More Than Meets The Eye: Tuesday Open Thread

I don’t want to talk about the NFL right now.

Not just because the Bills have now utilized both of their yearly Trip Over The Worst Teams On Your Schedule games- remember, Buffalo gave Urban Meyer one of his two career NFL wins.

And not just because the ostensible class of the league (outside perhaps the Clots) have been so wildly inconsistent that it’s almost impossible to determine whether a given game will be any good.

No, it’s because in the midst of a very dark time for our family, my children have discovered the magic of Transformers.

I’ve made a couple of unplanned trips back to my parents over the last couple months as a health situation developed. The kids have come with on a few, and the last time my young son disappeared into the basement for quite a while.

I didn’t think anything of it until 2:30 in the morning, when I was struck in the head by a collection of plastic, metal and nostalgia. Turns out while spelunking among my niece and nephew’s toys in the basement, the boy had found my Jetfire (a.k.a Skyfire, a.k.a. Robotech fighter) and snuck him up to our shared bedroom so he could smuggle him home. When he awoke in the wee hours and got bored, he decided to start flying Jetfire around. In the midst of a high-G manuever to avoid Imperial fighters (we are also big Star Wars fans), he lost control and I got a face full of Autobot.

After a brief talk about the importance of airmanship and flight safety, he asked whether this was a Rebel or Imperial plane. I explained that this was a Transformer, which is a totally different universe. I then demonstrated the “transform” aspect, because I am a complete fucking moron who apparently didn’t want to get any more sleep that night. It really is amazing; as noted by noted by the poet-philosophers Harvey Danger, fingertips have memories, and mine still remembered how to fold and shape and bend this toy almost 40 years later. The next morning, he demonstrated his new discovery to his little sister, and that was the clincher for both.

Since then, we have been overrun by Autobots, Decepticons, Terrans (which are somehow also Autobots?), homemade Quintessons, and others.

We have watched the first season of the original series (apparently now referred to as Generation 1). It still holds up, in that despite low-quality animation, stilted dialogue and simplistic plots, it’s still incredibly compelling. Huge props to the voice actors, who shoulder an outsized burden of expressing the emotion and characterization.

No, we will not be showing them Transformers: The Movie. The boy is the same age I was when that came out, and I still remember sitting in a theater full of my fellow kindergartners, all of us bawling. No thanks.

Anyway, I have become re-steeped in Transformers lore. Here are my Top 5 Transformers

5. Jazz

Voiced by Scatman Crothers (The Shining, among others). Jazz is always cool. Always rolls with it. Effortlessly hip. Also, a bitchin’ Porsche.

4. Ratchet

Voiced by Don Messick (Doctor Benton Quest, Boo Boo, Astro Jetson)

He’s funny. He’s a doctor. He’s got self-esteem issues. If you took away Hawkeye Pierce’s genitals and gave him an iron skin, he’d be Ratchet.

3. Wreck Gar

Voiced by Eric Idle (Monty Python). He was basically my introduction to both absurdism and Weird Al. I apparently ran around for several days as a child, yelling “Destroy Unicron! Kill the Grand Poobah! Eliminates even the toughest stains!”

2. Soundwave

Voiced by Frank Welker (Megatron, Fred from Scooby Doo, about a thousand other characters). Trying to explain Soundwave required explaining cassettes, which required explaining the world before streaming, which required me to take a nap before I shrivelled away to ancient dust. Soundwave is basically the Smart Decepticon.

1. Optimus Prime

Voiced by Peter Cullen (Canadian). Leader. Father. Friend. Christ Figure.

Honorable Mentions: WheelJack (mad scientist), Silverbolt (acrophobic airplane), Starscream (he’s a grasping little bitch, but amazing name and plane form), Omega Supreme (why is there a tank on a railroad track surrounding a ballistic missile? Because Omega Supreme, motherfucker), Ironhide (making the Chevy Astrovan look badass)