It's Over the Hill and I'm Over the Hype

Comic-Con turned 40 this year and its contract will be up in a few years with the San Diego Convention Center. Some people are worried that it will move to Anaheim or Las Vegas since there's no bigger space in San Diego. For years, it's already spilled over into the Marriot Hotel to the west. This year it took over a new Hilton just built to the east. I went to Showtime's Weeds panel there tonight and everything was very state-of-the-art. Every year I try to keep my eye out for what's new and I guess I succeeded in finding that. All I'd really planned for was my usual pass through the small press section to discover new artists and to watch a couple of movie premieres. I no longer care about panels with celebrities or the latest announcements. Most of that stuff gets reported in same time on the web. This year my main goal was just to find bootleg DVDs of old Spider-Man TV shows that will probably never be officially released. Between finding those and taking pictures of over 150 different costumes, I'd say the 40th Comic-Con was a good one for me, and not because everyone else says so too.

Guess Which Title Is Getting a TV Remake?

Here are my random picks from this week's New York Times Book Review section:

Fiction

Ravens - George Dawes Green; "The Boatwrights just won 318 million dollars in the Georgia state lottery. It's going to be the worst day of their lives."

The Widows of Eastwick - John Updike; "Now close to 70 and widowed by their second husbands, they are haunted by mortality and use their waning powers to atone for past crimes."

Nonfiction

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Super Athletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen - Christopher McDougall; "half rollicking adventure tale, half training manual, though even the leatheriest ultramarathoner might find the Tarahumara training diet of ground corn spiked with barbecued mice challenging."

The Importance of Music To Girls - Lavinia Greenlaw; "In smart, lovely prose, she begins with her mother's singing and moves through her allegiance to disco, punk and new wave, bringing her youth to life."

Guest-Starring Milla Jovovich

My favorite TV series of all time finally came out on DVD yesterday and you know I had it pre-ordered on Amazon for 30% off. I was a little worried that it might not be as good as I remembered, which is the case sometimes when revisiting childhood. Not so with Parker Lewis. It's aged just as well as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which it openly references and then improves on through "a surreal, living-cartoon-like quality and clever camera angles and filming techniques" (from Wikipedia). If you read my Benjamin Button review, you know those two elements are my top two favorites on film. Parker Lewis isn't just a rip-off of Ferris Bueller though, and while he goes on to become the most popular guy in school, in the first three episodes Park just seems to be popular with the school principal. That may still sound like a rip-off, but what I mean to say is that you don't see other students going ga-ga over him from the beginning like they do with Ferris. Watching the pilot episode by itself, you just might confuse Lewis with every other teen rebel who has stereotypical accomplices as his "best buds."

There are more obvious differences between Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Parker Lewis Can't Lose. In terms of setting, there's a big difference between the Midwest's real-life Chicago and Southern California's fictional Santo Domingo (with California's car culture, it's kinda backwards that Bueller has the car and Lewis is always on foot). In terms of theme, Bueller plays on generational conflict while Lewis works through it and even collaborates with his authority figures (difference between Gen X and Y?). In terms of character, the antagonistic sister goes from being older to younger, the principal changes from male to female, and the buds go from Bueller's reluctant best friend who secretly likes his girlfriend (a love triangle) to Lewis' Luke Perry/Corey Haim/Corey Feldman mash-up of a best friend and a devoted nerdy freshman who secretly likes his sister (future brother-in-law?). This last tidbit brings up a good point - Parker Lewis is all about the future whereas Ferris Bueller is so in the present. In terms of plot, most episodes revolve around Park trying to help classmates with college plans (Episode 2) and "careers" (Episodes 3-5, 8, 12-15, 24).

