As an elementary-aged child, I never really enjoyed reading all that much. I would tackle books and assignments for school, of course, but I did so because I had to, not because I wanted to. The only books I remember truly enjoying and reading for fun were Garfield comic strip collections and many of The Berenstain Bears stories. I rarely found a book that sucked me in and in which I lost a sense of time and place. One that I could return to time and time again. That all changed somewhere between the ages of 10 and 12, when I discovered Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends.
That's not to say attempts were not made to get me to read more. I distinctly remember being in the fourth grade and my siblings and I receiving The Chronicles of Narnia box set as a gift. He instructed us to start the series by reading The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, which I did, and I loved it. But my trips to Narnia ended there, and to this day I have yet to read any of the other chronicles. Then there were The Little House on the Prairie books. As tried and true Minnesotans, my family gathered around the television every week to watch the network series based on the books and starring Melissa Gilbert and Michael Landon. I assumed because I liked the show that I would like the books. I was wrong. No matter how many times I tried to get through one of the Prairie novels, I'd give up and quit somewhere around chapter four. Perhaps a slight over-exaggeration, but it gets my point across. I really did not like reading books for fun. But then something happened I did not expect. Someone gave me a cassette tape of Shel Silverstein reading Where the Sidewalk Ends, and everything changed. I listened intently and giggled as he read about Melinda Mae (who ate a whale just because she said she would), Captain Hook (who must remember not to pick his nose), and Jimmy Jet (who watched so much TV he turned into a TV set). My favorite, though, was Sick, a poem wherein a young girl lists a great number of deathly ailments as reasons why she shouldn't go to school that day. Her belly button was caving in for goodness sakes! When she finds out the day was Saturday, however, she suddenly felt better, proclaiming "Goodbye, I'm going out to play." When I found out the audiobook contained only a sampling of Silverstein's poems, I knew I needed to read the others, and the only way to accomplish that was by acquiring a hard copy. Once I had Where the Sidewalk Ends in my hands, I read each perfect poem and studied each wonderful drawing, over and over and over again. A new found appreciation and love for the written word was born.
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Well before the off-beat and quirky Pushing Daisies aired its first episode, the comparably off-beat and quirky Northern Exposure pulled me into the eccentric world of Cicely, Alaska. The show's charmingly idiosyncratic characters and often-time bizarre episodes quickly endeared themselves to me, and before long I found myself tuning into the series regularly. On a side note, I might be detecting a pattern among my most cherished television shows emerging here, one that I had not previously considered. Along with Pushing Daisies and Northern Exposure, at least one other television series TBA in my Countdown to 40 shares these exact descriptors, too. A couple notable favorites not on the countdown fit the same mold as well, like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and 30 Rock. Things that make you go hmmmm.
