Koosh of Glory!

Arising from the dust of the 80s, it is an odd little combo of rubber bands, a pom-pom and a soft ball. I speak of a favorite from my childhood, the Koosh ball. Introduced in 1988, it was one of those semi-trendy fads that enjoyed a few years of popularity then receded into the oddities of the toy department.

During the ancient spandex days of 1986, a father, Scott Stillinger, wanted a safe and soft toy for his children to play with. His efforts resulted in a toy ball made of rubber filaments. The toy earned its name from the "koosh" sound heard when it was moved about. Along with his brother-in-law, Mark Button, Stillinger started OddzOn Products Inc in 1987 to market the koosh ball. Their efforts were well rewarded as the koosh ball made 1988’s ‘hottest Christmas toys’ list.

In their maiden incarnation, koosh were simply rubber bandy balls. As often happens with successful items, they were soon expanded into other toyetic merchandise. Koosh yoyos, key chains and even jewelry became commonplace. One of the more memorable renditions of the koosh had to be the "koosh kins". Cartoony faces and arms were added to the balls to create ‘characters’. The concept proved popular enough for mainstream companies like Warner Brothers and Disney to "koosh" their characters. Even today, you can find Phineas, Ferb and Barry among the collectiballs.

Koosh balls have thwarted the toy graveyard because they’ve found practical niches to fill. Adults have embraced them as occupational enhancement accessories in the workplace. A koosh’s soft, squeezable form makes it an ideal stress ball. It has also been rumored to provide a quiet distraction during meetings.

Because of its visual and touch sensory stimulation, the koosh ball has become popular for educational therapy. Koosh balls are often used for hand-eye coordination as well as touch exercises. The Davis Learning Strategies Program includes them in teaching kits for dyslexic children. Some teacher advice columns recommend using koosh balls as a means of keeping students’ attention.

Even today, your friendly neighborhood koosh ball has personal uses. It makes a unique paperweight. It appears to be a cat-swiping magnet (though ill-advised due to possibility of rubber strands coming out and being a choking hazard). It doubles as a pet Tribble for Sci-fi fanatics. For those of us with a creative mind, koosh balls could be quite a nice army of evil spike monsters which terrorize the world around them.

References:
Starr, Linda. “Education World; Behavior Management Tips: Quiet Classrooms and More”.
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/behaviortips/behaviortips034.shtml (2005)

Davis Learning Strategies. http://www.dyslexia.com (2011)

Wikipedia. “Koosh Ball”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koosh ((2011)

“Office Playground: Koosh Ball”.
http://www.officeplayground.com/Koosh-Ball-P161.aspx Retrieved December 30th, 2011.

Total Culture Shock!

To help my drawing skills, I picked up a couple of books about clothing styles throughout the 20th century. Total culture shock! I’ve learned two lessons from this.

Styles change but run in about 20-30 year cycles. Don’t believe me? 1900-20 meet the ‘sack trousers’ wide leg pants sometimes with cuffs sometimes without; 1930s ‘Wide leg denim’ pants come in; 1960s-70s Say hello to ‘bell bottoms’; 1990s-present you know them as ‘wide leg’ carpenter jeans.

Shoulder pads were seen in the 1920s, 1940s & 1980s. Remember the non-flattering ‘babydoll dress’? Go back a few more years. You’ll know them as ‘smocks’ and ‘sack dresses’ during previous portions of history.

Fabrics and some details may change. But the feature remains the same.

Lessons 2 is that the clothing that we consider ‘old folks clothes’ today was what young people wore back then. High waists were popular as was many other things that we consider ‘old’.

I think this is the real reason why a resurgence in 80s style is happening. We, the 80s kids, are getting older and we want our old stuff back.

Wow, the thought of our wrinkly butts running around in faded out, rolled up stonewashed denims as ‘old folks clothes’ is kinda creepy.

Video Game Life lessons Part 1

A few years ago, a friend got me addicted to watching video game playthroughs and Let’s Plays of them. (A Let’s Play is a player commenting during gameplay.) I’ve gotten to see quite a few games that I’ll never get to play. I get to see some that thwarted my childhood efforts. Plus, there are quite a few games from consoles that I never knew existed.

