Self indulgent Birthday alert!
Self indulgent Birthday alert!
Last year, my birthday post consisted of The 10 Best Things About The Year I Was Born. The response was so good, I have decided to keep the tradition up by annually posting a 10 Best list for every decade of my life. When I was 10, that year was 1973.
This list is undoubtedly going to stir up a storm of controversy and heated discussions amongst the massive Internet fanbase for both me and the year 1973.
I stand by my choices....
10. Montreal Canadiens win the Stanley Cup
I realize that putting any Canadiens Stanley Cup win at number 10 on any 10 best list is considered treason for anyone living in the greater Montreal area. Honestly, though, '73, was the last time I was actually following hockey closely.
As was Canadian Law for all children under the age of 12 at that time, I collected hockey cards. Many of the names on roster from that year are still familiar to me: Ken Dryden, Serve Savard, Larry Robinson, Steve Shutt, Guy Lafleur, Frank and Pete Mahovlich and, of course, "the pocket rocket" Henri Richard. In fact, I could name the '73 line-up much better than I could name just about anybody on the current roster (um, is Carey Price still on the team?).
Most important to me though, for obvious reasons, was head coach Scotty Bowman.
In the 70's, Bowman led the Canadiens to six of the their total of 23 Stanley Cup victories. Four of those victories were won consecutively (76-79). It's also the highest number of wins for any decade in the club's history.
1973 was 2 of 6, though no one knew or predicted that then. I remember it very well. Well, kind of well, actually. Except for the Saturday night games, I never got to see the end of any hockey game, playoff or not. I usually had to go to bed sometime around the 2nd period. I would get the final score in the morning either from the radio or my dad (whichever one I got to first).
I didn't even get to see all of the final game of that '73 series. And with the series going seven games, it was pretty obvious that the Habs could take the Cup that night. Such was the Law of Bedtime in my house.
For what it's worth, I am told that I am distantly related to Scotty Bowman. Some people have told me I kinda look like the guy as well.
So, if anyone out there is casting that biopic...
9. Live and Let Die
Not the movie, the song.
In 1973, Roger Moore, former star of the long running British TV series, The Saint, took over the iconic role of James Bond, secret agent 007. Live and Let Die was super loosely based on the Bond novel of the same name by Ian Fleming.
Moore's reign as Bond would mark a decidedly arch turn toward camp and, at times, even outright slapstick in the 007 films. It created a link in the public consciousness between Bond and silliness. That link became so strong that it would not fully be broken until the advent of Daniel Craig in the role of James Bond in Casino Royale, the series' 2006 reboot.
Despite an overwhelming case of the sillies, Live and Let Die is still considered a fan favorite. To be fair, I did not see Live and Let Die in the theatres in '73. I was barely aware of it and only vaguely aware of James Bond's existence at the time. More than likely, I would not have been allowed to see the movie even if I had known about it. I would not see any of the Moore Bonds until I was much older. By that time, I considered the wackiness of, say, a chase that ends up crashing through a wedding with a lot of people comically screaming and running around, to be the exclusive domain of the those live action Disney comedies of the 70's. Such madcap mayhem, as far as I was concerned, belonged in movies like Herbie The Love Bug and The Strongest Man in the World and not in what should have been more serious Bond thrillers.
But I digress.
I remember hearing the song, Live and Let Die by Paul McCartney and Wings while listening to CKGM, Monteal's Top 40 radio station. I thought it was just about the coolest piece of music I'd ever heard in my life. It made for the perfect running around the house and jumping up and down on the couch while my mom wasn't looking soundtrack.
Live and Let Die was the highest charting Bond song up to that point in time. Later Bond title song hits were Carly Simon's Nobody Does it Better from The Spy Who Loved in 1975, Sheena Easton's For Your Eyes Only in 1981 and Duran Duran's A View to a Kill in 1985 (which also marked Moore's last appearance in the role). The McCartney composed title song marked a departure from the franchise's previous penchant for brassy big band style songs like Shirley Bassey's Goldfinger and Tom Jones' Thunderball.
The story goes that after being approached by producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to provide the theme for the next Bond film, McCartney went off on his own, wrote the song and then recorded it soon after.
