30 Years Since...

If time continues to do this annoying linear thing, we're going to have to have some words.

We're now at the 30th anniversary of the premiere of Lois & Clark, and some media outlets are actually recognizing the occasion, including the LA Times and the Washington Post.

My friend and fellow FOLC Julie and I were reminiscing tonight about L&C websites from back in the day. Remember those sparkly GIFs? I still have a few things saved from back then. So please, enjoy... unless you have photosensitivity, in which case, TURN BACK NOW.

Okay, I know this one isn't animated, but it's cool so here you go...

AKA Vintage References

I'm currently nearing the end of the of glorious podcast Lois & Clark'd: The New Podcasts of Superman. Last night I was listening to the AKA Superman episode, and Matt (the host) and the guests were confused about the "dance" Lois & Penny do while trying to escape.

I was 16 when this episode aired, and I (like the podcasters) had no idea what this tune/dance was. I only learned about it later, as an educator, when a fellow teacher had her class perform it as part of a skit or something. 

The dance is called The Bunny Hop, and here is a video of it from 1953.

Recently, I asked my mom, who was born in 1952, if she knew what The Bunny Hop was, and she said yes; they used to do it in gym class in school.

Lois, however, was born in 1967. We don't know how old Penny is; but maybe 22? (Kristanna Loken, the actress, was 17!) Would they really have been as familiar with it?

That got me thinking... maybe the writer of this episode was a grandpa or something. BUT NO! It was thirtysomething Jeffrey Vlaming (1959-2023; RIP.)

All that said, as I recall, the scene in the episode uses the song weirdly and IT'S JUST ALL WEIRD, OKAY?

I remember when AKA Superman aired and how delighted the fans were that Lois's humorous self was "back." (I should mention that "the fans" were the follow FOLCs over on the Compuserve message boards that I frequented. As the show's ratings dropped, so did the number of people on the forums. I was never entirely sure if they stopped being fans or if they'd merely migrated over to AOL.) 

Throwing stuff on the floor in a restaurant, going underneath a table, and hitting your invulnerable husband in the head with chopsticks are apparently all very funny things.

Waste of shampoo, honey...

 

Even though I knew in the back of my mind that this was a real movie (A Summer Place (1959)) that Lois switches the channel away from in Honeymoon In Metropolis, I only watched the movie for the first time last week.

I now know why Lois changed the dang channel.

The movie was a giant ball of cringe. At first I was excited because one of the main actors was Dr. Chilton from Pollyanna, but I quickly grew sick of seeing his face.

The funniest thing was probably the two forty-something parents planning a divorce and worrying about who would get custody of their son (the son is played by an actor in his 20s... custody indeed!)

What I hadn't realized was that the actress pictured here is Sandra Dee, of "that-song-from-Grease" fame! So that was fun.

Never again.

20 Years Since...

Sunday, September 12, 1993: Lois & Clark premiered as a pilot movie on ABC. It was followed by episode 3 ("Strange Visitor"), then episode 2 ("Neverending Battle"). I guess you could say it got off to a strange start. Pre-empted almost straight away by an awards show, the show's ratings were pretty lame that year. It was up against good ol' Murder She Wrote on CBS and the new sci-fi series SeaQuest: DSV on NBC. Plus it was created as an adult romantic comedy, yet it aired in the family-friendly 8:00 timeslot.

And yet it managed to stick around for four years... outlasting both of its abovementioned competitors. Four wasn't the perfect number, exactly -- L&C had actually been slated for a fifth season, but ratings went kaput in season 4 and it got canceled; the final episode aired in June of 1997. But from 1993-1997 TV audiences had a great show to watch nearly every week -- it was my favorite show. And I really can't believe it's been 20 years since...

My mom and my brother wanted to watch the pilot. I'd been seeing commercials for the show all summer and wasn't impressed. But they turned it on and I stuck around. And then that dang snake had to come on and get into a staring contest with Lex Luthor, and I was out of there. I mean literally. I fled.

