The time I met Johnny Tsunami
"It was like you met Meryl Streep"
Welcome to Following Studies — an adventure through subcultures, obsessions, the things we follow & the things that follow us. I’m glad you’re here. If you think someone else would have fun hanging out with us, be sure to share.
Hi friends,
The truest parts of myself, the things that I love to do the most, have been with me since childhood. That makes sense. We haven’t sorted out yet that the world can be mean, that there are standards or norms that we are expected to follow, that there are things that will be expected of us. The world is just open. There might be limits, due to what our childhood itself holds, but there is possibility.
I’m nostalgic for that feeling lately.
I’m not alone.
wrote about how nostalgic content lands so well for people because we are looking for an escape and shared ways to fill our cups so we can better defend our rights & the rights of others which included diving back into the things we loved as kids as a way to invest in ourselves and our creative work.I’m a big fan of nostalgia, of exploring the memories of childhood, and of finding freedom and comfort in them. A few years ago, after dealing with a particularly rough professional flop, I order the entire Royal Diaries series to cope. It helped.
I’ve been writing a lot lately about those weird years of girlhood. When you are 11 and then 12 and then 13. That time when there’s starting to be a lot of voices around you that suddenly make it harder to hear your own.
What I’m writing is messy fiction, a long draft of a thing that feels like something but hasn’t shape shifted enough to show me what it is yet. So, I’ve been buying things that remind me of that time. This is investigative work. I bought aY2K IKEA desk lamp (purchased from Etsy), the exact model that used to sit on my childhood desk that has a familiar click when I turn it on and birthday cake chapstick that felt like the less toxic version to smackers birthday cake lip gloss (You can buy an unopened Bonne Bell Lip Smackers Sponge on Layered Cake Shimmer Lip Gloss on Esty for $100 if you are so inclined. Etsy, you have everything!) Even the music I’m listening to is sending me back in time (I will not link it in order to maintain a bit of my dignity). I haven’t started watching old Disney channel movies yet, but I recently reminisced with someone about Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century. She had worked with Proto Zoa once. Zoom zoom zoom, make my heart go boom boom.
That is nostalgia — shared magic.
Am I recessing? Or am I just coming back to myself a bit more? I’ll keep you posted on that. But I’ve also been thinking about that time I met a true celebrity of our time. The one, the only — Johnny Tsunami:
“Good nostalgia but meant for kids”
Ed R, Rotten Tomatoes review (on Johnny Tsunami)
A few years ago, on a trip to Colorado with my husband to visit friends, we walked out on a frozen lake and scooted around in our shoes. I was marveling at it all — the iciness, the chill of the air, the complete lack of control I had on my own body as I slid around. It was all snow globe magic, until I hit a really slick part of the ice and went down. My head bounced. I looked up and three concerned faces stared back at me.
This was the part of the story where it gets a little ridiculous. I was sick. Not sick sick but hit-your-head-really-hard-and-probably-have-a-concussion sick. But we were on a trip! It was a time for adventure! A visit to the emergency room would have meant hours out of our short visit. So, I lied. I’m perfectly fiiiiiiiine, I insisted as though bouncing your head on ice was an everyday activity for me. Totally normal! I wake up and have a coffee and bounce my head on something and carry on my day! I’m casual like that! No cause for concern! Everything is fine!
I will say this is highly unusual for me. I am the queen of Web MD. Tell me your ailment and I will volley back a hypothesis based on years of Greys Anatomy viewership. You probably have a few years left to live.
But on that day, even when I sat on the floor of a public bathroom (I know) because I felt dizzy, I decided to keep my mouth shut and pretend that I was 100% okay. I WILL BE CHILL ABOUT THIS, I thought, I AM COMPLETELY FINE. This was even despite my husband’s best friend repeatedly asking if my head was fine because once, when they were children, she hit her head so hard on my husband’s family vacation that she fractured her skull.
I’m totally fine, concussed me said.
So, when we walked into a rock shop in the middle of somewhere Colorado, I was out of it to say the least. I had sat on a public bathroom floor. The world felt very off kelter. It was bendy — or I was bendy in it. The store was small. Everything was covered in rocks. Quartz, calcite, malachite, pyrite, fluorite. Rocks I’ve seen other places; rocks I’ve never seen. Little bowls of rocks and ones that were so large they cost hundreds of dollars. As we walked around this very small store, I saw someone that looked familiar out of the corner of my eye. I looked over and then back to the rocks. That guy looks so familiar, I whispered to my friend, he looks like someone I had algebra with in high school.
This, it appeared, was not a whisper. Concussed me does not whisper. I apparently spoke so loudly that it was impossible for anyone in the store to pretend they couldn’t hear me — especially not this man who I was convinced sat in a class where I pretended to understand mathematical equations. Did we find ‘x’ together? Did I ever find ‘x’ at all? My report cards would say no.
You don’t know me, he said, but some people know me because I was in a Disney movie. I was in Johnny Tsunami.
He could have said he was a triple Oscar winner. I was standing in front of an icon, Brandon Baker. He looked exactly the same as he did when he played Johnny Kapahala and was snowboarding across my childhood TV screen.
Concussed me kept exactly no chill. I squealed. I asked for a photo. OF COURSE I DID NOT HAVE ALGEBRA WITH YOU, I said. Could anything ever be more exciting than meeting an early aughts Disney Channel movie star? Most likely not. This could be because I was in a concussed fever dream, but I’d like to remember that moment not as a worrisome medical one, but as the time I met a true celebrity and reached back in time to experience some childhood joy.
You must have made his day, my husband later said, you acted like you met Meryl Streep.
Well, to childhood Laura, I did.
A few things:
Go follow Lori Snyder over at
for weekly writer exercises! They are joyful invitations to dive a little more into happiness.If you are wanting some time away to work on your art, I hope you consider applying to The Perch at Twin Peak’s Artist Residency. I’m helping to run this residency and I love being able to offer this to fellow creatives. I hope you apply & pass it along to anyone who is loving for a spring residency opportunity in Southern California. Dates are May 5-8, applications close April 11. Maybe I’ll see you there!
Tell me in the comments — what are you nostalgic for?
One of my most vivid childhood memories is playing olden times with you and also the Mary Kate and Ashley movies!