Ah, Street Sharks. This was basically a poor man’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I don’t remember how it happened, but some dudes mutated into crime-fighting sharks. It was one of the many that I was forced to watch even though I hated it. The point was, you had to be in the room if the next half hour was one you wanted to choose. So if The Little Mermaid was coming on next then I had to be in the room to “call it.”

Seriously, the rules that siblings come up with are astounding.

I’m dedicating this one to my brother Kyle, because he was obsessed with watching Captain Bucky O’Hare for a period of time. It came on Sunday mornings and he had this coloring book that he would carry around…a lot of places. This was also around the time that he was always wearing the yellow (I think? Correct me if I’m wrong on that one) ball cap, olive green quilted vest, and either black or red cowboy boots. He was like 4 or 5. Man. There’s video of that ensemble somewhere.

This is one that my brothers and I always liked to watch, and maybe because it was so difficult to get it to show up on our tv. It didn’t come on any of our “big 5″ back in the day (those would be the OKC metro area’s Channels 4, 5, 9, Fox 25, and 34). Nope, it came in beneath a blanket of snow from some station out of Sherman, Texas. This back in the day before our family had cable and we managed to survive with one of us standing at the tv, another at the front door, and the last (usually me, since I was oldest) at the antenna, moving it until one of the boys shouted for me to stop. Then we’d get our Saturday morning fix of Dark Water…

This guy spent about as much time telling me and millions of other kids how things work as he did completely freaking me out. I’m talking about “Beakman” who starred on Beakman’s World (which I believe aired on CBS Kids on Saturday mornings). I guess the appeal may be in the grossness of the program. Nasty sound effects are endless in any of these clips. The one I’m posting is particularly “tooty.” Or as we called them in my household when I was a kid, “uh-ohs.” Not kidding.

UPDATE: Looks like this show is still airing. Click here to find out if it’s available in your area.

This was one of the ones we only got to watch if we were up early on a Sunday morning, and by early I mean 5am. If Mom had anything to say about that we definitely wouldn’t be awake that early. So it was only when we were sick or something. Or for me on Sunday morning I would regularly be up at 5:45, just to catch the last 15 minutes of the second episode. I love Pooh. (Kevin, there you go.)

This morning I am off to get my hair cut. Wouldn’t be a big deal except it hasn’t been touched by scissors in 18 months. I know. It’s awful. That’s why I am going home to my cousin who always cuts my hair because I am embarrassed for someone new in Norman to see my really bad split ends. Nothing drastic because I am determined to have glorious tresses for the wedding, but something has to be done. Then we’re going to meet with the wedding planner at a popular Mexican restaurant in town. I’ll eat a small hill of guacamole–because I can.

I think I’m in ketosis again…

Not so much cartoons (again), but this episode of Sesame Street is so memorable to me because around the same time, I got a baby brother!

Hopefully I’ll be able to post something else by the end of today. If my texts are being accepted by Twitter (they weren’t on Thursday), maybe there will be some updates.

Now, here’s one that’s actually a cartoon. It’s one that my brothers and I watched over, and over, and over again, probably between 1989 and 1991 (I remember because Ryan was teeny tiny at the time). So it was probably me and Kyle watching it mostly. With Ryan over in the corner gurgling or something. We had it taped on a VHS cassette, following DTV’s Romancin’ or something like that. I accidentally taped over it I grieve the loss of “Romancin’” to this day. It had this great song on there called “Mickey, She’s Got A Crush On You” and about a year ago I ordered this CD just so I could listen to the song.

Back to the cartoon. This one is “Garfield: On the Town” and it’s the one where he meets his mama. Watch it with a box of tissues.

Enjoy! I’m off to An Affair of the Heart with my mom.

If this does for me what it does for you then it should be great for a Saturday morning (which, for most people, are meant for sleeping in). This signaled nap time for me before I was in school and then again when I would be home during the day in the summertime. I believe at some point it replaced Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in the schedule, which had been my original “DING DING DING It’s nap time!” alarm. I loved Shining Time Station and wish it was still on instead of that Alec Baldwin stuff.

The only other thing that compares is the M*A*S*H theme. My clearest memories of that song are Mom and Dad telling us to either get in bed or to be quiet because we were already in bed. To this day I cannot hear that song without yawning.

Well, not a cartoon, but one of my most vivid childhood memories.