Wallaby Wednesday: The two times Rocko tackled ageism

The impact cannot be more instantaneous when Rocko and Heffer switch age groups with their customers on a seniors’ cruise.

“Lookee, Hef,” the former observes. “We’re a thousand years old, and surrounded by wild kids.”

Heffer, suddenly hard of hearing, asks his friend to repeat the statement. Instead, Rocko continues, “I never realized what old people have to go through.”

Given how open-minded Rocko is, he surprises no one by digesting his lesson this quickly. But before and after this second-season eye-opener, his lack of perfection shows with his shortage of sensitivity for older individuals.

Frustration with Grandpa Hiram Wolfe’s cantankerous demeanor trips up his morals for the first part of “Cruisin.’” Hiram persistently calls him a “beaver” and heckles him through the chores he must do after Hiram and Heffer’s protracted pit stops get him stuck on the ship.

In Season 3, fear of property damage by wild baseball pitches and embarrassment by exasperated comic-shop customers impels Rocko to dodge an uncharacteristically fun-loving Ed Bighead. After Heffer and Filburt abandon him, he is once again worn down, along with his patience.

The age-group swap is less literal this time, but different means arrive at the same end in both episodes. Those varied settings, situations and personnel help to reaffirm the moral with sustained resonance going forward. That can benefit not only the characters absorbing the lesson, but also the program’s young target audience.

Hiram and Ed alike have it hard enough dealing with the reality or illusion of irrecoverable youth and opportunity. It is on Rocko and his peers to mitigate that by accepting the invitation, however unorthodox, to build generational bridges.

Here is a brief breakdown of both storylines and how the main character cultivates and regains his compassion therein.

“Cruisin’”

Besides the captain, Rocko and Heffer are the only non-geriatrics to start the cruise. Other staffers have inexplicably jumped the ship, allowing the “stowaways” to fill in and make amends for their inadvertent infraction. As they do this, they cannot escape being an overwhelmed minority.

Being in such a position is not a new experience for either young man. Heffer is a steer who has lived with wolves for as long as he can recall. Rocko is an Australian immigrant still acclimating to American culture.

Nonetheless, working amongst senior citizens cannot help yielding unique growing pains for the pair of twentysomethings. Besides being outnumbered, they are at a stark deficit in general life experience.

For Hiram and his peers, this ostensibly relaxing and entertaining journey backfires by illuminating what they have lost, missed and come up short on through the decades. Facing those reminders away from their natural habitat, let alone in a setting with no viable exit, exacerbates the pain.

This is why Hiram shoots down Rocko’s simplistic plea for harmony and scolds, “You don’t have a clue, do you, you little runt!” Rocko proves him right when he fails to read the room on the rehashed story of Winifred Wolfe.

By that point in his young love life, Rocko has not so much as approached his nextdoor crush, Melba. When he tries to divert his attention from her, he realizes he cannot fake an interest in another woman. But he still has time to make an impression if and when the opportunity arises.

Conversely, Hiram did try his luck with Winifred, failed through youthful foolishness and is now desperate to capitalize on serendipity. Alas, his bid for redemption crashes as soon as he launches his bold attempt at a reunion.

Upon yet another prompt rejection by Winifred, the last thing he needs to hear is “So, Grandpa, how’d it go with your old girlfriend?” By addressing Hiram by that title despite being admonished not to earlier, calling Winifred his “girlfriend” when she never was and adding the adjective “old,” Rocko swings for three swift strikes. Though a little over the line himself, Hiram literally strikes him with his cane.

Frustrated, Rocko walks off muttering about Hiram’s “crotchety” temper, prompting another lone cruiser to enlighten him. Absorbing the man’s calmer candor, Rocko starts brimming with his familiar empathy. For good measure on that front, he spots endangered ducks before the ship, and fate takes the journey into the Bermuda Triangle.

It is one thing to hear about aging from someone who has lived it. It is quite another to feel it firsthand. While stuck in Bermuda, if only for a moment, Rocko and Heffer get that walk-in-your-shoes experience.

During the short role reversal, Rocko brooks the annoyance of having youngsters pester him with unsolicited, uninformed advice and bombard him with energy when he needs a rest. Heffer witnesses Hiram’s near-death experience, but averts his eyes before Winifred comes to a last-second rescue. This lends him that sense of “the heartbreak of losing a loved one” the duck-feeding man had told Rocko about.

When everyone’s worst fears are allayed and everyone’s best qualities come through, normalcy returns. Back on land, Heffer even looks on the bright side of age-induced tooth loss, noting that “I could swallow food whole!”

More crucially, Rocko is armed with more substance as he renews his case for cordial relations with Hiram. But within a year (based on the air dates of his chronicles), another elder acquaintance’s surprising thirst for friendly fun will test him again.

“Old Fogey Froggy”

For Rocko and Heffer plus Filburt, the lessons from “Crusin’” bear repeating via a third-season plot.

Like Hiram with Winifred, Ed has waited for an incalculable stretch of time to catch a big break. But his boss bursts his bubble by promoting a bespectacled, acne-laden intern from the mail room to the hot-tub department. Mr. Dupette adds insult to injury by saying, “Face it, Bighead, you’re too old.”

That remark is the tipping point after Ed endures an onslaught of ageist jeers from strangers on his commute. He too is now facing a cruel crowd of missed opportunities, ill luck and lost glory. All he wants is to regain a little of the latter, and his sprightly neighbors are his best bet.

By the episode’s end, Dupette denies Bighead another promotion, claiming “you just act too young for your age.” While the inconsistency is ludicrous, the reasoning underscores the way Ed overcompensates to counter the earlier slight.

