Monkey Spankin’ Uncle Fuckers
I saw this cartoon spoofing Power Rangers the other night and I thought it was pretty funny. But then, most things that are touched by Egorapter usually are.
I confess, I watched the first couple seasons of Power Rangers when I was in high school. It’s a guilty pleasure. Saw the movie. In the theaters. But only to make fun of it. It’s one of the few moments in life I look back and wished I were also high at the time. When my buddies and I would goof around, we’d act out silly Power Ranger spoofs of our own. Heh, though, one of us still thinks he’s a Power Ranger…
Watching that cartoon got me wondering what ever happened to the original cast of that show. I know that the black ranger is still in acting, cuz I see him every now and again on a TV show. But for the rest, I did a quit bit of checking out their IMDB and Wikipedia entries. The red ranger got fat. The blue ranger’s balding. The pink ranger is a musician, but all her recent photos are blurred to hide that she’s 37.
When I got to the yellow ranger, I paused. She was looking really good in her Wikipedia photo. I thought either she hasn’t aged a day in the past 10 years or they just used an old photograph. I began to read the file and found that there’s a good reason for that: She’s dead. Died in a car accident a few years ago. I thought, “Well, I guess that’s the final nail in the coffin for the 15-year reunion next year.” (No pun intended…or was it?) I was surprised, wondering why I hadn’t heard of something like that. Something in the depths of my memory tells me that I probably had heard about it from a buddy, but most likely passed it off as just a rumor. Or maybe I knew and just forgot.
Anyway, the green ranger runs his own martial arts school, but gives me the vibe that he’s a lot like some slimy asshole club owner. I don’t really know what Bulk and Skull are up to, but last I heard, Bulk got into 3D graphics. The guy who ran the juice bar actually lived in Riverside, CA and I’ve seen him in person a couple times in passing while at the mall. I don’t know what he’s doing, but I read that he has severe heart, weight, and drinking problems.
One thing that always got me is that Power Rangers did something like Star Trek, in that they wanted to demonstrate racial equality, but how they did it turned out to be more racist than if they tried nothing. They had each ranger represent a different race, each also playing out their ethic background to it’s fullest extent. No real cultural blending at all…which is absurd considering they went to a high school in Southern California. Then they also made the subtle association of their race with which color ranger they were. The Black Ranger was black, the Yellow Ranger was asian, the Red Ranger was a redneck, and so on…
I’ll tell ya, it’s just another one of those things that make me feel old to realize that Power Rangers first came out 15 years ago. On this final note, I got to thinking that after being on the air for that long, they’ve accumulated a hell of a lot of characters… rangers, villains, monsters, supporting cast, etc. So I thought that would be an excellent basis to develop a multi-player online game based on the Power Rangers. They could call it the MMPR MMORPG! LOLOMGBBQ!!!
