TV Guidance Counselor
TV Guidance Counselor Saturday Morning Special Edition 2: Raj Sivaraman
You have a TV? No, I just like to read the TV guide. Read the TV guide. You don't need a TV. Hello and welcome to another edition of TV guidance counselor. It is Saturday morning. This is a Saturday morning special edition of TV guidance counselor. This is Saturday morning special edition number two. And my guest this week is Raj Silveraman who is a very funny comedian and scientist who I know from Boston. So please enjoy this Saturday morning special edition of TV guidance counselor. Raj Silveraman how are you sir? Great, how are you doing? Saturday Silveraman special edition. Yeah. I'm gonna call you Ravi because Raj is your stage name. Yeah that's fine. Yeah that would be weird to call you by a stage name. Well I guess we're friends so you guess we're friends. Okay we're friends. Yes, fine fair enough. Most people don't bother learning my name so. Why did you go with Raj? Because I used to do that character. Yeah I remember you did the character. And then I'm like got a domain and I got Twitter stuff all the setup for the character. Right. And then I stopped doing the character and I was like I have all of this stuff. Just get new stuff. But then I also do science. Right. Oh you wanted to keep knowing that you are a scientist? Yeah I like sort of having separate worlds. And Ravi my real name Ravi doesn't exist on the internet. So everyone knows it's exactly you. Yeah so it's really hard to find me as me outside of just doing science. Gotcha. So you're the only Ravi similar Silveraman. I'm the only Raj Silveraman period. Oh gotcha. So you picked a Saturday morning November 1st 1986. All Saints Day. So this would be the day after Halloween. You would have gone out. You would have been what? Five year old Ravi. Yeah. What did you remember what you dressed up as that year? This is '86. I don't remember two years later I remember what my Halloween was. I was Jose Conseco. Jose Conseco. So you grew up in Kentucky. Yeah. And were you in sort of a more urban environment or was it like a big sprawling Kentucky where there were just like miles and miles between houses? I was like right in the foothills of the University of Kentucky campus. Okay so did you go trick or treating at like college kids, frat houses? So I was in I used to be so this year I moved from graduate from like graduate housing area where my parents used to live to my mom bought a house. Were they teachers? My mom was a teacher yeah. Okay. Yeah my dad was like a physicist in a hospital. So he's a bum? Yeah. Your mother was supporting him. Just a bunch of donuts. A bunch of donuts. So did you go you went trick or treating around the campus area? Yeah. I don't remember. Yeah I think we just ran around to all the other. So say you're five years old what time do you think you'd be in the house in like a sleep on Halloween? Pretty early. In Kentucky everyone sort of is done by like six. Oh really? They start trick or treating like right after school and then you have to be done before it gets like super dark. That's really early. Yeah. And then what time do they let the black people trick or treating? But they don't. They don't. They have their own. Yeah. Yeah. They segregated the black people to different neighborhoods. They had someone check all the candy. The candy's too dark. Get out here. I don't know anything about Kentucky. They don't check the chocolate candies. So that's. I'm going to put them right in the garbage. Yeah. Did your parents check your candy? No. I feel like the checking the candy thing was like much later. It wasn't. It was actually completely made up. There's not a single instance of somebody poisoning or razor-blading candy in the history of the world. The only people who were poisoned or injured by candy it turned out their own parents had done it. And like so the Munshazan syndrome situation. Wait. Yeah. How? Wait. How? So the parents were just trying to kill their own kids. Not kill their own kids. Get attention from having a sick kid which is what Munshazan syndrome is. Oh okay. But I felt like that didn't start. That whole urban legend didn't start to like the mid 90s or late 90s. Oh no no. It was definitely around in the 70s and 80s. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I think parents just became a lot more. It may not have been Kentucky. It may not. Oh yeah. I'm sorry. The 90s in Kentucky is the 70s everywhere else. Yeah. Basically. Fair enough. So this is a day after Halloween. So what about a big night? Well, how did your parents portion out your candy? Did they let you do like one piece a day or would you just gorge on that Saturday morning? My parents were pretty. So I was just with my mom and grandparents. Okay. So I remember, I think we, yeah, my mom just had a giant pile of candy. And then if I ate too much candy one day, she's like, stop eating candy. Okay. Because you need to have your own problem at that point, because you'd get a stomachache. You've learned, it was the smoke all these cigarettes. So you get that. Basically. Yeah. Yeah. Saying that, I've I've plied Robbie with a huge amount of heroes, Cadbury chocolates and Turkish delight. And I've learned my own self-discipline. You've learned your own self-discipline. He's only had like two pieces. And I'm a little disappointed, because I'll just eat it later. So Saturday morning, you started 5.30 AM. What drew you to 1986, by the way? So like, I think right around the late 80s is sort of when I really became obsessed with television. So I feel like we have this kinship, because I love tell like, I grew up just. Yeah, I've found that many people who've decided to pursue comedy careers have a similar television broken link. Yeah, some sort of latchkey kid. