Rocko's Modern Queer Life

 

Anyone in the last 30 years who likes cartoons, probably had a glimpse of Rocko's Modern Life; the show was extremely subversive for being a Nickelodeon show as the channel was aimed to toddlers and barely to adults, even on the nighttime block it was as clean as Disney Channel albeit within their rooster of programming back in the 90's they had so much subtle messages and coding about queer life, intersectional feminism and acceptance that Disney themselves lacked on those subjects.

As Nickelodeon started to explore entertaining aimed to adults in the early 1990's, Joe Murray pitched the idea of Rocko which he created sometime around the 1980's as a comic book format but never gained momentum; but, at that moment in the early-mid 1990's the explosion of risque cartoons that borderline in the satirical aspect of modern society were something fresh, something new as not even The Flintstone's could execute something as wonderful as the Nicktoons; but the Nicktoons were a product of their time much like the Hanna Barbera cartoons.

There are so many interpretations towards how queer the show is, a lot of the characters sided with different sides of the rainbow as being fluid; I can only think of Heffer and Rocko being somewhat heterosexual life partner's but also flirting with each other a lot. The show itself doesn't have a preset of relationships besides the Bigheads and Filburt with Dr. Hutchinson but that doesn't mean they strictly are committed to one another, but rather there is some form of polyamory and I can't stop thinking about it. It was sublet but it was there, there was this implication especially after the birth of Filburt kids and there wasn't any jealously or anything negative, it was accepted in the universe of O-Town.

The turning point of the show, came in 2019 after 23 years of being off air with the Netflix special Static Cling where the Bigheads child came to live on their true authentic self as a transwoman and the reaction Ed to his daughter Rachel was a sequence not common to see on cartoons or television, there was denial but also acceptance in to knowing that we can't as parents make our children a reflection of our own ideals and shattered dreams but instead we need to make them grow in to decent people and that they will know they will have a home to come if something bad happens, and that was probably the biggest twist but lesson in the entire show.

Rocko's Modern Life reflect sometimes the absurdity that is the human experience, not only that it also shows diversity and a honest approach in life that we can't cling to the past but rather we can learn from it, because we have memories of what we associated with happier times but happiness itself comes from living, just living every day to the fullest and that's the aspect of the entire show that made it so appealing.

A Short Analysis of Heathcliff

  

     As far I've remember, I had a fascination with Heathcliff the Cat, I always remember reading it on the comic strips of the newspapers whenever I traveled to the United States thinking it was a nice sequel of the 1984 cartoon, which is the year I was born but I remember seeing Heathcliff and the Cattilacs way into the 1990's, and not even knowing there was a previous show in the 1980's as it never got a proper distribution in Latin America.

    By that moment the impact of Garfield was powerful worldwide, it was the era also where Calvin and Hobbes was outsourced to be published outside the United States and I was mesmerized by the influx of American funnies or comic strips. the diaries in Colombia weren't strong as the ones in the United States with cartoons and as a kid in the 1990's back in Latin America I was visually experiencing something I never seen before, American comic strips and I am still fascinating by them because some of them are non-sequitur and other goes on arc, but what it got my attention the most about Heatcliff is something many other people born before the advent of the Internet it was a ripoff of Garfield while it was the opposite way Jim Davies ripped off the concept of George Gately albeit ht etones of the strips are vastly different especially after the passing of Gately which his nephew Peter Gallagher inherited the strip and it turned it in to a piece of Dadaistic non-sensical pop culture art.

 

    The strips have no sense, at least at first sight or even if you try to place it on a deeper meaning there are none. It seems on an epistemological level to understand the identity of anarchism and the Dadaism, is the notion of truth and the roles that the artist and philosopher play together "is just the concept of absurdism, where no method is regarded as indispensable" where there is an opposition to universal standards and universal laws. 

    It's a setting where all contact with  world has been lost and the stability achieved, and the semblance of truth is achieved through conformism. Is probably the most coherent way to explain why the humans are submissive to their strange environment in which Heathcliff seems as the catalyst of the madness in Westfinster where everything goes

    There is no sense whenever is just looked at random times, even on the progression of the comic strip there seems to be an influence of the Family Circus but it diverged on the point where it became a meme before memes existed. Heathcliff doesn't need to have sense because it defies the conventionalisms in the comics strips of the newspapers, it's subversive but also it contains aspects of nothingness where the readers expect to see, a hidden social commentary.