Anyway, back to the show at hand. For those of you unfamiliar with the wonder and awesomeness that is Northern Exposure, the 1990-1995 series centers on Dr. Joel Fleischman, who, upon graduation from medical school in New York City, gets placed as the resident doctor for a tiny Alaskan town. Provided he successfully fulfills his agreement to the town of Cicely, his medical degree will be paid for. Of course, Joel finds the transition rather difficult, and he struggles adjusting to his new home, remote as it is, and his new neighbors, weird as they are. Where can he find a bagel? How do people get into town? How do they get out? None of the backward, uneducated locals could possibly understand his worldly, cosmopolitan, and highly-educated perspective or refined tastes. (Sounds prescient considering our current political atmosphere and the increasingly bitter conflict between urban and rural America, doesn't it?) The truly peculiar townspeople, for the most part, graciously accept Joel into their fold, despite the Empire State Building-sized chip on his shoulder and his abrasively stereotypical New York personality. Their genuine concern for the doctor's well-being coupled with their immense pride in their hometown eventually breaks Joel's guard down, and Cicely becomes his home, too. During the process, some truly bizarre episodes take place--ones that have stuck with me for the past 20 years. There's one in which the local DJ, Chris Stevens (played by John Corbett), hoists a grand piano several stories into the air with a crane, only to drop it crashing to the ground. The reason? Sheer curiosity for what the experience would be like. Other episodes, or maybe one of the same--memory does come and go these days, chronicle life in Cicely during the summer and winter solstices, when the town experiences 24 hours of sunlight or darkness. The impact those days have on the show's characters only made them more strange and therefore more endearing. Apart from satisfying my recently uncovered penchant for off-beat, quirky television series, Northern Exposure shares a common trait with my connection to Entertainment Weekly. As I reflected in my first Countdown to 40 post, I felt a sense of isolation after moving from suburban Saint Paul to rural Minnesota. Entertainment Weekly certainly helped alleviate that feeling, and so did Northern Exposure in its own way. Sure, no matter how rural and disconnected my life seemed to be in west-central Minnesota, it definitely was not as rural and disconnected as Cicely, Alaska. On some level, though, I think I connected to Joel's experience as a stranger in a strange new land among strange new people. That the decision to relocate was not his own made the similarity to my situation all the more striking. At the same time, I, too, eventually grew to love my new home, my new surroundings, and my new friends, particularly once I started letting my own guard down and opening myself up to the wonderful people and space around me. Reduced to a base level comparison, we were the same, Joel and I. When I started the process of writing about Northern Exposure, I generally knew the direction it was heading. One thing I failed to see coming at the outset was identifying a pattern of television show qualities I tend to gravitate towards. Surprisingly, two other revelations surfaced as I continued to write, both having to do with the character played by John Corbett. First, most if not all of the scenes and episodes I remember the most feature Corbett's Chris Stevens in a prominent storyline. I never spent much time thinking about that before this project. I primarily thought the show's radio DJ simply epitomized what it meant to be cool. But now I am pretty sure my fascination with Chris Stevens amounted to one of my first adolescent crushes. Second, my crush on the DJ character may have also inspired me to create my own DJ alter-ego, which I talk about in more detail on the Hot 101 page. Of course my fascination with Top 40 programs undoubtedly played a role in that, too, but I don't think it a coincidence that I initiated my Top 40 around the same time I started watching Northern Exposure. Consider my mind blown. So far I've thoroughly enjoyed examining the elements of pop culture that provide some point of reference in my life. Regardless of their impact, writing about them has been both challenging and fun. The posts about Entertainment Weekly, Schindler's List, Jagged Little Pill, and The Velvet Rope proved especially cathartic and meaningful, as I never sat down to put my thoughts and feelings about them into such coherent reflections before. Considering the depth, gravity, and importance of my three most recent posts, though, I figured the time had come to lighten things up a bit and focus on pure, unadulterated fun. What better way to accomplish that than with Super Mario Bros, one of the all-time great video game franchises?
