Well, it certainly isn't acting my age, but The Angry Beavers is my all time favorite show. I've got four tapes of episodes that I recorded off of Nickelodeon, before they started being stupid and never showing any of the good stuff anymore. Nope, can't watch anything good, but you can watch stupid Rugrats anytime you turn on the television. Nickelodeon needs to STOP trying to find new hit shows and just keep showing the ones they already have. They haven't come out with anything good since Invader Zim, and before that it was Beavers. They're not doing very well, but when they get a good one, it's REALLY good, such as Zim and Beavers.
Anyway, The Angry Beavers is about two brothers who live together: the spastic, excitable and gullable younger brother, Daggett, and the older, always suave and level-headed Norbert. Some of the best episodes in my opinion are Muscular Beaver 3 (the DEATH RAY OF 'OUCH MY FACE!'), and the Halloween episode called The Day the World Got Really Screwed Up (Oh! My ankle!).
As I mentioned before, Invader Zim is another really awesome show that was cancelled. Jhonen Vasquez made it, and (my favorite) Richard Horvitz did the voice of the title character (and also Daggett from The Angry Beavers. I WANT HIS JOB!!). GIR was everybody's favorite, because he was NUTS. My personal favorite episode was Germs, but I'm not sure why. I liked GIR running around the tree. Other good episodes include Bad Bad Rubber Piggy (WHY MY PIGGY! I lov-ed you, Piggy), GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff (I love the little tacos...), Walk of Doom (I had to make room for the cupcake!), and Rise of Zitboy (Why was there BACON IN THE SOAP?!). All the episodes used to be available to download, but I don't know if they still are, and furthermore, I don't remember the site... I'll get to work on that.
Can anybody guess who these people are? They certainly don't look like that anymore, but the piano should give it away. If you still can't figure it out, that's probably because you're simply not old enough. If you were around in the late 1960's, it would make sense. The TV takeoff of The Beatles, these are the "Pre-Fab Four" themselves. That's right, The Monkees. When the television pilot made its debut, nobody liked it because they couldn't relate to the guys, couldn't tell them apart. So they re-showed the pilot, but this time added the boys' screen tests to the beginning, and suddenly it was a hit. From left to right in the photo above, there's Davy Jones (19), Peter Tork (21), Michael Nesmith (22, son of the inventor of Liquid Paper!), and my favorite, Micky Dolenz (20, and there's no 'e' in 'Micky'). There were only 2 seasons and 52 episodes, and then came the infamous "Head," a feature film that made NO sense whatsoever. It seemed like they had just gone into a room with a tape recorder, lots of drugs and alcohol, and Jack Nicholson, and sat for days just musing while high and then taking the tapes and making a movie out of it. Wait, that's exactly what they did. While making the movie, the guys weren't interested in the show, so it was cancelled. When the show began, two of the four couldn't play an instrument, but they were tired of being called fakes, so they learned, and before the show ended had gone on a concert tour playing all their own music. Circle Sky is a tune that was recorded live at one of their concerts, so long as you find the right version. The Monkees Anthology and Missing Links, Vol. 3 both feature the live version, and it's great. However, we're talking television, not music. In keeping with the tradition of this page, some of my favorite episodes are Alias Micky Dolenz (No Tony, I was a has-been. Now I'm an am-is), Monkee vs. Machine (My mommy won't let me play with toys that burn or bash or scratch... or go boom), and The Monkee's Paw (I think you spell 'monkey' with a 'y.' Oh really? I always thought you spelled it with 2 'e's).
Here are the guys again, a little older. There's Davy on the left, then Peter, Micky on the far right, and... Wait a minute, that's not Mike! That guy sure looks familiar, though. Looks like my Uncle David. Of course, he looks a lot more like Weird Al Yankovic, probably because he IS Weird Al Yankovic. He was great pals with The Monkees, and Micky's daughter Aimee. I wonder where I could get one of those shirts...
Home Page
Angry Beavers and Invader Zim photos courtesy of the Nickelodeon website, and the Monkees photos courtesy of The Official Monkees Website, despite their best efforts to keep me from acquiring them.