Rolling RFI thread for half-formed pop culture memories

A thread for identifying unidentifiable things from your past!

Could preface every noun in this with iirc but I won't bother, bear in mind this is a blur that I would like sharpened a little:

When I was in first grade (1989) there was a TV show on PBS that taught basic drawing techniques. I lived in Wyoming, maybe it wasn't shown on every PBS channel. It may have been called "The Secret City" or something like that. The host/drawing instructor guy was called Commander Marker, or maybe just Commandeer Mark. There was also a robot type guy, I think?

I remember learning one point perspective, contour shading, and drawing basic 3-D solids by connecting dots from this show.

Does anyone know what the hell this TV show was????

He drew on a big paper pad that was on an easel.

Oj jesus what I swear I have googled this hundreds of times with no results but now that I post about it I find

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_City_Adventures

ANyway, if you can't figure out a memory, feel free to post about it here. Or if you liked The Secret City Adventures!

Shading is Commander Mark's lesson today. Lisa Kveaton, a published author, beams into the Secret City to show you how to make your own book! Guess what happens when Commander Mark and Bobtron get lost in the library's card catalog?

I remember a movie on a VHS tape that I watched endlessly when I was a kid. I can't recall too much, but here's what I can:

* Australian (or I assume it was Australian, I think all the characters were)
* Late 70s/early 80s maybe?
* There was a talking Koala in it, or maybe it didn't talk, but you heard the koala's thoughts? I think it was the pet of the/one-of-the kid protagonists.
* The plot was something to do with the manufacture of a little green candy bars that made you go incredibly happy and behave all weird when you ate it. I think the plant that the bars came from was harvested only by this one forest tribe, and a big evil corporation was trying to get these plants from them and run the tribe off their native land, or something like that.
* One scene I remember is a tennis match which they had to stretch out for as long as possible for some reason, so there were lots of hi-jinx, including the main grown-up (who was playing) drinking an entire water-cooler of water between points.

Does this ring a bell with ANYONE?

A series of books for young adults:
- by a woman author who was not Betsy Byars (or Cleary or Blume)
- the lead kid was a freckly redhead but was not Bingo Brown
- but I think his name may have been alliterative and also with Bs
- his mom did balloonagrams in costumes or something wacky like that? or maybe that was in Bingo Brown
- his mom was makin' it for herself tho!
- woulda been wrote in the '80s or '90s
- books were set in Philadelphia – main one I remember has them all having a school sanctioned slumber party at the Franklin Institute that I thought sounded rad as hell!!!

what the hell were these books???

I love this thread, all I have to do is type and then I remember everything immediately. It was the Matthew Martin series by Paula Danziger, who wrote way too many books & I read them all (Betsy Byars was better, so was Bingo Brown)

http://childrensbookshop.com/images/bookimages/77/77726.jpg

Do you guys think I could pull of a Franklin Institute t-shirt as a dress?

Guys my mind is exploding with Danziger memories!

Man I thought I'd read SO MANY Paula Danziger books and now I'm a bit surprised reading her Wikipedia entry that over half of the 30 books listed were written after I last read any.

I am totally in favour of a rolling kids' and YA fiction thread where I can randomly turn up and announce that "After the Goat Man" and "The Cartoonist" by Betsy Byars were spiritually important to me as a child even if I can't remember anything about the plot, and that "The Pigman" by Paul Zindel was pretty bleak, huh? I had forgotten about that one, and etc.

(I didn't know Danziger and Zindel had died. RIP. Byars is still writing at 82.)

Betsy Byars was my favorite.

"The Pigman" by Paul Zindel

Probably my favorite book from my youth. Bought a copy at a rummage sale many years ago but haven't re-read it, maybe I'm afraid it won't live up to my memories. I'm surprised it's never been made into a movie, seems perfect for it. Zindel also wrote "My Darling, My Hamburger" which was pretty good. And "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man In The Moon Marigolds," which was movie-ized, but I'm not sure I've seen it.

Yea, I loved all of those by Zindel. I used to do a monologue from The Effect of Gamma Rays when I was auditioning for plays in HS. Didn't know it was a movie.

ha, my mom got me "Earth to Matthew" as a christmas present but i never read it cuz i was insulted by the title.

Some stage musical we went on a field trip to see in first grade about man first landing on the moon. What stands out most in my mind is a number about the faceless crowd who thought the venture was a waste of money. IIRC the chorus was "ten million dollars – come send it down to us."
WHAT WAS THIS MUSICAL

tbh it could have been the project of some University of Wyoming student and not a big musical

This isn't it, but can I just
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=184

ultra-cool edu-tainment "hip-hopera"