DTV

In the late 80s, NBC aired DTV, a series of specials featuring "music videos" of Disney cartoons set to popular music. It was also used as filler material on the Disney Channel, back when there were no commercials or music videos by talentless pre-pubescent brats. Man, times have changed. It's truly disheartening that kids today would rather see Billy Ray's meal ticket Hannah Montana's horse face, instead of Mickey and Goofy.

Just think, if DTV never existed, Youtube would save TONS of bandwidth on those annoying AMVs that plague the site.

The clips I'm posting are from "DTV Doggone Valentine". My dad actually taped this episode for me when it first aired (in 1987!) and I continued to watch it for years. I never did find out what happened to that tape.

This first video features "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham!, "You're the One That I Want" from Grease, and "I Only Have Eyes for You" by The Flamingos.



Since I don't want to post all six parts in one entry, I'm jumping to the end. This one features "Lets Hear it for the Boy" by Denice Williams and "Stay" by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs.

The Baby-sitters Club: The TV Series

Say hello to your friends...

I was absolutely obsessed with The Baby-sitters Club book series. In fact I probably continued reading them long after I should have stopped. Naturally, I was psyched that there was a TV series based on the books. Unfortunately, it came on the Disney Channel, which was a premium channel (like HBO) back then. I had to make do with renting the videos whenever I could find them.

Of course, there were a few things about the show that differed from the books. These little differences bugged the hell out of me, no matter how trivial they were (although to be fair, some of these didn't bug me until just now). Examples:

• Japanese-American Claudia didn't look remotely Asian.
• Mary Anne, who was supposed to be on the short side, towered over the others (the books ALWAYS made it a point to mention that only Kristy was shorter).
• Dawn, whose "California girl" persona was over-emphasized in the books, had a very thick Jersey (or maybe Bostonian?) accent.
• Stacey was supposed to be the "fashionable" one, but she looked hella frumpy at times, even by early 90s standards. And Claudia's attire wasn't nearly "wild" enough.
• Charlotte sure acted babyish. Granted, she's a kid, but she's supposed to be smart and precocious.
  

I present "The Baby-sitters Special Christmas", a holiday special and Very Special Episode rolled into one (if you pay attention, you might notice that Jackie Rodowsky is played by Little Pete Wrigley):



And for a bonus video, Dr. JD helps Dawn save the trees!