It's not often that we here at Renzo's Rant get email. Of course Shorts can count on receiving a few marriage proposals every week, but he's in the office so infrequently (usually just to inform me of his latest legal woes or dropping in simply to mock me for a while before driving off to whatever it is he does in his free time) that I'm hesitant to include him in the RR staff. While he did attend the annual barbeque party last year, he showed up half-way through with some unsavoury looking women, filled their purses with hamburgers he grabbed directly off the grill, and just as quickly disappeared.
Anyway, at least I don't get much email. On one hand that could be seen as a good thing as it means that I haven't found myself onto a bunch of spam lists (though my good friend RAYMOND SIMY would probably beg to differ) despite having it written on the page several times without the usual renzoREMOVETHISWHENEMAILINGME@REMOVETHISPLEASErenzosREMOVETHISrant.tk trick. (I apologise to anyone viewing this page on a resolution of less than 800X600, as I have now created a page with a horizontal scroll bar, which is something I hate). But on the other hand, it could mean that no one reads this page in the first place, which is, as we all know, very true. I like to try to keep track of my numbers, but they rarely add up. The counter on the front page is supposed to keep track of daily unique hits, but I occasionally see it cheating by going up by two, or sometimes even moving down when someone comes. And Angelfire tracks hits by recording each and every page load, so they're always telling me I had 80,000 hits yesterday. Either way, an email is a nice way of confirming that someone new has been by.
But one thing that I can say is that the overwhelming majority of emails I've received have concerned the "nostalgia" pages that RR is peppered with - A Tribute To Lucas, The Star Wars Holiday Special, and by far the most popular, Kideo. I think by this point every single person in the world who remembers Kideo has emailed me about the page (there's about six of them). It seems that every time I do one of those pages, people suddenly feel compelled to tell me about it. So now, in a shameless attempt to gain more reader feedback, I will discuss a TV show that defined my childhood - The Raccoons.
As the title might lead you to believe, the show revolved around a trio of raccoons living in the Evergreen Forest. Bert, the main protagonist, lived with an older, unrelated married couple named Ralph and Melissa. They were a bunch of hardcore tree-huggy hippies, as demonstrated in the episode where Melissa was arrested for planting a pipe bomb in Halliburton headquarters. In a typical 80s TV cross-over, she managed to contact the A-Team, who rescued her and they fled to the Los Angeles underground. This explains why she was replaced with "the new Becky" for a few years. There was also a talking dog that lived with them and always offered Bert sage advice, but no one cares about him so I don't even remember his name (I think it was like Horatio or something).
I don't recall them ever explaining why Bert lived with Ralph and Melissa, nor what their relationship with each other was. It's entirely possible that he was a friend of the family or a paying boarder or something, but it's probably safer to just go ahead and say that he was their kinky BDSM plaything. This flimsy plot device has been used in many shows before (see the Fonz in Happy Days), but never with raccoons, to my knowledge. I mean, they never showed them engaged in roleplaying, but they never stated anything to the contrary, and that's all the proof I need. For further incriminating examples of subliminal sexual content, you need look no further than the raccoons' main foil, Cyril Sneer.
Cyril Sneer was a gruff-talking, cigar-smoking, multi-millionaire bipedal anteater industrialist with a penchant for exploting nature for financial gain. Of course, needless to say, this frequently put him at odds with the raccoons. Also, he was pink. And did I mention phallic? Yes, I'm pretty sure I did. Anyway, Cyril had a huge nerd of a son named Cedric, who was supposedly inspired by other TV geeks Samuel "Screech" Powers and Steve "Urkel" Urkel, which is pretty impressive considering that neither of them existed at the time. Clairvoyance was just one of the many cool things about the show, as you'll see.
Although Cyril talked tough, he was actually a softy when it came to his family. Being a single father is hard, and Cyril was always looking out for his son. Every time one of his money-making schemes would somehow pose a danger to Cedric, he'd instantly see the error of his ways and rectify the situation. Conveniently enough, this sort of dilemma occurred every week. Sometimes it was a sheer coincidence, such as the time that the tree Cyril wanted to cut down was actually the reincarnation of Cedric's appendix and due to their psychic bond its destruction would therefore kill Cedric, but usually it resulted from Cyril saying something stupid like "Let's dump a bunch of barrels of toxic waste into the pond that Cedric is currently swimming in, and then store the rest in his poorly-ventilated bedroom!" And of course while they were doing that Cedric would get accidentally run over by the forklift they were using, and we the viewers would learn the moral of the story, which was why you should never play with forklifts.
Aiding Mr. Sneer in his nefarious schemes were three pigs named Lloyd, Floyd and Boyd. Apart from being nearly identical and unsufferable yes-men, they also apparently wore coconuts on their feet, as the sound effect used for their footsteps was the same as the horse-clopping gag from Monty Python & the Holy Grail. As the series went on, they started to develop actual personalities and often did things behind Sneer's back for their own profit, such as the time that they converted his house into a giant popsicle factory and made millions of popsicles. I think the moral of that episode was that you shouldn't eat popsicles.
To understand how cool The Raccoons was, one look no further than the theme song. "Run With Us", by Lisa Lougheed, is the quintessential 80s song - it's like a cross between Bonnie Tyler, Pat Benatar, Falco, Men Without Hats and Menudo...with just a hint of Huey Lewis & The News. It's got it all - electronic drums, synthesized licks, and not-so-subtle endorsements of Michael Dukakis' doomed 1988 presidental bid. Apparently when the show was aired in England the station received thousands of requests to remove dubbed-over commercial audio during the ending credits so that the song could be heard (true story). Also, Run With Us directed the beloved Disney classic Mulan (also a true story).
Anyway, if that doesn't convince you to watch the show, I don't know what will. Just don't blame me when you get hit by that forklift.
