"Apparently, Cory would rather listen to the game then try and understand the emotional content of Romeo & Juliet."

When I was in my awkward pre-teen, junior high years, I started buying those lame "teen celebrity" magazines - like Big Bopper and Tiger Beat, ugh - with the pull-out posters. My friends and I were way into Joey Lawrence, Rider Strong, and Jonathan Taylor Thomas (affectionately known as just "JTT").

(I was actually smitten with Dean Cain and religiously watched "Lois & Clark: the New Adventures of Superman"... but that's another story for another time.)

Rider Strong, especially, was the big heartthrob of our age group. As the tortured adolescent bad-boy Shawn Hunter on "Boy Meets World," he won us over with his skater hair and flannels.

I admit that he was the hook that initially got me to watch the show, but soon I got sucked in to the plot every "TGIF" Friday.

Which is why this article blew me away today. It sounds like Owen Roberts and I had similar childhoods in terms of TV pop culture. Although I did have a television, we only got about six channels on a good day and I was not allowed to watch TV on school nights (unless it was "Family Ties," "The Cosby Show," or "Life Goes On" - because those are wholesome, I guess). So my exposure to the cool stuff was limited to the TGIF blocks of quirky-family-and-friends comedies.


I always ended up watching "Boy Meets World," but not until now had I thought so deeply about the Cory-Topanga and Cory-Shawn dynamics. In fact, Cory Matthews as a whole is a surprisingly empty character in comparison to everyone else.

Does this say something deep and significant about our generation? Are we all like Cory, directionless and hopelessly "average?"

As Owen says:

What gives my life meaning? My own sense of self-worth has been derived, though not so self-consciously, from various "passions" over the years, and then, you know, family and friends and girls. For a while it was playing soccer, and then music, and then reading books, with a fair amount of overlap, all things that can be done well or not well. But I have often questioned, like Cory, whether I have any talent, the kind of talent that would justify doing those kinds of things in a way that would make other people notice or even give me money.

Read the rest of the article here.

Damn, this is getting pretty heavy for a Friday. Why don't we all just YouTube some episodes and admire Topanga's killer hair, OK? OK.


Also: THANKS This Recording! I've found enough procrastination reading for at least the next two weeks!