When living in the present isn’t working out, look to the...

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 16:31:41 -0500

When living in the present isn’t working out, look to the past.

crumievideoshow:

Episode One: Stealth As A Wallaby

Beowolf at Arbor Vitae

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 16:11:41 -0500

Beowolf at Arbor Vitae

Samn Johnson and Friends live at Arbor Vitae 11/16/12

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 12:24:13 -0500

Samn Johnson and Friends live at Arbor Vitae 11/16/12

Titus Andronicus

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 08:20:46 -0500

Titus Andronicus

The Tetris Junkies - Crumie Theme

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 02:46:48 -0500

The Tetris Junkies - Crumie Theme

Photo

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 12:18:31 -0500

http://www.henrycrissman.com/Hot-N-Ready-Pizza-Teapot Photo I...

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 22:45:32 -0500

http://www.henrycrissman.com/Hot-N-Ready-Pizza-Teapot

Photo I took tonight of Henry Crissman and his family trying out his latest invention the Hot-N-Ready Pizza Teapot.™

Goldblum’s magic hair!!

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 19:42:08 -0500

Goldblum’s magic hair!!

https://soundcloud.com/crumie-mix-tapes/a-little-christmas-chair ...

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 18:01:00 -0500

https://soundcloud.com/crumie-mix-tapes/a-little-christmas-chair

http://www.mediafire.com/?xurglb5ic1m6yde

A Little Christmas Chair
A Crumie Mixtape

MC DJ - Christmas Time
Jan Terri - Rock and Roll Santa
Woods - Christmas Time Is Here
Krispy Kreme - Christmas
Adam Horne - Rudolph (as Interpol)
Blink 182 - I Won’t Be Home For Christmas
Astronautalis - Xmas In July
The Dismemberment Plan - This Christmas
Travis Morrison - My Two Front Teeth
Macklin Underdown - A Very Dub Spector Christmas
Torkelson - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
The XX - Last Christmas (TABS Rework)
Wham! - Last Christmas (Slugabed Remix)
The Fantasies - How The Fantasies Stole Christmas

Audio clips from ‘Northern Exposure’

CHROME SPARKS ON...

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:43:57 -0500

CHROME SPARKS ON PITCHFORK

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/14659-send-the-pain-on/

Photo

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:07:02 -0500

Samn Johnson!

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 02:11:00 -0500

Samn Johnson!

From Mayfield to Wellsville

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:05:00 -0500

The American family has gone through many transformations over the years and these changes have been highlighted in the ways these families have been represented through one of the staples of popular culture, the television sitcom. While sitcoms can take on a range of concepts and subject matter, from a family of social outcasts on The Addams Family to the eclectic college study group of Community, the suburban family sitcom has remained a staple of the genre. These programs offer examples of “traditional” American families built upon what their creators feel are crucial aspects to this identity. One of the landmark early domestic sitcoms, 1957’s Leave It To Beaver, whose central cast of two adolescent brothers and their loving parents helped craft an archetype for a nuclear American family that has become a sort of trivial reference point in the years following the show. As cultural morals and ethical standards have evolved over the decades, so too have sitcom families been forced to reinvent themselves in order to reflect these changes. Nickelodeon’s1991’s cult classic, The Adventures of Pete and Pete frequently tested the precedents glorified in Beaver in an attempt to update these predetermined “traditions” of family life in a contemporary landscape. Where Beaver is remembered for drafting what constitutes a stereotypical “average” American family, Pete and Pete became a sort of response to this legacy of misinformed generalizations guised as truth that hold little water in the non-televised world.

Leave It To Beaver initially ran on CBS from 1957 until 1958, moved to ABC until 1963, and even spawned remakes in the form of two1980s television series, Still The Beaver and The “New” Leave It To Beaver, finally being adapted to a 1997 feature film. Episodes of Beaver attempted to appeal to audiences inherit nostalgia for childhood by way of glamorizing so-called “values” that were portrayed as essential to an “average” American life. In his article, The Meaning of Memory, George Lipsitz suggests that programs such as Beaver attempted to “call attention to the disparity between the past and the present” by framing themselves as reality-based artifacts of a past which was in fact highly formulated, baring only a surface resemblance to reality.¹ During the first season each episode began with an omniscient voiceover of Hugh Beaumont who also played father figure, Ward Cleaver, literally asking viewers to remember, “when you were young.”² This narrative ploy acted as an attempt to show viewers important “morals” via an assumed sense of collective nostalgia of stereotypical American childhood activities such as a game of baseball or a frosty treat from the local ice cream man on a hot summer day. These activities, among countless others would eventually inspire plotlines for episodes of Pete and Pete a show which began as a series of one-minute shorts on Nickelodeon in 1989 that was expanded into a three season run of 30 minute episodes from 1993 to 1996. By drawing from an alternative aesthetic born out of “indie culture” and a sensibility that show co-creator Chris Viscardi told the LA Times was a universal focus of “being an outsider growing up…that definitely affects everyone” ³Pete and Pete would take classical sitcom traditions and warp them through a unique surrealist lens to create a program prime for an unconventional cultural landscape of a 1990s American wherein young people struggled to adapt “traditional” values of growing up in America.

