My hometown...

I'm going back to Indiana for a brief holiday trip. It's always bittersweet to go back to the old home front. I like seeing my family and the few friends that still live there. But it is sort of depressing too. Although my hometown has been getting more fast food chains and prefab stores like Best Buy, it seems to be losing people. I googled Muncie this morning to see what I could see. I particularly liked the Wikipedia page.

LAZY MUNCIE (Parody of the LAZY SUNDAY skit on SNL)


Oh go watch it, you know you want to see where I grew up.

Yes, Jim Davis (Garfield creator) lives there. Yes they filmed Armed and Famous there. Actually several "people of note" are from Muncie. (check it out on Wikipedia)

My hometown was also a sociological case study. You can learn all about the Middletown Studies here. I know all this stuff already as I played one of the authors, Helen Lynd, in college.

Also, my hometown is 83% white, 12% African American and 5% "other races." Yeah, I'm from the Rust Belt..... The KKK was big in Muncie in the 1920's. *sigh* I learned about it in Magic Middletown and Citizen Klansmen. I own Magic Middletown, btw, if you are interested.

Here is a list of Cultural References to Muncie, Indiana. (I loved reading through this! This list is copied from wikipedia...the links do not work but you can go to the wikipedia page and click on them)

Cultural references to Muncie

• The 1960 Korean War film All the Young Men features Alan Ladd as a soldier from Muncie.
• In several episodes of Hogan's Heroes (1965-1971) Carter and other characters refer to Muncie. Carter seems to have either grown up there or spent time there while growing up.
• In the 1966 Dick Van Dyke film Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N., Lt. Crusoe complains that his malfunctioning navigational equipment will only tell him how far he is from Muncie.
• The "star" of the eponymous Tom Slick segment of the late 1960s animated series George of the Jungle frequently raced to or from Muncie (and, at least once, to and from Muncie).
• The "What Are Sex Perverts?"' segment of Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972) features a rabbi from Muncie.
• In the 1976 TV pilot movie for The Love Boat, Tom Bosley plays Muncie native George Havlicek.
• The 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind is partially set in Muncie.
• Television talk show host David Letterman, whose national career began in 1980, often refers to Muncie when needing to name a small, provincial town.
• Though the 1986 movie Hoosiers pits Hickory's basketball team against South Bend's team, the real life story that inspired the movie features Muncie Central High School's 1954 championship loss to the team from Milan.
• The A-Team episode "Mission of Peace," which originally aired March 11, 1986 mentioned that the lion statues in front of the fake Mission were actually from the public library in Muncie.
• It is revealed in the 1987 Garfield Goes Hollywood television special that cartoon characters Garfield, Jon, and Odie live in Muncie.
• In the Saturday morning cartoon Garfield and Friends, characters often mention Muncie. Examples include Roy Rooster asking for "a pickle in the shape of Muncie, Indiana"; Garfield growing a minimall on the shores of the "Muncie River"; and Binky the Clown interrupting surgery at "Cedars of Muncie Hospital."
• In the musical revue The Taffetas, about a four sister singing group, Muncie is named as the sisters' home town. The show began off Broadway in 1988.^[20]
• The cartoon character "Snake" from The Simpsons (1989- ) played lacrosse for Ball State University located in Muncie Indiana. Also, Superintendent Chalmers went to BSU.
• Knights of the Dinner Table (1990- ) - A comic strip set in Muncie. Parody of Roleplaying groups and Dungeons & Dragons.
• Bikini Summer (1991) features "Holly from Muncie, Indiana" in a wet T-shirt contest.
• In the 1994 film The Hudsucker Proxy the main character, Norville Barnes, was born and raised in Muncie. The city is referenced throughout the movie.
• Gregory Howard Williams' best selling autobiography, Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black (first published in 1996), is mostly set in Muncie, his adopted hometown.
• The X-Files episode "Salvage," which first aired on January 14, 2001, was set in Muncie.
• Toby Keith's 2001 song I Wanna Talk About Me contains the line "We talk about your nanna up in Muncie, Indiana."
• The romance in Say It Isn't So (2002) begins in Muncie
• In the fifth season (2004-5) of The Gilmore Girls television series one of the characters (Doyle McMaster, a native of the state and boyfriend to Paris Geller) reports that he spent his summer interning at the fictional Muncie Messenger newspaper.
• Muncie was the setting for Armed and Famous, a celebrity reality TV show that premiered on CBS in January, 2007.
• In the popular viral video spoof of the original Saturday Night Live sketch Lazy Sunday, Lazy Muncie references the Muncie cityscape, including Muncie Mall, McGalliard Road, and a cameo appearance by Jim Davis.

Ok, I doubt anyone is still reading because who cares about my hometown, but it is MY hometown and I love it no matter how much of a craphole it is... wait...

....It can't be that bad, huh? I turned out ok.