"Toy Story II" - El Joegante

 

Greetings, Toymasters! 

When I was six years old, there was no-one cooler then G.I. Joe.  And, no, I'm not talking about those growth-stunted, three-and-three-quarter-sized midgets.  I'm talking twelve whole inches of bearded, Eagle-Eyed, fuzzy-headed, fully-articulated love.

Wow, that sounded bad.

Anyhoo, these bad-ass dolls...er, figures were part of the G.I. Joe Adventure Team.  From the early-to- mid Seventies, the American toy company Hasbro produced a veritable army of foot-tall figures and a slew of matching outfits, vehicles, weapons and gear.

Since the Vietnam War had soured parents on toys with a blatantly military bent, the original G.I. Joe from the 1960's got a more "adventurous" makeover.  Instead of exchanging suppressive fire with World War II-era villains like the Germans and prospective enemies like the Russkies, this new Joe was much more keen on exploring deserts, mountains, rain forests and underwater environments.  Instead of recreating flashback scenes from The Deer Hunter, the Adventure Team tried to stem the tide of ecological disaster whilst risking being eaten to death by the very same ecology that they were attempting to save.

This era of Joe featured a rubbery and oxymoronic "Kung-Fu Grip" which allowed him to tote rifles, knives, canteens, pistols, flare guns, binoculars, shovels, compasses, pick-axes, machetes, map-cases, cameras, spear-guns, pretzels and A&W mini root beer mug handles.  Unfortunately, by the time you swapped these props out a hundred times a day for seven months, Joe's fingers would start falling off like a chronic case of leprosy.

Also pretty cool (in theory) was Joe's highly-vaunted "realistic hair".  A pretty elaborate flocking technique was used to give the Joes a fuzzy crew cut and beard.  Unfortunately Hasbro didn't tell kids that the glue used to keep these wigs on would eventually dissolve, usually after Joe had clocked his four-hundred and twenty-eighth straight hour submerged in the family bathtub.  Regardless of their flaws, the Adventure Team Joes were definitely my number one choice of toy in the B.S.W. (Before Star Wars) Era.   

This was the first G.I. Joe I ever owned:

In case you can't tell, that "medallion" around his neck is actually the Adventure Team logo:

Although it was just a cheap piece of plastic which probably turned your chest into the Green Lantern insignia, as a card-carrying AT member you were expected to wear your medallion at all times.  In retrospect this was kinda handy since you could just flash it to other kids in the schoolyard to see which ones were part of the Adventure Team Illuminati.

The cool thing about Joe was all the sweet, sweet swag you could deck him out in, including this bitchin' ride:

 
The jeep was actually part of the "Sandstorm Survival Adventure" which also included everything you see here (that last part is best read in cheesy announcer voice, BTW):

Oh, so you like the Transformers, huh?  Well, did Optimus Prime ever come with a mother-f#@kin' crocodile, yo?

What's that?  Why would there be a crocodile, a raft and a rain poncho in a "Sandstorm Survival Adventure" kit?  Well, it's because...um...I...uh...hey! why don't you go away and play with your stupid radioactive adolescent black belt newts! 

Admittedly, I'd like to call bullshit on Hasbro for that whole "male pattern baldness when exposed to water" crap.  How the hell were kids expected to dress Joe up in the following outfit and not marinate him in bathwater for three to six hours a night?

This reminds me of a quick / funny / sad story.  On August 16, 1977 me any my friend David ("His name is my name too!") we playing with our G.I. Joe's in nearly-filled-to-capacity bathtub just like every other night.  All of a sudden my mom, visibly upset, came into the bathroom and said "Hey,  listen, I got some bad news to tell you."

Struck by her sombre tone we temporarily suspended our intense hunt for the good (but clearly not great) white shark.  We both turned around to face her, our rolled-up-yet-still-somehow-drenched sleeves and saturated Adventure Team members (?) dripping all over the bathroom floor.