With that said, neither Rocko, his friends nor any bystanders take the time to ponder Ed’s abrupt change in attitude and behavior. Rocko observes that his neighbor is “acting strange” and “trying to be a kid again.” Yet he does not bother considering, let alone inquiring as to why. Instead, Heffer tries curtailing the conversation by saying, “I was just glad to get rid of him.”

Heffer later tries to divert everyone’s minds when Rocko, riddled with guilt after snapping at Ed, expresses his concern over the toad’s prolonged absence. Even after nearly losing his grandfather to “the angry sea,” he coldly says, in reference to Ed, “Who cares? He’s old.”

By this point, Ed has relented and all but let his self-esteem succumb to internalized ageism. Rocko, given his knee-jerk tirade when Ed follows him to his bedroom, is right to say, “I feel kind of responsible.” The blame is not entirely his, but he has not been a part of the solution.

That is until he is the first to step up and think of a solution.

To everyone’s credit, Heffer and Filburt join Bev and Rocko in the latter’s creative idea to make amends. Their faux funeral and teasing threat to bury Ed in cement instantly refill the toad’s energy tank.

While his new lease on life still cannot get him into Conglom-O’s coveted hot-tub department, it does make him the youthful go-getter he was three-plus decades earlier. His exuberant personality just resides in a more mature body now.

How does HIMYM hold up in the hockey world 5 years later?

Lizi Norton is a fellow Minnesotan of Marshall Eriksen’s (Jason Segel). Her birthplace of Long Lake and current town of Orono are within a 50-mile radius of Marshall’s St. Cloud.

Gordi Myer shares a native state with Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor). He as born in Toledo, Ohio, and played five years of elite youth hockey in Mosby’s home metropolis of Cleveland.

As a bonus, Myer’s mother is a fellow Canadian of Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders), Ted’s initial love interest and implied eventual second wife on How I Met Your Mother.

Both current college hockey blueliners, Norton and Myer were below the recommended viewing age for the better part of HIMYM’s run on CBS. The series carried a TV-14 rating, a boundary Common Sense Media has since echoed.

During the show’s inaugural season, Norton was the right age to be one of Lily Aldrin’s (Alyson Hannigan) kindergarten students. She did not turn 14 until six-and-a-half weeks before the finale premiered five years ago this Sunday.

But whether unofficial barriers had any bearing on her late arrival to the nine-season saga is a moot point now. No later than her first year at Orono High School, she found a perfect way to unwind from a grueling day in the life of an elite student-athlete. It has since established itself as the go-to for her to “binge watch at night.”

“After watching a couple of episodes, I was instantly hooked,” the Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs freshman told Pucks and Recreation.

“Hooked” is an apt choice of metaphor in multiple senses. No fewer than nine current collegians or professionals around North American hockey cite HIMYM as their favorite series.

St. Cloud State and Team Switzerland goaltender Janine Alder has said as much. Ditto SCSU graduate-turned-ECHL journeyman Nate Widman and Florida Panthers prospect Cliff Pu. (Until recently, Pu was in the Carolina Hurricanes system, and his since-deleted Charlotte Checkers profile listed his favorites.)

When he was in college, Brady Norrish of the Idaho Steelheads also mentioned Carrie Underwood as his celebrity crush. In Season 5’s “Hooked,” Underwood played one of Ted’s many one-off girlfriends, although Pucks and Rec has yet to confirm whether “Hooked” is Norrish’s favorite episode.

In The Show, Finnish import Sebastian Aho of the Hurricanes mentioned HIMYM, along with Friends, as a preferred stateside sitcom. It is a standalone favorite of Tampa Bay Lightning staple Tyler Johnson and Worcester Blades forward Megan Myers.

Given how stingy most team websites are about disclosing outside interests in player profiles, this group is hardly negligible. It stands out all the more given how many active pucksters admittedly or implicitly joined the HIMYM fan club after the premiere, the peak or even the finale. Moreover, all of the show’s fans in question divulged their interest after the finale.

 

The tally of outspoken HIMYM-loving hockey players also rivals that of the show’s references to their sport. While it never had a puck-centric plot like Seinfeld’s “The Face Painter,” it dispensed allusions in more moderate, though more frequent and numerous doses.

Wayne Gretzky comes up on multiple occasions in multiple contexts. Another Hall of Famer, Luc Robitaille, parodies himself by citing Robin Sparkles’ music as a guilty pleasure.

When Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) starts dating Robin, Ted recommends the 2003-04 Vancouver Canucks division title as a topic to appease her when necessary. Robin, in turn, lists “shaky goaltending and, frankly, the declining skills of Trevor Linden” as that team’s obstacles.

Clips from a Rangers-Flyers game introduce the scene where Marshall takes Lily to visit Madison Square Garden’s organist, an estranged teenhood friend of Robin’s.

On her wedding day, Robin and her younger sister pass a puck while wearing what look to be logo-less Atlanta Thrashers jerseys. A few hours (or episodes) later, in a bout of cold feet, Robin proposes following Ted to Chicago, even if it means learning to “root for the Blackhawks.”

“I think it is definitely something I noticed and appreciated throughout the show,” Myer told Pucks and Rec. “It is rare to see on an American show, so as a hockey player you appreciate it more than someone else. They do a great job using Robin to show this, because she is a Canadian.”

He added, “I definitely appreciated the Canadian slang words and accent Robin would use when she would talk or mention hockey.”

Indeed, with her Northern patriotism and Canucks fanaticism, Robin is a slightly out-of-proportion take on her portraying actor. A real-life Vancouverite who once crushed on Pavel Bure, Smulders got the freedom to be herself in character as the series gained traction. The NHL would capitalize on the hockey aspect by enlisting her as a celebrity presenter at its 2011 awards show.

As early as HIMYM’s third season, Robin was referencing such up-and-coming Canucks players as Mason Raymond. At the time, in 2007-08, Raymond had signed out of Norton’s future university to turn pro two years early.