In their various adventures and iterations, the constantly evolving Italian plumber and his friends provided countless hours of fun throughout much of my life (and still do), accompanying me all the way from my preteen years up into my late thirties. I could always count on them to bring the fun. The best thing about my favorite Mario games? They brought together family and friends for a bit of innocent, good-natured competition. Well, mostly innocent. And usually good-natured. Like with any game that pits players against one another, there were heated verbal exchanges at times, but they were relatively rare and never transformed into physical altercations. Nevertheless, we always enjoyed ourselves and the time we spent immersed in the worlds of Mario, and here I highlight a few of my favorites: Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES): The first two Super Mario Bros. for the original Nintendo Entertainment System ruled, no doubt. But #3 brought things to a whole new level by giving Mario and Luigi a Tanooki Suit (aka the Flying Raccoon Suit). My younger siblings and I spent many winter afternoon hours plodding our way through the game until one of us would get frustrated and quit or the game system would unexpectedly shut down. Take out the cartridge and blow--that'll fix everything! Super Mario World (SNES): My best friend in high school, Jonathan of CJJ5 fame, and I played this Super Nintendo game incessantly for a while. Who could blame us? Yoshi made everything more interesting. Plus I had a TV in my room at that time, so who could stop us? MarioKart 64 (N64): A racing game featuring Mario, his friends, AND his foes? Yes, please! I swear my college friends and I played this game for a solid decade, even after new systems and updated versions came out. No new offering could ever beat the Nintendo 64 versions of Rainbow Road and Wario Stadium, though. Only time and skill helped master those boards. And Donkey Kong. He was my go-to guy. Mario Party (N64/GameCube/Wii): As mature adults in our late twenties and early thirties, my friends Dianna, Allison, Kara, and I were known to spend many an evening engrossed in a lively round of this board and video game hybrid. We tended to gravitate toward the mini games, each of us gifted in our own unique specialties. Sometimes frustration with an outcome would prompt a curse word or two to escape from one of our mouths. Normally not an issue, except when my niece and nephew, Brittani and Jordan, were visiting for a weekend. Jordan chided us after a particularly salty evening as he proclaimed, "No swearing!" On more occasions than I can recount, we laughed so hard we cried. New Super Mario Bros. (Wii): I never really got into the open-world concept of the Nintendo 64, Game Cube, and early Wii platform versions of Super Mario Bros. I understood the potential of Mario unbound by the constraints of side-scroll games, but they never drew me in. When Nintendo released an updated version of a more traditional Mario game for the Wii, I knew instantly it would be a hit. Bryce and I spent much of our first summer together mastering every level, going back through each on diligently to get all three coins. I think he was supposed to be working on his dissertation, but neither one of us could resist the throwback nostalgia and infinite fun of the New Super Mario Bros. Such great times and memories over the course of three decades! It's easy to understand why I cherish the Super Mario games to this day. My love and adoration for Janet Jackson runs deep and true, and if I had to choose a single musical artist as my all-time favorite, it would be her. No contest. For most of my family and friends, this confession is neither surprising nor particularly revelatory, since I never kept my fandom much of a secret. Posters of Jackson adorned my bedroom walls. I celebrated her May birthday rather than the end of the school year and never missed an opportunity to insert her music or lyrics into my homework. A number of passages scribbled on the pages of my senior-year yearbook mention my infatuation with Janet as one of my defining characteristics, a badge of honor I was all too happy to carry with me to college and into adulthood. Even one of my tattoos--the first one, actually--is Janet Jackson related: a symbol from The Velvet Rope on my upper left arm, the significance of its permanence not lost on me.