    The most non-sequitur aspect of the comment is not the helmets, the strange outfits, flying cats with bubblegum but it's the garbage ape, there can be interpretations about what is the garbage ape; is they a figment of the cats imagination? a construct that they see as the waste management workers going by? It's difficult to say, as it contains elements of David Lynch products where there is no objectivism to understand reality but rather to be absorbed in an universe where sense and reason would emotionally scar Ben Shapiro.

    The cartoons versus the comic strip, the comic strip evolution of Gately over his nephew Gallagher, is as two different universes, a what if? Even if Gately introduced the no sense concept, there was some form of conformism that eventually got discarded in favor of anarchistic and Dadaist concepts by Gallagher. 

References

• Chiodo, S. (2019). The Epistemological Anarchist and the Dadaist. Philosophia, 47(5), 1379–1390. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-018-0049-8

Mortality

   We all had a dream about life, it was a short dream, a dream that in reality lasted less than two hours, we blinked and we were gone. I always wondered about if I die tomorrow, what would be the legacy I will leaving? I don't know, I know our existence is erased from the collective consciousness in around 100 years. 200 years if we have an exception life and the resource to fulfill an economical legacy. The what we do today has repercussions on a long term,

    We do not know what the tomorrow will bring, and when our last day will but we can live every day as if it was the last one, to live it fully and to be happy that even if is there isn't any mythical purpose for our existence we can implement compassion in other people and animals, without expecting anything back, think of the power of connection and what you can achieve "even if you don't have a physical legacy, you can change people, you can influence your communities and after that a bigger change will come, because is not about the money but how we are all interlocked"

    I have surgery of my molars tomorrow, I am anxious because I have previous experience in hospitals that involved bad of parental care when I was younger, I get anxious even if is a day surgery and I know what to do to recover, I have my hours to skip work for 7 days and don't do anything heavy, but I fear the worse and that comes from years of repression and abuse that had channelized in to every time I go to a medical practice. I remember one day when I got one of the hepatitis vaccines and my mother out of nowhere when she was driving back with me, as I was underage "Nobody can't say anything because you are vaccinated" the words always stuck with me and even after 1\3 years of leaving and not going to Cartagena, I still remember the location.

    Words have power, they transcend time and even when is been over 20 years since that moment, I still remember it and is one of the many, I am scare of tomorrow because even with insurance I can't linger the image what I associate health care with. I hope I will be OK, I know I shouldn't be scared, but still...

Quinton Kyle Hoover

Lately I been reconsidering some of my old habits of Youtube, and I love commentary channels, but Quinton Reviews got my attention to the full extent because Quinton dead pan non-sequitur humor, honest approach and their image that can relate to so many geeks and dweebs around the world is so relate because they look like good friend you had across the street and the two of you sit down to laugh and tell jokes while playing video games and probably that's part of their appeal.

Is the ability to relate to essentially every common geek online, that it makes him endearing but also there is this mystery that surrounds them but it rather goes on trivial pop data than anything else that is more substantial, Quinton is somewhat of an enigma surrounded by their love of Garfield and collection which progressively expanded over the years but also is their sense of humor that caught (at least for me) people's attention.

I found his channel by mere accident about a month ago, maybe it was a nostalgia trip that hit me while I was looking for old Fred's videos and my surprise I found this one and I was introduced to Quinton's Fallen Titans series, which as a viewer gave me another perspective on Fred and it pointed the dark side of the character that was involved within the original run of Fred opposite to the iCarly cameos, which outside the screaming annoying voice, and the constant non-sequiturs Fred is quite a dark early Youtube series that involves a six year old with a drug addiction, who is subjected to a toxic life by his prostitute mother and predatory behavior by trespassing his neighbors house.

Curiosity as well binging on Quinton's video for over a month let me to find more information about them, and there is nothing, nothing at all, nothing relevant, no interviews, no nothing besides his own self-referential Fallen Titans video. There is no information on Youtube Wikia besides him saying on a video that they occasionally check the website, other piece of information seems to show their pronouns from one of the video (but I forgot to save it, and I been binging on them too much) which said The Force is Strong in They/Them which gives another hint but no overall confirmation either and some of his Garfield videos that reveal some of their personal information and how they got in to Garfield when they were a child.