Coincidentally, within two nights of his HIMYM mention, he was called up from Vancouver’s then-AHL affiliate in Manitoba and scored his first big-league goal.

 

For Myer, though, Lily’s big save is the top HIMYM hockey highlight of all time. The flashback scene kicks off with Marshall recalling when Robin “got all super-Canadian” after overindulging in Molson.

Sporting a Roberto Luongo jersey, Robin implicitly reenacts Game 6 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Final. “The Rangers are aboat to be sorry they ever played shinny with the Canucks,” she says before taking aim at the open apartment door.

When Lily snares the airborne puck with her oven mitt and orders Robin to stop, a potential brawl ensues. Robin pledges to give her friend “summer teeth. Some are here, some are there.”

“Great chirp, Robin,” Myer said.

That Lily halts Robin’s game fits all the more given that her hometown Rangers vanquished Vancouver in the 1994 championship. Although, she is clearly not a hockey fan, as she later mistakenly calls the local franchise the “New York Rogers.”

For that matter, while her husband hails from the State of Hockey, he never engages Robin in Wild-Canucks banter. This despite the fact that the series ran from 2005 to 2014, with most the final season taking place on a May 2013 weekend. All in an era when Minnesota and Vancouver were Northwest Division rivals.

Of that missed shot, Myer said, “Yes, it is odd for sure, especially because of how big the game of hockey is in Minnesota. I know a lot of guys from Minnesota, so I know this from a personal account. The show could have for sure used this to an advantage.”

Even without that, or even with its majority of puck-free episodes, HIMYM has quickly seized the hearts of its first all-syndication generation.

“I find How I Met Your Mother to be an incredible show that is able to capture one’s attention instantly,” said Norton. “It has wonderful, humorous episodes that I enjoyed watching with my friends.”

 

For her age group, it is largely a glimpse at the not-too-distant past. For all viewers, it dishes up generous backchecks to the previous century in the lives of its core cast.

“I have always liked the episodes where they take you back in time to before they met each other, or when times were different,” Norton said.

Even the polarizing fast-forward to 2030, when the long-widowed Ted mercifully ends his prolonged story and acts on his children’s encouragement to pursue Robin once more, has Norton and Myer’s approval.

“I was surprised that Ted did not end up with Robin originally,” said Norton, “although happy they ended up together.”

Myer was wrapping up his fifth season in the Cleveland Barons elite youth program when the series ended. He did not dive into the show until he briefly moved out of state for two gap years in the USHL. But when he did, his peers instilled an itch to stream through the reruns in a hurry.

After being mesmerized by the yellow-umbrella motif and how it led to the title figure, Myer was floored by the twist in the two-part finale.

“The guys on my team were telling me, ‘Just wait till the end. It’s gonna blow your mind,’” he said.

“And that is exactly what happened, mind was blown. I truly believe that Ted and Robin go off and get married at some point. Some people have other theories, but that is the one I like to believe.”

Wallaby Wednesday: How Rocko’s Dingo trauma explains his Filburt flashbacks

Anyone who has ever been accused of “choosing not to remember” or bungling an ostensibly obvious detail of a lived experience can relate to Rocko. As his chronicles demonstrate, he suppresses of slew of unpleasant childhood episodes until a visitor makes him face the issue.

That twist sets the premise for Season 4’s “Wimp on the Barby,” as he prepares to be reacquainted with old antagonist Dingo.

While the reunion proves more peaceful than he plans, he comes away conflicted. Rocko accepts Dingo’s reparations, then reluctantly punches the pleading latter’s nose.

Unbeknownst to him, Heffer and Filburt ambush Dingo outside while he struggles to justify his small dose of retribution. That residual guilt signals this storyline in his life is still unresolved by episode’s end.

As such, it should surprise no one if he alters his own history during prior and later reminiscence. Even before “Wimp on the Barby” — and “Put to Pasture” shortly thereafter — Rocko and other storytellers stretch logic. In a pair of first-season episodes, he acquiescently listens as Filburt and Really Really Big Man variously revisit purported events that conflict with his official backstory.

But series creator Joe Murray, in a 1997 interview with Lisa Kiczuk Trainor, gave the continuity errors a sound excuse.

“I believe all real friends have clouded memories and their own romantic versions of the way things happened,” he reasoned.

As Rocko reveals early in “Wimp on the Barby,” he has ample reason to revise his history. His friends know nothing of the dreaded Dingo until Heffer relays Rocko’s mother’s message that the ex-classmate is coming. Horrified, Rocko pleads for protection before taking a deep breath and delivering the background.

In short, the wallaby endured the kangaroo’s bullying “for 12 terrible years,” beginning in third grade. He gets little or no reprieve until his plane takes off, moving him to America at age 20 or 21.

While the present-day events of “Wimp on the Barby” precede those of “Put to Pasture,” Rocko still gives an alternate narrative in the latter segment. His flashback is the last of three centered on a hospitalized Heffer, and depicts them as high-school classmates.

The only way that could fit into Murray’s admission to Trainor that Rocko “moved to America from Austrailia (sic) after he graduated from High School” would be if O-Town High exchanged students with a Down-Under district.

Perhaps his friendship with Filburt and Heffer began with a semester abroad. That experience may have also cemented O-Town as his desired destination when he emigrated as an adult.

But even that potentiality has its flaws. Early in Rocko’s Modern Life, Filburt is less of a friend to the protagonist on Heffer’s par. He merely happens to encounter Rocko at the counter of the comic shop, supermarket and DMV.

By the same token, those frequent path-crossings, particularly at multiple comic stores, can and do build familiarity. And for once, familiarity breeds not contempt, but camaraderie. This explains why, by the first season’s latter stages, Rocko enlists Filburt as a comic-shop temp and agrees to be his dental-school patient.