Whereas Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill defined an era for millions of people the world over, my friends and I included, Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope seemed more singularly important in my journey of self-discovery. Though I fully recognized my adoration for Jackson was well established and others obviously connected to The Velvet Rope for a variety of reasons, I felt as if this Jackson album spoke directly to me and my burgeoning sense of identity when it arrived in the fall of 1997. I was 20 years old at the time and serving my second year as a Resident Advisor in the on-campus apartments at UMD. Many of the close and life-long friendships made that first fall grew stronger over those two years. Others faded. New lasting friendships developed as my position as an RA connected me to new people on an almost daily basis. The days of living within a shell were officially gone, and with the awkwardness of freshman year receding into the past and my first year as an RA successfully under my belt, my self-confidence and sense of purpose never seemed stronger. I felt like I had found my calling and finally began to understand who Chris was. In short, life was great. Never before had I felt so alive or so connected to my fellow human beings. I lived for socializing with my friends, hosting programs for residents, and going to class more often than not (most weeks). I threw myself and all of my energy into the people and activities that brought so much fulfillment to my life. Despite my amazing circle of friends and profound sense of happiness, however, something inside of me was just not adding up, something I couldn't quite identify. Or, more appropriately phrased, there was something I wasn't quite ready to acknowledge and accept. I was having the time of my life but felt as though part of me was missing and false, and I worked really hard to focus energy on everything else. Turns out leaving that shell I lived underneath proved more of an evasive maneuver than a courageous declaration to the world that I had arrived. Shells and living underneath them provide a certain amount of protection from the outside world, this much is true. But they also sometimes facilitate the time and space needed to engage with the type of introspection required for self-discovery. You see, I had a secret I didn't want to confess or confront. I liked men. I REALLY liked men. I lingered over images of shirtless men in print ads. (Marky Mark's famous campaign for Calvin Klein comes to mind.) I anticipated movies starring Hollywood hunks. (Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall anyone?). In the very early stages of the Internet, I also chatted with guys I'd never meet. (Anonymity was key.) But I didn't quite fully understand that part of myself. I definitely did not embrace it yet, and I avoided sharing this information with anyone for fear of rejection, though I'm pretty sure they all knew and accepted me for who I truly was. All the signs were there, stereotypical and otherwise. My ever-so faint lisp. My slightly effeminate affect. My obsession with Disney movies. My love but not lust for Janet Jackson. And, of course, my ogling of guys passing by. So, as aspects of my identity became more difficult and scary to face, I ventured further and further away from that shell, and my introverted self tried very hard and mostly succeeded at appearing as an extrovert. For a while. Along came The Velvet Rope. I plopped the CD into my player and pressed play. The first words Janet spoke were, "It's my belief that we all have the need to feel special. And it's this need that can bring out the best yet worst in us." Wait, what? Something triggered in my brain. Was that what I was doing? The wonderful friends around me made me feel special, that's for sure, and I cherished every moment of that. But by completely embracing that feeling of being special and being part of something special without regard for the scary yet honest truth within myself, was I also bringing out the worst by justifying a false life, a lie? Okay, Janet. Where are you going with this? And did you write this just for me? Over the subsequent 75 minutes of songs and interludes, Janet continued reaching out to me, relating all too closely to my emotional and psychological journey at the the time with lyrics like: "You spend most your life pretending not to be the one you are but who you choose to see" and "Boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy gets cute boy back. Girl meets girl, girl loses girl, girl gets cute girl back. One rule, no rules. One love, free Xone." She even tackled the subject of meeting strangers online: "How could it be that you knew me? My deepest fears, my fantasies...confide in you what no one knows, but it feels so real." In almost every way, The Velvet Rope proved the album I needed most in the fall of 1997, and to be perfectly honest, that need still resurfaces from time to time. At one point during the title track, Janet sings a line that rings as true today as it did 20 years ago: "One love's the answer, you'll find in you." I'm still working on that, though I recognize and acknowledge that I'm now in a much better place in terms of self-identity and self-acceptance. After all, I didn't have to leave my shell behind, I simply needed to come out of it. It would take another two years before I fully came out. Many wonderful friends helped me through the process, but, in part, I also have The Velvet Rope to thank for that. Once in a great while an album comes along that truly defines an era, one that proves impossible to ignore yet equally impossible to resist. A pop-culture phenomenon that defies convention and unites an entire generation. A zeitgeist, if you will. Such was the case in the mid-1990s when Alanis Morissette released her angry-pop masterpiece, Jagged Little Pill.
