For the past couple of days I’ve been up in the mountains of New Mexico breathing clean air (a novel concept for most Dallasites) and tromping around at an elevation that would give most Texans vertigo.

I’m not sure if it was the hypoxia or the ethereal creativity that seems to float around in the air like the damn cottonwood fluff is right now, but ideas seemed to come to me pretty easily while I was slacking off. It might have also been a type of vision quest brought on by the sheer amounts of chile (red and green) that I consumed over the three day period. Either way, I don’t care.

The first of my ideas that I was really excited to commit to paper was my ace in the hole: a treatment for a television pilot that would be a guaranteed grand-slam. A cross-cultural buddy cop dramedy hit that has the potential to change the way the world looks at itsself: “Hyde & Sikh.”

The concept is pretty simple; in a freak accident, Dr. Henry Jekyll is transported from Victorian England to the 1970’s stuck in his Mr. Edward Hyde transformation. After wandering the Earth (like Caine) for more than a decade, Hyde settles in San Francisco and joins the police force. After quickly making detective, Hyde is partnered with the new hotshot transfer from Hong Kong by way of Punjab: Vikram Gony. Together they are Hyde and Sikh: dispelling prejudices and squashing crimes in the Bay Area.

The episodes practically write themselves.

Every couple of weeks my email inbox gets bombarded by offers of contract employment in strange and far off cities. I just about always check out where the job is in case I know someone that direction who might be interested (referral cash is as good as free money), but I generally just click the delete button and send these offers off into the ether to be recycled as ads for penis enlargement or lap band surgery.

Today, however, I got a contract offer for the one place I never thought I’d see in a contract employment email: Sunnydale, California. For the uninitiated, Sunnydale is the “town” where Buffy the Vampire Slayer takes place. Sunnydale is renowned for being a Hellmouth: a location of increased supernatural energies and basically serves as a portal between Earth and Hell.

Imagine my surprise to get a job offer there. For the seven seasons Buffy the Vampire Slayer ran on television (not to mention all the Buffy comic books I’ve read), Sunnydale as spit out baddie after baddie to terrorize the general populace and generally cause much mirth and mayhem.

Now the big question. Would I want to work there?  Even though the contract is only for a couple of months doing UI development (User Interface for you non-technical types), the thought of being smack dab (not sand dabs. Look it up) near the Hellmouth has some serious potential. At the very least I could team up with the local Scoobies (you know they exist) and hang out picking on weird homeless people after beers (or whatever they served) at the Bronze.

Wait a minute, that job was in Sunnyvale, CA and not Sunnydale, CA? Screw that.

I noticed a quite disturbing trend the other day when I was wasting time at my local big box electronics store: the “25th Anniversary” trend in DVDs.

Everywhere I looked, the stuff that was cool as shit in my formidable years was suddenly celebrating a quarter of a century of existence. I realize that I’ve killed enough brain cells to honestly have a missing year or two, but this is scary.

Remember The Last Starfighter? It’s freakin’ 25 years old and they’re putting it out on Blu-ray! Now you can see spaceman Harold Hill in 1080P! If that doesn’t scare you enough, then pick up Cujo because it’s 25 years old as well. I’m not even going to go into how depressing it is that movies like The Blues Brothers and Pink Floyd – The Wall are pushing 30 this year. That’s just too depressing.

If aging movies aren’t enough, think about the television of your (meaning mine) childhood and how it’s faring.

The Bill Cosby show and it’s awesomely awful sweaters is 25. Have you seen Rudy lately? She’s gone from the sweet baby of the family to now (apparently) playing some reformed con artist. That’s just plain sad.

Even though Optimus Prime is kicking it in living color on the big screen (with a newly-found mouth at that), the original Transformerscartoon is celebrating 25 years this year. That tells me that GoBots, Thundercats, Dungeons & Dragons, Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling and M.A.S.K. are all that old. Hell, by 1985, He-Man was already off the air!

I’m going to go curl up and cry at my childhood now.

I’m a child of the 80’s. Sure there was a lot of horrible stuff went on (Iran-Contra, Reaganomics, parachute pants), but it was definitely a simpler time for simpler people.

A simpler time for simpler tastes, and my simple tastes were largely cartoon oriented. Cut me some slack, I was ten years old in 1984. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I even knew who George Orwell was or why the year was so significant. I watched the hell out of Transformers, M.A.S.K., Voltron, Robotech, Tranzor-Z, and, my personal favorite, G.I. Joe.

I had nearly as much G.I. Joe crap as I did Star Wars crap. My brother and I held constant battles with some of the coolest toys ever to be made, and that was all fueled by the cartoon.

This weekend my darling squeezle bought for me The absolute ultimate G.I. Joe box set ever, and, throwing her own sanity to the wind, watched about six hours of the masterpiece with me. Sure, she did fall asleep during part of The MASS Device, but it’s totally excusable.

After watching a bunch of these episodes in a row I’ve discovered a few things that actually surprise me.

First off, when I was a kid, I remember Dukebeing a total badass. From the first six hours of cartoon that I’ve watched so far, Duke has spent way more time being a prisoner of Cobra than actually fighting. What the hell is up with that? Sure, being a P.O.W. is heroic and I would never denigrate that, but getting captured repeatedly is just moronic. Yeah, I said it, Duke is a moron.

My second “WTF” moment was the realization that Snake Eyesis constantly getting called on the radio. No lie, the line “Snake Eyes, are you there?” happened several times in the first couple of episodes alone. Hey Joes, can’t you remember that your elite ninja guy is mute? I’m just not thinking he’s going to answer that damn radio.

Third, everyone in G.I. Joe is a horrible shot. I can understand making all the guns “magically” lasers because there is just no way to market a cartoon where 3/4 of the time on the show is spent with the heroes and villains reloading their guns. Plus, in the eventuality that anyone gets hit, a laser shot is way cleaner than being hit by a bullet. Not that anyone ever gets hit. For an elite squad, G.I. Joe, quite literally, cannot hit the broad side of a tank from thirty yards.

All in all, while these things bug me, it’s not like I’m going to stop watching the episodes, or, heaven forbid, reevaluate my childhood. The lessons I learned from G.I. Joe I carry with me even today. For example, did you know that apple seeds are slightly poisonous? G.I. Joe taught me that.

It’s undeniable. Any Scooby-head worth their salt always knew to look out for Velma. Now, Travis Pitts (who does some freakin’ amazing designs) and Threadless put out what could be one of the best Scooby-related articles of clothing yet. This Velma could probably even give Buffy, Wichita and even Eden Sinclair a run for their money. This shirt deserves to be in your wardrobe. It has that “yeah, I might spend my nights glued to the Boomerang channel, but dollars to dead-guys you’ll be running to me when the zombpocolypse starts” vibe to it.

You always had to figure that Freddy, Daphne and Shaggy were nothing more than dead weight. Right Scoob?

found at Threadless