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Need that attention. And so you get up, it's 5.30 in the morning. Yep. What's the first thing you watch? So I picked this show, because this is like one of my favorite shows, the Herculoids. Herculoids is great. So Herculoids is a hanger barberish, you know. It had a really weird, what's the word I'm looking for? It reused the, what are they called? Reappropriated. Reappropriated is the word that I'm looking for. They had characters from like other shows. Not really. So it reappropriated the schmoo in a strange way. Okay. So the schmoo was a character from Little Abner that was sort of an amorphous, and so they reused it on the Herculoids as those things up. Yeah, it was very strange. This was on a prehistoric planet, and this is this 1960s cartoon. It was often paired up with Space Ghost and Birdman. And very occasionally the 1960s, fantastic four cartoon. Oh yeah. And so I used to get up really to watch this. Absolutely. Herculoids was great. I remember, I loved all those Hanna-Barbera sort of, like anything Hanna-Barbera did. I was like, my thing growing up. My all-time favorite 60s cartoon they did was Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles. Did you ever watch that? Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles was that two things. Yes. It was two things, but it was one show. So they were like two 15 minutes. Oh yeah, because they, I remember these two that. Yeah, they did. So the, the impossibles was about a mod rock group, very influenced by the Beatles, who were also superheroes. They also solve crimes. They solve crimes. Yeah. That's the jam. Yep. And then Frankenstein Jr. was about a kid named Buzz Corrie. Was it Buzz Corrie? Buzz something. And he was in charge of a Godzilla-sized Frankenstein robot. Yeah. And I have, you should probably saw in my, my TV guide room, I have several Frankenstein Jr. paraphernalia. Oh, is that what that was? Yeah. Is it Frankenstein Jr. in there? Almost a life-size one. I have to rewatch that. Yeah. That's great, Joe. What was, there was another Hanna-Barbera one with, I forget, with the guy with his, Oh yeah, Samson. Yeah. Yeah. The bracelets that went together. Yeah. That's the Samson. Yeah. That was a great one. That was a long one. So what would you do for, would you make your own breakfast? Oh, I just have cereal. Would you have several courses of cereal? That's what I would do. I would do several of throughout the morning. I would probably, so I would wake up and I'd make, like make my own cereal. Yeah. Probably, I don't know if I would when I was like five, but maybe a couple of years later. Yeah. But I would have cereal and then my mom would make breakfast when she woke up at like nine or ten. So you'd actually have like, it was like a little appetizer and then you'd have like, kind of an egg or something. Yeah. So six a.m. what'd you go with? So six a.m. I'm a little fuzzy. I know for sure I would wake up to watch Herculoids, but six a.m. and sort of six thirty, I was sort of like fuzzy on. Okay. I put down Jabberwocky. Yes. Jabberwocky was a show produced by WCVB TV5 here in Boston in the 70s and it starred the mom from Poltergeist. Sounds like a live action. It was a live action show. Joe Beth Williams, she was in that and it was sort of a kid's, you know, puppets and costumes, kids sort of very sharp puffing stuff. It was an HR puffing stuffy. It was more, we're in a clubhouse and I'm a woman and I'm we're teaching new things and friends with Jabberwocky. They reared this on this channel up until probably the early 90s. It was produced in the early 70s and they reared it forever. Okay. It was a fun weird show. I probably would have gone with the last hour of Night Flight. What's that? So Night Flight was a show that was on the USA Network from 1981 until 1988. It was on every Friday and Saturday night from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. and it was all kinds of insanity. They'd show the movie Forbidden Zone. They'd show the documentary, another state of mind, about social distortion. Yeah. They would show music videos. They would show weird animated shorts. They would show things like The Terror of Tiny Town. All kinds of strange things. I got, it's where I first kind of heard of John Waters. It's where I first got exposed to like punk rock and rock and roll high school and all that sort of stuff. So this night, because Halloween was the night before, they're showing the short film Dracula Bites The Big Apple, which was produced by the guy who made the movie Vamp. I'm starring Grace Jones. He was a sort of student film. Okay. And also horror videos. I would test it. I remember waking up and sometimes I would catch like movies from that kind of floor. Yeah. And I would always be a little scared. Like I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Yeah. I mean, that's not incorrect. Yeah. But that's how I got where I am today. 630. What'd you go with? So I went with contraption, but I don't know what that is either. So contraption, I also don't know what it is. It was on the Disney channel. I don't know anything about contraption. If people know anything about contraption, please email can and I can read and let me know. I was hoping for clarification. But if you don't know, I'm sorry. Yeah, I really don't know. I don't know. If I don't know, I don't know who would. And I don't get very cocky often. But yeah, I don't know if anyone know that. I would go with Nick Rocks, which was Nickelodeon's rock music video show. Oh, really? Yeah. So the concept of MTV was actually invented by Michael Nesmith, who came up with a concept called pop clips, which he sold to Nickelodeon. And so they actually had several times during the weekend, a block of music videos that they would show. Okay. Called Nick Rocks. I probably would have gone with that. 7am, what'd you go with? So 7am, I went. So just as a caveat, I didn't have cable at this point. Okay. So at somewhere around this time, I moved from the graduate housing where I was living where I didn't have cable to a proper house, where I had cable. Right. And that is the only distinction between a proper house and a non proper house cable. Yeah, yeah, basically. And so most likely I would have gone with