It was with Lion-O from "Thundercats". I was three.
Looking back on it, "head-over-heels" was really due to my first-stage gross motor skill development and unfamiliarity with the physics of stairs, and I must confess that words getting jumbled were probably more related to primary language acquisition than anything else. The obsession though? That, my friends, was pure Laurie.
One of the most enduring memories of my thug life pre-Kindercare is of sitting upon the knee of either one of my parents, or one of my older sisters, each Saturday morning and waiting with bated breath for my favorite part of my favorite TV program. Being three, I was not really big on character development, so I did not pick up on the enigmatic leadership, innate truth, or overwhelming personal power of the leader of this ragtag group of human/feline superbeings. Nope, my love for Lion-O was based on something much more simple and raw: I really dug when he would scream "Thunder, Thunder, Thundercats HOOOOO!!!!" The fact that he seemed to throw himself enthusiastically into yelling when he was excited was something that we really had in common- much to the dismay of my second generation parents and perpetually-so-over-it teenaged sisters.
Such was my devotion to my man/beast, I went about putting together a dowry that consisted primarily of fruit snacks and Happy Meal toys so that I would be prepared for when I hit marrying age which, at the time, I believed to be twelve. In my fevered imaginations, he would come to sweep me off my feet and take me to Thundera where we would yell ourselves hoarse every night, and then kiss like my sister and her bad boyfriend did on the couch when mom was not home. In my eyes, life was just a decade from becoming epic.
Sadly, things did not pan out for me and Lion-O. There were many contributing factors- discovering fingerpaints, Michael Dukakis losing the 1988 election, riding my bike without the training wheels. When I was seven, I stepped on a rusty nail that went all the way through my foot. This near-death experience forced me to re-think everything that I ever thought was true and suddenly Lion-O and interplanetary migration were bottoming out on my list. What really sealed it though, was that by the time I was twelve, I finally realized what my girlfriends had been telling me all along- that Lion-O was obviously gay (ref: his clothes, his hair, his friends), and as important as screaming is to a healthy adult relationship, it is hardly the foundation of lasting happiness. Same sentiment also applies for spandex.
We change so much from childhood. I, for instance, no longer see introductions to new people as a an appropriate platform for showing off new granny panties with the days of the week written on the waistband. (That behavior is, of course, reserved for dinner parties with old friends.) Some things however, turn out to be formulae for what will become the core of our adult selves and sadly, while Lion-O was the first, he was certainly nowhere near the last of my 2-dimensional cassanovas.
This is something that I have struggled with accepting about myself for a while. I mean, it's embarrassing enough to admit that you are attracted to a movie or television character independent of the actor playing the part- I have many adult female friends that refer to Robert Pattinson as "Edward" (i.e. "Edward was on Jimmy Kimmel last night") who can attest to this. So much worse though, is loving hand- or computer-generated character, who owns but one set of clothing and- excluding the priest from "The Little Mermaid"- has unconfirmed genitalia. There is simply no excuse for this behavior.
Sadly though, there is no sense in love. The heart wants what it wants, and over the years I have decided that it is easier to give in and ride out my infatuations- decades though they may last- rather than attempt to blot out what is honest, genuine feeling. While it is not healthy for an adult woman to sit around fantasizing about life on Thundera, it is okay to sit back and smile when I am reminded of all the 'toons I've loved before . . .
So it is with this enlightened sense of self-acceptance that I present the following list of Saturday morning how-do-I-love-thees (in no particular order):
Damn! I Wish I Was Your Big-Eyed Small-Waisted Lover!
or How I Learned to Lighten Up and Love Four-Fingered Men
My approximate age at time of obsession: 15
Why I loved him:
Fifteen was an awkward age for me. I was an academic over-performer with limited social skills besides being funny, so much as I hated to admit it, I was still watching cartoons every Saturday when I woke up.
Milo Kamalani was so much of what I was really looking for in the opposite sex- long hair, cool voice, looked good in a beanie. Add to it the fact that he was a tortured artist- a sub-species of male I had become obsessed with since Kurt Cobain's suicide- and I really did not even stand a chance.
Was I ashamed that him being in the same year as Pepper Ann who was "too cool for seventh grade" meant that he was twelve and I was technically an icky predator? It definitely crossed my mind. Gratefully though, in my eyes we were both old souls and when faced with the future, I knew that we could take on the world armed with a paintbrush for him and a computer with a word processing program for me. Preferably an IBM. (Yeah, I know I'm old. Shut up.)
