Old time good times

I was bored at lunch.
I usually go for a walk in the park, eat my lunch and go straight back to my desk, but this time I went for a walk into the city. Unlike most people I know, I don't really like stuff and I'm heaps not excited about things and as such our current enforced pauperism to get back in the black has been much easier for me than the little red rockstar. So, walking around shops is pretty freakin' boring for me, I just can't get my enthusiasm on. This time though, I was curious about this post from Deb just because I do like the X-Men and lately TV has been the crap.

So I walked to JB Hi-Fi.
Pretty much as soon as I went in I wanted to leave. People were just so into things, and buying stuff. So much so I was a bit embarrassed to be sharing the same floorspace. Slinking sideways against the walls, diving over the cheap DVD table and crawling between aisles to avoid suspicion I went over to the TV show DVDs and had a look. I didn't find it but I saw something I got very excited about.

Not understanding my emotions, I ran.


My Dad's favourite thing in the whole world is hooking people up.
Not for smoochy smoochy, lovey lovey, bouncy bouncy but 'to share conversations on your mutual passions and/or circumstances'. Tell a story, any story and my Dad will know a guy you should meet.

The first (and I think only) guy I did actually meet was the dude who gave me my first job. Now, this very post could land me in jail but since I trust the internet not to nark on me and because it's not at all integral to anything I worked at a candle wrapper well before the age you're actually allowed to work. I think it's 13 and 9 months.

This meant I was the youngest, richest dude anyone/my family had ever met and I became a bit of a bank to my parents, I think there was a recession on, I wasn't really paying attention. Anywho, when I wasn't lending currency to the parentals I was buying up big on comics.

Yes, I was a nerd.

Yes, was. Want to take it outside?

My comic collector status lasted for about 5 years and there were so many that I really liked. I liked the Australian-made Phantom comics and I liked the the UK joke comics but I never really got into the American ones. They were just heaps confusing, how many X-Men and Batman titles were there, freakin', and how did they all link in to each other. How many Spidermans can there be? They were always so much more expensive and glossy and filled hardcore with ads.

My distaste changed a bit when my Mum was up late one night and saw a show about a superguy or something and even though she didn't know how to use the video player she managed to record half of it. I watched it the next day and heaps loved it.

My parents were always very complimentary and impressed about all my drawings and big Lego cities and stories about skateboarding but they weren't totally interested, you know. That's not criticism on them, if a kid came up to me and was telling me all about Pokemon or shooting up or whatever kids are into these days I'd listen and ask cool questions but I personally am not into Pokemons/The Fat Controller/winning thousands on internet poker.

First up, my Mum was proud that she introduced me to something cool so she'd watch the weekly taping of the superdude show with me. It was a pretty fun show so after a few episodes we'd both be totally hanging for the next one. It was called The Flash and was about a dude dressed in red who could run really, really fast. Like, even faster than me and I won blue ribbons. Whoa! Too freakin' fast.

Unfortunately, like all good TV shows it just disappeared in the middle of a season without explanation and I scanned the Green Guide for like a year looking for it. I was still in my comic phase and that's when I found The Flash comics.

It started off pretty confusing because the dude in the comics wasn't the dude in the TV show. Piecing together little clues in the comic, I worked out that the comic dude was, like, the nephew of the TV show Flash who had been killed in comics land years earlier.

The comics were good but still not as interesting as The Phantom and whatnot... but then they starting getting better. Like, Better x 100. They changed writing staff and drawing guys and the stories became so much more involved and awesome and just hardcore good.

Just hardcore good. Freakin'.

By this point I had been replaced by a candle wrapping machine and so now I was totally awesome at doing my chores for pocket money. Our cats got fed every day now. The comic would come out once a month and I've devour it in like 3 minutes and then basically savour it for that month. I used to set them out in order on my desk with a clean spot ready for the next one.

Was a nerd.

Eventually, the main writer left and the drawing guys moved on and it got more expensive and it wasn't as good and I got a pair of rollerblades and the comics are in a box in my Dad's garage somewhere (I hope) and I totally forgot totally about it totally... but thinking back I don't reckon I've ever been that excited about a fictional character since.

Until I went back into JB Hi-Fi a couple of days ago and bought this:

I've only watched a couple of episodes but I goddam love it so much. It was made or released or something in 1990 - it's even daggier than Bill Cosby always overhearing his family's plans to trick him, daggier than a serious Cool As Ice. The peeps be wearing crazy print shirts all the time and when they dress up spiffy they look like Chandler dressed like Miami Vice and when he dons his superdude suit he looks far more like a cherry flavoured Ninja Turtle than anything else. The acting is terrible, the jokes are baaaaaaad and the whole thing was so poorly done and I don't think I've ever been so excited.