Before wrapping this up, I better return to the title of the post and my actual review of the pilot episode. Some of you may remember Milla Jovovich as the 15 year old bad girl with nude scenes in Return to the Blue Lagoon (replacing Brooke Shields as the series' lead). Others may only recognize her as the badder grrrl from the Resident Evil series. To me, she will always be the knocked up girlfriend from one of my favorite movies of all time, Kuffs, and "genetic perfection" in The Fifth Element. Until this week, I had no recollection of her guest-starring on Parker Lewis Can't Lose (Season 1, Pilot Episode,1990) or Married With Children before that (Season 4, Episode 6, 1989). She plays the object of affection in a twist on the classic Cyrano de Bergerac plot in that she chooses neither Parker Lewis nor Mikey Randall by the end of this (her only) episode. Lewis tries to help Randall woo her with a hidden earpiece the likes of which only NASA has. This brings back to mind the comparison above because what Ferris Bueller does with answering machines and doorbells, Parker Lewis improves on using security camera footage and audio/video splicing. If you watch this series for no other reason, watch it for the these fantasy twists on pop culture references (like Jerry Steiner pulling anything out of his trenchcoat à la Mary Poppins, but explaining that it's held in place using Velcro).

25th Anniversary

The other night I was walking through the toy section at Target, looking for a birthday present for someone else's kid, and I saw that they had replicas of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures for their 25th anniversary. Cabbage Patch and G.I. Joe have already done replicas too, so it's not noteworthy for that concept. It's just that I can't believe it's been 25 years. And it hasn't. You see, the Turtles action figures were my youngest brother's toys, not mine, and he hadn't even been born in 1984. What's actually been around for 25 years is the concept, since the black and white comic started in 1984. The Turtles action figures and animated series came a few years later, along with The Real Ghostbusters action figures and animated series, not to be confused with their 1984 original movie. What else has been around 25 years? Apple Computers (which I never used until college), Transformers (which I didn't know much about until the recent live action movie), and as I mentioned in "My '80s TV Shows" post (9/1/08), The Cosby Show. Since Thanksgiving, my wife's been watching every episode from every season of Friends and now that she's done, she told me she wants to go back through the entire Cosby run. I didn't watch Friends with her, but I'd like to revisit The Cosby Show, as it started around the same time as my earliest memories. 1984 was the year I started Kindergarten. When I turned 25, it didn't feel too weird to think that I was a quarter of a century old. But to think that Kindergarten was a quarter of a century ago for me and so was Ghostbusters - now that's weird.

Happy New Year

A few years ago I actually picked this special issue of People up while waiting in line at the grocery store. Now I keep it in "the box" (for more details, see my 9/11/08 post). Just think, around five years from now, there will probably be a "Celebrate the '00s!" Right now there are already 2008 retrospectives being written or on grocery store shelves. This post is my own little list of highlights:

My Favorite Blog Post I Wrote - "Scarier Than Scary" (10/16/08)

My Least Favorite - "My Webcomics" (9/10/08)

My Blogging Resolution - shorter, more personal posts

My Favorite Single Issue Comic Book I Read - X-Men Origins: Jean Grey (Oct. 2008)

My Least Favorite - Final Crisis #4 (Nov. 2008)

My Comic-Reading Resolution - switching to online

My Least Favorite Cheesy Trend - Guitar Hero/Rock Band video games

My Favorite Movie I Saw - The Dark Knight (7/18/08)

My Least Favorite - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (5/22/08)

My Movie-Watching Resolution - taking my time with just classics from Blockbuster Online

My Favorite Music Discovery - Daedelus or MURS

My Least Favorite (don't believe the hype) - TV on the Radio

My Music-Listening Resolution - to return to Coachella music festival

My Least Favorite News Item - Cyd Charisse's obituary; she's one of my favorite actresses and my wife and I agreed long ago that if we ever have a girl, her middle name will be Charisse

My Favorite TV Show I Actually Watched - 30 Rock

My Least Favorite - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

My TV-Viewing Resolution - avoiding ever-worsening Showtime series like Dexter and Weeds (I guess that includes next week's Confessions of a Call Girl on DVD)

In case you're interested, here are the things highlighted in "the '90s" magazine:

Books - Stop the Insanity!, Men Are from Mars, Bridges of Madison County, Bridget Jones' Diary, The Celestine Prophecy

Fashion - Hammer pants, the Wonder Bra, Snapple, Magic Eye, Tickle Me Elmo, Pokémon, scrunchies, fanny packs, and Rollerblades

Movies - Clueless, Forrest Gump, Pretty Woman, Scream, Pulp Fiction, American Pie, Jurassic Park

Music - *NSYNC, The Backstreet Boys, Salt-N-Pepa, The Fugees, Dr. Dre, Garth Brooks, Alanis Morissette, Hootie and the Blowfish, Boyz II Men