Whereas Beaver attempted to showcase the lives of the Cleaver family as a sort of definition of the American population as a whole, Pete and Pete utilized similar subject matter with a goal of putting what show creator Will McRobb calls the “mystery back into kids’ lives, because everything is so over-explained.”⁴ Thus in the world of Pete and Pete’s town of Wellsville, ice cream men and summer baseball games become subverted perceptions of traditional ideals crafted around bizarre, surreal storylines. Traditionally shows such as Beaver would probably craft a storyline about baseball as an example of an established American past time promoting ideologies of teamwork and good sportsmanship a convention Pete and Pete effectively warps. Big Pete (Michael Merona) is faced with a more obscure challenge, saving baseball from a maniacal coach obsessed with winning who champions unsavory tactics such as the crude trash-talk of his younger brother Pete (Danny Tamberelli), and his teammates’ growing dependence upon a mind altering frozen slush-drink. This episode, “Field of Pete” has a plotline that is inherently obscure but is driven by Pete’s fear that his coach’s strategies were “destroying baseball”⁵ or more accurately the predetermined notions of what he feels baseball represents at a larger scale. Pete eventually learns that while he does enjoy being on a winning team, but not if it requires debasing what he feels are essential ideals the game represents which are presumably based on the popular culture he grew up with, such as, Leave It To Beaver. In this sense Pete and Pete effectively embraces the traditions of American baseball but in Pete’s grappling with finding a balance for his expectations and reality, he finds that being “true” to baseball also involves the self -acceptance that he may have to be part of the losing team.

A pivotal aspect of any sitcom is its core set of characters or its “family”. In comparing these two programs, the Wrigley family of Pete and Pete is of a seemingly similar make-up to the Cleavers of Beaver. Both shows revolve around a suburban nuclear family comprised of the Cleaver parents, Ward and June (Barbara Billingsley) and the Wrigleys, Don (Hardy Rawls) and Joyce (Judy Grafe). The subtle weirdness of Pete and Pete is immediately evident if not only for the fact that in Pete the older and younger sibling dynamic of Wally (Tony Dow) and Beaver (Jerry Mathers) is fulfilled by two brothers, both of whom are named “Pete.” While this may seem like a goofy ploy on the part of the creators to confuse audiences, the fact that the rational for their shared name is never explained and is accepted as normal showcases a peculiarity that becomes indicative of the American “indie-culture” aesthetic of experimentation that Pete and Pete was created within.

In her book Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture, Kaya Oakes examines the rise of a do-it-yourself mindset that grew to prominence in the 1980s as “ways the younger generation could vent the tensions they inherited with the new decade.”⁶ So in this light, Pete and Pete’s consistent theme of coming to terms with reality in a world where glorifications seem unachievable reflects larger trademarks of “indie culture.” Coupled with the shows use of independent rock music, a unique sense of humor, and a visual style facilitated by employing innovative “hip” directors such as Katherine Dieckmann and Adam Bernstein, the show became cemented in the unique world of “indie”. An “indie” where what normally would be considered “weird” becomes no stranger than the ordinary. The fact that Pete and Pete takes place in a suburban setting is also indicative of Oakes’ claim that the independent revival of the eighties “came from the suburbs” where disenfranchised young people were given the power to create their own media via music, art or “hosting an underground radio show.”⁷In the episode “Hard Days Pete” younger Pete enacts this last activity by hosting his own radio station in which he responds to his own lack of a favorite song by initially vowing to never play music on his station. Pete’s choice to be true to himself and avoid the conventional use of radio to play music shows the power that “indie culture” gives to the individual in which you no longer have to answer to predetermined cultural precedents.

The Cleaver family with its working father, housewife mother and well-meaning obedient children is a model that was as Stephanie Coontz points out was “never as idyllic or uncomplicated as we sometimes imagine.”⁸ Coontz’s book, The Way We Never Were, examines the incongruent depictions found on television with those observed in actuality. Coontz points out that this “nuclear family” model accounted for less than 10% of American households in the 1950s⁹so as Beaver attempts to frame itself as a reflection of “normality,” it was in fact highlighting a contrived fiction. With a simple visual style of open household floor-plan sets and unobtrusive camera angles such as an extensive use of medium close ups, Beaver crafted a neatly uncomplicated world where conflicts resolve positively with life lessons for all involved. By creating a wholesome environment tinged with a nostalgic vibe, in the end, episodes of Beaver create a feeling of nauseatingly triteness that causes the storylines to feel as phony as they are contrived.