"What?  What is it?" I ventured, worried by impending response.

My mom took a deep breath, wrung her hands together and said:

"Elvis Presley just died."

Me and David exchanged a brief glance, shrugged, turned around and then plunged our respective Joes back into the briny deep.  Nothing could stop the hunt for that poor, sad, anemic, clearly immature shark, and certainly not an obituary for the King of Rock n' Roll.  Stunned by our sacrilege, my mom heaved an exasperated sigh, turned away and then brought the bathroom door to with more mustard then usual.  To calm her frazzled nerves she sparked up a smoke and telephoned David's mom in an effort to find solace in someone other then her weird, obsessive spawn.
    
Because of the false advertising propagated by all that pimp "Danger of the Depths" gear, my first Joe eventually went bald and then started to fall apart so eventually I had to dump him.  Co-incidentally this is the exact same reason why most marriages end.  

Anyway, I soon recruited a new Joe for the ongoing mission.  This was Moving-Eyes Land Commander G.I. Joe.

This dude was pretty pimp 'cuz he had a lever on the back of his head that you could move left or right to make his eyes shift back and forth.  This could be used to indicate that Joe was always wary of incoming danger.  Or that he was just about to shoplift something. 

One summer we went to the Bill Lynch Fair in Sydney.  This was back when going to the fair was a big deal so the fairgrounds took up three-quarters of the mall parking lot.  Anyway I was walking through the place with my Dad and we came across a massive Bingo tent.  One of the Bingo prizes was this incredible-looking thing:

The Training Center's sheer awesomitute is nicely illustrated in this vintage television spot:

 

This was something that I hadn't seen in the local stores.  Although it was clearly a thing of tremendous beauty my parents quickly made it crystal clear that there no way I was going to get it.  As we drove home that evening I envisioned all the awesome adventures that Joe might have in the Training Camp™.

The next day I came home from school and went to put my books in my room.  Lo and behold, this thing was standing right in the middle of the floor, fully assembled:

Somehow my Dad managed to go down to the fair, play a stack of Bingo cards, win the thing, bring it home and assemble it, all in six hours.  Who's got two thumbs and the greatest Dad in the history of the word "Dad"?  This cowboy.
  

Eventually Hasbro realized that a real man of action like Joe was probably getting bored with wrestling around in the dirt with vermin, so they brought in some additional characters.  Actually the real reason they did this was probably because their sales were about to tank because of this dude:  

That's right, folks: it's Steve Austin, The Six Million Dollar Man.  Well, more like the Thirty-One Million Dollar Man if you adjust for inflation.  Y'know the funny thing is I eventually got one of these Bionic bastards for Christmas and he didn't have half the personality of Joe!  He barely had any articulation.  The rubber skin on his mechanical arm dried up like some weird foreskin and fell off in a few months.  Finally, his "bionic" eyeball was so lame it was like you were looking backwards into your own brain.

Clearly threatened by this paper tiger, Hasbro cranked out a couple of "super-heroic" figures to compete directly with Monsieur Austin.  Namely the handi-capable "Atomic Man" Mike Power:

And the incredibly lame "Bulletman: The Human Glans":

Even as a six year old kid I could see that these guys were nothing but pale imitations of other characters.  If I wanted to go bionic I had Steve Austin and if I wanted to have a superhero brawl, I could just use my Megos.  Even though I recognized these two clowns for the charlatans that they really were, even I had to admit that Joe needed better adversaries then a pygmy crocodile and a guppy-sized shark.  Ergo, I put this dynamic villain on my wish list:

Yeah, so, in case you didn't catch that "the Intruder is the enemy of G.I. Joe".  What can I say, it was an appalling lapse of judgement on behalf of my six year old self.

Although I did have a pretty awesome G.I. Joe collection, there were three other vehicles that I really wanted but never got.  First up was the Capture Copter:

 

Then there was the "Big Trapper":

And finally, to reinforce that these toys were all about The Life Aquatic with G.I. Jou, here's the Sea Wolf submarine.  C'mon, it's a freakin' submarine, people!