masks. Yes. So did you watch mask every week? I loved the mask. Mask was like one of my favorite shows. So mask was a show that I definitely watched. I used to watch it more during the week. So Saturday morning, I had a sort of a rule where I wouldn't watch any weekday shows on Saturday morning. I was like, I could watch this all week. This is Saturday morning. It's a very special day. I'm watching very special shows. I felt the same, but I feel like mask was such an exception for me. It was a pretty exceptional show. Did you have the toys? Oh, I had a bunch of the toys. Did you have the go around the mountain? I didn't have the mask station. So I feel like I'm painting a proper picture that I was quite poor as a kid. Yeah. And I didn't have any of like the big stuff, but I had all the little stuff that was like cheap. Yeah. I had that as well. I'd always get it like a year later. We had this store in Melrose going out called the Children's Exchange. Okay. And you could kind of trade in old toys for credit for new toys. Oh, wow. And so I would always get the last year stuff there, like really cheap. So you have like used toys. I have used toys. Yeah. So my parents, I, when I talk about the toys, I had as a kid, I had all the hot toys. But what people don't know is I had them two years after everyone else had lightly used toys. Yeah. So we'd get them at flea markets. I had all the Star Wars toys. I didn't really like Star Wars, but I bought them all in like 1984. We'd get, you know, like $24 at some flea market or someone's yard sale. So the one thing I would have only, the only toys I really had a lot of were Mask, Star Wars, and Transformers. Yeah. And were they all, you got them new? Those were all new. So like my mom had allocated X amount of money for this, these toys. She approved those specific toys. Those are the only ones that are acceptable. Why were they acceptable? I don't know. I think she liked Transformers for sure because they were somewhat educational. Sort of educational. Yeah. And Star Wars, she loves Star Wars as well. Okay. So there are things like she liked as well. And I feel like Mask also was sort of like transforming. Kind of transforming. How did she feel about GoBots? We had a couple of GoBots. I didn't like GoBots so much. It was very clear that it was a kind of a scam. Well, it came out before Transformers. Yeah, that's right. It's the Hydrox to Transformers Oreo. Yeah, exactly. And Furio, but first. Yeah. So I would have gone with probably Galaxy High School, which was a favorite show of mine at this time. What is that about? Galaxy High School was produced by Chris Columbus. Oh, really? Yes. Wait, of Home Alone? Yes. Okay. And it was a cartoon about sort of an international high school, but of the galaxy. So it was representatives from alien races from all over the galaxy to human beings. Was this on high school? It was not on Nickelodeon. It was on CBS. It was great, great show. I feel like I always got turned off by like kids shows that had aliens in them. Really? I was always freaked out by the aliens. Did you ever watch Fantastic Max? That was one of my favorite aliens. Oh, that's different. The baby. Yeah. Yeah. Wait. So Galaxy High School was a cartoon? It's a cartoon. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Great cartoon. Yeah. I was thinking of the live action that I did. No, no, no. It was a cartoon. And then also you passed up Shazan, which was the Hanna-Barber cartoon about the genie. Is it like the fat genie? No, you're thinking of the one that's more like it was a rip off of. He was in the Laugh Olympics. Yes. What was he called? It was like Ooby-Dooby or something like that. Yeah, no, this was more of an action show. It was always paired up with Samson and Goliath. Okay. So we're going with that. 730, what'd you go with? I don't want what Defenders of the Earth. Defenders of the Earth was an all-star cast of the greatest 1930s public domain characters from a series in the Flash. Fanta Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician. That's right. He was one of my favorites. Yeah. And they were fighting Ming the Merciless. That's right. Yes. So this was produced by Filmation, which did He-Man, Master's, the Universe, Shira. And they really pushed Defenders of the Earth. Defenders of the Earth. Defenders. Yeah. This was also a weekday cartoon that where they were rearranged. So I would have watched this during the week. You could get the entire series now very, very cheap. Oh, yeah. They had really cool toys. I particularly like the Mandrake toy because he was a superhero, but he was just top it, top pad and tails in a cane. Wasn't because I'm trying to remember it was sort of like it had that same sort of Star Trek type of archetypes where you had, yeah. It was the Fanta was sort of like Spock. Yes. As I remember. Well, the Fanta was a human being though. Yeah, but I mean, but sort of that logical, like very interesting. Did you ever see the Fanta movie with Billy Zane? I did. It was horrible. Billy Zane's an underrated actor, in my opinion. Did you like the Fanta movie? It wasn't bad. Okay. You know what I didn't care for. You know what I surprisingly really liked? The Shadow. Russell Mulcahy directed the Shadow with Alice Baldwin. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a pretty good movie. Penelope Ann Miller, who is always underrated. She's great. Yeah. Defenders of the Earth, definitely a good show. However, I would have been, I didn't real trouble narrowing this down. Yeah. I have real trouble here. So number one, Birdman was on, which we mentioned earlier, which was a great superhero cartoon. Also, the Teen Wolf cartoon, which was a huge fan of. Yeah. And Topcat, which I loved because I mean, he was still a Silver's fan and Topcat's basically animated Pearl Silver's and on Nickelodeon Auto Control, the Dave Kool-A vehicle, which is a fantastic show. So really, really tough here. I went through puberty when I said really, that's how tough it was. But I think it would have gone with Teen Wolf because the other ones they could watch during the week also want to note there's a show I've never heard of before, which looks like a magazine for teenagers called Notebook. And this particular episode, how some teenagers are helping others learn to read included 18-year-old George Prisoxio of Greenwich, Connecticut, who's seen working with a New York housewife. So sold. Yeah. So some of these shows, I feel like because I came up in Kentucky, like some of these shows I recognized, but it would be on this channel that we would get some some weeks. Yeah. A lot of these we're looking at a Boston edition TV guide here and a lot of these are very regional. Yeah. So AAM, what'd you go with? It's going to sound a bit of a Homer thing, but Mr. Wizard's World. Mr. Wizard's World is a fantastic show. It's where they learn about dry ice. Yes. This is making fog from dry ice where Canadian children are amazed by an old man. That's how I would have pitched that show if I was selling Mr. Wizard's World. I mean, who is not impressed by the fog from dry ice? Who doesn't love Don Herbert? Yeah. Nobody. Everyone loves Don Herbert. My mom met Mr. Wizard. I met Mr. Wizard. I went to my school. When did your mom meet him? He was at a physics teacher conference like in the lady. Like this is like peak, Mr. Wizard. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And did you recognize him? Yeah. Did you use to watch this with her? Yeah. I think because he I think it re-aired in the afternoon as well. It was on a lot. Yeah. Nickelodeon didn't have that many shows. Right. So I think we watched it together like in the afternoon, but I also watch it in the morning. It was on every morning weekday mornings at 7 a.m. And then it was also on probably around two or three in the afternoon. Yeah. It would be like Mr. Wizard's World. You can't do that in television. Lassie. Wasn't they had like, was it special delivery? Special delivery was on Saturday and Sundays from 2 to 4 and they would have a rotating cast of various specials. So they would have things like sometimes they would show Canadian specials, one-offs, cartoons, a lot of Japanese things. Yeah, I still love that. Yeah. Special delivery was great. Yeah. I also really enjoyed when Nickelodeon would do a thing called the third eye. If you remember the third eye, the third eye was a, essentially an anthology series. Yeah. But what it was was an excuse to show 70s children's British sci-fi shows like Children of the Stones and Under the Mountain and these really weird terrifying live action The Tomorrow People, which is being remade now on the CW, but was a 70s British television series. So that was always fun on there. I wouldn't have gone with Mr. Wizard at this time because he was on a lot during the week. Sure. So I would have gone with the Wuzzles. I had that as my if I didn't have cable. Yeah. I would watch the Wuzzles. One of the best Disney cartoons. I'll tell you what I wouldn't have gone with. Kissifur, one of my least favorite cartoons. I can't remember. Was that like the pink? It was like a pink? It wasn't pink. It was like a little baby bear and his dumb dad. Actually not to offend you. But when I think of Kentucky, I just picture Kissifur. Is the bear sort of Southern and kind of like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, it's like that kind of thing. Yeah. It's not a good, not a good show. Not a good show. That might be deeper south. Yeah. Oh, I'm sure it is. But that's why I always go. I'm just like when people are like, I'm from Kentucky and I just hear like. Kissifur. Kissifur. Blah, blah, blah. I'm a kissifur. Yeah. Fending. I think I remember disliking that show. It's a terrible show. But Wuzzles is great. 8.30, what'd you go with? 8.30, if I had cable, I would go with Danger Mouse. Okay, you're going with the Cosgrove Hall Danger Mouse. Great show. Again, on every weekday on Nickelodeon and most weekdays on ABC, well, wasn't known as ABC Family then, it was known as the Family Channel. But you could get it even without cable or basic cable. So I definitely wouldn't have gone with that, although I do love Danger Mouse. I absolutely would have gone with a show called Wild Fire. What is that? So Wild Fire was basically a girl's show. This was on CBS and it was about a girl who was not an orphan, her mother was dead. She worked on a ranch, had a horse. And in an alternate reality, she was actually a princess who was the savior of this alternate dimension. And so her and her horse would go through this mirror into this other dimension and her horse would be known as Wild Fire. It was like this purple flaming seed. Sort of like Jim. Okay. But in an alternate reality. So it was more like Lion Witch and the Wardrobe kind of thing. And I spent, I loved Wild Fire. And I was terrified that my dad would see me watching it. It was such a girl's show. My dad, we had a donut shop in Melrose called Melrose Donut that had opened in 1915 or 1920. It looked like a Tiffany's. It was all pink and it was amazing. It was like a serendipity in New York City. It was sort of like that. And the guy who opened it was 90 something years old. He still worked there. They had amazing donuts, but my dad refused to go there because they had pink boxes. And he didn't want to be seen carrying a pink box out of there. Wow. So that's the kind of environment I was dealing with when I was watching Wild Fire. You got a huge trouble with Wild Fire. Yes. I love Wild Fire. I often make references to Wild Fire when I talk about when I get depressed sometimes doing comedy because if I ever do like a great show or like I'm at a really great festival or something so we can feel like I'm a real comedian and I'm really doing it. And then the next day I'm sitting at work at my desk just if no one cares. And I feel like Wild Fire. Like I've gone to this alternate dimension and I've fought people on a flaming steed. And now I'm just some wrench hand and no one knows. There's definitely is something to that whole doing