Flash-forward to now:
Oh, Milo. Milo, Milo, Milo. I now realize how much was stacked against us. You would never be able to grow older than twelve and I became so much more a woman with each passing day...at least that's what the teen-oriented tampon ads of the time were telling me. Remember the hilarious scene in one of the Twilight movies where the girl realizes that her castrated and defanged vampire boyfriend is going to stay young and she will get old, so she daydreams of him kissing her as an old lady? Yeah, it would be like that, except that prison glass would separate us, because even though you are a far superior man to that pale batboy who is 90% pompadour, your being an eternal pre-teen throws a wrench into the works of anything resembling longevity. Le Sigh.
Approximate age at time of obsession: 16-17
Why I loved him:
Continuing my adolescent obsession with the tortured and (semi-) creative, Trent Lane was the monotonously-voiced rock god of my unfortunately hormone-addled dreams. At 17 I was certain that Trent had everything that I was looking for in a guy, including:
- Epic hair- black and spiky with some pretty intense sideburns.
- Piercings in your ear cartilidge and forearm/bicep tattoos that make this native of Eugene, Oregon (where the body art shops have punch cards) swoon.
- Played guitar.
- Gravelly speaking voice.
- He was SO. DEEP.
- Ridiculously cool.
Flash-forward to now:
It was not forever.
In fact, of all my cartoon boyfriends, Trent Lane is the one that I regret the most, and were I to meet such a character again now, I would run screaming in the opposite direction for the following reasons:
- Lives with his parents.
- Is in a band that is not very good.
- Is in a BAND.
- Has a soul patch.
- Is always coughing for inexplicable reasons. What is that? Why don't you have it checked out?
- Seems confused. Always.
- Drives a crappy old van.
- Drives a VAN.
My approximate age at time of obsession: 17
Why I loved him:
The movie "George of the Jungle" had come out a few years previous. I remember watching that movie and becoming obsessed for one reason, two words: talking monkeys. Just kidding, it was Brendan Fraser...in a loin cloth. Cause DAY-UM.
There was something that kept me from really loving him though. I mean, it had all the foundations of a great celebrity crush- disgustingly gorgeous body, tan, and perfect long hair (This being the 90's and me being ridiculous, that was kind of my jam at the time). Add to that the crazy fantasy of living in the jungle and swinging on vines while you are fed passion fruit by a man that has never been taught to be a douche by other men, and as my boy Jemaine Clement would say, the situations should have been perfect for business to be conducted (if you know what I'm saying).
There was something wrong though. Something that I did not have a word for at the time but have since come to understand quite clearly. That something was the horrible epidemic affecting our nation for eons known affectionately as butterface. It turned out that what I really sought in an ape man- in addition to all the wonderful things that Encino Man brought to the table- was beautiful piercing eyes, a strong jawbone, and a mouth that did not bring to mind Dr. Demento's "Fish Heads" song. I mean, what good is having a boyfriend in the jungle if you have to put a bag over his head? Watch out for that FACE. Ugh.
Enter Disney's "Tarzan". I saw this movie with a group of friends at the second-run movie theater in while I was in college. This theater's $1.50 per show pricetag, combined with the fact that I did not have my license and could not drive myself home, was the reason that I ended up seeing "Meet the Parents" seven times the summer that it came out. Consequently, I cannot get on an airplane now without wanting to proclaim that I am a bombadier.
But I digress. Back to the movie. The lights dimmed...
- Credits rolled.
- Phil Collins drummed.
- Tarzan swung through the jungle and surfed on trees. His body was sick. His face was- dare I say it- dreamy. I sighed.
- Phil Collins drummed some more.
- The monkeys were funny and this girl named Tammy that I did not know laughed. Really. really. loud.
- Phil Collins, again with the drums.
- Tarzan kept being beautiful and I noticed he had that V-thing on his stomach that guys get when they stop ingesting things beside egg whites and vodka. And that scene where Jane draws his eyes over and over? I hear ya, girlfriend. I thought about how much I love cartoons and then smiled. Then Tammy laughed some more and I frowned.
- For variety, Phil Collins brought drums to the party.
