oh how we remember things differently

I have had a netflix account for quite a little while now and the other day I guess finally decided to use it for good instead of evil. There was once a show I used to watch way back in the day during the good old days of Nickelodeon called The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Now I am not sure what started it but somehow the memory of the show popped into my head. Most likely this was just a misinterpreted message from the mother ship that got mixed up with an old I Love Lucy episode but irregardless (marry x-mas dennis) I immediately went to wikipedia and checked out what the good people of the internet had to say about it while they tried to act intellectual. This only fueled the flame, literally because now in order to gain access to the internet, for some reason, I have to be engulfed in fire, specially fire from Eastern Europe. I know, it sounds like a odd thing requirement to me too but it’s probably jut a bad case of spyware. But anyway, I am sure you don’t want to hear about that, so to continue on, I eventually found out that just a few weeks ago the dvd set of season 1 was released. So I zoomed over to netflix as fast as my isp would take me and after adding about twelve or thirteen more movies (what can I say, netflix just somehow sucks me into it) I put The Adventures of Pete and Pete Season 1 disks 1 and 2 at the top of my queue. The disk arrived promptly as they always do and, after making a backup or two (just in case both disks died before I could watch them, nothing illegal here, keep moving) I popped the disks in and was all set to relive the childhood memories that I will one day get to pay a therapist many dollars to help me forget. Now I always knew that Pete and Pete was a strange show, quirky if you will (if you wont then it was just plain messed up). It came out around the same time as Twin Peaks’ first season (although it was originally short stories back in 1989), maybe a year after and it was sometimes called the Twin Peaks of kid shows. Not by me (I have never even seen Twin Peeks and I have no idea what it is about, but then again neither do the obsessed fans of the show) but by, you know, people. Well I have to say I was caught most off guard by how weird and different the show was form what I remembered. I mean on the one hand everything I thought I remembered was there but I guess I just remembered a lot that I hadn’t noticed. I mean how many other shows do you know that feature Steve Bushemii (last seen getting his legs put through the wood chipper a la Fargo) guest staring as a dad, one brother who has a giant tattoo of a flamingo dancer on his forearm that he can make dance around as well as a giant tattoo of a sailboat covering half his back (I guess tattooing children was a usually practice back in the late 80’s early 90’s because nobody finds this unusual), the mom who has a metal plate in her head from a childhood accident and she can use it to receive radio station from all around the country as well as police scanner messages (Steve Bushemii uses this to his advantage by broadcasting night and day on the mom’s head as a type of psychological warfare driving her crazy and keeping her up for several weeks straight and forcing her to do polka dancing), she can also transmit messages and the young Pete sets up a radio station using his mom’s head, a crossing guard who is always smoking, especially around the young kids (and no mention is made of this, I guess the 90’s were a simpler time before cigarette were bad) and he loves to memorize and recite love notes between the kids, an emotionally disturbed school bus driver who recently gets dumped by his girlfriend responds by locking the kids in the bus and driving them around town for hours and hours showing them every little thing they did together, from where she drooped her ice cream scoop to the forest that the wood was taken from the make the table they ate at for their first date, and how a bout a marching band teacher that snaps and drills the human compassion out of the band members. And of course there is Artie…..the strongest maaannn….in the world! He runs around in pajamas doing incredible feats of strength like moving a house over an inch as a prank. All of this was encompassed in a usually 22 minute episode. Somehow all that seemed not that out of the ordinary all those years ago. Well I guess the 50’s had the beatniks, the 60’s had the hippies, the 70’s had banapple gas and Cat Stevens, the 80’s had…well everyone who was alive and wore cloths during the 80’s, and the 90’s had Pete and Pete. (and the 00’s had this blog)