One of the legacies of television has always been its reliance upon advertising and the inclusion of consumerist ideology in its programs. In line with many shows of its time, Beaver would at regular intervals incorporate a sense of happiness achieved through consumerism such as in the episode “Beaver Gets Expelled” when Walt returns home to an excited loving embrace from his wife June. His reaction “ok, what did you buy?”¹⁰ gets a big reaction from the canned laugh track while at the same time helps to glorify the acquisition of consumer goods as a primary source of happiness. The Cleavers affluence and comfortable lifestyle wherein June is able to live out her housewife lifestyle aided by an abundance of fancy household appliances and consumer products creates a disconnect from a 1950s reality in which, thanks to a national poverty crisis, “a third of American Children were poor.”¹¹True to form, the sitcom trope of incorporating ideals of consumerism also appears in Pete and Pete, not only in plotlines but also through a running detail wherein a majority of the consumer goods found on the show are a product of a fictional company known as Kreb-Star whose products run from “Kreb of the Loom” underpants to “KrebStar Aluminum Siding.” This assumed sense of corporate sponsorship recalls the golden age of television in which companies would fund programs as a form of advertising. Pete also comments on the inability of consumerism in the episode “New Year’s Pete” in which younger Pete spends the duration of the show saving up for a “Riley Retrofire Jetpack” which he hopes to use to better his life and ultimately the world at large. When Pete finally sends off for his treasured jetpack he is instead sent a “stupid leaf blower,” he is let down by his consumerist goals, however his humanitarian spirit lives on through his New Year’s resolution to find a new way to “save the human race” next year.¹²

With a retroactive gaze, Leave It To Beaver is alarmingly absent of minority characters, focusing primarily upon white characters, a controversial issue prevalent for decades in television programming and one which Pete and Pete is able to casually subvert in their unique position as an independently creative program on a cutting edge network such as Nickelodeon. Early episode, “The Day of the Dot” features a storyline in which the school bus driver Stu Benedict (Damian Young) forces a busload of students to suffer through his recanting of a recent break up over the bus loudspeaker. Surprisingly or not, his love interest turns out to be fellow bus driver, Sally Knorp played by African-American actress, Ellen Kleghorne. Creator, Chris Viscardi recounts this detail as part of Pete and Pete’s tendency towards experimentation, which led Nickelodeon executives to turn their heads at the break in tradition, since an openly bi-racial relationship complete with an on-camera kiss was “certainly not something that you had seen before.”¹³ It’s this tactic of undermining and re-inventing expectations that becomes one of the series’ calling cards.

One such subject of subversion is the convention of “father knows best” found frequently in Beaver. Nearly every episode the Cleaver brothers are faced with a problem and it is Walt whom they turn to for support. In the episode “Captain Jack” Beaver and Wally turn to their father for more information about alligators and with the grace of an encyclopedia Walt is able to offer them about a minute and a half’s worth of miscellaneous facts about the reptiles. In an interview with the A.V. Club, McRobb claims with Pete they wanted to show that parents can be “just as immature and backward as anybody else,” and he feels, “that’s part of that discovery path you’re on as a kid, realizing your parents don’t know everything.”¹⁴ So in reflection of this, much of the conflict facing Don Wrigley of Pete and Pete stems from his misguided attempts to portray himself as an all -around “great dad” (he even dons a t-shirt with his photograph and the phrase “#1 Dad” emblazoned upon it). This pursuit causes him to occasionally lose touch with the sons he hopes to impress and at times he acts surprisingly childish as he wrestles with his anxieties on how to live up to the lofty demands of a “traditional” father stemming out of idealizations such as Ward Cleaver.

While retaining a familiar suburban family core, Pete and Pete creators McRobb and Viscardi aspired to unmask certain fallacies of the values of shows like Beaver. The show brings this conflict to a narrative device when its new version of the conventional family comes into direct conflict with the image of the “perfect family” in the episode, “King of the Road” in which the Wrigleys embark upon a family road trip to the Hoover Dam. Along their journey the Wrigleys, or more accurately, Dad becomes obsessed with out-doing a second family who also share their travel destination. This rival family appears to be modeled after a “conventional” sitcom family such as the Cleavers with an air of perfection that the Wrigleys with their peculiarities and imperfections seem wholly unable to stack up against. The dueling families eventually get involved in a high-speed battle of roof stack packing, or the art of strapping as much luggage as possible to the roof of your vehicle, which intentionally or not becomes an analogy for the pursuit of living up to glorifications of American life. When the last of their belongings find their way to the roof, it seems like the “perfect” family has crafted a mountain of luggage our loveable misfits seem unable to match, then older Pete has a revelation that “we’re not perfect, we’re just us.”¹⁵ In the end, by embracing “the Wrigley way” over the conventional way, our heroes take the clothes on their back, add it to their stack and push themselves to victory. Instead of promoting conformist “average family values” and consumerism, Pete and Pete effectively becomes a promotion for breaking away from tradition and embracing individuality, a pursuit more closely in line with contemporary ideas of the “indie culture” of self-actualization that is implicitly opposed to tradition.