- Tarzan and Jane had moments- several of them. She was booky and brunette so it was fairly easy for me to imagine myself knocking her out of that tree and taking her place. It was also fairly easy for me to imagine doing the same to Tammy, who had now added phrases like, "That monkey is funny!" to her reperatoire of annoying noises.
- All right Phil Collins, now you are just showing off.
- The movie ended and I left, one shameful crush richer, and searching for blunt objects to use on that girl that would not shut up during the movie.
- Phil Collins, played us out and reminded us via bongo-morse-code to pick up any garbage that was in our immediate area.
Flash-forward to now:
For Thanksgiving, I asked my best friend of the last 13 years, Tammy, if she wanted to go to Disneyland. My family was all going to be out of town and I did not want my parents to have to prepare a guilt ham for their one kid left coming home. No one likes guilt ham. Besides, I currently hold the record for being the only Mormon to ever keep kosher- why would I want to mess that up?
On our first day, the park was PACKED. We went and got a Fast Pass ticket to the Indiana Jones ride but then had to wait several hours before we could go on the ride which I thought completely contradicted the title of "Fast Pass". We saw that Tarzan's treehouse did not have much of a line. For nostalgia's sake we decided to pay it a visit.
Sadly for me, there was no live-action version of Tarzan waiting inside to show me how to speak gorilla on a tree branch. That's probably good, I don't know that I could withstand the temptation to stick singles in his loincloth and I did not want to get kicked out of the park that early in the day. Tammy took pictures of anything with a monkey in it muttering, "Those monkeys ARE funny!" and I swore that I could hear the ghost of Phil Collins in the trees even though Tammy assured me that he was not dead and that if Phil Collins did die, he would probably go to heaven and kick it with his girl Sussudio who had passed away in the early 90's due to a tragic synthesizer-related accident.
As we stepped out of the gorilla camp and back into the Southern California heat, I decided that it had been nice to get some closure on that which had promised to be an epic love, but suffered from my unwillingness to forgo flush toilets and a diet featuring complex carbohydrates. I waved goodbye to my jungle-based steady and went to buy a Wookie hat that I had seen earlier at the Star Wars attraction. I will save my list of disturbing characters from a galaxy far, far away about whom I have had inappropriate fantasies for another time.
My approximate age at the time of obsession: 22
Why I loved him:
I'm not going to lie. I dug the ending of the original "Shrek". Where Fiona frets over the fact that no one will ever love her as an ogre because she is not beautiful and Shrek tells her that she IS beautiful and then they kiss and suddenly they are driving away in that "Just Married" onion? Tears. (Pun intended- hell, pun CELEBRATED). Then you realize that you will NOT have to listen to another Smashmouth song before the end of the film and you are so overjoyed you CRY BUCKETS.
I'm not going to lie- as a plus sized chickadee, I identified with Fiona's search for a decent guy that appreciated her for her and did not live with his parents. It was a heartwarming story that helped me become a little more comfortable with the concept of finding true love, as long as I was willing to let go of the mandate that my soul mate have hair and perfectly straight teeth.
I'm not going to lie- as a plus sized chickadee, I identified with Fiona's search for a decent guy that appreciated her for her and did not live with his parents. It was a heartwarming story that helped me become a little more comfortable with the concept of finding true love, as long as I was willing to let go of the mandate that my soul mate have hair and perfectly straight teeth.
The concept of happiness with imperfection was not really new to me though. Prince Charming was never really my type anyway. In reality, I preferred a hopeless nerd with problematic facial features, ironic t-shirts about Marxism, and ugly old Converse sneakers that may or may not have had binary messages sketched on the side in White-Out. This was because experience taught me that they were more likely to have a sarcastic sense of humor, a firm grasp of the George Romero oeuvre, and an at least passing relationship with one or two classic dystopian novels ("You know who Yevgeny Zamyatin is? Let's make some babies.") Unfortunately for me, over a dating life that spans over a decade and a half, I have met just one person that actually fits all of those qualifications that is not also a pretentious d-bag. Also unfortunate was that in addition to his being born in the almost-90s (Zach Morris had a cell phone when he was born- eeep!), he was also Mormon and so went off to church school in the fall and was engaged by Christmas. During the time he was deciding to commit his heart to someone forever, I switched laundry detergents. So really- big year for the both of us. But don't feel bad for me . . . despite a rough start, Arm and Hammer Odor Neutralizer and I are still very happy together. (Insert Johnny Cash's "Walk the Line" here.)