I distinctly remember when the album exploded onto the scene. It was my freshman year at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Like all who leave the comforts of home for their first year of college, I floundered to find my footing as a fledgling adult and solo human being. Who am I? What is my purpose in life? What do I want to be when I grow up? Who are all these strange people? Unsure of myself, I spent the first half of freshman year focused almost entirely on my studies. Sure, I socialized some and established a few friendships early on, but drinking and parties weren't really my thing. They never had been. Instead, I put my nose to the proverbial grindstone, did my homework diligently, and spent much of my free time keeping up with my Top 40, a security blanket of sorts. That's not to say, however, I was a total recluse. It just took time for me to come out of my shell. As fall progressed, I started to attend more of the programs and office hours held by my Resident Advisors. These events fostered connections with my fellow hall mates, many of whom also preferred hanging out, watching movies, listening to music, playing games, sharing meals, and hiking around campus to binge drinking and house parties. As a result, a core group of close-knit friendships gradually blossomed and grew in the weeks leading up to winter break. In fact, the shared intensity of our first-year experiences in that specific time and in that specific place meant that I could not wait to return to campus after break. I needed to reunite with my new friends, the people who knew and understood me better than I thought anyone had before. I was officially done living under my shell. So what does Jagged Little Pill have to do with all of this? My newfound college friends and I bonded over many things. We introduced one another to new games and television shows. We took turns hosting movie nights. We checked out each others' Christmas decorations. We ordered and shared pizza late at night. We left messages for each other on white boards fastened to our room doors. We devised secret phrases to help one another avoid awkward situations. And we all listened to Jagged Little Pill. Repeatedly. It seemed you couldn't walk by one of our rooms or have someone's car pass by without hearing Morissette's lilt emanating from within. The tunes were catchy and lyrical. Some were angry power anthems, some confessional ballads, and some poppy love songs. They were introspective and non-conventional. But as freshmen initially feeling lost in a sea of unfamiliar faces and experiences, I think the album's emotional rawness may have been what we connected with most as we found our way through the year together. The scene in which the little girl dressed in a red coat winds her way through the chaos and terror of the Nazi liquidation of a Jewish ghetto sticks out as one of the most indelible ever filmed. And that says a lot, considering the film confronts audiences with scene after scene of unimaginable violence. Truth be told, no single movie made a more lasting impact on my high-school brain than Schindler's List.
Generally speaking, I knew about World War II and Adolf Hitler's crusade to rid Europe of its Jews. History books and classes had offered introductions to the topics as early as elementary school. But not until I watched Schindler's List in 1993 did I start to realize the extent and horror of the Holocaust. Like everyone else I knew who experienced the film, I found what I saw on screen heart-breaking and unbelievable. But it also raised several questions. How could people commit such atrocities against one another? Why didn't the German people stop the Nazis? What did the rest of the world know about Hitler's Final Solution? What took the Allies so long to intervene? How did and do Germans and Germany overcome this part of their history? Recognizing that films about the past--even those based on actual events--should not be confused with history itself, the questions prompted by Schindler's List served to further pique my interest in history and deepen my fascination with Germany, the Holocaust, and World War II. And though the answers may seem obvious at first glance, they proved much more complex and typically led to an entirely new set of questions. So much so that Schindler's List and the questions it posed laid the foundation for my eventual pursuit of a graduate degree in history and for informing the research topic of my grad school thesis paper, in which I examine the confluence of popular film, victimization, cultural memory, and history. It's no wonder Schindler's List made my list of most influential elements of popular culture. A common slogan in the aftermath of World War II has been "Never Again," usually plastered over images not unlike ones seen in Schindler's List. Yet victory over Hitler failed to prevent genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda, among others. In today's current political atmosphere, with demagogues and nativists rising to positions of power the world over, remembering the Holocaust and other genocides as well as acknowledging the xenophobic and authoritarian rhetoric that compelled almost entire societies to commit genocide against themselves seems timely and important. When facts, science, the arts, compassion for humankind, and the freedoms of speech, religion, and press come under attack, films like Schindler's List remind us what can happen when humanity lets fear, apathy, and anger rule the day, thereby not only justifying hate crimes and intolerance but condoning them, too. And therein lies the danger. Not all my favorite pop-culture obsessions served as catalysts for introspection and helped me figure out and define myself. Some, like the television series Pushing Daisies, I simply fell in love with.