But the anecdote Filburt evokes to secure the latter reeks of the romanticism Murray told Trainor about. In the interview, Murray said Rocko met Filburt on a childhood trip that “sparked his appetite” for the American life.

That meeting may have featured the swingset “footage” Big Man shows Rocko in “Power Trip.” It may also refer to the playground incident Filburt reminds Rocko of in “Rinse and Spit.” Either one is conceivable given the stateside presence of Rocko’s extended family, such as rancher Uncle Gib.

But in Filburt’s flashback, he intervenes and redirects a gang of bullying poodles away from Rocko and Spunky. Filburt recounts this story after vaguely referring to it as “that time I saved your life.” The flashback only wiggles in because Rocko is stumped, admitting he has forgotten it.

As with Dingo’s bullying, he may have forgotten it after making the effort to do so. But being a nonanthropomorphic house dog, Spunky could not have been Rocko’s pet at that time. Moreover, in “Unbalanced Load,” Rocko recalls his adult self finding his beloved puppy as a testament to his “lucky shirt.”

Knowing his honest inclinations, one should trust that Rocko genuinely believes in the shirt’s good fortune. When he is alone with Spunky, and not confronting off-putting flashbacks or specters, he has no need to lie. And so he speaks the straight truth.

To that point, however, he can circumvent reality under extenuating circumstances. That is the case when Filburt needs him, and when he simultaneously needs Filburt in his own way.

Unlike his friends’ unequivocally real-life treatment of Dingo, Filburt’s handling of the threatening poodles brings that story peaceful closure. Even if the event did not happen, the idea can be a surrogate comforter in Rocko’s memory bank.

At the time of “Rinse and Spit,” no one has stepped up to help stop Dingo’s pursuit. On the contrary, as Rocko later recalls, the bully leaves that saga off by vowing, “I’ll get you someday, Shrimpo!”

While Dingo is in an opposite hemisphere, Rocko can keep him out of mind. Fantasies of having spent more of his boyhood with a loyal friend like Filburt can help in that regard. That is all the more so if it involves his friend driving bad guys away with no bloodshed.

Likewise, when Rocko recklessly presses the green button, mutates out of character and betrays Filburt, Big Man answers the victim’s echoing pleas and gives Rocko a chance to set things right. He does so in three steps, including the supposed replay of a grade-school-age Rocko gently pushing Filburt on a swing.

Unlike the poodles at the playground, this anecdotes adds up. It could very well embody a friendship Rocko and Filburt once enjoyed before their remembrance of one another faded, only to gradually rekindle in early adulthood.

Most crucially, that flashback depicts the two as younger than third-grade age. As such, it typifies a simpler time before Dingo’s abuse in Australia, let alone Mr. Smitty’s in America.

Regardless, the reminder tunes up Rocko’s remorse for the subsequent worst-case-scenario glimpse of his future. The final step snaps Rocko out of his Smitty-esque moral downturn, prompting him to end the “Power Trip” episode on a positive note.

Three years later, Dingo similarly changes and tries to make amends. But when he invites Rocko to hit him, Rocko initially refuses on the grounds that violence “only makes things worse.”

That philosophical distinction juts all the more when you remember he had not offered Filburt a shot at eye-for-eye justice. It likely never crosses anyone’s mind in “Power Trip.”

In terms of his history with Dingo, though, Rocko all but proves himself right after throwing the punch. If he does not feel worse, he at best feels no better, even if Dingo “did say ‘Please.’”

As such, the two marsupials’ efforts to bury one’s “12 terrible years” at the other’s hands fall short. Is it any wonder, then, that later in the final season, Rocko recalls meeting Heffer in a high-school science lab?

That sequence could have happened, even as a byproduct of a one-semester escape from the homeland tormentor. But even that is complicated by the way Rocko and Filburt come across as somewhere between strangers and casual acquaintances in Season 1. This is to say nothing of the cloud on the credibility of Filburt’s life-saving story.

But if Rocko is not percolating those clouds himself, he does nothing to dispel them either. Once you watch every past and present scene with Dingo, you can see why that kind of overcast makes for a brighter sky.

Remembering the “Kernkraft 400” boom in North American sports

Few did their part to fulfill Jurgen Korduletsch’s vision quite like the Toronto Maple Leafs sound crew.

Last May, VICE ran a segment detailing the origins and rise of Zombie Nation’s “Kernkraft 400” phenomenon. The German techno artist, whose magnum opus dropped its first rendition 20 years ago Friday, gained transatlantic traction in an unintended and, from his perspective, discomfiting viewpoint.

In his VICE interview, under his real name, Zombie Nation mastermind Florian Sentfer admitted to initially shuddering at his tune’s “Stadium Chant Mix” reprise. He had nothing to do with that rendition, which originated in Italy. And the vocal onslaught of oh’s flowing in sports venues to the beat he had in turn borrowed from the video game Lazy Jones deviated his modest idea for a dance-club staple.

“To have, like, a bunch of hooligans be aggressive,” he told VICE. “It just, like, was a weird moment.”

Together with Helmut Geier, whose Gigolo Records released the first “Kernkraft 400” beat, Sentfer lawyered up to no avail. The 1999 “Kernkraft 400” had effectively mutated into a 2000 redo that spearheaded a drive toward a new era in sports-tunage staples.

It started in soccer circuits around Europe, then spread to North America. On this side of the ocean, the “Stadium Chant Remix” arguably cemented its notoriety as a new go-to goal song in hockey. But wherever a team did not experiment with it for that purpose, it was more than likely to find usage in a pregame pump-up or general context.

As the founder of Radikal Records, Korduletsch had been a key cog in the explosion of canned music. When VICE approached him last year, he recalled seeing the potential for a pattern in Zombie Nation’s lifted remix not unlike that of his earlier all-star partners.