Later, at a meeting with the Bond producers, he played a tape of the finished song. Saltzman and Broccoli then reportedly said something to the effect of "Wow. Great demo! Let's get Shirley Bassey and the band that played on Goldfinger into the studio to record it for the opening titles." At which point, McCartney reportedly explained to them that they just heard was the title song exactly as it would appear in the movie. It was that or they don't get to use the song at all.
In the battle of Beatle vs Bond, Beatle won.
8. Schoolhouse Rock!
Schoolhouse Rock! was a very telling sign of its time. It marked perhaps the first time that education finally caught up with the generation gap of the 60's and 70's. Schoolhouse Rocks! clever combo of animation and pop songs managed to nail down that elusive concept of making learning fun.
Schoolhouse Rock! was also significant in that it was a product born out of the world of advertising. The short snappy educational segments were the brainchild of one of Madison avenue's most successful ad agencies, McCaffrey and McCall. Education was approached in the same way that an advertising campaign approaches selling soap. The advertising techniques were especially relevant when it came to getting that important information, like the times tables, say, right into the young viewer's heads for good. The short animated musical shorts created jingles for learning math, grammar, history, science, etc. Instead of selling Juicy Fruit Gum or Lestoil, Schoolhouse Rock! sold reading, writing and arithmetic.
Schoolhouse Rock! began in 1973 as interstitials on the ABC network. They ran between cartoons and other kids shows on Saturday mornings. They quickly caught on with the kids, eventually attracting big name sponsors like Nabisco and General Mills. The Schoolhouse Rock! segments ran on ABC right up till 1985. They were then revived by ABC in the 90's.
I own an album, "Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks" featuring cover versions of Schoolhouse Rocks! songs by various indie rock bands from the late 90's. It's very cool. Get it.
The Schoolhouse Rocks! phenomenon continues today with DVD's, Blu-ray's, newly produced segments and even live concerts. Now that Disney owns ABC, Schoolhouse Rocks! is sure to remain a pop culture institution for years to come.
And let's face it, Schoolhouse Rocks! segments were and still are stunningly effective educational pieces. Who could ever forget what a conjunction is after you've heard "Conjuction Junction" two or three times? Or that a noun is "any person you can know, any place that you can go or anything that you can show.."? Even today, whenever I follow American politics, my fundamental understanding of how the U.S. Legislative branch of government works still comes from "I'm just a Bill, sitting here on capitol hill...".
It's like, for one brief shining moment, advertising used its powers for good instead of evil.
7. The Six Million Dollar Man
Doo-do-do-de-dee-de-do-do-da-do-da-do-de-de-dah!
Or something like that...
The Six Million Dollar man debuted in January of 1973. A mid-season replacement that caught on big time, The Six Million Dollar Man was an action adventure series centered around the exploits of a super powerful cyborg secret agent named Steve Austin (not to be confused with the 90's wrestler who borrowed his name). The role of Steve Austin was played by a post-Big Valley, pre-Fall Guy Lee Majors.
Austin was a former astronaut and an Air Force test pilot who lost both his legs, his right arm and his left eye in a plane crash. With the help of a highly advanced top secret government program, Austin's damaged legs, arm and eye are replaced by powerful mechanical prostheses or, using the term the series popularized, "bionic" (an actual scientific term but not used accurately in this context) parts. Hence where the super powerful cyborg secret agent part comes in. The title comes from the fact that, in 1973, it cost six million bucks to make the "world's first bionic man".
Not only did The Six Million Dollar Man introduce the word "bionic" into the pop culture lexicon but it also introduced the phenomenon of millions of boys play fighting in slow motion in elementary school yards all across North America.
The show is a quintessential old school action adventure series. It had a super strong guy beating up bad guys (though for Standards and Practices reasons, he tended to just throw them around a lot), poor man's James Bond villains, jungle adventures, fast cars, helicopters, robots and even (in one now famous two part episode) Sasquatch (who, of course, turned out to be an alien robot).
After two very successful seasons The Six Million Dollar Man, spun off another extremely popular 70's action adventure series, The Bionic Woman. This time around, the super powerful cyborg secret agent was a woman. Jamie Summers' adventures tended to be of the Barbie career variety. A typical episode would see Ms. (yes, the were using that prefix by then) Summers go undercover as a nurse, flight attendant, etc.
As played by Lindsay Wagner, The Bionic Woman came along at just the right time in my life, developmentally speaking. It premiered when my interests were just shifting away from big strong guys to attractive but not too threatening women.
6. Roe v Wade
My first instinct was to not include this historical event on the list.