 

Alas, I never did acquire these childhood Holy Grails, mainly because another marketing juggernaut would soon eclipse everything and, back then, parents didn't feel obligated go into debt just to bribe their own children and assuage their own guilt.  But before I get to that, I'm gonna talk about another "butch" series of dolls that preoccupied my formative years.

Next time out the Emblogification Capture Device takes a look at the Massive Marvelous (and DC-elous) Multiverse of the Megos!  

EPIC MEMORIES

Meeting Joe for the first time.  I still wear these same P.J.'s on special occasions, BTW.  

Here's Joe "humbling" his rival Dr. Steel, Iron Sheik-style.  As you can see, one foe Joe couldn't defeat was Male Pattern Baldness. 

 Pals to the end.  The end, of course, being 1978 when Star Wars action figures came out.   

Mark II Joe with an unidentified master of disguise.  

EPIC PHOTO CREDITS 

http://www.mastercollector.com/neat/giJoe/club/exclusives/at.html
 
http://vame.lefora.com/2010/09/15/some-photos-of-my-collection/

http://sean.adventureteam.com/gijoe/new-at/gijoe-at-danger-depths.htm

http://www.thetrenchesforum.com/forums/showthread.php?p=97199

http://www.landlcollectables.com/catalog/product_info.php/products_id/1000916
 
http://www.retroland.com/six-million-dollar-man-toys/#.UMO_lnf4KSo

http://www.plaidstallions.com/hasbro/gijoe.html

EPIC VIDEO  MCA + AD ROCK + MIKE D + G.I. JOE = WIN!

 

ADVENTURE TEAM FAIL  Man, talk about "The Intruder".

♫♪ "Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'..." ♪♫

Hello, Kind Reader.

A great man once said "Time is the fire in which we burn".  Well, actually it was Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Tolian Soran in Star Trek Generations, but, hey, why split hairs?  It's still a cool quote.

Well, it's been nearly five months since my voluntary departure from my last traditional paying gig and I can scarcely believe it.  Like with any new, exciting and terrifying venture, for the first few weeks after my liberation time crept by like a chameleon on downers.

But inexorably, it began to pick up steam again.  Despite my best efforts to the contrary, the summer is melting away like quicksilver through my fingers.  Whatupwitdat?

Do you remember how the days lasted forever when you were a kid?  Do you remember how time would drag by sometimes and you couldn't wait for a certain major event to roll around?  Do you remember checking days off an Advent Calendar waiting for Christmas like a crazed little Dwight Frye in Dracula? 

Cripes, it seemed like a month would have to transpire before you could earn the privilege of spinning that little dial, marking an "X" or doing a cardboard "B&E" to retrieve the chocolaty  treasure inside.   

Summer vacations were epic long before the word epic was overused.  Of course, "Back in My Day" (best read in your finest Grampa Simpson voice) we weren't over-saturated in entertainment value.  There was no internet, no home video and our game consoles all sucked considerable amounts of ass.  All we had were Star Wars action figures, G.I. Joe (the gigantism version that would be much more likely to nail Barbie versus that pastel-clad closet case Ken), crappy hand-held electronic baseball games, and drawing paper.  Mardi Friggin' Gras, huh? 

I've said this before but it bears repeating: the intervening years between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were the longest years of my life.  I look back on it now and consider those thirty-six months to be like the dream that Leonardo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard shared in Inception.  It was like a separate, insular other lifetime. 

So why is it that time seems to accelerate the older we get?  Frankly I gotta know because I'm looking at the calendar and feeling a bit whip-lashed here.

I did some research on the interwebs and found a lot of theories.  Here are just a few:

(1) "We had more leisure time and less responsibilities as a child so when you add in deadlines, chores and tasks, the time flies by quicker." 

