Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age

by Mathew Klickstein

  DANNY TAMBERELLI: You have to be a certain kind of person to really enjoy Pete & Pete. I find people who come up to me or like the show are people I would relate to or would be friends with. I don’t think I’ve ever been approached by someone who’s recognized me from Pete & Pete and felt kinda weird about it. Some kind of big jock dude or whatever.

  RICK GOMEZ: I’ll go on a set and my second AD will come up to me and say, “Endless Mike, man!” And he’s thirty! These shows were being made for him. Now we’re all working together, and that is the coolest shit. Those are the people I end up having a martini with at the end of the night.

  TREVOR EYSTER: I’ve been a security guard on a night shift when things were tight and there were kids there who probably watched me on television. I was too embarrassed to tell them who I was.

  BLAKE SENNETT: My own demon was feeling like a fraud. When I transitioned into music with Rilo Kiley, kids would sing the Salute Your Shorts theme song at me and yell from the audience. They would bring “Pinsky sausages” to a show, and I wouldn’t know what they were doing. Are you fucking with me? I got off stage and cried, I was so bummed out and humiliated. I thought I’d never be taken seriously.

  MEGAN BERWICK: Freshman year of high school, after Salute Your Shorts and a movie I did, I hadn’t booked anything for about six months. I said something in my English class and one of the boys in there said, “What do you know? You’re just a washed-up has-been.” I was like, “Yeah. You’re right. I am. That’s exactly what I feel like. Thanks for pointing that out.” Sophomore year, my history teacher was doing roll call the first day of class and she reached my name and she said, “You’re that girl on that Nick show.” “That’s me!” “My kids love that show. I can’t stand it!” “Okay . . .” And then she asked me for my autograph later. It’s a weird dynamic.

  MICHAEL BOWER: We got degraded all the time. I worked at CityWalk at a comic book store to make some money and had people come up to me and make fun of me. “Why do you work here? You’re a star!” Boy, they take your pride and they shove it down. They make you feel like crap.

  JASON ZIMBLER: If somebody was secure . . . or insecure—let’s frame it right—and had to prove themselves, if “Ferguson” wasn’t cool or they were “cooler than” or whatever that is, I had to contend with that. And I had mechanisms to contend with that. If there was a group of people there, and somebody was trying to be douchey, then I just wouldn’t really pay attention to them.

  BLAKE SENNETT: Later, I realized people weren’t ridiculing me. They were just trying to connect: “I saw that show! I was part of that! You are part of me!”

  ALASDAIR GILLIS: People will want to find affiliation—I understand things from our childhood can hold a very special impact as something you want to connect with—and the fact that it was part of people’s childhood might have a sort of staying power.

  VANESSA LINDORES: For some people, we were the cheeky background noise to their middle school/adolescent years. These are important years, and while those people are still around, we will be meaningful as fond memories.

  JOANNA GARCIA: I was recently with my husband and two of our best friends in Orlando at Harry Potter World, and our guide on the tour took us through the whole place. As a treat for me, he brought me back to the old stages where we shot Welcome Freshmen and Clarissa Explains It All, and I got to see my old dressing room . . . and now it’s totally transformed and totally different. But the moment I walked in, it smelled the same to me, which was this really great sweet smell. And it just brought me back to a really wonderful time in my life.

  TREVOR EYSTER: People have asked me where Salute Your Shorts was shot, and I don’t know because I was driven there as a kid and am estranged now from my mom. I would like somebody to tell me how to get back, so I can go hiking there. I don’t even know how to get back to where my memories are, frankly.

  MICHAEL MARONNA: All of us were there. It’s one of those things we can come together on. A lot of people are like, “Oh, I grew up with you!” Nickelodeon is a kids’ network. So it’s not surprising that the kids watching would identify with us. Since we can’t freeze time, all these people in their thirties, dealing with their jobs and lives now, they still remember those times. It’s the chance to relive their childhood, but a little weirder. And it’s immortalized on TV, so it’s more reinforced.

  SANDY KAVANAUGH: The first word my daughter ever read was “Nickelodeon.” She pointed to it on a T-shirt and said, “Nickanee!” It’s been there for her her whole life.

  CHUCK VINSON: When my daughter was really young, we would put on episodes of Clarissa Explains It All and she would be really into it, which put a smile on my face: Yeah, Dad directed that.