True, the landmark US Supreme Court ruling that effectively made abortion legal in the United States did happen in 1973. However, such an emotional, important and controversial topic seemed a bit out of place on a list featuring the likes of the Six Million Dollar Man and Schoolhouse Rocks! And wouldn't it come off a kinda flippant to place Roe v Wade at no. 6, between The Six Million Dollar Man and The Exorcist? Plus, needless to day, the issue wasn't much on my radar at nine going on ten years old.
Then I thought...hmmm...maybe if I focus on the bumper stickers Roe v Wade generated. One can still see many pro and con Roe v Wade slogans on the backs of cars just about anytime you visit the United States. The subject would fit into the "He Had on a Hat" paradigm a little easier that way too. The uniquely American fixation of political and social debate via car bumpers had always fascinated me anyway.
So I Googled Roe v Wade bumper stickers. What I found was, well rather stunning. In the results for a Google image search for Roe v Wad bumper stickers, there was about 1 pro-Choice slogan for every 10 pro-Life slogans. This went on for pages and pages. Then it hit me that I really have to write about Roe v Wade.
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| Um, actually, it really isn't... |
I recently heard the claim that Google is, in fact, part of the liberal biased "lamestream" media that Fox News loves to pretend exists. If that's the case, Google musta really slacked off on this one. Clearly, the pro-Life movement is much better organized when it comes to tipping the search engines in their favour. Making sure that any given message dominates Google searches takes a concerted effort, especially given how much those Google geeks love to change search algorithms.
I mean, c'mon, whatever your beliefs on the subject, there's got to at least be debate. It's too important an issue for one side to just ride roughshod over.
As far as the bumber sticker issue goes, well, I think this classic piece from The Onion's book, Our Dumb Century, does the topic more justice than I ever could....
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| From The Onion's "Our Dumb Century" |
5. The Exorcist
I was way, way, way too young to see The Exorcist in the theatres when it first came out in 1973 (or even on its watered down network TV premiere a couple of years later). I remember finally seeing The Exorcist on TV many years later and kinda thinking "Pff! That's not scary". Fair enough, on the small screen with all the more gross and scary bits cut out and with the movie constantly being interrupted by commercials, yeah, it wasn't scary at all.
I remember finally seeing the intact version on video in the early 90's. While it still did not scare me all that much, I did find it incredibly creeping and disturbing. Few movies have pulled off the craft of genuinely creepy and disturbing filmmaking in quite the same way.
The Exorcist was based on the book of the same name by William Peter Blatty. Blatty not only adapted his novel for the screen but also reportedly had a great deal of say in the choice of the film's director and cast. The story goes that he held out for director William Friedkin based on the directors work on his previous 70's hit, The French Connection. The studio had a director named Mark Rydell in mind. I've seen at least two of Rydell's other films, The Cowboys and On Golden Pond and I can safely say that there is no way in hell that Rydell coulda pulled of The Exorcist (pun intended). Stanley Kubrick, not suprisingly, turned down the offer to direct both The Exorcist and, later, its sequel.
The original casting choices for The Exorcist were quite different as well. The original cast at one point was going to be Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda and -get this- that kid from the 60's sitcom, Family Affair, in the part of Regan, the little girl who gets possessed by Satan . That cast did not work out for various reasons. And a good thing too.
Those actors are all have powerful on-screen personas who would have undoubtedly overpowered the film itself (k, maybe not the kid from Family Affair). The cast they finally went with was Max von Sydow, Jason Miller, Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair, all strong actors but not as well known or as dominant with their on-screen presence as the earlier casting choices. von Sydow had just arrived in Hollywood and was then famous only to college students and Swedish film goers. Jason Miller was a playwright and actor not really all that well known outside of the New York theatre scene. Burstyn was a "name" but not a big one at the time. The movie was Linda Blair's second film.
The Exorcist was released on Boxing Day, 1973. It was not just a big hit but also the only horror movie to have ever won an Oscar for Best Picture. It was followed by two sequels and a prequel that had two radically different versions released a year apart. The classic horror film was introduced to a new generation of fans with the hit 2000 re-release of the slightly different "version you've never seen".
Back in the day, The Exorcist was talked about everywhere and often referred to as "the scariest movie ever". It was very much on my radar. Having never the movie or even the trailers on TV, I was never scared by it. Though I do remember seeing a cover of the novel in the store. The cover merely showed a blurry picture of some kind of ethereal head. Didn't matter. Still scared the hell out of me.