News - Princess Diana, JonBenét Patricia Ramsey, Heidi Fleiss, Oklahoma City bombing, Monicagate, Amy Fisher, the Menendez brothers

Sports - Michael Jordan, John Elway, Monica Sales, Mark McGuire, Kristi Yamaguchi, Magic Johson

TV - Northern Exposure, Beverly Hills 90210, Ally McBeal, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire, Twin Peaks, Roseanne

I just realized that since my son and I were both born toward the end of a decade, his experience and nostalgia for different decades might mirror my own. In other words, the same way that I disregard the '70s might be the way he will diregard the '00s, and the same kind of affection I have for the '80s, he might have for the '10s. It's crazy for me to think that his adolescence in the '20s might be like my adolescence in the '90s.

Time Capsule Winter 1991

I went to my parents' house for my birthday and in typical fashion, my curious kid started opening up dresser drawers and pulling things out. The good news is that he came across a bunch of old comics I had long forgotten. The bad news is that after re-reading them all, I could see why I'd forgotten them, but not entirely. Certain panels and some of the ads brought back memories. I noticed the cover dates all fell in the same six-month period, the first half of 1991. Something you may not know about the cover dates on comics is that they're always at least two months ahead for reasons to do with the post office and newsstand shelving. So when I tell you that the first issues I ever bought (pictured above) of Flash (2nd series, #48), Ghost Rider (2nd series, #11), and Spider-Man (Todd McFarlane, #9) were all cover dated March 1991, that means I actually bought them in January 1991 or even December 1990. The reason this is all so interesting to me is because it connects a lot of dots in my comic book collecting. The winter of 1991 I had just turned 12 and graduated from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts. I was in my last year of elementary school and almost a year away from my first girlfriend.

The Flash TV series must have premiered the fall before in order for me to become interested enough to spend my hard-earned paper route earnings on a Flash comic. Where would I have got money enough to take a chance on three new comic series? Like I said, these issues probably came out in January, so I would have been using Christmas money. That leads me to remember that I got Spider-Man (Todd McFarlane, #7-8) from my brother Christmas of 1990 and that's why I would have already been invested enough to continue buying a series costarring Wolverine (starting in #9), who I've never liked very much. As for Ghost Rider, well, I remembered that my first mail order comic catalog (pictured above) had the character on its cover, and that would have come out sometime the first half of 1991. Seeing as how most of the comics featured in that New England Comics catalog are my favorites to this day, perhaps a cover shot was all the push I needed. As a side note, NEC published The Tick comic book and when I got back into comics in college, one of the first comic-related DVDs I searched out was the live-action Tick. Other forgotten comics that I found at my parents were my first issues of Dr. Strange (cover dated April 1991), Daredevil (May 1991), and The Punisher (June 1991). This means that starting the winter of 1991, I must have continually bought more and more new series until Image Comics arrived on the scene a year later (with Rob Liefeld's Youngblood #1, cover dated April 1992) until losing me (around Shadowhawk #4/Shadowhawk II #1, both May 1993).

TGIF="Thank Goodness It's Funny" TV

I once tried to tell a guy at church that I didn't know there was to be a third Pirates of the Caribbean until the end credits of the second one. Almost ignoring my whole point, he asked "was it funny?" He continued, "the only thing I want to know about movies anymore is if they're funny." What a rating system. By that same standard, nearly every current prime time television series would be lost (no pun intended) on him. It's brilliant! I have to say he'd be better off for it. I don't watch TV. Don't get me wrong, we own a TV, but it's not HD, and no cable either. With bunny ears, we can get ABC and CBS, but that's only until the big switch. Why do I hate TV, you ask? I don't, really. We actually got a free month of cable back when we moved to San Diego and out of all those channels, I found myself only watching Seinfeld reruns that I could get without cable. Hmmm, Lost versus Seinfeld. What's the difference between Lost and Seinfeld? Why, one's funny, that's what. From what I can tell and correct me if I'm wrong, most of the shows on primetime are not funny and like my friend, I only want funny if there's commercials involved. At the theater I can do drama. On DVD I can do drama, because I can do entire season marathons. But on TV, no drama. Reality TV is not funny to me. Untalented performers on contest shows are not funny to me. Sports aren't funny to anyone, are they? Is the problem just me? Then I talked to a guy at work. He loves TV dramas. His favorites are Dexter (dark funny), House (mean funny) and Smallville (I've only seen the Aquaman and The Flash episodes, which were hokey funny; are the Green Arrow and Supergirl episodes funny too?). Anyway, I told him I had just watched the season one finale of The Big Bang Theory (geeky funny) on DVD and it made me excited for the first episode of the season two. He replied by spoiling the plot of that first episode (which premiered weeks ago) and followed up by noting that that's the only show he currently "follows." We then tried to think back to what the last shows that we "followed" were. What was the last show YOU watched every week, not counting reruns, downloads, or DVDs?