But I was back for more as the season went on, and by the end of season 1, I was a bigger fan than any of my family members. By season 3, I could recite the names of all the episodes and give you a description of each of their plots, the names of the guest stars, and the titles of any songs used within. By season 4, I was paying (out of my allowance) for internet access just so I could go online and discuss the show with fans around the world.

After L&C ended, I started an online fan club for the show, and I may say it was one of the longer-lasting clubs of its kind. But after several years, it, too, came to an end. My passion faded a bit, though I never forgot the show. I'd watch it when I felt like it. I kept the posters and photos up. I never found another show I liked quite so much.

And it all started one Sunday night, twenty years ago. More than half a lifetime ago...

I made new friends because of L&C. Friends who also loved the show. Just last January, one of those friends & I went to meet Dean Cain at a convention here in town. We giggled like 13-year-olds and squealed happily after we got a photo taken with him. We had a great time and were probably grinning for days. That friend and I would never have been friends if not for L&C.

TV looks a lot different these days. Commercial breaks are longer; shows are more mature. The 8:00 hour is rarely "family-friendly" anymore, and no one seems to care.

We've seen two other Superman TV shows and two Superman movies in the last 20 years. And while I've seen them all, none compares to that sweet, funny, exciting, wonderful show.

Happy Anniversary, Lois & Clark.

Merry Christmas!

I had to do it. There are just certain things a person needs do before Christmas, or, as the cliche goes, "it just wouldn't be Christmas." The tree was decorated, carols were sung, the Christmas Eve service attended, Peacock Lane driven down, and holiday beverages consumed. But there was one thing I still needed...

Lois & Clark, duh!

On Christmas Eve, I decided to download Season's Greedings (season 2, episode 9) from Amazon for $1.99. Not that I don't own eighteen copies of it. I probably do. I just thought "hey, I'd like to watch it on my Kindle." So I began watching it and I started to feel giddy and nostalgic. Shoot, I was FOURTEEN YEARS OLD when that ep first aired! I loved it then and I love it now.

But there was one little snag in the plan. My friend had warned me (but I'd forgotten) about this one thing. The streaming version of this episode has different music than the original version. Instead of The Twist, when Perry is dancing, you've got some generic rock and roll music; instead of The Pretenders' Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas towards the end, you've got instrumental music. And while the later is really pretty -- it's just not RIGHT.

Meh.

BUT! It's still a wonderful episode and 98% of it totally made my night.

Some thoughts:
*Lois is so pretty in this episode and I love all her outfits.

*Every time I watch the scene where Superman flies down to save the snowball girl, I can't help thinking of the behind-the-scenes thing I saw where he actually fell during one take. D'oh. (Proof that mayyyybe I shouldn't watch behind-the-scenes things if I want to keep the magic alive.)

*Mr. Schott is kind of hard to understand. It has taken me MANY viewings to catch most of his dialogue, and there are still a few lines I'm not sure about.

*Season 4 had a lot of dopey moments, and the latter half of season 3 was full of them too (shrinking shampoo, anyone?) but season 1 and 2 don't have very many. At least not to me. But the part where Clark indicates that the star ornament is an ACTUAL STAR, and Lois seems to be impressed, is a BIT MUCH. (Oh well, it's the sentiment, right?)

*Denise Richards was so pretty back then! It makes me sad that she had to grow up and marry Charlie Sheen for a while. And that she didn't come back for any more episodes. And that Jimmy never seemed to find true love. :(

*When the HECK did Lois have time to cook all that food? No. I think she ordered it all. Lois, you little devil.

So Dean Cain is on Twitter...

