all about getting the soldier's eye view of battles and what really goes on. Since then, I'll read anything by him, and I'm not a big war book fan either.
Comments
Cary Woodham
07/07/2020 at 09:30 PM
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is my top favorite TV show of all time. Did you watch the new ones on Netflix?
The PowerPuff Girls was actually Craig McKracken's baby, but Tartakovsky worked on it, too. Those were really good cartoons.
1996 was a big year for video games. We got Super Mario RPG at the first half of the year, and the second half was the release of the N64 and Super Mario 64. 1996 was also the year I started writing game reviews for The Dallas Morning News, one of my most proudest accomplishments.
KnightDriver
07/08/2020 at 06:33 PM
I remember watching it back then and seeing the movie they put out in the theater. But since then I really haven't kept up with them even though some of those guys showed up at a local community theater in my area not too long ago. Sometimes a show hits you at a particular time and place in your life and it fits perfectly.
I saw the Powerpuff Girls movie when it came out and really liked it. I've only seen a few of the TV episodes.
Yes, Super Mario RPG. I figure each year I'll pick a new favorite and build my library up that way slowly and affordably. Super Mario RPG might be next year's pick for me. I love that game and the whole series.
Good for you. I've only published a couple of things for my college way back.
Super Step
Contributing Writer
07/08/2020 at 03:13 AM
Is it really a ripoff just because you're hitting the same genre? I dunno, maybe it's deeper than that, but I get annoyed at how much music is called a "rip off" of something else.
I still remember when whoever owns the rights to Tom Petty's "Last Dance of Mary Jane" wanted to sue the Red Hot Chili Peppers for "Dani California" because the riffs ARE pretty damn identical, but they are in such different tempos and accomplish such different things musically that I fail to see how one is a "rip off." And of course the vocal melodies are completely different. I dunno, that just seems to come from people who want to prove to you what they know (and legal teams who want to make some money from the copyrights they have) more than people who are actually upset about "rip offs."
KnightDriver
07/08/2020 at 06:55 PM
It's always the issue with music because there are only so many notes and possible harmonies within the system used for popular music. No one's going to write a pop song using a 12 tone harmonic structure like some composers have done; you've only got the octave and major and minor keys; songs are bound to sound alike.
Copyright law for music must be a nightmare. It might be more clear for sampling, but it's in the nature of music to interate and build on another's ideas. It goes against the creative process but people want to get paid. I often remember an interview with Nile Rogers saying how he was flattered that Sugar Hill Gang used a riff from Chic's Good Times, but he had to sue because they also used the strings he had recorded, and it cost him a lot of money to record that with real string players.
SanAndreas
07/08/2020 at 02:55 PM
For me 1996 was the year of Super Mario RPG and Super Mario 64. The latter was the mosf amazing game I'd seen at the time. Too bad the N64 was kind of a bust overall.
KnightDriver
07/08/2020 at 07:01 PM
I really like the N64. I had the 32X expansion module and everything. I just didn't play a lot of Mario games at the time. But I get your point. It was short lived and had a limited library compared to other systems.
I played a bunch of games on it though: Hexen, Destruction Derby 64, Turok, Star Wars Rogue Squadron, Clayfighter 63 1/3, Diddy Kong Racing, Quake, Duke Nukem and Pokemon Snap.
Matt Snee
Staff Writer
07/08/2020 at 11:19 PM
I like Tartakovsky a lot. I loved his Clone Wars shorts. I never got into the LucasFilm Clonewars cartoons much, never liked it.
I loved the Kids in the Hall when I was a kid. I remember many of them.
KnightDriver
07/09/2020 at 08:17 PM
I tried to get into Clonewars. I saw the movie and liked it a bit, but I've never stuck with the TV show for long. I think the main characters are pretty uninteresting and most of the stories are pretty derivative of SW staries already told.
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