“We had some good contacts at some sports arenas because our of prior success with 2 Unlimited, ‘Get Ready for This,’” he told the network.

The bar-setting tune Korduletsch spoke of was chiefly, and naturally, a game-starter for the better part of Radikal’s first decade. In 1995, it led off the first Jock Jams album as a mashup with Michael Buffer’s trademark “Let’s get ready to rumble!” bellow.

With or without Buffer, it was heard in an easy majority of high-profile venues during player introductions or between the national anthem and the opening faceoff/kickoff/tipoff/first pitch.

But the Maple Leafs purposed it differently. Up through the end of the 1999-2000 season, a Toronto home goal triggered a horn, then the unmistakable opening crescendo to “Get Ready for This.” The tune would continue after a recording of broadcaster Joe Bowen’s catchphrase, “Holy Mackinaw!” in lieu of Buffer.

When the Buds tuned the twine at the Air Canada Centre for the first time in 2000-01, it first sounded like nothing had changed. The same horn rang, followed by the same 2 Unlimited introductory crescendo.

But then a split-second silence gave way to incessant rapid-fire patterns of Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh. Just in time for the new millennium, someone had found their new “Get Ready for This.”

By season’s end, Zombie Nation (which many mistakenly believed to be the track’s title) became a staple on other NHL playlists. Of particular note, the eventual 2001 Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche used it as their opening-faceoff song for the playoffs.

Of course, 2 Unlimited’s legacy was not going to go dormant on command. NHL and lower-level PA systems alike kept “Get Ready for This” in its familiar spot for a handful of years.

But no later than 2001-02, the “Stadium Chant Mix” proved a formidable foe to another arena adage. When they played “Get Ready for This” after goals, the Leafs were an exception to the “Rock and Roll Part 2” norm.

Gary Glitter’s claim to fame had served its stadium function since the 1970s, long before canned music became commonplace. But by 1999, concomitant with the birth of “Kernkraft 400,” Glitter’s hideous claim to international infamy was becoming apparent.

Incredibly, many teams kept using Glitter’s work for nearly two decades during and after his slew of sex-crime convictions. “Rock and Roll Part 2” has still not entirely vanished from canned rotations and college pep-band music sheets.

For the final quarter of the 1990s, only Blur’s oven-fresh “Song 2,” with its unmistakable “Woo-hoo!” hook, stood out among Glitter’s goal-song challengers. But at the dawn of this century, there was another viable alternative, undoubtedly inspired by the Leafs and others.

The “Kernkraft 400” groundswell could not have been more palpable circa 2001-02. It was one of the few non-recycled tracks on the 2001 All-Star Jock Jams compilation. (Two of the reused ones were…drumroll…“Rock and Roll Part 2” and “Get Ready for This.” All three tunes reappeared on ESPN’s final CD, 2003’s Stadium Anthems.)

At that point, a rash of hockey teams of all levels abandoned Glitter in favor of Zombie Nation for goals. This author, for one, can recall hearing “Rock and Roll Part 2” in that role for the Grand Rapids Griffins as late as their final IHL season in 2000-01.

But “Kernkraft 400” had crashed in by the next winter in time for the team’s inaugural AHL campaign. Similarly, the Chicago Wolves were including a snippet of it as part of their celebratory mash-up.

A smattering of NHL teams, such as Edmonton, did the same. Some stuck with it, others reverted to Glitter and others pursued something fresher.

Tellingly, Toronto was among those who did not keep “Kernkraft 400” as their goal song forever. Another period of decisive change, the other side of the season-long 2004-05 NHL lockout, brought on a boom in variety across the continent.

This is not to say it was previously all Glitter, then Glitter or Blur, then Glitter, Blur or Zombie Nation. Concomitant with Toronto’s big Y2K switch, a few minor-league teams tried “Who Let the Dogs Out?” But that practice did not gain mainstream traction, and most of the franchises using it had short runs altogether.

Dating back to the mid-1990s, the New York Rangers had long distinguished themselves with “Slapshot.” In St. Louis, the organ has long defied Father Time with a twist on “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The Philadelphia Flyers and 1999 Stanley Cup finalist Buffalo Sabres were the first prominent users of “Song 2.”

But even the Sabres went on to experiment with “Kernkraft 400,” as did a few more NHL teams after the song’s novelty and peak had passed. The late Atlanta Thrashers, who started with Glitter’s tune when they launched in 1999, eventually rotated between Blur and Zombie Nation. Florida, New Jersey and Washington have all tried it as well.

And the Flyers, who also used Glitter in stretches, have since had flings with Fall Out Boy and Pennywise, just to name two. The latter’s “Bro Hymn” also fastened itself as the Anaheim Ducks’ goal song shortly before the club’s 2007 championship run.

Concurrently, the Minnesota Wild were popularizing Joe Satriani’s “Crowd Chant,” and the Chicago Blackhawks “Chelsea Dagger.” Those songs have stuck in those markets, and “Crowd Chant” also sees NHL goal-horn action via the New York Islanders, but nowhere else.

The snowballing craving for variety has trickled down to other levels, even to the point where it made headlines when the AHL’s Syracuse Crunch abandoned “Kernkraft 400” as their goal song in 2015.

 

As of 2018-19, while “Rock and Roll Part 2” has finally vanished from The Show, the Boston Bruins are the last of the NHL’s “Kernkraft 400” lamplighters. In fact, having triumphed in 2011, they are the only team to have won a Stanley Cup while using that goal song.

Contrast that with the three-peat of then-Glitter users in the 1999 Dallas Stars, 2000 New Jersey Devils and 2001 Avalanche. The Devils were still using it when they last won the Cup in 2003. Even after Zombie Nation chipped away at the old standardized guard like no other song has, the 2004 Tampa Bay Lightning and 2009 Penguins used “Rock and Roll Part 2.”