  E. G. DAILY: My kids were at that age where they were huge Rugrats fans. It was always on in the house. I was pretty much the coolest mom on the block. I was the “Tommy Pickles Mom.” Kids would come over and say, “Do the voice! Do the voice!”

  MARTY SCHIFF: I always joke with my children that they have to refer to Nick as “The Network Daddy Built.”

  JULENE RENEE-PRECIADO: I actually still have VHS tapes of the show, and I show them to my kids. The last season of Roundhouse, I was pregnant with my daughter and gave birth to her about a month and a half after the show got canceled. She’s going to be eighteen this year, and we quote the show all the time.

  ROBIN RUSSO: I have a son and daughter, and when I showed them Double Dare about five years ago, my daughter burst into tears because I was getting hit by a pie. And now my daughter has a teacher who was a contestant on Double Dare!

  DOUG PREIS: I didn’t have that to share with my kids. They missed that. They know that Dad does stuff for Vlasic Pickles and Lucky Charms, but in terms of network things and Doug, it’s sad in a way. There are discs and stuff, but it’s not the same. That was a different time.

  BOB MITTENTHAL: Because I worked in the field of kids’ TV, I knew just how stupid it could be. So I tried to keep my kids away from it. But I should show it to them, just to get a reaction out of them.

  ROGER PRICE: I didn’t like my own kids to watch it at the time, not because I was afraid it would corrupt them but because it sort of reminded them that their dad spent his working day having fun with other children. Or so I thought. It made me uncomfortable, anyway. My son told me only recently that he was about the only kid in school not able to talk about the show the next day. He felt quite out of it.

  DEBBY BEECE: As a mother of three young children, I was always telling my kids to turn off the TV set.

  JOHN CRANE: I was over at the Nick offices not too long ago, and I honestly don’t think they know the show. Some of the executives, I’m not even sure they’ve ever seen it!

  MARK SCHULTZ: The memories of working on the early shows were like campfire stories. They didn’t have any relevance. I began to feel irrelevant. It was time for me to move on.

  ELIZABETH HESS: I watched the episodes of Clarissa once they were finished. And I think for the most part, that was it. Sometimes now my students say, “Let’s have a Clarissa party!” And I’m like, “Nooooo! No, no. For you, it’s nostalgia. For me, it’s a really beautiful time in my life I don’t need to revisit.”

  JASON ZIMBLER: Those shows, those characters, the writers were partly your teachers. Because you listened to them as closely as you listened to your middle school science teacher. And those are data points. Those are like clear harkenings. Those are the ways you can call back your twelve-year-old life by way of these shows.

  SEAN O’NEAL: I went through a roller-coaster ride, I’m not going to lie. I had many ups and downs and trials and errors after Clarissa. It wasn’t until four or five years ago that I decided to give LA a try. I wasn’t really involved much in the industry after the show except for commercials and what my agent would call me for. I wasn’t pursuing it. So the industry didn’t pursue me. And I did go through some really tough times.


  TREVOR EYSTER: I’m in back pain and can’t afford a chiropractor. I’ll probably lose my car any day now and am really amazed I haven’t gotten a court document yet. But I’m happy, you know? I’m happy because I’m living authentically. I’m happy because I think “happy” is a choice we all make outside of our circumstances. I don’t look like a geek anymore. I’m kind of a jock now, really.

  JASON ZIMBLER: I did hope that the show would result in the “Ferguson” brand or the “Jason” brand, where the stock would rise. But I decided to go to college and left the business. I think I was scared, actually. When I was a kid actor, I had this perverse, overarching confidence that I was King Shit, walking into the room knowing I was better than anybody else in the audition. Somewhere on the show, I think I grew up.

  DANNY COOKSEY: It’s really strange: They had some Salute Your Shorts on around Thanksgiving or something on Nick and my daughter was watching it. And it was a weird, like, out-of-body experience. I had no recollection of the show. I was watching myself and I didn’t remember the plot at all. It was very strange.

  JACOB TIERNEY: It almost felt like it didn’t happen because it was so quick. It’s weird to see yourself in twenty-two episodes of TV you barely remember doing.

  CONNIE SHULMAN: I’ve watched episodes of Doug on these bad tapes that we have, and it brings to mind the actual shooting of that particular episode, and I end up remembering really stumbling on a particular line where they’ve cleaned it up. It’s like watching yourself and listening to yourself is a similar kind of experience. There’s a little bit of that “eww” factor.