One thing that I hear quite often is “How was I supposed to know that?” or “That’s STUPID! How’d they expect people to figure THAT out?”

Gee, I dunno. How about these little life lessons called ‘trial and error’, ‘patience and determination’ and ‘developing problem solving skills’.

Ever since video gaming exploded in the 80s, people have complained about all of the bad things that video games are; too violent; too sedentary; waste of time; non-productive; too difficult; ect; ect; ect & totally BS.

Actually, video games are full of life lessons. Sometimes they’re more useful than the supposed ‘life preparation lessons’ taught in school.

These days, we’re familiar with such lessons as

“Beware the plumber.”
“In medieval times, women regularly fought in wars, wearing armor that afforded them equal protection to suits of plate mail worn by men, despite only covering about 3 inches of skin.”(1)
“Property destruction, theft and mass murder are not only acceptable, they’re encouraged through rewards and required to get to the next level.”
“Everyone is a stupid NPC (non player character) except for you.”

Mainstream as they are, I have a few other ‘real-world applicable’ lessons in mind.

There’s a long 40 year+ history behind video games. Obviously, all of the life lessons can’t be covered in one post. So, let’s just start with the early years.

During the 70s and early 80s, video games didn’t end. Literally, there was no real end to these games. Except for the occasional bug corruptions around level 255, games were just the same 4-9 repeating levels. With each cycle the AI (artificial intelligence) moved faster to create more of a challenge for the player.

What life lessons did those repetitive cycles teach?

Pattern recognition and memorization – Many games had patterns to each of the enemy AIs. With a little patience, those patterns could be memorized. Knowing the pattern makes defeating an enemy easier.
Patterns are everywhere; from numbers to words to human behaviors. Dictionaries use an alphabetical pattern. Knowing the pattern allows you to skip around the book to find what you need more quickly. Even the simple act of counting is a pattern of 0-9 cycles. As you grow up, you memorize the pattern of things like a 9-digit phone number, 16-digit cards and various other things. Even a street address is a pattern.
Identifiable disease patterns allow doctors to develop working treatments. Behavioral patterns help therapists figure out how they can best motivate a recovering patient. You always thought teachers had eyes in the back of their heads? Nope, they just memorize their students’ patterns. After a few years, they just know when to expect things and from whom. Like it or not while student faces change each year the behaviors remain the same. Even leaders stay in control by recognizing patterns and taking advantage of them.

Crowd Navigation – Most of the early games featured masses of enemies against one player. No matter how many times the player cleared the screen, foes always returned with about 60 of their buddies. Still, the player hitched up their pixels and cleared the screen again.
Life is full of crowds. From traffic to stores to school and work hallways, you’ve got to get through the crowd to reach your destination. Granted, you can’t just destroy them or hit them. If Frogger was your teacher, you’ve learned to observe the crowds and dodge your way through.

Repetitive cycles – Get used to it, kid. Each weekday, kids go to school, sit in classes, do assignments and leave. Each year, it’s the same thing only with higher grades of information. (And there’s the whole ‘growing up’ thing. I suppose you could call that a difficulty setting increase.)
After school, you’ll be in the adult world of ‘a job’. 10 to 1 you’ll be going to some office, store, or other location, to do the same thing on a daily basis…for the rest of your life.

Working for Points - In the 70s/80s, games were played for fun and high score bragging rights rather than a good ending. Games were replayed to get a better score and higher bragging rights. It’s really as simple as that.
Welcome to the reason for which you work; a paycheck. If you work hard or smart enough, your paycheck gets bigger. A bigger paycheck means better stuff.

These are a mere few of the ‘life lessons’ from video games. Don’t worry, there’s more – a whole lot more. But that is for another post. Seeya next time!

Footnotes:
1. (2008) 101 things we've learned from videogames The wisdom of our favorite pastime, applied to real life http://www.gamesradar.com/101-things-weve-learned-from-videogames/

Dull Cartoons = For Girls?

Just for ‘fun’ – and because I’ve never actually seen it - I looked up a cartoon called ‘Lady LovelyLocks’. It’s supposed to be an essential for girls’ cartoons everywhere. My impression? Dear gawd, that was worse than watching paint dry. (At least paint gives you those nice spirit-lifting noxious fumes.) This show was boring, contrived, overly moralistic and just plainly lacks replay value except for those with ‘the blinding light of nostalgia’.. I can’t believe they expected anyone to watch that drek!