Same as going through their Twitter and some Youtube videos, his hate for Donald Trump and that they supported Bernie Sanders, and one random photo that popped on Google seemed that they worked on Dollar General as well; but the general information to create a template profile is scarce which adds more to the mystery who is Quinton Kyle Hoover and I would love to do a full interview on them one day because they are one of the most interesting people in the Youtube stratosphere.

El Legado de Bienvenidos (Parte Uno)

   Últimamente me han llegado las memorias que tenía hace varios años, pero fue cuando siento paz que logre volver a escribir en castellano otra vez, una de esas memorias que me han llegado ayer ha sido con el programa Venezolano Bienvenidos, que toco a diferentes generaciones en Latino América ya que con el humor irreverente, pero al mismo tiempo mostrando al mundo lo difícil que es hacer un programa de humor en medio de una emergente dictadura.

 El programa fue concebido por Miguel Ángel Landa a principios de la década de los Ochenta, y posteriormente en 1982  fue lanzado en Venevisión pero el programa piloto fue originalmente ofrecido a Radio Caracas Televisión donde fue grabado con actores del canal pero alrededor de 1981 RCTV rechazo la producción del programa y fue entonces donde Landa se enfocó en ir a la cadena rival que contó con la aprobación inmediata y el primer episodio fue transmitido en mediados de 1982 - honestamente en este punto pienso que los archivos de distribución fueron borrados o extraviados debido al régimen, si alguien tiene datos de la producción, pueden dejarme un mensaje con su email y les respondo lo más pronto posible-

    Honestamente buscando los episodios, los he encontrado alrededor de YouTube, algunos de ellos están bloqueados, pero en su gran mayoría me da la impresión que los primeros episodios de Venevisión están perdidos con el tiempo.

   El primer episodio lo encontré en YouTube, al menos lo que creo es que el primero ya que el entró y la cinematografía muestran los 80's y vagamente recuerdo a Yulika Krauz en uno de los primeros episodios, si lo quieren ver y está bloqueado en su país por derechos de autor, usen el navegador Tor que hace milagros con sobrepasando las fronteras del IP.

 Otro aspecto que tengo que mencionar que estoy usando los recursos que encuentro en el Internet y me da la impresión que página de Wikipedia y la Wiki de los fans de Bienvenidos están incompletas ya que comparando videos de las primeras temporadas no hay un registro oficial y publico de los actores del programa al igual que el elenco de producción, que van hasta el final del programa con la productora Televen que honestamente no consigo información concreta y me encantaría saber que ha pasado con la mayoría del elenco de la serie original y del relanzamiento a lo largo de los años.

    Probablemente el programa no tendría la acogida que tuvo en su momento debido a que las sociedades cambian y el sentido del humor evolucionan, pero uno nunca sabe; en el 2015 Miguel Ángel Landa trato de revivir el formato pero investigando más a fondo, honestamente no encontré nada más que un solo artículo de la Republica Dominicana en donde Landa hablaba de castings que se iban hacer en la isla pero no hay más nada, al igual que los actores, honestamente es difícil encontrar alguna información referente online.

     El legado del programa sigue ahí, sigue en el colectivo de la gente, pero se ha vuelto más una sombra de un producto que estuvo vigente hace unos 19 años, pero en las últimas dos décadas quedo en el olvido, al igual que la mayoría de los actores. La pregunta que me hago es ¿puede haber otro Bienvenidos? un relanzamiento de la franquicia en tiempos en que la gente está clamando por nostalgia, pero adaptar el programa en tiempos modernos y ver como los contratos con Venevisión se pueden cambiar para que las propiedades intelectuales de Miguel Ángel Landa y ver al Loco Hugo, la Beba o Enrico una vez más en la luz del día y en pleno siglo 21.

 

Referencias:

 

• https://bienvenidosvenevision.fandom.com/es/wiki/Categor%C3%ADa:Elenco_Original
• https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bienvenidos_(programa_de_televisi%C3%B3n_venezolano)
• https://listindiario.com/entretenimiento/2015/08/04/382887/bienvenidosse-realizara-en-republica-dominicana

What ever Happened to Chris Hutka The Bear?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattszerlag/12150846004

A friend of mine introduced me to The Bunny The Bear group, reason was "I call my husband the bear (like the slang for big, hairy guy) and for some reason that stuck to that friend of mine who about a year later send me out of nowhere the music video Aisle which was my first exposition to The Bunny The Bear and it hook me up.