For the first half of the current decade, the Penguins ran through this age’s trite troika. Blur, Glitter and Zombie Nation all had stints with their goal horn between 2010 and 2015. But ahead of the team’s 2016 and 2017 titles, they selected something more distinctive in Andrew W.K.’s “Party Hard.”

Ironically, “Party Hard” was either a late arrival or received a belated invitation. As part of the album I Get Wet, it was released amidst the 2001-02 NHL season. Too late to compete with “Kernkraft 400” for first dibs on the unofficial distinction of the 21st century’s “Rock and Roll Part 2.”

But with the successful Penguins, it was better late than never for W.K. In 2017, he told ESPN’s Tal Pinchevsky, “I was just really moved. It means a lot to have that song be useful.”

As the tune’s artist, the hard-rocking W.K. gets a gratifying share of the goal-song pie that once seemed to solely go to a pre-disgraced glam rocker. Though the slices of publicity and recognition vary in size, he is in ample company with Blur, the Fratellis, Pennywise, Satriani and many more.

Even the techno DJ who unwittingly started the wave of variety, though at first looked primed to be the reluctant Glitter of the new millennium, has grown to embrace the arena link. Zombie Nation’s website touts “Kernkraft 400” as the project’s “landmark Song.” It adds that the chant variety is “still played as motivational anthem or in breaks almost 20 years” after the first version came out.

Compared to its formative years on athletic playlists, the remix lingers these days. But it has earned its keep, and likely the distinction of the last homogenous fad of its kind.

Wallaby Wednesday: 17 random signs of a bona fide Rocko devotee

Six years have passed since the implied time of “Future Schlock,” the de facto Rocko’s Modern Life series finale. Premiered in 1996, the episode has Filburt and Rocko saying 17 years have elapsed since they last saw each other.

Of the real-life time since the implicit setting of “Future Schlock,” we have filled nearly half with our own anticipation of Rocko’s return. As of last month, we have waited two-and-a-half years for the TV movie Static Cling.

But three-plus months after its would-be premiere, the product remains in production’s equivalent of “the blackness of space.” Per a mid-February write-up by CBR’s Reuben Baron, “a Nickelodeon spokesperson said there are no updates available for Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling.”

Baron subsequently notes that a top-tier personnel overhaul at Nickelodeon, a ratings letdown for other Nicktoon reboots and uncertainty over other potential platforms have complicated Static Cling’s timeline.

Simply put, it may still air on the parent network, or it may not. It may find refuge in one of many streaming services, or it may not. Each passing moment of stagnation, however, dims the light on the outlook.

Is the film’s place in the entertainment universe gone forever? Series creator Joe Murray and his loyal followers are expressly hoping not. But for now, like Filburt and his offspring, all we can do is reminisce on what Rocko has already done.

And so we shall continue to do that in this space, which as of this week has broken double-digit installments. To mark that little milestone, here are 17 indicators (one for every year Filburt waited to see Rocko and Heffer again) that you are itching to see Rocko and company in a new adventure again.

1. Starting no later than 2013, you have habitually called your refrigerator a refrigerizer. You may not know the distinction, and such a distinction may not even exist, but that does not matter.

2. When you are flipping through your TV’s digital guide and see that 2009’s The Proposal is airing, you mimic the sound of glass shattering and channel Ed Bighead with a panicked, elongated scream.

3. When your guide says The Voice is on NBC, you say the program’s title in a Chuck Chameleon accent.

4. Whether you have retained it or not, your childhood habit of uttering the minced oath “fish sticks” has rubbed off on a friend or family member.

5. A surprising or startling development is liable to make you exclaim, “What in the blazes?”

6. An exceptionally fun time prompts you to shout, “That was a hoot!” afterward.

7. You cannot help affecting the sound of an exploding piano when you catch a highlight of a golfer teeing off.

8. Before a friend or relative embarks on a driving test, you tell them, “Don’t get the fat guy.”

9. Any time you are served a fortune cookie, you pull your fellow diners’ legs by claiming your fortune reads, “Bad luck and misfortune will infest your pathetic soul for all eternity.”

10. You acknowledge small- or medium-level good news by channeling the “Hooray!” flies from “Canned.” Unfortunately, only those of us who can affect a high pitch can pull this off with any respectability. But if you are a hardcore Rocko nerd, that lack of vocal range is not likely to stop you.

11. In an honest Freudian slip, you have called your national animal the great American balding eagle.

12. Pizza Hut’s recent ads indicating every item on their menu costs $5 immediately evokes Mt. Frosty.

13. Whenever Ice-T told passers-by to “Read the sign” in his GEICO commercial, you were slightly disappointed when he followed it with “Lemonade” rather than “No barfing.” Meanwhile, a more recent GEICO ad has you thinking of “Cabin Fever” and the opening scene of “With Friends Like These.”

14. Any mention of peaches, whether it refers to the plural fruit or a pet name, evokes a satanic figure.

15. When anyone advertises their food as “gluten-free,” you think of Heffer’s mispronunciation of “glutton.”

16. If a friend tells you to “Guess what I got,” your knee-jerk response is “A lobotomy?”

17. As far as you are concerned, Hansel’s sister will always be Debbie. End of story.

Bublés celebrate a decade and counting in a Giant family affair

Call Me Irresponsible, Michael Bublé’s third studio album three-plus years in the making, hit the shelves on May 1, 2007. Permeated with jazz and traditional pop oldies, the compilation of covers led off with his version of Cy Coleman’s “The Best is Yet to Come.”

Given its timing, perhaps this was an early premonition of the Bublé family’s involvement with the Vancouver Giants, their hometown major-junior hockey club.

The best was soon to come for the team. Within 26 days of Call Me Irresponsible’s release, the

Giants were Memorial Cup champions. As the tournament’s host at the Pacific Coliseum, they vanquished the Medicine Hat Tigers, avenging their Western League final loss and capping a stellar major-junior career for local favorite Milan Lucic.

