I grew up in a well-to-do household with a lot of domestic help crawling all over the place. It’s a little embarrassing to tell you this, but there’s no point in denying who I am and where I come from. And this may sound like a horrible Hollywood cliché, but I became close with some of the servants, at least until the inevitable crystallization of class consciousness imbued me with a more restrictive sense of how to relate to people outside the insularity and incestuousness of Manhattan's bourgeois bubble. I spent a lot more time with the domestics each day than I did with my parents, who were out working, building and consolidating their careers, and earning enough money to keep the cooks and cleaners and nannies on the payroll. When I was in sixth grade, Edith, the cook/cleaner from Barbados, turned me on to
General Hospital. The timing was just right because within about a year the show would become a huge sensation thanks to story lines featuring a dastardly plot to impose a new Ice Age over the town of Port Charles, and three mesmerizing love triangles, the first between Luke Spencer, Laura Webber and Scotty Baldwin; the second between Dr. Alan Quartemain, Dr. Monica Quatemain, and Dr. Rick Webber; and the third between Dr. Noah Drake, Nurse Bobbie Spencer, and (I think) Mattie Drake. I also got hooked on
The Edge of Night, but it wasn't nearly as good as GH. Like my attachment to baseball and comic books, I gravitated to the routinization and predictability of soaps.
General Hospital came on at 3:00, went to commercial at 3:06, 3:22, 3:37, and 3:47, and ended at 3:56. The timing never changed and neither did the commercials or even the sequencing of the commercials. Top Job. Nine Lives. Extra Strength Midol. Tide leaves your laundry springtime clean. Calgon take me away. They call these age spots, I call them ugly, but what’s a woman to do? Ask any mermaid you happen to see... I’ve always needed this type of
a priori structure to give me a sense of security and order, something to provide meaning and familiar rhythm to a life that would otherwise be empty and beyond my control. It’s why I’m always on time (if not a half hour early), and it’s why some of my more loosey goosey friends probably think I’m uptight. The soaps were there for me every day, Monday to Friday. And just as the domestic help became my surrogate family, the characters on the
General Hospital became my family as well. I’d worry about them at night and cared deeply about what happened to them in the same way I cared about what happened to Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, and Reed Richards. I'd sprint home from school to make sure I caught every minute of every episode. The fact that I was perilously close to failing out of school mattered much less to me than whether Noah and Bobbie would end up together.
…And speaking of Dr. Noah Drake, his character was played by Rick Springfield. I miss the days of this kind crossover between teevee and pop. What the world needs now is a new Shaun Cassidy... The thing about Rick Springfield is that his two most well-known albums,
Working Class Dog and especially
Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet, are deceptively, improbably excellent. The lyrics are admittedly often young and dumb and full of cum (notwithstanding the complicated emotions and circumstances depicted in Jessie’s Girl), but the melodies are amazing, the hooks completely addictive, the harmonies ridiculous, and the guitars crunch and buzz along with just enough hard edge to make you want and need to hear them repeatedly. This last point is really the test of whether a pop song works: Do you want to hear it again and again, like a little boy who insists that his parents (or nanny) read
Curious George to him over and over again? With tonight’s song and three or four others on
Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet, the answer is an emphatic yes, as in yes, the very first thing that crosses my mind when Calling All Girls ends is that I want and need and have to hear the damn thing again, and then again after that. At first, the synthesizers and 80s production values are likely to heighten any reservations you might have about an Australian dreamboat soap/pop star. But if you have a little patience, Springfield’s best songs will grow on you, and before you know it you’ll want them shot directly into your arm. They don’t break any new ground, and they’re in essence mechanized products of trash culture, but for those of us who can’t keep it together without predictability, routine and reliability, Rick Springfield offers the soothing balm of controlled catharsis…
I grew up in a well-to-do household with a lot of domestic help crawling all over the place. It’s a little embarrassing to tell you this, but there’s no point in denying who I am and where I come from. And this may sound like a horrible Hollywood cliché, but I became close with some of the servants, at least until the inevitable crystallization of class consciousness imbued me with a more restrictive sense of how to relate to people outside the insularity and incestuousness of Manhattan's bourgeois bubble. I spent a lot more time with the domestics each day than I did with my parents, who were out working, building and consolidating their careers, and earning enough money to keep the cooks and cleaners and nannies on the payroll. When I was in sixth grade, Edith, the cook/cleaner from Barbados, turned me on to General Hospital. The timing was just right because within about a year the show would become a huge sensation thanks to story lines featuring a dastardly plot to impose a new Ice Age over the town of Port Charles, and three mesmerizing love triangles, the first between Luke Spencer, Laura Webber and Scotty Baldwin; the second between Dr. Alan Quartemain, Dr. Monica Quatemain, and Dr. Rick Webber; and the third between Dr. Noah Drake, Nurse Bobbie Spencer, and (I think) Mattie Drake. I also got hooked on The Edge of Night, but it wasn't nearly as good as GH. Like my attachment to baseball and comic books, I gravitated to the routinization and predictability of soaps. General Hospital came on at 3:00, went to commercial at 3:06, 3:22, 3:37, and 3:47, and ended at 3:56. The timing never changed and neither did the commercials or even the sequencing of the commercials. Top Job. Nine Lives. Extra Strength Midol. Tide leaves your laundry springtime clean. Calgon take me away. They call these age spots, I call them ugly, but what’s a woman to do? Ask any mermaid you happen to see... I’ve always needed this type of a priori structure to give me a sense of security and order, something to provide meaning and familiar rhythm to a life that would otherwise be empty and beyond my control. It’s why I’m always on time (if not a half hour early), and it’s why some of my more loosey goosey friends probably think I’m uptight. The soaps were there for me every day, Monday to Friday. And just as the domestic help became my surrogate family, the characters on the General Hospital became my family as well. I’d worry about them at night and cared deeply about what happened to them in the same way I cared about what happened to Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, and Reed Richards. I'd sprint home from school to make sure I caught every minute of every episode. The fact that I was perilously close to failing out of school mattered much less to me than whether Noah and Bobbie would end up together.
…And speaking of Dr. Noah Drake, his character was played by Rick Springfield. I miss the days of this kind crossover between teevee and pop. What the world needs now is a new Shaun Cassidy... The thing about Rick Springfield is that his two most well-known albums, Working Class Dog and especially Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet, are deceptively, improbably excellent. The lyrics are admittedly often young and dumb and full of cum (notwithstanding the complicated emotions and circumstances depicted in Jessie’s Girl), but the melodies are amazing, the hooks completely addictive, the harmonies ridiculous, and the guitars crunch and buzz along with just enough hard edge to make you want and need to hear them repeatedly. This last point is really the test of whether a pop song works: Do you want to hear it again and again, like a little boy who insists that his parents (or nanny) read Curious George to him over and over again? With tonight’s song and three or four others on Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet, the answer is an emphatic yes, as in yes, the very first thing that crosses my mind when Calling All Girls ends is that I want and need and have to hear the damn thing again, and then again after that. At first, the synthesizers and 80s production values are likely to heighten any reservations you might have about an Australian dreamboat soap/pop star. But if you have a little patience, Springfield’s best songs will grow on you, and before you know it you’ll want them shot directly into your arm. They don’t break any new ground, and they’re in essence mechanized products of trash culture, but for those of us who can’t keep it together without predictability, routine and reliability, Rick Springfield offers the soothing balm of controlled catharsis…
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