This may come as a shock to most of my fellow Americans--not to mention 11-year-old me--but I have gone without cable for almost a decade now.
The main reason for this (aside from cost) is that I live in the city. Thus, my preferred modes of entertainment tend to be of the live variety (stand-up comedy, music, people yelling at inanimate objects on the subway, etc.). The very basic TV channel lineup, my healthy DVD collection, and Netflix is more than enough to satisfy my limited time in front of the TV.
When I visit my parents in the boring suburbs, however, things are different. Since they make their home in an area where the most thrilling occurrence is a traffic light malfunction, they naturally have a decent cable package.
On one recent visit, I was flipping through their 9754 different channels, trying to find something worth watching. I stopped on Nickelodeon (well, on ONE of the Nickelodeons; I think there's something like 14 of them today) to see what became of the children's programming network that kept me glued to the TV during my pre-adolescence.
I think what I happened on was a program called iCarly, which features characters and situations that you can actually interact with online once the latest episode has concluded. iCarly is a marvel in technology and the strong degree of connectivity between viewer and content, no doubt, but to me it is just plain sad. And not only because I'm old enough to have given birth to most of the program's main cast.
Back when *I* watched Nickelodeon, the programming made us kids want to do far more than simply interacting with a tablet or computer. One particular show made us want to actually engage in strenuous physical activity, no matter how ridiculous it was.
The program?
Granted, there were TONS of programs like Double Dare back in the day (hell, Double Dare ITSELF spawned several spin-off series)...offerings like What Would You Do, Guts, Legends of the Hidden Temple, Wild & Crazy Kids, etc. And all of them made us want to go out, climb stuff, dive into large piles of food, you name it.
But Double Dare came first.
Unlike other game shows, the contestants weren't uncomfortable-looking people in ugly 80s formal wear who were our parents' age. Instead, they were kids just like us (except with possibly better-connected, or at least pushy theatrical, parents)! Even though its host, the charismatic Marc Summers, was technically an adult, he came off as a very fun and interesting adult. Things kicked off with trivia questions, which was all well and good, but we knew what we wanted. We wanted creative, colorful action!
And Double Dare delivered in spades.
Contestants did everything from fish around in giant pizzas for the elusive orange flag to race across giant tanks of water on rickety devices that would capsize in a puddle. This was known as the "physical challenge" and was worth many hundreds of dollars in prize money if successfully accomplished.
At the conclusion of each episode, the contestants with the most money got to compete for an array of prizes in the always-thrilling, 60-second-long obstacle course. This involved all kinds of creatively crazy activities that most of us never got to do (sadly, even in the booming 80s economy, playgrounds were still devoid of giant slides made of pie ingredients).
But one obstacle stood above them all: the One-Ton Human Hamster Wheel.
The existence of this meant that there was a clinically insane Double Dare producer out there staring at his pet hamster going nowhere fast in his wheel and saying to himself, "We need one of these big enough for kids."
Regardless of the fact that it kind of made a mockery of human decency, we ALL wanted to try out this thing. It was always the last obstacle of the course, which meant that getting the flag got you the grand prize, which was anything from a brand new Nintendo set to a trip to Space Camp.
Years later, I had the unique opportunity of meeting Marc Summers himself. While he is mainly known for his work on the Food Network these days, I of course went into full fanboy mode for his hosting duties on Double Dare. I even made a crude orange flag and asked him to sign it.
Summers, who is honestly one of the nicest guys on the planet, obliged and scribbled:
"Mike, take the physical challenge! Marc Summers"
After doing so, he handed the flag back to me and said, "Congratulations, now you can go to Space Camp."
See? He still didn't want me to sit motionless in front of a computer.