comedy. And then the next day you're just doing your own Monday. It's like you dreamed it. Yeah. And I literally think of Wild Fire every time. And I've tried to explain it to people as being like Wild Fire. And they're like I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I don't know what Wild Fire is. I never heard of it. It's a very obscure show. One of my favorites. Yeah. I always equated just like Lord of the Rings because I feel like that sort of awkwardness after you like went to Mount Doom and then you go back to the Shire. You're like I don't know what they're talking to these people. Yeah. And they just think you're lying. Yeah. Like no my horse turned into a purple steed with flame eyes and we saved an entire universe of elves. And we are like the empress of the universe. And they're like I go shovel that horse crap. And you're like fair enough. Yeah. Cause her mother was actually this interdimensional queen and she was imprisoned and murdered by this evil wizard in real life or in the in real life. She just disappeared. They thought she just thought she doesn't have a mother. Right. And the other dimension she was like the savior queen and she was in her a little Wizard of Oz in there. Okay. Because Return to Oz had come out the year before. So I think they were kind of a little hug a bunch movie but not as terrifying. Okay. That sort of thing. So 9 a.m. what'd you go with? So there's two shows that I both wanted to watch and both were one hour long and I probably just flicked back and forth and that's Flintstone Kids and Muppet Babies. Okay. So it's not Muppet Babies and Business of Management. No. Okay. So Business of Management was on PBS for an hour. Alright. Flintstone Kids Ziya was not a fan of. Really? I did not like the babyfication of classic cartoons. No. It wasn't my thing. I loved Muppet Babies. Muppet Babies was amazing. Yeah. What about Scooby-Doo? A pop name Scooby-Doo was a fun show and that was the first show that like Bruce Tim and Paul Deenie and a lot of people did Animaniacs and the C animated music music universe worked on. So that was a great show but Flintstone Kids not my favorite. Okay. I enjoyed, you know, it always reminded me of Potato Head Kids. Flintstone Kids. I don't know. I just watched Potato Head Kids. Flintstone Kids was just like too much like I'm skateboarding. Yeah. It was too like sassy. I guess that's true. I really like the Flintstones. I love the Flintstones which is probably why I didn't like Flintstone Kids. Okay. Yeah. Although, you know what, I did enjoy Flintstone Kids is they would sometimes have shorts of Captain Caveman and stuff. Yeah. That was like Captain Caveman and something was sort of my favorite. Yeah. Everybody loves Captain Caveman. Yeah. Flintstone Kids sort of reminded me of what's the show that I'm thinking of with. Oh man. I lost it. I lost it. I can't think of it now. Okay. There was a, there was a thing that reminded me of that I didn't like. Oh, I remember now. Flintstone Kids reminded me of the Get Along Gang in a weird way. The Get Along Gang. Yeah. I remember the Get Along Gang. It was something about it. It was just... You didn't like the Get Along Gang. I didn't really like the Get Along Gang. Although I do. I do. Raccoons. Raccoons. Raccoons. I actually have a complete set of Get Along Gang dolls in my basement right now. I had a few of those growing up. They're fun. You could get them on clearance real cheap. I'm sure. Yeah. I don't think anyone knows they are. Many toys I got in KB Toys clearance box with a red pen markdown. So 9am, what'd you go with? Oh, you went with an hour of either Muppet Babies or Flintstone Kids. So 9.30, you didn't have to pick anything. I probably would have still been watching Muppet Babies as well. I just want to point out there's a thing on the lifetime network called Can You Be thinner? I don't know what that is. You can always be thinner. 10am, what'd you go with? A Peewee's Playhouse. Yeah, there's really no question. It had to be Peewee's Playhouse. Yeah, I really like Peewee's Playhouse. But I would say if I had cable, I would also watch Wind in the Willows. Really? On Disney Channel. I really like this one. This was the animated one or the Stop Motion one. Oh, that's a good question. If it was the I'm picturing the animated one. So what did you like about Wind in the Willows? I always found it kind of a turnoff. I didn't know. I just always liked the stories of like Toad and always felt like Toad was just like such a maniac. It seems something about it just seemed so old to me in a bad way. Like a grand parenting. Yeah, it is. Like a 65 year old man's impression of what a child would want to hear about. Yeah, I don't know. I sort of liked it for that reason that I felt like, oh, this is like a mature cartoon. Oh, so you felt adult? Yeah, I felt like as the day progressed, you definitely feel more the shows get more adulty. I would not consider Wind in the Willows adulty, but I guess I could kind of see that. So I'm surprised you passed up real Ghostbusters. I thought that was going to be bad. I hated real Ghostbusters. Did you really? What did you hate about it? So I was a fan of the Ghostbusters. The Filmmation Ghostbusters. Yeah, that was one of my favorite cartoons growing up. All the Filmmation. Do you have a big Filmmation collection? Oh, yeah. Lushheimer sadly died this year. Oh, yeah. The head of Filmmation also did The Voice of Orco. Rest in Peace. Rest in Peace. There's a great book about Filmmation and they released BCI Eclipse company released almost the entire Filmmation catalog over the last few years. Oh, yeah. Very cheap now. Even their live action shows like Isis and Space Academy and Zeta One, not Zeta One. Some really weird data show about a post-apocalyptic Land Rover that had a monkey in it. Yeah, I'll check these out. Yeah, Filmmation, a ton of great stuff. They did the Shazam live action as well. Jason of the Star Command. That was the best one. Jason of the Star Command. That, wait, that was a