Here are the last five TV shows that I followed as they premiered:
1. 30 Rock (the funniest show since 2006) I can't remember if I saw the first episode as a free download on iTunes or if our NBC was still working and I made time for it because I wanted to see Alec Baldwin do a sitcom, or d) none of the above. I do remember Entertainment Weekly magazine made a big deal when it first came out. Since then, we've watched each episode as it came up on NBC's website. Other shows that I've downloaded the first episode for free from iTunes are Lost (not funny), Weeds (very funny, but I don't think I've seen all the DVDs available), The Starter Wife (not funny enough to seek out any other episodes), and Burn Notice (doesn't look funny, but that's not why I haven't played it yet).

2. Spin City (1996 and funny to me) Notice the ten year difference between this and the show above. The reason for that is mostly that I was out of the country from 1998-2000 and I didn't watch any TV during that time. When I returned, I figured I had gone two years without it, so why not two more, or four, or 40? As you can see, I started up again, but I don't think I'll ever fully comprehend That '70s Show, or Dawson's Creek, or Will & Grace, which all came out while I was gone. I didn't see Friends end or the Seinfeld series finale either (funny?), but that's ok because I was only familiar with those shows from reruns in the first place.

3. X-Files (1993 sorry, not funny) I didn't stick around for all the seasons, but I definitely followed the first few. Five years prior to this I had followed Unsolved Mysteries because it was mostly about the supernatural in the beginning. As it gave way to real world crimes, I lost interest, so X-Files offered a new way to fill the void. I can't remember how long I stayed with it or why I stopped. Some Saturday morning cartoons (very serious) that I may have followed but I can't remember were Talespin (1990), Darkwing Duck (1991), Batman: The Animated Series and X-Men (both 1992).

4. Saturday Morning Videos (1990) was an extension of NBC's Friday Night Videos (1983-2002) where I watched the latest from Marky Mark and Roxette (funny) without Mtv. That's where I first saw Depeche Mode and got into the KLF. NBC also debuted The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990) and Blossom (1991) around this same time (both stupid funny), but I'm not sure I watched those every week.

5. Before that, it was something on Fox (always good for a laugh): either The Simpsons (1989), In Living Color (1990), or Married... with Children (1987), which I didn't start until after the Jefferson character. After Disney's original Sunday night movies stopped, my mom started watching Life Goes On (1989 not funny), which my brothers and I couldn't have cared less about, but the alternative was one of the worst shows of all time, America's Most Wanted (1988 and NOT funny), unless of course we snuck into our bedroom and watched Fox without our parents realizing what we were watching.

The last five shows I'm caught up on thanks to the advent of DVD:
1. The Big Bang Theory (2007) funny
2. Ergo Proxy (2006; 2007 in English) alas, not funny
3. My Name is Earl (2005) funny
4. Teen Titans (2003) kinda funny
5. Cowboy Bebop (1998; 2001 in English) funny in a weird way

The five years that I followed ABC's Friday prime time block (which officially started calling itself "TGIF" on October 13, 1992):

1. Max Headroom (1987-88) was America's turn with a British movie concept, also seen in Back to the Future Part II. It played after Full House and Mr. Belvedere and replaced Sidekicks (Chuck Norris Karate Kid ripoff) and Sledge Hammer! (Dirty Harry meets Get Smart) from the year before. My wife's favorite show of all time, Perfect Strangers, still aired on Wednesdays at this point.