Moving on, I tried to look up some lists of ‘girls cartoons’. All I really found were ‘hot girls’ lists created by boys. One list that attracted my attention was ‘5 80s Girls Toons That Boys Secretly Watched’. I gave it a look. Some of those list members completely confused me.

Care Bears is a girls’ cartoon? I’ve honestly always thought of it as a gender-neutral toon for the younger sets. In fact, it seems that most ‘little fuzzy animal’ toons are placed into the realm of ‘girls toons’. The Wuzzles, Popples, and Pound Puppies are just a few of the shows given the designation of a ‘girls cartoon’. The cast seems diverse enough that it should be a gender-neutral show, at least, in my personal opinion.

Now, one remark on the previously mentioned list did catch my irritation. The list creator mentioned that he watched G1 My Little Pony. As a hasty side note, he added “That’s the original My Little Pony, not Pony Tales! That was definitely for girls!”

So are you telling me that basically any cartoon which is low-key or boring is automatically a ‘girls cartoon’? Anything that doesn’t involve a world-altering consequence, big-issue conflict or smash bash action is obviously a show ONLY designed for girls? Are you saying that girls shows are required to be dull, cutesy drek?

“Oh, that’s dull. Must be a girls’ show!”

Thankfully, we have seen some companies attempt to break this trend with shows like the PowerPuff Girls and Kim Possible. Results have been mixed at best. Quite frankly, Japanese animation has done a far better job of bringing respect to a ‘girls show’ with shows like Slayers and the, parody-enriched, Excel Saga.

It’s sad to think that 91 years after women acquired the right to vote in America, the designation ‘for girls’ still implies a vastly inferior product to the designation of ‘for boys’.

The 'Annoyed with Christmas Already' Song

I think it's time for a repost of an old song.

(Tune of 'Here comes Santa Claus')

Here comes Selfish Claus, Here comes Selfish Claus,
Ruining all holidays
He gets his kicks by steamrolling over anything in his way.

Thanksgiving is all but gone
Halloween is shunned

Say bye-bye to your holidays dear
Cuz Selfish Claus hogs the year

Here comes Selfish Claus, Here comes Selfish Claus,
Ruining all holidays
He gets his kicks by steamrolling over anything in his way.

Columbus and Veteran's Day - were they known well anyway?
An' when his foot holds in July, Independence Day will fry

So hang your head cuz holidays are dead
Cuz Selfish Claus hogs the year

Spooks and spirits of all kinds
Now’s the time to rise and slime!
Our frightest day dawns at last.
Haunting hours flee too fast.
Happy Halloween!

Talking about Teela

In the 80s, I was a fan of the series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.  Even now, I still find that the show has interesting characters and decent personality development for them. 

Sadly, there’s just never been much in the way of good female characters for girls.  I never cared much for watching some dippy show about airheads looking for BFFs, boyfriends and fashion tips.  I much preferred the real thrill of watching shows about characters going out on adventures, kicking butts, dodging death traps, defeating some foe and saving some magoffin.  So it was only natural for me to be drawn to shows ‘designed for boys’.  Usually, these shows included a few token female characters.  Some were just obvious eye-candy for the young testosterones.  Others were great characters.

This brings me to the character Teela of He-Man fame.

As a young girl, I admired Teela.  She’s a rare character type.  She’s a capable and agile fighter as seen in episodes like ‘Trouble in Arcadia’.  Episodes such as ‘Like Father Like Daughter’ show Teela’s intelligence.  ‘The Witch and the Warrior’ is an example of Teela’s strategic thinking and cleverness.  Despite her displays of a quick tempter throughout the series, ‘Into the Abyss’ is just one example of Teela’s kind and caring side.  In short, she’s a well-rounded, admirable lady role model.