So. Dean Cain is on twitter. But I can't bear to follow him. Not that I follow that many celebrities anyway. It's just too weird, though, with Dean. In my mind he's still 29 and... well... Clark Kent, dangit! Of course, I CAN separate the actor from the character in my mind if I really want to -- heck, I've met Dean in real life -- but mostly I.... don't really want to. When I read fanfic I want to be able to picture that handsome, dark haired, chocolate-brown-eyed cutiepie. When I watch the show I want to completely immerse myself in THAT CHARACTER without thinking about the actor, who, God bless him, is 45 with a 12-year-old son. Nooo! Clark Kent is in his twenties! BRAIN CAN NOT COMPUTE. The same thing happens when I watch a slightly-younger Dean on shows like A Different World. He was such a jerk in that one episode. It makes my brain hurt.

Yet somehow with Teri Hatcher it never has really mattered, watching her get older and move on to other projects. I have no problem seeing her in one role and yet still seeing her as Lois and totally believing her character when I see her or read about Ms. Lane.

So what. Is. My. Problem?

I think I'm just madly in love with "Dean Cain circa 1995," and I could use some professional help.

Fanfictional

I'm one of those people who can read several books at once. In fact, I like to. Unless it's that rare book that gives me everything I need (which would be nigh impossible, since "everything" includes both fiction and non-fiction and how do you do both? Unless you're James Frey. But can he also write something with historical juiciness? And angsty romance? And humor? I think not), I've gotta have several going on at once. Well, not at once. I'm not an octopus, with one book on each of my eight arms. No, I'll read a chapter or two of one, two chapters of another, maybe dip into a third, go back to the first, and so on.

It seems I'm the same way when it comes to writing. While there will be times when my focus and attention is on just one project, other times, I get my happiness from three or four projects. A novel, a short story, a web series, and -- when the mood is right -- fanfic.

Yes, I am a fanfic writer. And I'm afraid there's a bit of a stigma that goes with that. Blame it on the nerdy thirteen-year-olds who blast the internet with tales like Harriette Potter -- Long-Lost Twin Sister of Harry -- And The Pealing Bells of Harmony, in which Harriette not only is smarter, braver, and more clever than her born-four-minutes-later brother Harry, but she's scarless, has perfect eyesight, and is the object of lust of Draco Malfoy, Oliver Wood, and Cedric Diggory. Yes, some fanfic is really cheesy. A lot is poorly written. And anyone can publish it for the masses on places like fanfiction.net, then receive oodles of comments from younger readers along the lines of "UR SO AWESUM!"

But despite this, fanfic is not a bad thing.

I actually developed my love for writing as a teenager while penning crappy Friends/Lois & Clark crossovers. Don't ask. They were really dumb and I never shared them. But writing is like anything else -- the more you do it, the better you get at it (well, we hope.) Later, once I'd written something I deemed worthy of sharing, I did so -- and received comments from older, wiser writers that made my heart swell. They said I had potential! I started dabbling in different genres. I especially enjoyed doing tag-team, or round-robin fics with my friends. They often turned out very silly (usually, toward the end, because we didn't have the skills to come up with a coherent ending, we'd just casually kill everybody off), but we had a blast doing the actually writing.

Over time, I began to write less fanfic and swing toward more original stuff. Fanfic kind of has its limitations. You have set characters and a set canon. Sure, you can play around with that to some extent -- alternate universes, alternate beginnings, etc. -- but whether or not they're accepted depends on the mercy of your intended audience. Some fandoms will let you get away with more than others, I suppose. But really, you do have these already-established characters, and unless you go crazy and throw canon out the window, you have to stick to certain guidelines. Not so with original fiction. That's yours to do whatever you like with. Go nuts.

So even though original writing has its pros, every once in a while I'll start to think about my favorite TV show and my brain will start going, "Hey... what if...?" As I lay in bed at night, my mind will churn with possibilities. And before long, I have to start writing my thoughts down.

Which is why I've written two fanfics in the last six months, and have another one stirring.

No, I can never publish my fanfics for real or make so much as a dime off them. But they make me happy. They satisfy my creative urges, at least for a time.

And, in fifteen years, I'm sure they'll give me something to laugh at.

Like those Friends fanfics.

Did I say laugh? I meant cringe. ;)