“I remember the series of plays involving Lucic now known as ‘The Shift,’” Michael’s father, Lewis Bublé, told Pucks and Recreation, citing his favorite moment as a Giants fan.

This series of plays still features prominently among the most memorable moments in Vancouver hockey history. Within the first five minutes of the 2007 Memorial Cup title game, Lucic lived up to the team name.

Culminating in a fight, Lucic’s hit-heavy shift showcased his versatility en route to tournament MVP accolades. It marked a triumphant ending to the power forward’s pre-NHL days, as he moved up to The Show the next autumn.

“I was there when they won the Memorial Cup in 2007,” reflected Bublé. “Lucic led the way for that team, which really set the tempo.”

Although he did not own the team when Lucic played, Lewis enjoyed watching him from 2004 to 2007. He helped build more memories at the historic Coliseum, where the Bublé family had grown up cheering for the Canucks from 1970 to 1995. (The local NHL team subsequently moved into GM Place, now Rogers Arena.)

Not long after Lucic moved on, the Bublés got directly involved with the junior club. In December 2008, Ron Toigo approached Lewis and Michael about becoming partners in owning the Giants.

“When we were initially asked to become co-owners of the team, we were excited,” said Lewis. “We have always enjoyed the sport and had Canucks season tickets. Since Michael and I love sports, especially hockey, we came on as minority partners.”

Fast-forward 10 years, and Michael and Lewis co-own the Giants with three other minority partners. However, Lewis noted that Toigo has been the driving force in assembling the ownership group.

Toigo, the Managing Director of Shato Holdings, Ltd., is the Giants current president and majority owner. He brings a wealth of experience to junior hockey, having previously run the WHL’s Tri-City Americans from 1991 to 2000.

Later this year, the BC Sports Hall of Fame will honor Toigo for his accomplishments, including bringing the 2006 World Junior Championship to Vancouver, with the W.A.C. Bennett Award.

Besides Toigo, the Bublés are joined by Sultan Thiara and Bruce Allen. Thiara works as an accountant and is currently a high-ranking executive at Shato Holdings Ltd., a privately held company owned by the Toigo family. Meanwhile, Allen gained notoriety managing such musicians as Bryan Adams, Martina McBride and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

The late Gordie Howe and Pat Quinn (a one-time Canucks coach) were also co-owners of the Giants, and the elder Bublé said their contributions to the organization cannot be overlooked.

During each man’s involvement with the team, the overlapping Bublé and Giants family emphatically demonstrated its appreciation. The month Howe turned 85 in 2013, Michael drove a cake-bearing pickup onto the Coliseum ice and serenaded the legend.

 

Vancouver’s young players have offered their own homages to Michael. In December 2016, the team uploaded a music video of the Giants lip-syncing to one of his Christmas covers. The club dedicated the performance to Michael’s then-three-year-old son, Noah, who had started undergoing treatment for cancer at the time.

Of his personal highlights in his first decade of Giants co-ownership, Lewis says, “There are too many moments that stand out.”

While the Bublés have been involved since 2008, the Giants have existed since 2001-02. In that time, they have won one President’s Cup as WHL playoff champions in 2006 plus the next year’s Memorial Cup.

Some of the distinguished moments of the Bublé era include back-to-back conference finals in 2009 and 2010. For that first run, current San Jose Sharks forward Evander Kane was still with the Giants for the second half of his third and final major-junior season when the Bublé era began.

Beyond their on-ice involvement, Lewis marvels at how the ownership group and front office instills strong values to their teenage players.

“Ron sets the tone,” he said. “He believes in them not just as players, but as people. He views them beyond their hockey talent, which is important especially watching the team grow.”

While Toigo is the majority owner, President and WHL governor, Lewis also focuses his time as the president and chairman of the board of the Pacific Coast Fishermen’s Mutual Insurance Company, which insures commercial fishing vessels.

Naturally, Michael is traveling the hemipshere as part of the tour promoting his latest album, Love. He started in Tampa on Feb. 13 and will continue through Nov. 10 in Munich. He will have covered 20 countries within that nine-month window.

Even with this busy concert schedule, Michael still finds time to devote to his favorite childhood sport.

“Michael loves the sport,” said Lewis about his son’s involvement with the Giants. “He watches every game that he can, even when touring 45 countries.”

Back when he first came on as a minority partner, Michael shared similar sentiments.

“I’ve done lots of amazing things in my life, but this is easily the most prestigious for me,” he told The Canadian Press at the time. “It’s a dream come true to be a part of this club.”

The Bublés’ fascination with hockey extends to their personal lives. Lewis noted that Michael has a rink in his basement and requests a team puck of any city he visits where applicable.

In extreme cases, Michael’s hockey obsession can even cut into his day job. In June 2011, he postponed a concert to fly cross-continent and catch Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, which pitted the Canucks against Lucic and the Boston Bruins. As it happened, that concert was supposed to take place in New England, so crossover fans were likely forgiving.

In another Cup-related anecdote, Michael kissed the legendary trophy when it visited him backstage. Witnesses to that display told reporters of the singer’s childlike enthusiasm, and his father has similar takes on similar stories.

“During his life, in fact, he has met a bunch of professional hockey players, and rather than act nervously, he grins like a kid,” laughed Lewis. Those players have come from all over the world, even from as far away as Sweden.

For the Bublés, the Giants have become a metaphorical extended family. The Giants have become that for each other too. According to Lewis, Toigi inspires that mentality in all players that pass through the organization.

“At times it is certainly challenging to have to trade players,” he said. “However, you are trying to do the best you can for the player at that time. That is what truly stands out about being involved with the Giants. The emphasis is on the game, but it is also on providing quality support to the players and their families.” 