In one of the rarest things for a good female character ever, Teela is actually reasonably dressed!  Far too often, production crews seem to think that a strong female character must dress like a prostitute.  Teela’s outfit is actually sensible and concealing.  Quite frankly, she’s far less of an exhibitionist than She-Ra.  That’s a constant issue that I’ve had with shows.  Some of them go through the pains to give us a decent female character only to have her dress like the local street-side whore.  Wonder Woman, Storm, Starfire, Xena and Gabrielle are all very good characters.  Yet they dress like lust puppy bait.  It’s very refreshing to see a female, like Teela, that can be a strong competent character without exposing herself like a cheap slab of beef for the oglers.

I’ve always found it extremely unfair that Teela was never allowed to be in on the Eternia secrets.  There was always the excuse of ‘Oh, it’s just too dangerous!’ where she was concerned.  That was the lamest, most ignorant and most selfish excuse that Filmation or Hasbro could have EVER come up with.

Man-at-Arms trained Teela as a soldier.  She’s learned how to fight and how to think her way through most situations.  Teela’s more than proven herself adept at taking on danger.  She doesn’t shy away from it either.  She’s a royal palace captain of the guard for crying out loud!  When Teela sets her mind to something, she isn’t afraid to take risks to achieve her goals.  Yet, she’s smart enough to prepare for those risks.

Teela’s Quest is a good example of Teela’s skills in action.  Man-at-Arms was unable to tell Teela who her mother is because he’d been sworn to secrecy.  He’s very honest about that too.

“That is a secret I’ve promised never to reveal.  Someday, you will learn that secret, Teela.  But not from me.”

This left Teela very depressed.  She decided to find out who her mother is on her own.  That quest would take her to a very dangerous place.  However she didn’t just go unprepared.  After landing her Wind Raider (air-car) in the Crystal Sea, Teela had to continue on foot.  She took a staff with her for protection.  She was also smart enough to have other weapons to deal with the creatures there.  She found the Oracle of the Crystal Sea on her own.  It was telling her about her mother until Mer-Man interfered.  At this point, standard ‘main character saves the day’ rules apply.  He-Man rescued Teela and helped her finish her quest.

Sadly, her determination and skills weren’t enough to prove herself worthy.  After all the trouble that Teela went through to find out who her mother is, the Sorceress showed up and took the knowledge away from her.  Teela proves herself once again by defending Castle Grayskull in ‘Teela’s Triumph’.  Again, she’s denied the knowledge of her mother or He-Man’s secret.  The reason?  “It’s still too dangerous for Teela to know anything yet.” 

Teela has spent her life being trained as a soldier.  Soldiers are trained to face dangers and take risks.  He-Man didn’t hesitate to lend Teela his sword in ‘Teela’s Quest’.  That sword, I might add, is the source of his powers.  Yet he doesn’t feel that she’s worthy of his secrets?  Keeping Teela out of the loop was completely wrong and stupid.

It’s sad to think that even Man-at-Arms, Teela’s own adoptive father, didn’t trust her enough to be included in Adam’s secret.  Sometimes it seems like Man-at-Arms hates the team’s magician, Orko.  Yet, he trusts Orko more than Teela.

Don’t get me wrong.  For a character that’s basically supposed to be ‘comic relief’, Orko is generally a very useful character.  He helps the group quite a bit and actually comes through in a pinch.  His worth as a character is never contrived to make him seem useful.  He actually does forward the plot of an episode many times leading to a problem’s resolution. 

Still, Orko does tend to have a big mouth.  Every time someone says, “And don’t tell anyone.”  The first thing Orko does is run off to tell everyone. (Except for Adam’s secret)

Considering that they did a female version of He-Man for us girls, they knew that they had a girl fanbase for the show.  They even went through all the trouble of developing endearing, competent female characters that girls could admire and identify with.  To just give such a slap in the face to a character like Teela was one of the biggest mistakes that they ever made.

New Dvd picked up 'Ghost Stories Seasons 1 & 2'

If you have seen a History Channel series called “Haunted History”, “Ghost Stories” is a very similar paranormal documentary program with a bit less focus on the back-story and a bit more focus on the ghost story itself.  If you haven’t seen “Haunted History”, then I’ll explain.

As the narrator says in the first episode on the disc, ‘Boise Theater’, “I have a tale to tell you.”  This is essentially what the series is.  Jay Thomas plays the eerie storyteller relating accounts of ghostly happenings within a location.  As he narrates, the viewer’s eyes are treated to photo and video images for that location.  Plenty of low-budget sound effects and various ‘apparition experience’ interviews round out the basic idea of “Ghost Stories”.