Frankly, I don't buy this one.  Class attendance and homework certainly ate up more lot time for me as a High Schooler than I have now.  So why are my weeks as an adult flying by quicker again even though I'm theoretically doing less now?

EEEEEENNNNTTTT!!!  "Ooooooo, sorry, good guess but I'm afraid that is incorrect!  Now would you like to try for the bonus round where the scores can really change?"

(2) "School as a kid is so boring that time drags by. Once you're out of school you can choose what you want to do and suddenly there's not enough time in the day to do everything you want."

Ummmm, okay.  So why do you perceive time spent at your current boring adult job (especially an entire work week) still melts away quicker then, say, when you were locked up in a classroom as a kid?  In the immortal works of Ricky Ricardo: "'Splain, Lucy, 'splain."   

Let's face it folks: Lucy never did.      

(3) "Because time spent as a child is a larger proportion of your life.  Three years between the ages of three and six is half of your existence. Two years between the ages of 47 and 50 is only about 4% of your life."


Ri-i-i-i-i-i-ght.  Even the original author thinks this is horseshit when he admits: "Well, it sounds good when you say it fast."  Frankly a year is a year is a year.  A kid has no perception that a year of his life represents a certain percentage of his time spent on earth.  Nuts to this one as well.


(4) "Your brain is similar to a camera shutter.  The higher the setting on the shutter speed, the slower objects appear to be moving when you see them on film.  As you age, your brain starts to slow down like the shutter on a camera.  If you take a video at a high frame rate of a fast-moving humming bird its wings will appear to freeze in flight. When you're a kid your senses are operating a lot quicker."  

?????????

Okay, all I gotta say here is: "Ground Control to Major Tom!  Ground Control to Major Tom!"  Who the f#@$ wrote this, Doug Henning?

Actually I'm being a bit facetious here.  Of everything I've read so far at least this is an interesting theory.  This guy also tries to tie it into your diminishing reaction time as an adult and why your reflexes are sharper as a kid.  Frankly I think that's more related to the physiological disconnect that characterizes advanced aging and is certainly too variable amongst individuals to be the rule of law.   

Besides as an adult I'm a helluva lot more likely to grab something tumbling out of the cupboards before it brains me versus when I was a kid.  I was a clumsy, gangly little shit.  

(5) "As a man in his Sixties I believe that it's an attempt for the brain to guard itself. The more recollections we store up the more challenging it is for our minds to catalog it all.  The less intensely we feel things, the less the minor aches and pains will bother us. The more health issues we experience ( hearing loss, fading eyesight, stiff joints, poor balance, lack of recall...etc ), the more we'll welcome death as an old friend."

Jesus, morbid much?   This might address perception a bit and it's an interesting take, but there's not a shred of evidence to back it up.  Okay, let's see...next wacko. 


(6) "It's a physical process. Dopamine levels alter the perception of time.  Experiments have shown that people with high dopamine production guessed much higher than those with average levels when asked to approximate how much time had passed. Subjects with low dopamine levels guessed considerably lower." 

Alright, now we're cooking with gas!  This is the most sensible thing I've read so far.  But having said that, there are still no clinical studies available that have looked at the passage of really large chunks of time like an entire year.  But it certainly speaks to the old adage: "time flies when your having fun."

But if it was purely based on dopamine, why does your perception of time start crawling again when we suddenly find ourselves in unusual or different circumstances?  Typically during times in which our our usual routines are shaken up?  

Why is time flying by quicker for me now  versus my first two months away from work?  I've been uniformly busy the whole time and I'm pretty sure my Dopamine level hasn't dropped off a cliff in the past eight weeks.  Nope, something still isn't right here...

So, ladies and gents, I present to you, the real answer IMHO presented verbatim as written by the original author:

"Most people fall into a daily routine where nothing unusual ever happens. Our culture develops systems for smoothing our deaths, financial hardship, births, and so on, so that no one ever need be overly concerned. 