2. Perfect Strangers, Full House, Mr. Belvedere, and Just the Ten of Us (1988-89) was the inaugural sequence and the whole lineup had hosts, originally just the Balki and Larry characters from Perfect Strangers. One by one, each show would be cancelled or moved until none were left for the fall of 1992, but by then I was gone too.

3. Mr. Belvedere was the first to go, replaced by Family Matters (1989-90). Starting this season, characters from the other shows hosted and as mentioned above, the name and logo appeared.

4. Just the Ten of Us was replaced by Going Places (1990-91). I don't remember the latter at all, which may be evidence that I was already slipping away from "TGIF." Apparently it starred Heather Locklear and Alan Ruck, the guy who played Cameron on Ferris Bueller's Day Off (the movie, not the show; yes, there was a TV version; no, it wasn't any good and in no way could compete with Parker Lewis Can't Lose, my favorite show of all time; in case you really didn't know, they made Ferris Bueller blonde!)

5. I actually liked Step by Step (a Brady Bunch for the '90s with Suzanne Somers) and Look Who's Talking ripoff, Baby Talk (1991-92) better than Full House and Going Places, which they replaced. My thing with Full House is that they kept added rooms and families as if the widower and his daughters weren't enough, and in the end it crumbled like the Roman empire. Perfect Strangers was the only show left from the starting lineup in 1991. I could say that Dinosaurs moving from Wednesdays was what killed "TGIF" for me in the fall of 1992, but that annoying, stupid show was just the straw that broke the camel's half-missing back. I had already followed Full House to Tuesdays with Home Improvement, Roseanne, and Coach the year before, so that just became my new TV night. Even though Dinosaurs lasted a single season on Fridays, Boy Meets World and Hangin' with Mr. Cooper made sure that I stayed away. I'll admit I did take a peek another four years later, but Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and Clueless (a worse movie remake than Ferris Bueller) are where I draw the generation gap between Gen-X and Generation Why.

My '80s TV Shows

Happy Labor Day. I just added lists of my top ten bands and TV shows to the right. The following sentimental journey was made possible by Wikipedia. Obviously, many more shows than these debuted for each of the following years. I'm only including the ones that really left an impression on me. There were many more with which I am very familiar and even watched regularly. As a side note, I just tried watching Terminator: The Sarah Connors Chronicles on DVD and it was SO hokey. It was bad enough watching the bad terminator stop in his tracks to make wisecracks but then they expected me to believe that terminator scraps in a heap of rubble would lay dormant until taken home by an unsuspecting construction worker. The final straw that made me eject the disc was Sarah Connors waxing poetic after learning about the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. If you've seen it, do you agree? If not, SAVE YOURSELF THE GROANS.

1980
Captain Caveman - now see, I thought this was somehow associated with Rocky & Bullwinkle and about twenty years older
Magnum, P.I. - can't say that I ever actually watched this but I think my mom had a thing for Tom Selleck, whose name is synonomous with this role, no matter how much money Three Men and a Baby made

1981
Entertainment Tonight - I may not have started in '81, but there were a few years when I watched this every night
Hill Street Blues - I recently watched this for the first time along with 21 Jump Street (which was horrible) and was surprised by how familiar the theme song was; I downloaded the song and asked my mom about it, but she said she'd never watched it for all the controversy; I can see why that would be the case, because while the look of the show is dated, the issues it dealt with are completely current.
The Smurfs - even as a kid I wanted to know why there was only one girl and one senior

1982
Cagney & Lacey - another one I think my mom was into
Cheers - I discovered this through reruns and like Hill Street Blues, it's all about the theme song
Newhart - I know my mom loved this one; everytime I meet someone I think of "this is my brother Daryl and my other brother Daryl."
Night Rider - I won't lie, the theme song scared me so much I never could watch the show
Remington Steele - if it wasn't Tom Selleck, I'm definitely sure my mom had a thing for Pierce Brosnan (who is and always will the be the best Bond to me)

1983
The A-Team - all these shows that I never actually saw, yet somehow know the theme songs; which came first - this or Rocky III?
Alvin & the Chipmunks - I remember the Adventure movie more than the series and I'm trying to remember which Chipette I liked more - Jeanette or Brittany?
Dungeons and Dragons - I could actually see the animated characters as real people in this fantasy setting
Inspector Gadget - another great song; was he human with mechanical limbs or totally robotic?