I could not look at the cover of that book for months.
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| Pretty scary shit, huh? |
This rare trailer was never shown in theatres as the studio felt it was "too disturbing". Good call.
4. The U.S. Withdraws from Vietnam
In January 1973 in Paris, representatives of the U.S., North and South Vietnam and the Viet Cong signed a historic peace agreement. The agreement followed years of negotiations and more recently, a massive bombing campaign of the North Vietnamese capital city of Hanoi, ordered by US President Richard Nixon. After nine long years of war and the death of 58 000 American troops along with 1 and 3 million Vietnamese deaths, American military involvement in the controversial war was over.
When the news of the peace agreement broke on TV early one Saturday morning in January of 1973, I was incensed.
They interrupted my Saturday Morning cartoons!
Didn't they realize that I only had one chance a week to watch cartoons and that one chance was Saturday mornings? Back in the day before VCR's DVD releases, digital downloads, 24/7 cartoon channels and DVR's , you had to watch TV shows at the exact time when they actually aired on TV. The only time they aired shows aimed directly at children was for about a 4 hour period on Saturday mornings. The rest of the time, TV was mostly for grown-ups.
At the time, of course, I did not realize the historical importance of the situation. Nor did I realize that I'd one day own many of these shows that "only were on TV once" on DVD in the years to come.
The Vietnam War had lasted my entire life at that point in time, even longer if you count the presence of US military advisers as early as 1950 (they were there in order to help the French defend their colony). In the 60's, the US still had the draft. That meant that pretty much any guy over the age of 18 could be drafted and potentially sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. Imagine the difference a draft like that might make in public opinion towards the long running current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The other source of controversy surrounding the Vietnam War was powered by that same thing that brought me my Saturday Morning cartoons every week, TV. The power and potential impact of TV news on warfare had not really been understood by anyone until Vietnam. As no official declaration of war existed, there was not as much restriction of information as they had, say, during World War II. Journalists had a fairly wide range of access during Vietnam. Another thing they didn't have in World War II were cameras that shot footage of combat that could then be shown on TV back in the US and around the world within a relatively short period of time. As a result, the horrors of modern warfare were, being seen in homes across North America on a nightly basis. For perhaps the first time in history, just about everyone everywhere got a chance to see the real face of war.
Again, imagine what Iraq and Afghanistan would be like if we were regularly seeing images of naked napalmed Iraqi children running through the streets or of Afghan authorities executing civilians right out in the open.
Vietnam was seen for what it was: a long, brutal, costly and, some would say, completely unnecessary war. Even as a kid,while being spared some of the more brutal images, I got the idea that the war was bad and that many people weren't happy about it (I just never made the connection between those boring old men talking in Paris interrupting my cartoons and the end of that war).
In the 80's and beyond, the image of the Vietnam War has been cleaned up some. Much of the popular perception of the war has been altered by political revisionism along with a well orchestrated PR campaign in the media. It was a negative blip in the popular consciousness of war that has, in may ways, been either covered up or forgotten.
In some ways, the cartoons live on much better in the popular memory than does the true image of Vietnam.
3. GI Joe: Secret of the Mummy's Tomb
I kind of covered GI Joe and his greater social and political context in last week's post. So, this week, let's focus on my all time fave Adventure Team set.
The Secret of the Mummy's Tomb was a big gamble for Hasbro, the company behind GI Joe. It was the first toy set of its kind to break the $12 price barrier. $12? What where they thinking?
That just about every boy on the continent would want one, most likely.
The reason for the higher price was that, unlike most of the GI Joe "sold separately" sets, this one came with its own 12 inch GI Joe Land Adventurer action figure. It also came with one of the coolest accessories ever, the six wheeled yellow ATV. ATV, cleverly enough stood for both All Terrain Vehicle and/or for Adventure Team Vehicle at the same time. The set also came with a comic detailing The Secret of the Mummy's Tomb adventure. Unlike the Joe's of the 80's that would follow, 70's GI Joe comics could not be sold on their own. They only came with the toy.
Most importantly, it came with the object of GI Joe's quest, a Mummy. The story of that particular archaeological adventure and the background behind it so fascinated me that I went right to the school library to look up everything I could on Mummies. It would be years before I learnt about lost civilizations in school. Much of the knowledge I have today on ancient Egyptian culture began with that little GI Joe-inspired research spree.