The show follows the adventures of Ned, the Pie Maker, who possesses a secret and magical ability: he can bring dead things back to life momentarily just by touching them. When he touches the reanimated person or animal again, they are dead forever. Of course, Ned's unique power also proves to be a curse, and because a natural balance exists between life and death, anything he brings back to life can only be alive again for one minute. Any longer than that and another nearby living creature dies. Intriguing, right? It only gets better from there. Emerson Cod, a private detective, discovers Ned's secret and blackmails Ned to help solve murder mysteries around town. It's the perfect premise. Ned can bring the victim back to life, ask her or him who the murderer was, and then send the person back to the land of the dead. No harm, no foul. BUT then Ned's childhood sweetheart, Charlotte 'Chuck' Charles, turns up dead. When confronted with having to make Chuck dead again, Ned could not bring himself to do it--even though keeping her alive meant the two star-crossed lovers could never touch. Chuck's discovery of her untimely death and subsequent un-death, her eccentrically agoraphobic synchronized swimming star aunts, and the always pining-for-Ned character of Olive Snook eventually lead to the unraveling of a larger, over-arching narrative spanning the two short seasons of Pushing Daisies. In a word, brilliant. Filled with quirky characters, over-the-top murder mysteries, and engaging storylines, not to mention Jim Dale's perfect narration, Pushing Daisies remains one of the most whimsically original and beautifully designed shows I've ever seen. I'm not bitter that the writer's strike interrupted the show's first season in 2007 and seemingly jettisoned its momentum, ultimately leading to the show's cancellation midway through season two in 2009. No, not bitter. Not. One. Bit. I couldn't think of a more fitting way to officially kick off my Countdown to 40 than with Entertainment Weekly, a publication that has fueled my proclivity for best-of lists and kept me in the pop culture loop for more than 20 years.
After moving to west-central Minnesota from suburban Saint Paul, I felt acutely aware of how rural and disconnected from any sense of culture I was. Sure, we went to the movies and watched television, but as an over-dramatic and angsty teenager, I thought our new geographical location severely limited our access to what I considered the outside world. After all, I thoroughly enjoyed and had grown accustomed to the variety of programming offered by cable television in the Twin Cities area. The four local stations, or sometimes five, depending on the weather and position of the antenna, therefore just didn't cut it. Then there was our town's cinema. Though it gradually increased to include seven screens by the time I graduated high school, only three existed when we moved to the area. Adding insult to injury, many friends and relatives, including my older sister, still lived near our old hometown, and trips to visit them only exacerbated my sense of cultural isolation. Looking back, it's not surprising, then, that I often romanticized living a more suburban lifestyle, which would bring with it many of the cultural opportunities such a lifestyle could provide. When Entertainment Weekly came along, it superficially granted me access to the sense of suburban belonging I so badly wanted, and suddenly I felt much less alone and culturally uninformed. I eagerly anticipated the arrival of each weekly issue, without which I may not have heard about or seen films like Dazed and Confused, Trainspotting, or Velvet Goldmine. Nor would I have given Gilmore Girls or Sex and the City a chance. But the magazine also did more for me and my sense of self than I ever realized at the time, something subtle and perhaps wholly unintentional. In covering all things popular culture and generally throwing its support behind the entertainment industry, Entertainment Weekly introduced and reinforced the idea that being gay was okay, if not normal, and homophobia simply was not. For a not-yet-out teenager--heck, for a not-yet-aware teenager--those sentiments made a huge impact, even if only subconsciously at the time. I still read my Entertainment Weekly every week, though I've transitioned from print to electronic copies over time, and consistently rely on the movie reviews, often agreeing with them before ever seeing (or not seeing) a film. It doesn't hurt, either, that the magazine always seemed sympathetic if not approving of Janet Jackson. Still, the year-end double issue remains my favorite annual EW offering, primarily because it recounts the best (and worst) in the year's pop culture releases. A no-brainer for a pop-culture geek and list enthusiast, right? |
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I am a self-proclaimed pop culture geek and list enthusiast who is celebrating the big four-zero by counting down the most important, influential, and favorite music, movies, television shows, books, and video games of my life so far. Categories
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