The Joy of Painting - with host Bob Ross, may he rest in peace; I thought long and hard about making this #1 on the list to the right; it was so relaxing, it would make my scalp tingle
Reading Rainbow - the only PBS kids' show I liked; Sesame Street seemed cheap to me as a kid (but not as cheap as Gumby) and the puppets on Mister Roger's were scary
Superted - so our parents used to let the VCR babysit us, and this was a rental we kept coming back to

1984
Airwolf - don't think I ever saw it but this is when helicopters became cool
The Cosby Show - a coworker recently asked me which era of Cosby I was, based on which child character I grew up with; there were eight seasons total and I admit the family in the first season was a far cry from the family in the eighth.
Danger Mouse - British cartoon, not the DJ
Jeopardy! (w/Alex Trebek) - hard for me to believe there was ever a different host
Miami Vice - or as my mom called it, "Miami Violence;" she wouldn't let us watch it, and yet it comes to mind anyday I don't shave
Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies - I still want to see the nanny's face; at least adults in the show didn't make that awful noise that they do on Charlie Brown; I hate Peanuts by the way.
Murder, She Wrote - every week, baby

Punky Brewster - childhood crush; looking back, I have no idea why.
Tales from the Darkside - much scarier than The Twilight Zone and Tales from the Crypt combined; I think there was an episode my dad used in a Sunday school lesson about how criminals just get a mark on their forehead for however long their sentence and then nobody acknowledges those people with the mark

1985
Amazing Stories - my favorite show as a kid. I rented the DVDs recently and it's not as good as I remember, even with directors like Spielberg, Scorcese, Clint Eastwood, and Brad Bird.
CBS Storybreak - animated adaptations of children's books; my favorite was "The Pig Plantagent"
Disney's The Gummi Bears - my dad recorded all the episodes for my youngest brother and he almost killed us when we taped over them with something else
Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors - humans & machines vs. plant-machines; YES
MacGyver - childhood hero; sadly, the mullet AND the show overall has dated
Misfits of Science - a shortlived superhero team without spandex with Courtney Cox
Robotech - if we have a baby girl, we're naming her Miriya after the green-haired character
Thundercats - or as my dad called them, "Dunder, Dunder, Dunder, Dunder Heads" (to the song)

1986
ALF - wanted the doll
Defenders of the Earth - else how would I know Flash Gordon and The Phantom?
Matlock - superior to Perry Mason
Pee Wee’s Playhouse - stuff like a chair named Cherry kills me
The Real Ghostbusters - some episodes actually scared me, like the "Sandman" one on the Ghostbusters II DVD special features
Silverhawks - always together with Thundercats in my mind; somehow other people know that show but not this one

1987
Beauty and the Beast - go to IMDb and see how many of the shows on this list were written, at least in part, by J. Michael Straczynski (current comic writer)
Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future - another video we rented again and again; always connected with Max Headroom in my mind
Ducktales - 'nuff said
Full House - so the house just kept growing rooms and how much do newscasters make anyway?
Married... With Children - Al replaces MacGyver as my hero
The New Adventures of Beans Baxter - not sure if I ever watched a whole episode; it was on late, but the theme song was so cool - similar but better than "Axel F" from Beverly Hills Cop
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - in the original comic they all wear red

1988
Roseanne - check the Halloween DVD - just contains the Halloween episodes from each season
The Wonder Years - I hated Winnie; Julie Condra playing Madeline is the hottest actress ever
Unsolved Mysteries - in the beginning it was more about supernatural mysteries; I stopped watching when they tie it into the FBI's most wanted list

1989
Beetlejuice - the cartoon; although, the movie is very funny too
Chip’n Dale Rescue Rangers - followed the next year by Talespin and then Darkwing Duck
Saved by the Bell - my dad called this soap opera for teenagers; I started when they were in high school and later saw the middle school era on reruns; I only lasted a few episodes for The New Class (about college)

Seinfeld - started with the reruns
The Simpsons - my parents were against this when it came out; I remember not thinking it was funny while watching my brothers laugh themselves to tears; later I learned to appreciate by watching it from their perspective
Tales from the Crypt - best. opening. credits. ever
Quantum Leap - I've gotta see if I can rent this