And I had a teacher who said that GI Joe was "worthless junk"....
2. Westworld
In 1973, best selling author Michael Crichton made his directorial debut. Based on his own screenplay, the film was called Westworld. It starred Richard Benjamin, James Brolin (Josh's dad) and Yul Brynner.
Today Westworld might be called something of "high concept" premise.
In a futuristic amusement park named Delos, there are three resort worlds: Romanworld, Medievalworld and Westworld. All are populated by androids that allow the park’s guests to indulge their wildest sex and violence fantasies without consequences. Well, that is, without consequences until the androids malfunction.
One particularly badass gun-slinging robot is played by Brynner.
He wears almost the exact same wardrobe he wore in the classic Western, The Magnificent Seven. Brynner’s android in black goes after guests Benjamin and Brolin with a vengeance. He forces Benjamin in particular into a nerve racking chase that leads through, and behind the scenes of, all three resort worlds.
The events that follow could best be described as The Terminator
meets High Noon
with a bit of Jurassic Park 
thrown in for good measure. The last comparison is particularly apt. Twenty years after Westworld,
writer-director Crichton would substitute android cowboys running amok in a theme park for cloned dinosaurs running amok in a theme park in a little novel and subsequent motion picture called Jurassic Park
.
Westworld is a very effective low-key thriller. Much of the pace of the film is closer to that of Russian director Andre Tarkovsky’
s SF films Solaris 
or Stalker
than to today’s Michael Bay
action Sci-Fi Transformers
-style pacing. As is the case with most 70’s Sci-Fi, Westworld is also social commentary. In this film, the underlying message is that violence, in any form, is never without consequences.
All of that would have been lost on me at the time. I remember that I was dying to see Westworld when it first came out. I think it was rated PG and it was showing, I believe, in theatre in downtown Montreal. Living in the suburban West Island of Montreal in '73, it might as well have been in Delos itself.
1. Watergate
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Mad Magazine satirizes the Watergate scandal via the popular movie The Sting.
Would Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert handle Watergate any differently today? |
In June of 1972, there was a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters located in the Watergate Hotel and office complex in Washington DC. The burglary was ordered by and, in some cases, carried out by agents working for the committee to re-elect US President Richard Nixon. The ensuing cover-up of the break-in and scandal that followed would not only bring about the first ever resignation of a President of the United States but would also change public perceptions of politics and politicians forever.
One of those perceptions was mine. It was a shift in perceptions for me that consisted of no awareness of politics at all to some awareness of politics. Like Vietnam, Watergate was impossible to avoid in those days, even for a kid. If anything, the scandal may have seemed like an even bigger deal than it actually was.
Beyond just the TV news and the newspapers, Watergate made its way into popular culture. Sonny and Cher, on their hit variety series, were dropping Nixon jokes all over the place, Rich Little got "Tricky Dick" saying "I am not a crook" down pat and, most importantly, Mad Magazine ran parodies in pretty much every issue (or so it seemed) throughout 1973 and 1974.
Far being something I just skipped over to get to the Sergio Aragonnes margin cartoons or the latest Spy vs. Spy, I read and took in all of Mad's Watergate "coverage". And there was plenty of it too. Through their satirical bits, I came to an understanding, albeit a simple one, of the Watergate scandal. I got to know the names Spiro Agnew, John N. Mitchell, J.R. Haldeman, John Dean and (though I never got the reference) Deep Throat almost as well as I knew the members of The Avengers. Plus, who knew that you could so much comedic mileage out of reel-to-reel tapes?
There are surveys that say that most younger audiences today get all their news from shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. In 1973, the same was true of Mad Magazine. From Watergate through to the election of Ronald Reagan, I got all or most of my information on US politics via Mad Magazine.
Looking back on it today, the satire is pretty simplistic, but, hey, I was 9. While I seem to remember that Alfred E.Newman was an equal opportunity offender, Mad Magazine today would probably be (and possibly is) considered by some to be part of the "lamestream" liberal bias media.
I have been to Washington DC three times. I have visited the Watergate Hotel and Office Complex all three times.
They should offer tours and sell more T-shirts.
Next year: The Top 10 Things About The Year I was 20.
At this rate, I'll run out of Birthday post topics by the year 2016.
See you on the other side of 48!