  JOHN KRICFALUSI: I can’t watch anything I do. All I see is the mistakes.

  CHUCK SWENSON: I haven’t watched anything. It’s much better to go forward. Having done it, it’s like reliving a high school football game. Who gives a fuck?

  GEOFFREY DARBY: This happens every generation. People go back and find what they grew up on and they watch it again . . . and they usually find out that it wasn’t anywhere near as good as they thought it was. There were some pretty lame You Can’t Do That on Television’s mixed in there. But there were some genius ones, too.

  JOE O’CONNOR: Sometimes it doesn’t even have anything to do with the quality of it. It’s like your cereal at that age; it just makes you comfortable.

  MITCHELL KRIEGMAN: It wasn’t like people had some messianic idea that they were creating history. They just really cared a lot. That’s all I’m saying.

  HERB SCANNELL: About five years ago when I’d left MTV Networks, I’d been invited to Boston College to speak at some sort of seminar. And a young guy who’s gone on to do some brilliant stuff on the Internet was interviewing me about Nick. Afterward, he said, “You probably had more to do with me developing a sense of humor than anyone else.” It was the first time I realized there was a Nickelodeon generation of kids coming of age that were going to bring to whatever they were doing professionally a sense of humor or a look at the world that was shaped in part by Nick. That felt good because I think we did a lot of good stuff at Nick.

  FRED SEIBERT: Gerry was very tuned into the idea that, at ten years old, a kid could be in love with their parents one minute and run away from them the next. And she said, “Look, this is a natural thing that children do: They’re both closest to their parents and they want to reject their parents simultaneously. It’s part of the process of growing up.” One of the things that would happen when the audience would inevitably reject us and become adults was they would hopefully come back with kids of their own. As long as the brand stays true to its beliefs, a generation of people raised on Nickelodeon becoming parents will introduce their kids to Nickelodeon through their eyes.

  GUS HAUSER: Children’s programming is eternal. There’s always a new group of children. And you can always give the new age group the old programs. I would even bet they’re doing some of that today!

  FRED SEIBERT: During Gerry’s years, we were also really clear on the fact that at various development stages, we were just going to lose kids entirely . . . and that was built into the fabric of the business. They would lose interest the same way that at eleven years old I lost interest in cartoons because the Beatles came out. You know, you gotta grow up, right?

  DOMINIC LUCERO: Reprise the theme song and roll the credits!

  THE NINETIES? THE NINE TEES? NINE–GERK! NINETIES INDEED.

  I remember them perfectly.

  For I am Artie, the Strongest Man in the World.

  A squirrelypop time of tinny musics and little Vikings!

  Sansational pipe all around.

  Pipe! Not a wasted moment.

  Puny kids unbridled by book or job or stove, nuts-going, bomb-popping,

  and stupidly perfectly messily of mouthy and shirt and brainbag,

  flew around like magnificent hollerbirds through the wilds of everywhere:

  slayers of the bored and dumb and the mad and the mortgaged and the adult.

  Little pirates full of Plork and Fume! Fuuuume! Heavy syrup! Heavy!

  A blessed time enpillowed. Much ravaging then of the jackcrackered

  Americans for me and the Petes and handsome Ellen and the rest of them;

  eating handfuls of sledsnow and sunburn by day

  and moonwhiff and bugwink by night.

  Concocting the most elaborate plans and then wrassling a forest!

  Wonder chunks! Heart bleats!

  Unstoppable Pipe! You were with us.

  We all ran past them all and made life a huge, flopping thing

  with our wits and our goof and each other.

  It was quiet then. But tasty and large. A colossal carnival pie!

  A lollipop hundred years ago.

  It’s too kind and soft and fragile to sift through now,

  lest it shatter like butterfly wings that blowfloat into a smiley girl’s smile

  face like chalk dust. Ack stew.

  But now there’s a book of it all?! How dare you? A book of time?

  Of that time?!

  Our time! Pewsus! I’ll book you, bookie! Befouler of kids’ memory holes!

  That was our time!

  Not a fan of this book.

  Only a fan of you and me. Of our time. For it was US and THEM, and we were US.

  And US was all that mattered.

  Pipe on bookwormy, pipe on.

