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In This Issue

• Jem and the Holograms Suck Major Holo-Ass
• Students Get Involved, Eat Pizza
• Kids Aren't Worth It
• Can You Tell Me How To Get, How to Get to HIV
• Corporation Brightens Otherwise Bleak Childhood
• B'nai Mitzvot of Yore
• Cap'n Planet Saves World, Gouges You
• Bad Street Brawler Jerks Off Crime Off the Streets
• Science Proves America's Youth Turning Japanese
• On the Glorious Afterschool Special
• Chicken Soup for the Athletically Inept Soul
• A Researched Dildography
• Rider Strong Gets Stalked, Interviewed, Married
• Furry is the Way to Be

Where was it that we learned that marijuana was a deadly drug capable of destroying friendships and causing teenagers to hang out with guys in ripped denim jackets and that one girl with the glazed eyes? Where was it that we learned that not only are minorities people, but that among every clique in school, there shall be one (and only one) girl, one black kid or Hispanic, and one Southeast Asian or Indian amongst the three other white boys (one of whom has an abusive father)? And where was it that we learned that, if you are a teen and think you might be gay, you should definitely NOT go pick up guys at truck stops? The answer to all these questions is, of course, the immortal ABC Afterschool Special.

The ABC Afterschool Special was the television equivalent of whole milk--for some, it was comforting, wholesome, and good for the body; for others, it was like DEADLY POISON. Yet, like skim milk, it was mostly watered-down and white.

In the 25 years that ABC Afterschool Special ran, the producers covered a wide variety of issues many teens faced every day. For example, who doesn't remember "The Wave," which depicted the rise of Nazism through a school project in which a clever social studies teacher demonstrates the power of fascism and unites his students through the power of an exclusive club that targets social pariahs? Though the club grows beyond the teacher's control, and violence breaks out throughout the school, lessons were learned by all when the program ends. This happens when all the students sit down to watch German newsreels from 1935. Of course, the teacher is given no reprimand, and the attacked students remain rather, well, dead.

Sadly, the cartoons and live-action dramas of the seventies were replaced in the eighties by the then-ubiquitous socially conscious drama, which is primarily what we as students remember. The titles of these morality plays usually gave away the story and whatever moral the parents'groups expected us to assimilate into our world-outlook that week. Some of these visionary titles include: "The Boy Who Drank Too Much, in which a boy drinks too much; "Please Don't Hit Me, Mom," in which a kid gets hit by his mom; and "Just a Regular Kid: An AIDS Story," in which the protagonist is a regular kid, except for the AIDS. Get it?

Afterschool Special's socio-drama phase ended quite abruptly in the early nineties, when Oprah Winfrey obviously bought the series from ABC. The days of watching a chronically stoned Scott Baio battle drugs were over, as the majority of plots began to center around more "modern" interests: being fat, or a girl, or black, or all three at once. If you don't believe me, here's a small selection of titles: "I Hate the Way I Look," "Shades of a Single Protein," or "Just Like the Boys." At the point of its cancellation in 1997, Afterschool Special suffered not only from repetition of these three basic concepts, but from the high quality of Degrassi Junior High reruns on Showtime as well.

But what was it that drew us to the ABC Afterschool Special? If not the socially conscious messages, it was perhaps the hope that we'd see a story about a teen who gets pregnant (with sex); or, if you were a girl, the hope that maybe, just maybe, we'd get an episode starring Seaquest's Jonathan Brandis. Who wouldn't want to submerge with him? Pregnant teens and hot celebrities aside, the Afterschool Special provided one crucial thing to the preteen crowd: there were images moving on TV, and that was enough to keep us distracted from an otherwise boring pre-masturbatory existence. And for those who got their Afterschool fix from videotapes in health class, well, that was just as good.

n fantasize, just maybe, we'd get an episode starring Jonathan Brandis from "Seaquest." Mmmmmm. Who wouldn't want to submerge with him? Pregnant teens and hot celebrities aside, the Afterschool Special provided one crucial thing to the preteen crowd: there were images moving on TV, and that was enough to keep us distracted from an otherwise boring pre-masturbatory existence. And for those who got their Afterschooll fix from videotapes in health class, well, that was just as good.