What the Hell Happened to Saturday Morning Cartoons? Monday, October 20, 2008

Most of you may think I'm too old to still scour the television on a Saturday morning in search of a good cartoon; to those people I say, 'I have some rocks, perhaps you'd like to kick them.' I'm not nearly the avid fan of Saturday cartoons like I was when I was a shorty, but every now and then if I happen to wake up early from Friday night's hangover, I'll grab the remote and see what's on. To my surprise I found complete and utter garbage. And not garbage in the sense that I don't get the shit because I'm a grown up now, but garbage in the sense that what was being projected out of the television screen had the distinct aromatic fragrance of Chicago's finest city dump. To be fair, my Saturday morning viewing was confined to local stations, as opposed to cable. Not that I was conducting a scientific study or anything, but I had to let cable go because well, not only does Comcast not believe in Vaseline, but they don't even bother to give you a reach-around.

So what was I subjected to? Loads of visually impressive cartoons that were as fun to watch as a tour of Abu Ghraib. The one advantage the kids today have over cartoons back in the day, is that today's cartoons are graphically impressive. But there aren't a whole lot of action cartoons that come on nowadays. I saw some b.s. this past Saturday that looked like it was about some damned squirrels living in a tree or some shit shit like that. Enough to make G.I. JOE go straight Full Metal Jacket in his grave. Maybe I'm tripping (which is highly possible since I'm twentysomething and ranting about cartoons), but does no one else see the direct correlation between these pusillanimous cartoons and young boys growing up sexually confused?

Cartoons are supposed to have lots of colors, explosions, and a highly evil looking dude screaming out, '... I'll get you next time!' Not some damn squirrels sitting in a tree sharing nuts (you decide if 'no homo' goes here or not). By ten o'clock I was reduced to watching Hanna Montana and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody; don't judge me. They were by far more entertaining than anything else I had seen that morning. But that's like saying that one prefers sinkers to floaters (though I will probably tune in to Hanna Montana again next week; don't judge me).

Where are the Thundercats, Transformers, and He-Mans for this generation? Personally, I think this is why we have so many school shootings nowadays; because none of these little bastards are learning how to fight. And where's the best place to learn how to fight? Well I can only speak for me and the other kids I grew up with that frequented the school nurse's office with me, but we learned our best fighting maneuvers from cartoons. Because if I saw Lion-O straight wack Mumra with his sword something ugly, then you can bet fo' damn sho' that on Monday morning I would be recreating that scene with the teacher's yard stick and Jerome's forehead (this fool still has the mark after like 20 years; I feel bad now).

But alas, we're raising a generation of squirrel lovers. From now on, Saturday mornings are reserved for college football and Hanna Montana (you know what, go ahead and judge cause I'm tired of you giving me the stank eye).