"People's lives are planned by the State from the moment they're born to the moment they die so as to cause minimal fuss and disruption. The way the human brain (and other brains in general) work(s) is extraneous data is discarded to ensure that critical data is always able to get through. 

"A frog's brain is so simple that it edits out anything which doesn't move erratically; large erratic objects are predators to be avoided and small erratic objects are prey to be eaten. Snakes are efficient predators of frogs because their smooth, sinuous movement makes them literally invisible to frogs. Human brains, while more complex, work much the same way. As time passes, the uninteresting daily routine gets edited out of your experience. 


"Sadly, for most people, this means they blink at age 9 and suddenly they're 65, on their death beds.

"The best way to avoid having time whiz past at breakneck speed, rushing you to your death, is to make sure you never fall into routine. Take up new skills constantly. Challenge yourself always, and take on slightly more than you can handle. Throw yourself into crisis willingly, and tantalize yourself by the occasional brush with lethal danger. 

"I'm 39 years old, never had a wife, no kids, no car, no career, no insurance, and my income hasn't exceeded $10k per year in a decade. I'm an anarchist activist, a street organizer, I've done time in jail, and fighting with riot cops is a pleasant and relaxing hobby. When at last I go to my final rest -- with any luck, still wearing my combat boots -- I'll have sucked every drop of experience from my life and be well ready to throw the husk away."

So there it is.  Now I'm not saying that the previous theories don't hold any water at all.  They all contribute to our experience as time's plaything.  But I think this one really hits the nail on the head.

I'm also not suggesting we all go out like "anarchy boy here and throw Molotov cocktails, burn cop cars and spend time on a chain gang but for the love of Katy Perry, if you feel time is making you her coat rack then just twist the wheel hard to port and veer out of that rut!  

Turn off the crappy reality television!  Liberate yourself from that time-sucking MMORPG!  Stop virtual farming and plant a real friggin' garden!  Look for a new job!  Sign up for a course!  Go out and see a good movie!  Take a walk without a destination!  Read a book at a coffee shop!  Embark on a trip!  Go camping!  Volunteer!  Er, write a blog!

You'll be surprised how much time slows down again when you give your eyes and ears something new and exciting to chew on.

Yes, I still lose track of time occasionally but at least now I've got something to show for it!  Before all I could do was say that I pressed some buttons, habitually pestered people over the phone and then picked up a paycheck.

I hated knowing that every day of my work week was a pre-destined exercise in futility.  Just like clockwork, every morning I would get up, boil some tea, make toast, check my links, get cleaned up, get dressed, go to work, slave away pointlessly for two hours, go buy a coffee on my fifteen minute break, blabber endlessly for another two hours, drive somewhere for lunch for thirty minutes, rock back and forth in despair, come back and hit the feeder bar for another four and a half hours before stumbling bleary-eyed out of my corporate prison.

And my reward for enduring this at the end of the day?  Running errands, making dinner, paying bills, cleaning up, self-medicating myself with a movie or a video game for an hour or so, only to pass and do it all over again the next day.

I did this continuously for ten years with one interchangeable day blending into the other. Little wonder our brains merge all of these identical "experiences" into one big amorphous blob of  mush!  It's a horrible, limbo-like existence designed merely to prop up the status quo. 

After subsisting on this unchanging pattern of chronological gruel  for so long I've vowed never to let myself be imprisoned in my own life ever again.

   

At least now I can point to some things and say, "Well, that's what I did with my time!"   Of course some people may respond: "Really?  Jeez, that's pretty sad" but I bet it's more than they can claim.
 

Don't be kindling for time's fire, people.  Burn the bitch right back... 

EPIC: "Magic is illusion and illusion is magic, except on Wednesdays..."



100% bonus in the EPIC department:  "GET IN DA CHOPPAH!!!"



If this was a link it would be CAPTAIN EPICPANTS:  The best song I know on the subject.


FAIL: More half-baked answers to the time quandary right here.
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/34217