The series isn’t out to prove or disprove any of the possible hauntings that it presents.  Like a campfire storyteller, it uses what it has in order to entertain viewers and draw them into the story.  So don’t expect any high octane scares or Speilbergian special effects.

If your ‘paranormal experience’ requires a bunch of people walking around with cameras and jumping at every little sound, then you won’t care for this series.  If you enjoy hearing/watching straightforward stories about supposed hauntings with few theatrics, then this series is well worth the money.

Since I prefer the second option, I totally enjoyed this series.

The only downside to the series has to do with the discs, themselves.  The discs don’t have a ‘play all’ function.  The disc returns to the main menu after each episode plays.  The menu doesn’t move to the next episode in the series either.  This makes it too easy to forget which episode was last watched after stepping away from it for awhile.  This may be a bit nit-picky.  However, I find it a bit annoying when a show does not just automatically advance to the next episode.   Even with this slight issue, I still find the set worth it.

Not bad for a 'toy commercial'

People like to harp on shows like ‘He-Man and the Masters of the Universe’ as just being ’25 minute toy commercials’.  I’ll admit, I watched He-Man as a kid and enjoyed it quite a bit.  But as time passes (like say over 20 years) there’s no way for a show like that to stay fresh in your brain.  So, natch you forget it.  Not even the Blinding Light of Nostalgia can keep your memory properly archived with the show.

Well, a channel called ‘qubo’ (formerly Discovery Kids) has been running He-Man, She-Ra, Bravestarr and Ghostbusters at night.  So, I finally had an opportunity to see the show again.

After an episode last night, I can say without a doubt that He-Man was far more then any  toy commercial could hope to be.  What the censors restricted them from doing ACTION wise, the production company made up for in writing.

The episode ‘She-Demon of Phantos’ is a perfect example of good writing.

To summarize, Queen Elmora, an ally of Eternia, became Skeletor’s mind puppet.  So, He-Man and friends had to go help her.  Man-at-Arms ordered Teela to stay behind and guard the palace.  She decides that she wants to go anyway and follows the group.  Once there, the group gets into trouble.  Teela saves them.  Man-at-Arms is, understandably, angry with Teela for disobeying him.  He-Man allows her to stay and quickly gets the focus back on the mission.  Throughout the episode, Teela proves herself as a valuable team member.  Eventually, the group reaches Elmora only to have their efforts divided between fighting Skeletor and Elmora and trying to free Elmora from Skeletor’s mind control.  Eventually, He-Man wins and sends Skeletor packing (again.)

With the issue resolved, the group returns to Eternia where Teela is punished.  (She’s made to peel a huge pile of potatoes.)  She doesn’t feel that she should be punished since she proved herself as a valuable team member.  But Man-at-Arms is stern about the fact that she disobeyed a direct order.

What was the moral of the story?  That’s up to you.  He-Man didn’t feel any need to try and hammer a point into your head like SOME shows do today.  For some, the lesson could be that respecting authority is more important than anything.  For others, the lesson could be that Man-at-Arms is a jerk.  Still others could see the lesson as ‘if you’re going to be disobedient make sure you’re useful’.  Some folks could just see it as mindless entertainment and not feel any lessons were given at all.

I’ve got a lot more to say about Teela.  But I think I’ll save that for another post.

Not bad for a ‘toy commercial’ eh?

Tombs for the Hallowday Season

Looking for a nice big list of Halloween songs?  Well, I've done the legwork for you.  Enjoy!

Conversing with Kitty

Isn’t it fun when your cats talk back to you… And their meows sound like human speech?

Rei, “Yowl! Yowl! Yowl!”  (I’m in heat again!)

Me, “Shut up!  Do you wanna be sold to a convent?”

Rei, “Noo”

Me, “Don’t you want to be a nun?”

Rei, “RaI don’t meeeaant too!”

Me, “Well you are.  You’re a Nun for life!”

Rei, “Nooo! No! No!”

(And then she ran off for a ‘hell run’ spree.)

Arrival!

So eeehhhh.... Not to be derivative but...  I'm heeee-eeeeerrreee!