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Yes, it's 6AM. I've only been up for two hours...
When I was a little kid and woke up at around now, I'd go bother my parents, asking when the cartoons would be on. I would be assured that they would be on soon and, in soothing parent speak, to bloody well keep quiet until then.
The early morning was the crap. You might get weekly kids variety show rerun, like "Big Blue Marble" or Zoom. Or worst, the stop motion Davey and Goliath, which felt like it was running half speed and smelled like old people. Even the talking dog was on downers. If this was meant to instill virtuous Christian values in my child self all it did was vaguely creep me out.
Ultimately the toons would fire up. Production values were generally poor. So much so that thirty year old bugs reruns were often preferable to the new stuff. It would be years before the Japanese would take over, raising the quality of the jovial jerky sketches. In a strange way, Hanna-Barbera was American cartoon innocence.
I didn't care my sketchy entertainers were a little rough around the edges, they were TV for me. I liked the shark that did three stooges impressions. And the loud sack of hair that was supposed to be a cave man. There was an armored hippo that shot pop rocks out of it's head. A number of things that would have made much more sense if I knew what marijuana was. Of course, ancient Warner Bros fare, fresh from the forties with cultural references I couldn't hope to understand. For a three to four hour block on Saturday mornings, there was a shared kid experience.
That shared experience is dead now. Inevitably steamrolled by feeds of kid friendly crap 24/7. So much so that the networks have forgotten what "Saturday Morning" used to mean. It's kind of sad.
When I was a little kid and woke up at around now, I'd go bother my parents, asking when the cartoons would be on. I would be assured that they would be on soon and, in soothing parent speak, to bloody well keep quiet until then.
The early morning was the crap. You might get weekly kids variety show rerun, like "Big Blue Marble" or Zoom. Or worst, the stop motion Davey and Goliath, which felt like it was running half speed and smelled like old people. Even the talking dog was on downers. If this was meant to instill virtuous Christian values in my child self all it did was vaguely creep me out.
Ultimately the toons would fire up. Production values were generally poor. So much so that thirty year old bugs reruns were often preferable to the new stuff. It would be years before the Japanese would take over, raising the quality of the jovial jerky sketches. In a strange way, Hanna-Barbera was American cartoon innocence.
I didn't care my sketchy entertainers were a little rough around the edges, they were TV for me. I liked the shark that did three stooges impressions. And the loud sack of hair that was supposed to be a cave man. There was an armored hippo that shot pop rocks out of it's head. A number of things that would have made much more sense if I knew what marijuana was. Of course, ancient Warner Bros fare, fresh from the forties with cultural references I couldn't hope to understand. For a three to four hour block on Saturday mornings, there was a shared kid experience.
That shared experience is dead now. Inevitably steamrolled by feeds of kid friendly crap 24/7. So much so that the networks have forgotten what "Saturday Morning" used to mean. It's kind of sad.