-           John Morton

Wallaby Wednesday: Is cheese really funnier than bananas?

The Rocko’s Modern Life creator and network higher-ups disagreed as to whether cheese or bananas are funnier. Ultimately, one product got more scenes in the series while the other got the last big scene. But did quality eclipse quantity?

One year after Rocko’s Modern Life ended, Joe Murray publicly proved himself anything but a control freak.

In a September 1997 chat with Lisa Kiczuk Trainor, the series creator fielded the closing question from a first-season episode.

“Which is funnier: Bananas or cheese?”

When Heffer poses this query in “The Good, the Bad and the Wallaby,” Rocko does not hesistate. “Cheese, Hef. Definitely cheese,” he replies, and leaves it at that.

As it happens, Rocko’s brain parent, who in other interviews has said he “was Rocko,” respectfully disagrees. As Murray told Trainor, “I think cheese smells funny, but I feel bananas ‘are’ funny.”

He went on to explain that network higher-ups felt otherwise, thus explaining Rocko’s verdict. As Trainor noted, Rocko writer and director Jeff “Swampy” Marsh had corroborated that anecdote.

Given the closing dialogue to “The Good, the Bad and the Wallaby,” the showrunners acquiesced. But in subtle ways, they kept the debate open for the remaining three-plus seasons. Bananas and cheese alike make fleeting and prominent appearances in other storylines, letting viewers decide for themselves.

Incidentally, cheese comes up more frequently, not even counting its presence on pizza and elsewhere. As a standalone product, it gains an advantage from a higher volume of publicity. Nonetheless, the underdog fruit gets a few chances to demonstrate its own amusing appeal (pun intended).

There is a sequence in one episode where bananas or cheese would make equal sense (i.e. comically little). But the latter gets in while the former sits out, and the delivery of one line justifies the choice.

Indeed, the monosyllabic word is easier to say in a funny manner. When Rocko, Heffer and Filburt try using cheese as fish bait, a giant squid interrupts them. The cephalopod’s booming, elongated, but fairly polite delivery of his request for the fromage lands smoothly.

 

Afterward, as a third resort, the troika tries fishing with hot dogs. There are no bananas on board the boat. Although, if it is any consolation, they could have worked just as well as the wienies in the post-cheese scene.

Regardless, had the squid asked for “some banana-ahs” rather than “some chee-eese,” the gag would have squandered a few points. The preceding “Hut Sut Raw” episode demonstrates as much.

In that segment, the three friends’ attempt at camping demonstrates the lower humor ceiling for asking for a banana. When Filburt spots a wild gorilla carrying the fruit in question, he pushes for a share in the wealth.

But in this case, the humor comes from his exponential hanger and his request’s rapid rise to a confrontation. The visual aftermath punctuates Filburt’s ill-advised decision, which relates less to food than to a brute-strength mismatch.

And one could argue it would have been even funnier if he had suffered similar injuries from mice over cheese. That scenario could have been similar to the episode’s actual later instance of shrews biting the turtle over steaks.

Back in the confines of civilization, Filburt has a less painful setback that strengthens the case for cheese. While co-creating the title program in “Wacky Delly,” he proposes a character who is anything but wacky. He renders a realistic drawing of a block of cheese and christens it with the dignified-sounding moniker Lester Roquefort.

That over-the-top, out-of-place attempt at classiness is funny in its own right. But for the new cartoon’s sake, Heffer seizes Filburt’s concept and makes it look less dimensional. Moreover, he lends the character goofy-looking facial features and insists on naming him Mr. Cheese.

From the glimpses of the show within the show, Mr. Cheese teeters between sympathetic and pathetic. He is a dairy product on a show that is supposed to be about deli meats. He is destroyed in an unexplained explosion and later chewed to pieces by Heffer’s Sal Ami.

But he also thinks highly enough of himself to claim, “I am the best character on the show. I am better than both the salami and the bologna combined.”

 

That repeated statement in Wacky Delly’s slipshod pilot precedes the aforementioned explosion and two-way journey through Sal Ami’s mouth. Beyond that, Rocko’s Modern Life does not present much in the way of anthropomorphic cheese.

The only other instance of that comes briefly in Season 4’s “Driving Mrs. Wolfe.” For one apparent throwaway gag, a cheese crossing gives a troupe of Lester Roquefort lookalikes the right of way.

Later in that final season, however, Filburt centers and recounts a storyline featuring humanized bananas. In the flashback portion of “Future Schlock,” he takes one off the sidewalk and places it in Rocko’s refrigerator.

Because Rocko, Heffer and Spunky have accidentally gone to space, the banana goes unnoticed for 17 years. None other than two of Filburt’s children discover it in the renamed refrigerizer of Rocko’s abandoned dwelling.

As with the gorilla incident, the flashback does not draw much humor, if any, from the banana itself. But when Filburt’s friends abruptly return, we learn that the cold, shriveled banana is a democratic leader amongst her species. By all accounts, she and her subjects practice selective sentience not unlike the characters in Toy Story.

Adding to the absurdity, the monkey Rocko, Heffer and Spunky had freed from Mr. Bighead’s captivity and followed into space is a banana ally. That explains why he did not want to eat the one (i.e. the queen) Heffer had offered.

Regardless, he and his fruit friends get the last word and give the aged Ed his overdue comeuppance. By doing so with a no-nonsense delivery, they theoretically cannot gain much ground on cheese in this amusement derby.

On the other hand, they generate a ludicrous visual with that very seriousness. They gain the comically overloaded dignity that Filburt’s Lester Roquefort and even the cheese-crossing cheese miss.

The bananas also get the last word in this debate, as “Future Schlock” is Rocko’s de facto series finale. But is it enough to put them over the top and clinch the bragging rights?

Did bananas even get a fair shake in this informal competition?

You decide.