  Pipily,

  —ARTIE,

  The Strongest Man in the World (aka Toby Huss)

  It has long been remarkable to me that someone with a mouth and mind like mine, born of a youthful diet of classic Nickelodeon and—at far too young an age—everything from Stanley Kubrick to Paul Verhoeven (thanks, Dad) as well as a nasty propensity for always telling the truth (thanks, Mom) has ended up with so many life-saving true-blue friends.

  To put it simply, this book would not have been possible had the following individuals not selflessly donated food, lodgings, stimulants, entertainment/art, support, advice, and good cheer over the course of its quixotic development and production:

  My family: Helene and Mike Shotwell, Mike and Suzi Klickstein, Sylvia Silbert, Dolores Klickstein, Glenn and Lori Siegel.

  My nearest-dearest: Naomi Kriss (and family), Joseph Trinh, Mark Johnston, Ross Exler, Mike Restaino, Tore and Micah Knos, Mike Kenneally, Janet Rosen, Patrick Mallek, Howard Zaremba, Tim O’Shea, Pablo Kjolseth, Jerry Aronson, Glenn Webb, Dustin and Nicole Marquel, Michael Monagan, Jill Woodhouse, Jesse Cilio, Doug Gaddy, Jack Epps Jr., Jason Robert, Jeremy Elder, Aaron Sheley, David Isen, Aron Flasher, Richard Fleming, Alexia Anastasio, Jon Weinman, Howard Wishner, Sara Binkley, congressman David S. Chapman, Kathy Downey, Lloyd Kaufman, Alex Cox and Tod Davies, DJ Spooky, Doug Sakmann, Andrew Bujalski, and the Alba Family (including Papa Jim).

  My put-upon roommates (at various times and locales): Jared Riesel, Scott Manelis, Ashley Bruscoe, and the 255 McKi
bbin Kids.

  My Colorado folks: everyone at Mighty Fudge Studios, Kerry Johnson and Wolf, Carlos Pacheco, Brock DeShane, Jordan LaRousse and Samantha Sade/Oysters & Chocolate, everyone at International Film Series/Backyard Cinema, Shaun Oshman and Greg Koeka/iSupportU, Kathy and Robin Beeck/Boulder International Film Festival, Joel Haertling/Boulder Library Cinema Program, everyone at Boedecker Cinema/Dairy Center for the Arts, Stephanie Rudy, Jim Palmer, Albert Hand, Arthur Okner, Sharon Nehls, Rosh and Phil Norman/Blind Café, everyone at Absolute Vinyl, Andy Schneidkraut/Albums on the Hill, Tom Peters/beat bookshop, Brian Buckley/Innisfree Poetry Bookstore & Café, Heather Carp/Topo Ranch, everyone at Phamaly’s disLabled, Wayne Ewing, Anthony Musco, Morgan Fielding, Megan Bucholz/Local Table Tours, Bruce Borowsky/Boulder Digital Arts, Dr. Lisa Erickson, Alan, O’Hashi, Kevin McCarthy, Rich Florence, Bill Viehler, Bob Wells, Jim Nelson, Gary Stebick, Nick Reed and Glo, Peter Garrity, Dr. Eric Eisenbud, Nile Southern, George Peele and Patti Calhoun/Westword, Radio 1190, KGNU, Boulder Outdoor Cinema, DJ Cola, and Rob and Mary at Workout Studio.

  My Colorado Daily/Daily Camera family: big brothers Jeanine Fritz and Dave Burdick; big sisters Jenn Fields and Christy Frantz; cousins Clay Evans, Pete Holm, Matt Sebastian, and Aaron Trujillo; little sisters Whitney Bryen and Ashley Dean; and the lovely neighbor next door, Aimee Heckel.

  Refreshments provided by: Conor O’Neill’s (Boulder, CO), Espresso Roma (Boulder, CO), Unseen Bean (Boulder, CO), BSP Lounge (Kingston, NY), and Yucatan (Bronx, NY).

  Inspiration provided by: Michael Azerrad, who picked up where In the American Grain left off in teaching me at a young age how to write creative nonfiction; Mark Yarm, who offered good advice and even better pie; Legs McNeil, who created the gold standard of oral histories and loves Peter and Wendy; Ondi Timoner, who taught us all how to make true documentaries (like this book) and who is even sexier in real life; Anthony Bourdain, who picked me up when the vicissitudes of the contemporary publishing world got me down; and Thurston Moore (RIP Sonic Youth) and Slavoj Žižek, who continue to lead the way (even though Žižek would probably hate to be credited “as such”).