The Nostalgia Channel

First of all, allow me to repeat - the phone is STILL not working. I receive calls, but all I hear is static, and I can't hear people when I call them. Verizon had BETTER be here Tuesday morning to fix the problem. Until then, please do not attempt to call me. The Internet is working intermittently (it only went down once today, and that for a minute), so I would prefer if you sent e-mails or text messages until the problem is cleared up.

Spent a quiet morning online, listening to the Beatles show (B-sides of singles was the theme today) and looking around online. I went online mostly to e-mail Mom and tell her I wouldn't be able to call her today and make sure she wouldn't worry about me. I was at X-Entertainment, looking at Matt's collection of 80s TV ads, and enjoyed the Saturday Morning commercials so much I went to YouTube to look for more.

That lead me to several series of videos containing bumpers for The Disney Channel in the 1980s and 90s. We were one of the only families I knew with premium cable until well into the 80s. My stepfather is one of the great couch potatoes of the universe, and even the basic cable package wasn't enough for him. We watched The Disney Channel long before most kids did, when it still ran an ecelectic mix of Canadian dramas and action programs (Danger Bay, The Edison Twins, our much-loved early 90s favorite Road to Avonlea), made-for-the-Disney Channel movies, Disney animated features, classic non-Disney films (I saw a lot of my first old musicals on Disney), half-hour programs highlighting the animated shorts and featurettes (Good Morning, Mickey, Donald's Quack Attack), music videos made of sequences from Disney animated and live-action movies, foreign, syndicated, and (later) original Disney cartoon and live-action kids' series, and concerts and special events (the Going Home series, The American Teacher Awards).

Avonlea was probably our favorite of the Disney Channel Canadian series. My sisters and I were entranced by the Anne of Green Gables adaptation with Megan Follows that came out in the mid-80s and love this show just as much. I was always fondest of "The Story Girl"...for I loved to tell stories, too. I would often recall how the children on Avonlea reacted when the parents announced they were having a baby. They took it much better than my sisters and I did when Mom and Dad made a similar announcement in March 1992. (We didn't believe them. I was a month from turning 13!)

I remember Rose was crazy about Danger Bay and Five Mile Creek, the latter a western. I never got into them. Anny loved the adorable Under the Umbrella Tree, a toddler show about a young woman and her four funny puppet pals.

Mom may still have a few bits and pieces of the early Disney Channel at her house. We taped two Disney-Channel-only holiday specials, A Disney Channel Christmas and Disney's Halloween Treat, in 1988. (We also picked up two Disney Halloween specials that ran on Fox that year. Disney had other holiday-related specials made up almost entirely of sequences from the animated films and shorts. There was a Mother's Day special, a Valentine's Day special I remember quite fondly, and Goofy's Salute to Father, made up of Goofy's 50s Suburbian Everyman shorts. I think there was also one for the 4th of July.) Christmas includes the "Disney Night Time" bumper with the glass-like purple Disney Channel logo and the shiny effect. We taped a couple of Disney and non-Disney movies off the Disney Channel in the late 80s and early 90s as well. (Our only copy of Star Wars: A New Hope until 1997 was taped off The Disney Channel in 1990.)

One of the things I remember the most about the early Disney Channel was how they used to run things between the shows and movies when they ran short. These were usually classic shorts that related to whatever had just ended, but we'd occasionally see something more bizarre, like the Tim Burton short Vincent (I'm getting the willies just THINKING of that one), the 70s stop-motion short Mouse Mania, or a featurette like Donald In Mathematics Land or Ben and Me.

I also have fond memories of Walt Disney Presents, which ran episodes from the Disneyland and Walt Disney's World of Color 50s series. That's how we got to see all the great Disney anthology heroes. Rose was fondest of Elfago Baca and Zorro (she's loved all things Spanish and Mexican since she was little). I preferred Dr. Syn and Gallagher, the Newsboy. Anny's favorite was Texas John Slaughter. We could still get Daddy to join in when Davy Crockett was on. He and Mom loved the odd "Tomorrowland" sci-fi/science shorts, too. I liked the ads for Disney movies that were new when the show came out but could, by the late 80s, be seen on video. It was fascinating to see how many of these films and the theme parks came into being.

Oh yes, and work was steady today, nothing major. People may have been scared off by the on-and-off rain and thunder we had all day long. I rode to work in the rain (being unable to call for a ride), but thankfully managed to dodge another storm and make it home dry after a groceries run.