Logos and Idents and Bumpers - Oh My!

Television is a medium that spends its entire existence doing nothing more than trying to grab your eyes and ears by its balls. It is the attention-whore in your living room that won't be ignored. With that said, it should come as no surprise that even the short station identifications, program bumpers and production logos have become these memorable orgies of sounds and visuals. Some of them tried so hard, that they're practically unnerving. This is especially true to young children for whom any strange noise can either be a menacing robot attack or the "NBC Night at the Movies". These short animated idents I grew up watching were so outlandish or eerie that they're fascinating. And apparently, I'm not the only one who reminisces about these things judging by how easy it is to find them on video sites .

Below are some of the most memorable little snippets of promos that etched itself in my mind growing up. Videos pilfered from YouTube. I apologize if some are recognizable only to the Northeast portion of the United States (particularly New York), but I can't exactly relive my childhood in another part of the world.

WGBH - BOSTON


Looks like: Your TV is melting from inside out.
Sounds like: A synthesizer ejaculating.

You'd think they would have retired this when the Moog's novelty wore out. Nope. Even with updated 3-D graphics (see clip), that "Holy-shit-I'm-falling-into-a-black-hole" music remains. Even the author for Wikipedia's "WGBH Idents" entry states "Sometime in the mid or late 1980's this ident was shortened to just the latter half, with its jagged electronic music and eerie animation reported to have scared many younger viewers." Then again, no sources were cited so it can be assumed that this is not a recorded statistic and he or she was simply the same species of "tiny walking vagina" I was.

PBS ("PEOPLE IDENT")


Looks like:March of the Killer Alphabet.
Sounds like:A futuristic doorbell for a haunted house (or half the sound-effect of dying in Donkey Kong).

If I learned anything from Sesame Street, it's that the letter 'P' doesn't have a murderous face. So it seemed somewhat confusing that these scary abstract symbols presented itself at the end of the aforementioned educational show. The impact on my schooling was almost immediately evident. I was forced to undergo counseling when, during routing letter-writing exercises, I drew a picture of the letter 'P' murdering the number '3' with an ampersand.

WPIX SUNDAY MOVIE OPEN/BUMPER


Looks like:A sexually-repressed individual playing with a Spyrograph.
Sounds like:Theme music for a formal dinner party pillow-fight.

To those of you who weren't fortunate enough to witness the insane genius of 70's/80's Channel 11 bumpers and promos, please help yourself to a 2 liter bottle of my pity. Because damn if they weren't more bizarrely entertaining than the shows themselves. If it wasn't spirals of color descending into infinite madness, then it was something equally freakish. Take, for example, the firework explosion extravaganza set to frantic music that segued into the toy commercials. Or the overexcited kids screaming PIX PIX PIX into a phone while someone in the studio played Intellivision (it was some sort of call-in game). Or the "11 ALIVE!" branding that was coffee and cocaine rolled into two simple words (complete with epileptic rainbow effects). Channel 11 was always the scary clown on my dial.

CBS "PAINT CAN" SATURDAY MORNING BUMPERS

Looks like:Stream of consciousness vomiting on your face.
Sounds like: Er... a cat strapped to a ceiling fan?

Even at the age of ten, I knew what I was watching right before the commercials during Pee Wee's Playhouse was indescribably stupid. And I do mean "indescribably". I just watched it five times and still can't come up with anything coherent that can put that hodge-podge of colors and shapes into words. (I liked to think I was above "cats strapped to ceiling fan" and "vomit", but that was literally the best I could come up with.) It was like being lowered into the pits of a hell that was run by backwards-talking beatniks. That... "cone-thing"... was the subject of many nightmares. Not the "wake-up-gasping" type of nightmares, but more like a terribly annoying type of nightmare where you want to wake up as soon as possible so you can get to work suing CBS for "Defamation of Imagination".

SCREEN GEMS


Looks like: So many things! I'm going with "a hurricane forming over a puddle of urine."
Sounds like: A shorter, happier version of "Taps" for the electronic age... almost.

This innocent-looking little logo comes at you with a haunting melody and a somewhat curious looking logo. At first glance it looks like an "S" (if you cross your eyes a bit), but as sure as "P's" don't have faces, "S's" don't look like lawnmower blades. And it's that odd, indecipherable symbol that forms over that bittersweet death march that have many people nervously wondering if it's a production company or an evil organized cult brainwashing citizens with "Gidget" reruns.

CBS SPECIAL PRESENTATION


Looks like:Um, the word "Special" spinning around. Duh!
Sounds like:A drumline falling down a flight of stairs.

We didn't have those fancy, three-dimensional video games when I was young. If you wanted to experience first-person, virtual reality in the old days, you'd stick your face against TV right before "The Charlie Brown Christmas Special" came on. "Whee! I'm flying through a cosmic dictionary!" GET OFF MY LAWN!

Now this is usually the part of my post where I summarize the words I had done said. But after realizing I had spent eight paragraphs of text to talk about a combined about of less than sixty seconds of television, I suddenly feel the blunt force of shame. 32 years on this planet and my life experience has been boiled down to a bunch of stupid animated logos. I should really turn off this computer and read a book. And that's "One to Grow On".

...uggh!