cartoon, right? Live action. That was live action. Okay. Yeah, so I really enjoyed the Filmmation Ghostbusters show and I loved the Filmmation Ghostbusters toys and they were very not popular because the real Ghostbusters was so huge. You could get them for almost nothing. I love Prime Evil. Oh, Prime Evil is one of all of his sidekicks. I love how all the sidekicks and Filmmation cartoons are just like these incompetent. Yes, yes, absolutely. Surely, if you're trying to take over whatever you're trying to take over, you can get good help. They were all, I guess the best way to describe them would be boobs. Yeah, they're a bunch of bumbling boobs. Although, you know, I did have a big crush on Prime Evil's Elvira look-in sidekick with the Red Dress. I forget where their name was, but that was a lot of bull skin and it was kind of like Bride of Frankenstein. Yeah, it really woke some things up in me at that age. But I enjoyed both shows. I did like both shows. Did you like the Ghostbusters movie? I like the Ghostbusters movie because I remember so many kids at school were like, I turned on Ghostbusters and it wasn't Ghostbusters. It was a bullshit. And I had to be like, actually, it's based on the 1970s Ghostbusters TV series that came before the movie Ghostbusters and then they were like, I'm going to punch you now and I'm like, fair enough. Yeah, that's exact. I felt the opposite sort of like is like, oh, I watched the real Ghostbusters and I wanted to watch Filmmations. Yes, you were in a rare, rare class of people who that happened to. It was one of the reasons I didn't have many friends growing up. Well, that's true. Do you have any of the toys either Ghostbusters or real Ghostbusters? No, they didn't make the cut. The only kid, so I remember a kid named John Sirac had the mask toys, so I go over his house, didn't like him very much, but I go over his house to put a mask toys and this kid Johnny Bliler had all of the ghost, real Ghostbusters toys. He had like a tire in Thundercats. Yeah. Because I found going up, there was like certain kids specialized in certain toy lines. Like, you'd know like, oh, that kid's got all of Thundercats or like, this kid's got all of humans and human masters in the universe, but you didn't have that? You didn't know, hang on? Oh, yeah. We so I lived down the street from two twins and they had a bunch of GI Joe and my mom wouldn't let me get GI Joe. Because it's violent? Yeah. And so what I did, like, when I was like, I don't know, 11 or something like that, I traded all of my Star Wars toys. For GI Joe? For GI Joe toys. Did your mother lose her mind? My mom lost her mind. Like, I thought I made a pretty sweet deal and then they were sort of bragging about how they had conned me out of these Star Wars toys. Screwed you over? Yeah. And I sort of realized like, oh man, I totally screwed the pooch on this one. Yeah. And then my mom yelled at me like, you can't give away Star Wars toys. And I was like, okay. Did you undo the deal? We undo the deal and I got the Star Wars toys back. Nice. That would be a great Judge Judy case. Yeah. I remember my neighbors. Or a kid court. A kid's court. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. I remember my neighbors tried to con me out of a giant sized defenders number one comic by convincing me that the Ouija board they had had told me that I had to give it to them or else it would be cursed. So I was maybe seven. I knew it was a con. Yeah. So I went over there to give him the comic and when I handed it to him, I punched him in the stomach instead. Okay. That was what I did. That's how I handled things. I feel like I would not survive the rough and tumble Melrose. It was a top streets Melrose. Yeah. And it was tough to this day. So 10 30 would you go with? All right. So this was like one of my favorite shows ever is mysterious cities of gold. Okay. I was a little nervous before you said that because here's the options that when you say here's something I've never heard anyone say and I didn't know if I was going to hear it for the first time. Okay. This is one of my favorite shows ever. Pound puppies. Or this is one of my favorite shows ever. Alvin and the chipmunks. Yeah. Also a thing that I didn't. That would be a really bold claim. Yes. Mysterious cities of gold was a Nickelodeon show. It was produced, I believe in a joint venture between Spain and I want to say Israel. Yeah. It was a cereal in France. France was involved as well. Yeah. It was serialized, which was very unusual at the time. Estoban. Estoban, yeah. I have many episodes of mysterious cities of gold. It's on Netflix. It is a great theme song. One of the best. Yeah. That most of the shows I picked were based on the theme song. That is a really adult show, mysterious city. Yeah. My wife pointed out something pretty interesting that I thought was a good point was that I think a lot of kids pick shows based on the theme song. Yeah. Because you couldn't really, it was before kids got into music on your own. Yeah. And you didn't really have access to your own record collection or anything like that. So the songs you would like, the best one I hear them, would have watched the TV show, then. Yeah. So the catchier the song, the more you're just going to watch it. Absolutely. So yeah, I watched this show all the time. But again, this would have broken my, if it's on during the week, I don't watch an on Saturday rule. Was it on during the week? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It was on an hour block of Spartacus. Oh, okay. I would have watched either Teen Wolf again. So I had Teen Wolf as my backup. Which I loved if I didn't have Teen Wolf. Yeah. Teen Wolf great show. Or I would have watched Night of the Comet, which was a movie on the movie channel at this time, which is one of my all time favorite movies. Night of the Comet. Night of the Comet 1984 takes place in L.A. It's about Haley's Comet. There's zombies, there's valley girls. It's funny. It's dark. It's it just came in on Blu-ray from Shell Factory in the last year in a great special edition with four commentary trends. So this is what you would watch now, but not? No, I would have watched Night of the Comet then. If it was on TV at this time, I would have watched it. Really? I start in the theater. I love Night of the Comet. Loved it. How old are you? I'm 33 years old. Okay. So you're like a six year old watching Night of the Comet? I start when I was four in the theater with my dad. Yeah. We had all the cable channels because we had a black box. So I definitely would have watched. I mean, I've probably seen Night of the Comet 80 times. That's crazy. It's a great, great movie. It's a really funny, well written, great movie. I highly recommend Night of the Comet. You should Netflix. I will. I will Netflix Night of the Comet. So yeah, I would have watched Night of the Comet because it's a great movie. It was on, but what I wouldn't have watched was candle pin bowling. Now, this is a local phenomenon. Yeah. And several of the channels around here used to air bowling instead of the between 1030 and noon cartoons. That's how you knew cartoons were over. Yeah. Candle pin bowling came on. And for people unfamiliar, candle pin bowling is a small ball, like a bocce ball and very thin pins. And you'd bowl three instead of two. Yeah. It's extremely difficult. And they don't clean up the very not fun. And it was on TV incessantly here. I can't imagine it being fun to watch. It's not. I mean, bowling actually. Yeah. It was the number one televised sport until the early 80s. Really used to beat football, baseball, basketball combined. Bowling was these single biggest televised sporting event in America for decades. Why? It was just very popular. There's a great documentary called League of Ordinary Gentlemen. That is about the rise and fall of the popularity of bowling in America that I highly recommend. It's very, very interesting. Great documentary. Yeah. So bowling stuck around here. I mean, candle pin bowling. We had bowling for dollars, which was a very popular show here. Yeah. You would call in and people would, it was a very odd New England phenomenon. And they still aired candle pin bowling up until the mid 2000s in New England. Really? It was a bowling alley in Nashville, New Hampshire. My wife and I, we went through a big phase where every Saturday we'd just go to a different bowling alley and bowl. And we sucked at it, but it was kind of a fun excuse to drive somewhere. Yeah. And we tried to find you all the most obscure bowling alley that we could. And so one of them we went to, they had just filmed their last Saturday bowling event, but they had all the cameras and lights in there still that were permanently installed in this bowling alley. My dad saw the soul, soul recording group, Salmon Dave at Lanes and Games and L Life in Cambridge in 1965. Yeah, these two concerts there. I mean, bowling alleys were huge. Yeah, I can imagine that back in the, like, back in the day. Oh, yeah. But even, you know, throughout the decades, it was really the 90s where bowling alleys sort of fell out of favor. We had a kid growing up, it was very poor. And everyone used to call him "Hand Me Down" was his nickname. Yeah. And then he used to buy saucy buns, which you may have heard this story where, if you go to a pizza place in the Northeast, they'll let you buy a thing called saucy buns, which are like day old sub roles with sauce on them for like a nickel. So we would go for pizzas. Yeah, so we would go for pizzas and, you know, I'll kick in a couple bucks and get a pizza, but he didn't already money. So he'd be like, "Two saucy buns, please." So everyone called them saucy buns. That was his nickname, saucy buns. That is so unfortunate. Which is better than, which is better than "Hand Me Down." Yeah. So he was saucy buns, very poor. He won the lottery, and he bought the Melrose bullet drum. Wow. And the thing was, when we would all go bowling, he couldn't afford the 75 cents to rent the shoes. So he used to bowl in his socks that had holes in them and stuff. He used to make one of them. So he bought the Melrose bullet drum, and I always pictured him just piling all the shoes up and diving through them like Scrooge McDuck. At the end of the night, then he sold it and they tore it down and built condos. Made a big profit. Big profit. That's tragic. Good job, saucy buns. So 11 a.m. What'd you go with? I was Spartacus. So Spartacus, if you're watching mysterious cities of gold, you got to do the hour and do Spartacus. Again, another foreign show that Nickelodeon picked up. Not quite a serious friend show. It was a French show. It was a very, very strange show. It always weirded me out. The pupils. The way they drew pupils in that show freaked me out. Yeah. I just remember again with a theme song. Yeah, great theme song. Yeah. And it was also sometimes on with Ulysses 33, I think the show was called. Yeah. So yeah, I wouldn't watch this because I could have watched it during the week. Also want to point out one of my least favorite shows next to Kissi Fur was on another southern show, but a dumb southern dog, Fufer, was on. Oh yeah, I remember. Fufer was like someone went, hey, Scooby-Dum. Yeah. We'd like to have a show just about you. Yeah. Yeah, terrible show. I had as my backup Bugs and Tweety. Bugs and Tweety was always solid. Galaxy High was not again. So I may have watched that. Or I was a big fan of Soul Train. Oh yeah. I would always watch Soul Train. I sort of felt like that was also one of those things that wasn't for me. Soul Train? As a kid because it was like this is like an adult, like adults dancing and... Yeah, but it's such great music. No, it's great. It's a time. Soul Transit. Yeah. 1130, what'd you go with? Transformers. Transformers more than meets the eye. Again, this would have gone against my what I could have watched during the week rule. Yeah. I probably would have gone with Photon. That's Photon. Photon was a live action TV show about Photon, which was the rival to Laser Tag. Oh. Photon was