Where was I? Oh yes, my healthy (as my therapist assures me) taste in cartoon characters. Enter Shrek the Human. I am going to get this out of the way now: "Shrek 2" is easily one of my favorite movie sequels of all time. Go ahead, make fun, but to my tastes, it has everything I am looking for in a movie- awkward moments, talking animals that lick their own crotches mid-film, fun musical sequences, a giant gingerbread cookie having an "E.T." moment, Pinocchio in a thong, John Cleese, Julie Andrews, and Edwina from "Absolutely Fabulous". In fact, I will go so far as to say that it is really only bested by "The Empire Strikes Back" for me, and even then only because never once did Shrek respond to Fiona's "I love you"s with "I know". (Once again- now is not the time for a recounting of all my inappropriate "Star Wars" fantasies, so stop asking me about them, I will not tell you.)
Anyway, if you are not familiar with the plot, Shrek decides that he wants to change himself so that his wife Fiona, a princess, could have a man that would be acceptable to her royal family. He uses a magic potion stolen from a Mao-ist fairy godmother in order to transform him from a street rat to Prince Ali Ababwa. Oops. Wrong fairy tale. (You do have to admit though, that it is practically the same story, just change out the middle-eastern Hammer pants with plaid man-capris and the Genie with a cat that sounds like the Nasonex bee.) Anyway, there is a lot of build up in the movie to this moment, and to the credit of the producers, there were no images released in advance of what Shrek looked like after his transformation, so it was kind of a moment when you finally saw him for the first time.
Where I was at that point, Shrek as a human was nothing less than perfect to me. Having recently had my heart-broken, I was sort of swimming in a pool of despair and self loathing that was based less on the heartbreak itself and more on my desire to have drama in my life. (I wore sackcloth and ashes- it was a whole thing.) Human Shrek arrived on his Noble Steed (who talked WAY too effing much) to carry me away from all that in a bucket (...get it? Because I melted? Because he was sexy? Ugh, never mind.) At the end of the movie Fiona tells Shrek in the last seconds of his Magical Spell o' Sexy that she loved HIM no matter what and wanted to be with the ogre she married, so he turns back into an ogre as the clock chimes and everyone sings a Ricky Martin song to celebrate. As you can imagine, I was not pleased with this last minute twist and reacted accordingly.
Flash-forward to now:
Having had a lot more experience with adult relationships since that time, I have come to what you could call a healthy understanding of why Fiona did what she did.
It takes just such a lot of patience for bullshit to be with an extremely beautiful man. Even if they are only recently beautiful, men that are pretty are just such a pain. You have to wait hours for them to find the perfect pair of Vans to go with their skinny jeans and fitted black shirt; tell them forty times that their hair looks slept-in in the good way; and affirm to them that yes, they are sexier than Tatum Channing covered in chocolate sauce, I don't care what Cosmopolitain magazine has to say on the subject. There is, of course, that rare sub-species of humble, soft-spoken, intelligent, kind, AND physically beautiful man that has just no idea that woman cross desserts to kiss the hem of his Carhartt work pants, but like Bigfoot, most of us have only heard rumors of his existence, and those that claim to have seen him are generally regarded as mentally unstable by the majority populace.
No- Fiona had it right. Already ecstatically happy with her attractive-only-to-her fella, she also had the luxury of her love existing off the radar of meddling chicas like that slutty Jill, with her overfull pails of water. Let's face it, when your man is rocking the verdigris of a beanstalk, and boasts a smile that could sink a thousand ships, you never have to worry about the sales clerk of Far Far Away Mart flirt-laughing and arm brushing him every time he goes out to get a gallon of milk. There's a certain comfort in that.
The song doesn't lie. If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, gotta make an ugly woman your wife. The same goes for making an ugly ogre your hubby, which does not rhyme with anything catchy enough for a song, but I supposed could give depth to an evocative slam poem if you really tried...
Where I am now:
At the start of my 30th year, things have not really changed- I am still very likely to fall head-over-Pampers for a rakish hand-drawn/computer-generated anti-hero with Zachary Levi's speaking voice. The difference is that I am now less inclined to talk about them as I am entering my sexual peak and my thoughts are now considerably less romantic and more.... in need of disinfectant and possibly an exorcism.