I will talk the little bit I found out online about the group and the evolution on the sound, and essentially is the brainchild of Matthew Tybor (The Bunny) from arrangements to everything and it follows an experimental path and a rotative line-up that change certain amount of years. As the first Bear (Chris Hutka) there has been several over the years, which probably has let more options to experiment towards music as every single bear had a different key and way of singing.

It was Chris Hutka who got my attention, not because I enjoy tall big, hairy guys (which maybe I am a chaser but it also goes on the aesthetic) but because his voice had that falsetto, high keys that are somewhat popularized with Adam Levine but Chris voice wasn't forced as Adam, almost as a polyvox but also his stage presence as I can't really think of many mainstream musicians who fit in to a bear archetype taking out any who play on the queercore circles.

I haven't contacted Matthew Tybor (The Bunny) because from what I read online, there was some of rift and I respect the privacy of the individuals, but what baffles me is that essentially there is nothing of Chris Hutka, there are some traces of Instagram, the Twitter accounts I found seem to be abandoned by almost a decade, Facebook accounts seem to be inactive, there aren't any recent Youtube videos of any of his accounts by almost 9 years as well and there aren't news of him at all.

 Talking about videos, I found two; the first one is somewhat sad because as far I seen that's Chris and Hayley (one of the Bears) appearing on Jerry Springer around 2 years ago, the episode is still online and is somewhat of a mess to watch because there are two talented people acting like buffoons even with all their talent, is somewhat cringe to see it.

The second video is also recently where Chris is singing a cover by Saosin, but beyond that there is nothing else that is recently, which is almost as an enigma because there is nothing at all, like he vanished from face of the universe, especially on these days that is easy to track people due the influence of social media. I am curious because I rarely stumble in to something as this where trying to find information about the artist is difficult but I assume not impossible, and the last piece of professional information comes from Wikipedia that states that Hutka was going to release an LP on 2017 but it seems it never came.

 

Old Memories

I haven't wrote in a while, but again I feel the necessity as my others skills had come back, on a similar level  reading has been another that has come back at the same time as the one mentioned before as well illustration and continue pursuing my education which I start again in the next up coming week.

That little advertisement/ page holder is from an old book store in Cartagena - Colombia that was present when I used to live there, the name was Bitacora and everything that is left at least online is just an old Angelfire page that I opted to save because there aren't any visual media saved from 15 years ago online, and after the façade of the last location that I ever visited 14 years ago, is completely different and it seems that it closed a long time ago.

Bitacora was located in San Martin Avenue, on the last two incarnation that I remember, the two buildings are still there, and it was always close to the sea - it was a magical place for me, because I could escape whenever school was done for the day but also during the holidays since I was always happy back then being surrounded by books.

The place I always remember it that it was cold, the air conditioner was always on but it was pleasant - it had a rustic interior that give it some Caribean vibes but also a portal that was open for a world of magic in an enviroment that was already somewhat surreal, I always enjoyed going there because it was an experience for the senses but also an escape from the house and a moment where I could refresh from the heat and get a new book.

I didn't found a library when I move to the States that I enjoy myself but for a long time I was also trying to recover the pieces of who I was (in a value that could give something meaningful) to who I had grown in to, albeit now in a new city I had spotted several smaller libraries that are in a similar vibe as Bitacora and they inspire me to continue reading and buying books, but for 9 years I didn't read anything besides when I tried to go to school but not out of leisure or by interest without any responsibility.

I do not know what I am going to do with this blog or the others I have, I need to find more topics to write or essentially to write about nothing. I had recover my love for photography and illustration, but as well to improve my knowledge which were aspects of my core I didn't tackle for almost a decade because I couldn't relate to them or feel them as I used to. My motivation to do arts was related to my feelings of loneliness and desperation and having to find a new point that didn't involved sorrow or any other emotion but rather more related to my core.

The process of recovering was ardeous, I know I am more in touch with my emotions, to who I am without being part of a family but rather my own self, without any pretension that were influenced by someone else through the use of force. That little page holder from Bitacora brought me memories because after being shun by my parents and losing a lot of personal items a simple item in paper brought me joy when I found it again.

A simple item that made me realize, the happy places can change over time but the happiness comes within, and that was what Bitacora meant to me and still does, only that the physical place is not there anymore but it's within my memories. I am still thinking what I can do with my blogs, what direction I want to take them, my other products as well, I do not feel I lost the time where I wasn't active but rather it was a moment in time where I could take care of myself and let the creativity and my true art to flow without restrictions.