the go-bot to Laser Tag's Transformers. Okay. And it was a it was a huge rip off the last Starfighter, basically the plot with the show. It was very, very low rent. You should, I'm sure this clips on YouTube. You would be absolutely shocked by Photon. It was like a combination of Captain End the Game Master and the last Starfighter, but through public access production values. Jeez. Yeah. That sounds not great. It wasn't great, but I loved it. Absolutely loved it. What about The Ewoks Show? The Ewoks, I don't like Star Wars. So I wasn't a fan of the Ewoks. No, I never liked Star Wars. I did enjoy the droids section of the Star Wars Show. Okay. I mean to the Ewoks and droids. Yeah. And that show was produced by Nelvana, who was a Canadian production company that was probably most well known here for the Care Bears. But they made a movie called Rock and Rule in 1983, which was an adult cartoon, live action cart, and live action. Adult cartoon, Debbie Harry does a voice, Iggy Pop, Cheap Trick does songs. It's based on the devil and Daniel Webster. Okay. It's a very weird, cool, that's a that's a cartoon they actually used to show on Night Flight frequently. All right. Yeah. There was there were several sort of adult cartoons that Night Flight showed. Yeah. That was one of them. They would show heavy metal. Yeah. In the same sort of room that would show this French one called Fantastic Planet, which is very creepy, but very good. Yeah. But you should see Rock and Rule, if you like Nelvana animation. Did you see the Care Bears movies in the theaters? Yeah. I used to I Care Bears was so Care Bears was on in one of the hours, but I didn't. Yeah. I was never really like a huge fan. I always felt like if I was had nothing else to watch, I would watch the Care Bears. I always wanted the Care Bear with the Storm Cloud on his tummy. Grumpy. Grumpy Bears. I was a very grumpy bear. Yeah. I always wanted one of those. I don't know why and I still don't have one. I could probably buy one now. Yeah. I felt like he was the only really compelling character in that. I'd like to just see a show about him. Yeah. Just his. Just what a grumpy bear? Is he grumpy all the time? Does he care? Or is he just surrounded by the role? Maybe just as depression. Yeah. Maybe comparatively. Yeah. Maybe they should do something to help him out instead of ignoring him all the time. Yeah. Yeah. I did see both movies and theaters though and absolutely loved them. Yeah. I I remember watching the movies and enjoying them. Yeah. I have actually have a great book about Nelvana. I'm sure Nelvana is a cool thing. That doesn't surprise me. No, it doesn't. So, Ravi, that's the end of our Saturday morning. Oh man, it's tragic. It is tragic. We have to go outside now and did your parents, did your mom force you to go out? Yeah. She would force me to do something. I don't know what, just live. Just get out of the house. Get out of here. Come back in four hours. See, actually, actually around noon was great because that's when like lunch was ready. Okay. So, there's a lot of cooking. What would you have? So, I had like a big, like my breakfast was like the cereal at six and then 10 o'clock was like just toast. Yeah. So, it wasn't like a big breakfast. Right. Lunch was the real thing. Like that's when we had like a big Indian meal. What's, what's a big Indian meal consist of? So, we had like, Ravi's Indian everybody. Yeah, just so far. So, we're south Indian. So, the big dish is like sambar. What's sambar? It's sort of like a spicy lentil soup. Okay. And you have? Kids like spicy lentil soup. I did. Okay. It was, it was enjoyed it a lot. And so, that was like some vegetables. Do you still have that now? Yeah, usually when I'm home, like my mom makes up for lunch. She makes the best so you wouldn't try it anywhere else. Yeah. And do you still eat cereal for breakfast? Yeah. I love cereal. What kind of cereal do you usually have? I've turned on to the Three Sisters brand of cereal. Okay. Is this some kind of hippie shit? Kind of. Well, I mean, it's just sugar, it's sugary cereal. Okay. It's like actual like the junk food cereal, but instead of high-fructose corn syrup, it's like organic stuff. Really? Yeah. So, do they have like versions of like classic cereals? Yeah. With like cane sugar? So, they have like golden grams. They have cinnamon toast crunch. They have lucky charms. It's called Three Sisters? Three Sisters. Where do you get this? It's just, you can get a whole foods. It's like just like a bag. Oh, it's a bag thing? Like an alto meal? Yeah. But it's it's a solid bag. I was always embarrassed to buy the bag. Yeah. I used to avoid the bag, but I don't remember why I got it just because I felt like in the mood for now that you bought the bag. Yeah. You're endorsing the bag. I'm sold. Robbie. The bag is great. Dorsing the bag. The bag is great. Well, if we were going to cheer and cheer if this was prime time, I think your cheer would be for the bag. Yeah. Three Sisters, bag cereal. Three Sisters, bag of cereal. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. There you have it. That's Rob Silverhamen with the Saturday morning special edition number two of TV guidance counselor. Hopefully you guys enjoy these special editions. Please let me know. I'd love to do more of them. I have some other ideas for non prime time specials. So email me at Canadaicandread.com. And once again, please subscribe, rate us, review us on Stitcher, on iTunes, on SoundCloud, the Tumblr, please like our page on the Facebook, the Facebook. That's what I called it. Yes, I did. And as I have been teasing, we will have some giveaways and some contests coming up. I've been mining my basement for some excellent, excellent rare TV memorabilia from the 70s, 80s, and 90s that I think you will enjoy. So again, any questions? Canadaicandread.com. Check back here on Wednesday for our next episode of the show. And as always, you never know when you'll get a special edition. So please keep checking in. This has been TV guidance. [Music]