References:

¹George Lipsitz, “The Meaning of Memory: Family, Class, and Ethnicity in Early Network Television Programs,” in Lynn Spigel and Denise Mann, eds. Private Screenings: Television and the Female Consumer (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 102.

²Leave It To Beaver. “Beaver Gets ‘Spelled,” episode no. 1, first broadcast October 4^th, 1957 by CBS. Directed by Norman Tokar and written by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher.

³ Lloyd, Robert. The Further Adventures of ‘Pete & Pete’ and Will and Chris. LA Times, 31 Aug. 2012. Web. <http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/ tv/showtracker/la-et-st-the-further-adventures-of-pete-pete-will-and-chris-201208 31,0,4720092. story?page=1>

⁴ Eakin, Marah. Exploring The Adventures Of Pete And Pete’s Genesis and Highlights. The A.V. Club, 3 July 2012. Web. <http://www.avclub.com/articles/exploring-the-adventures-of-pete-and-petes-genesis,82042/2/>

⁵The Adventures of Pete & Pete. “Field of Pete,” episode no. 10, first broadcast September 11^th, 1994 by Nickelodeon. Directed by Chris Koch and written by Robert Mittenthal.

⁶ Oakes, Kaya, Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2009), 41.

⁷ Oakes, Kaya, Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2009), 40-41.

⁸ Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Never Were (New York: Basic Books, 2000 edition), xxvii.

⁹ Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Never Were (New York: Basic Books, 2000 edition), 23.

¹⁰Leave It To Beaver. “Beaver Gets ‘Spelled,” episode no. 1, first broadcast October 4^th, 1957 by CBS. Directed by Norman Tokar and written by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher.

¹¹ Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Never Were (New York: Basic Books, 2000 edition), 29.

¹²The Adventures of Pete & Pete. “New Years Pete,” special no. 5, first broadcast 1993 by Nickelodeon. Directed by Adam Bernstein and written by Will McRobb.

¹³ Eakin, Marah. Exploring The Adventures Of Pete And Pete’s Genesis and Highlights. The A.V. Club, 3 July 2012. Web. http://www.avclub.com/articles/exploring-the-adventures-of-pete-and-petes-genesis,82042/2/

¹⁴ Eakin, Marah. Exploring The Adventures Of Pete And Pete’s Genesis and Highlights. The A.V. Club, 3 July 2012. Web. http://www.avclub.com/articles/exploring-the-adventures-of-pete-and-petes-genesis,82042/2/

¹⁵The Adventures of Pete & Pete. “King Of The Road,” episode no. 1, first broadcast November 28^th,1993 by Nickelodeon. Directed by Peter Lauer and written by Will McRobb.

OldKid

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 06:31:18 -0500

OldKid

Ethan M.

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 06:30:51 -0500

Ethan M.

Known Moons

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 06:30:05 -0500

Known Moons

UNCLE SAMMY, FOO

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 19:59:46 -0500

UNCLE SAMMY, FOO

Sad Souls

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 18:16:23 -0500

Sad Souls

new mash up of d’lusions, silence, and crumie

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 08:01:19 -0500

new mash up of d’lusions, silence, and crumie

best use of video i have seen in awhile

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 11:10:26 -0500

best use of video i have seen in awhile

crumie.com

When living in the present isn’t working out, look to the...

Beowolf at Arbor Vitae

Samn Johnson and Friends live at Arbor Vitae 11/16/12

Titus Andronicus

The Tetris Junkies - Crumie Theme

Photo

http://www.henrycrissman.com/Hot-N-Ready-Pizza-Teapot Photo I...

Goldblum’s magic hair!!

https://soundcloud.com/crumie-mix-tapes/a-little-christmas-chair ...

CHROME SPARKS ON...

Photo

Samn Johnson!

From Mayfield to Wellsville

OldKid

Ethan M.

Known Moons

UNCLE SAMMY, FOO

Sad Souls

new mash up of d’lusions, silence, and crumie

best use of video i have seen in awhile