I was at the Whole Foods the other day and saw a man with pointed red hair wearing a wrestling singlet, a chunky belt, thigh high boots, and carrying a giant sword. I went to call out to him before I realized that it was not my Lion-O, but simply one of the drag queens just off duty from his shift at Darcelle's. My heart sank, but I realized that it is better this way. I would never want to mar the innocence of 1985 just to settle the curiousity of 2012. That's how the world ended up with a remake of "Arthur" starring Russell Brand and an obviously drunk Helen Mirren- and who wants to be responsible for a tragedy like that?
Anyway, if you are not familiar with the plot, Shrek decides that he wants to change himself so that his wife Fiona, a princess, could have a man that would be acceptable to her royal family. He uses a magic potion stolen from a Mao-ist fairy godmother in order to transform him from a street rat to Prince Ali Ababwa. Oops. Wrong fairy tale. (You do have to admit though, that it is practically the same story, just change out the middle-eastern Hammer pants with plaid man-capris and the Genie with a cat that sounds like the Nasonex bee.) Anyway, there is a lot of build up in the movie to this moment, and to the credit of the producers, there were no images released in advance of what Shrek looked like after his transformation, so it was kind of a moment when you finally saw him for the first time.
Where I was at that point, Shrek as a human was nothing less than perfect to me. Having recently had my heart-broken, I was sort of swimming in a pool of despair and self loathing that was based less on the heartbreak itself and more on my desire to have drama in my life. (I wore sackcloth and ashes- it was a whole thing.) Human Shrek arrived on his Noble Steed (who talked WAY too effing much) to carry me away from all that in a bucket (...get it? Because I melted? Because he was sexy? Ugh, never mind.) At the end of the movie Fiona tells Shrek in the last seconds of his Magical Spell o' Sexy that she loved HIM no matter what and wanted to be with the ogre she married, so he turns back into an ogre as the clock chimes and everyone sings a Ricky Martin song to celebrate. As you can imagine, I was not pleased with this last minute twist and reacted accordingly.
Flash-forward to now:
Having had a lot more experience with adult relationships since that time, I have come to what you could call a healthy understanding of why Fiona did what she did.
It takes just such a lot of patience for bullshit to be with an extremely beautiful man. Even if they are only recently beautiful, men that are pretty are just such a pain. You have to wait hours for them to find the perfect pair of Vans to go with their skinny jeans and fitted black shirt; tell them forty times that their hair looks slept-in in the good way; and affirm to them that yes, they are sexier than Tatum Channing covered in chocolate sauce, I don't care what Cosmopolitain magazine has to say on the subject. There is, of course, that rare sub-species of humble, soft-spoken, intelligent, kind, AND physically beautiful man that has just no idea that woman cross desserts to kiss the hem of his Carhartt work pants, but like Bigfoot, most of us have only heard rumors of his existence, and those that claim to have seen him are generally regarded as mentally unstable by the majority populace.
No- Fiona had it right. Already ecstatically happy with her attractive-only-to-her fella, she also had the luxury of her love existing off the radar of meddling chicas like that slutty Jill, with her overfull pails of water. Let's face it, when your man is rocking the verdigris of a beanstalk, and boasts a smile that could sink a thousand ships, you never have to worry about the sales clerk of Far Far Away Mart flirt-laughing and arm brushing him every time he goes out to get a gallon of milk. There's a certain comfort in that.
The song doesn't lie. If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, gotta make an ugly woman your wife. The same goes for making an ugly ogre your hubby, which does not rhyme with anything catchy enough for a song, but I supposed could give depth to an evocative slam poem if you really tried...
Where I am now:
At the start of my 30th year, things have not really changed- I am still very likely to fall head-over-Pampers for a rakish hand-drawn/computer-generated anti-hero with Zachary Levi's speaking voice. The difference is that I am now less inclined to talk about them as I am entering my sexual peak and my thoughts are now considerably less romantic and more.... in need of disinfectant and possibly an exorcism.
I was at the Whole Foods the other day and saw a man with pointed red hair wearing a wrestling singlet, a chunky belt, thigh high boots, and carrying a giant sword. I went to call out to him before I realized that it was not my Lion-O, but simply one of the drag queens just off duty from his shift at Darcelle's. My heart sank, but I realized that it is better this way. I would never want to mar the innocence of 1985 just to settle the curiousity of 2012. That's how the world ended up with a remake of "Arthur" starring Russell Brand and an obviously drunk Helen Mirren- and who wants to be responsible for a tragedy like that?
