Tag Archives: TV

Don’t Let the Guinea Pig Sing at My Funeral

Posted on by Frank
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Took time off from most everything yesterday to bask in the sensation of feeling like crap.  A general, nebulous sickness for most of the day though it did start off nice and early with an ugly headache and some snazzy joint pain.  Why was I suffering so? Because God hates us all and I was just caught in the line of fire; struck by tiny thunderbolts in one of the Lord’s lazy, contemptuous snits.

Or I was getting the flu.  Either way I shuffled around getting the morning business done with the vexation plainly visible on my knotted face.  When the kids began their breakfast routine of picking on each other I gave them a stern, but calm, warning that dad was feeling pretty crummy and if they kept it up I was going to flip out in such a volcanically mental way we’d all end up in our rooms crying. They opted to believe me for a change and behaved liked nervous, paranoid angels until we took Jack to the bus stop.

Now it only took about three hours, from waking to seeing the boy off to school, for me to figure out a solution to the brain discomfort:  medicine.  How about some nice, over-the-counter analgesics like the small barrels of Advil we buy just in case somebody in the house comes down with something like a headache?  I almost went into a coma from that blinding blast of genius.  But I managed the stairs up to the drug pantry anyway and gulped down six Liqui-Gels before descending to the family room couch to stretch and await relief.

My head throbbed and there was a chill in my bones which was barely helped by a tight wrap in Jack’s Bruins Snuggie. But I was in a momentary bathing of bliss…I got the couch!  I never get the sofa.  Sometimes I’m given the end of it with the worst view angle to the TV but most often it’s filled with short people or wives or critters or dolls and I just get to sit in the kitchen.  At last it was mine and my legs were extended fully, arms relaxed atop the light blanket while a triple dose of ibuprofen began coursing through cerebral arteries.  The room took on the rosy pink of a new dawn.

Then Elsie showed up and wasn’t at all happy that her couch was occupied.  Her displeasure at having to suffer the love seat had her looming near me for a moment, three and half feet of miffed little girl with a menacing look to her.  Thought for sure she was going to drag me to the floor.  Instead she set herself up on the short sofa and did something even more sinister to me.  She turned the TV on to Wonder Pets…

I have an extensive list of kids’ programs which are shitty on merit alone.  Wonder Pets falls onto a shorter roster of shows which are probably good in intent and message but nevertheless rank among the most obnoxious things you can do to your eyes, ears and brain.  And it proves a severe threat to the efficacy of Advil.  At first I assumed Elsie had turned the volume high in retaliation for the loss of her couch.  In an embarrassingly whiny growl I told her to turn it down, focusing a single eye on the screen to make sure she got the level down from obvious triple-digit volume it was at.  I was wrong, it was only at the normal, conversational, level of 18.  Shocking and additionally dismaying as the display numbers dwindled towards 11 while the noise failed to diminish at all.  That’s due to the sickening little classic librettos WP uses in its intro and everywhere else in the abominable show.  The soundtrack is a razor-tipped assault of flutes and piccolos and oboes and every other shrill fucking instrument developed during the renaissance when everybody was near deaf from syphilis.  Couldn’t tell if the painkillers were working on the original headache because the television was launching sonic silicate needles through my cranium, setting huge crystal zinnias into bloom within the midbrain.  Elsie was having her revenge…I was going to die.

It may just sound like the headache ranting but Wonder Pets really is an overall atrocity no matter what your health.  The characters – guinea pig, turtle and duckling – are cutout photos set to jarring, angular animation amid a quasi-normal cartoon background, they sing everything in their tiny heads and the goddamned duck has the same goddamned speech impediment as that goddamned Baby Bear on Sesame Street.  It’s that speaking handicap in which r’s & l’s become w’s and terminal –er sounds are pronounced “oo”.  As in “Whe-oo can I wun to and save my ea-oos fwom wistening to Ming Ming the fweaking duckwing?” I’m all for inclusiveness in children’s television; it is important for kids to learn acceptance at early stages in life.  They need to develop a sense that our differences are all cool, especially the ones we have no control over.  So it’s fine to have a character with underdeveloped speech – as long as Ming Ming, Baby Bear and Elmo are shown trying to overcome the problem from time to time.  Otherwise it just teaches kids that developmental issues are perfectly normal and there’s little reason to try fixing them.  If Ming Ming doesn’t try pronouncing a solid “r” once in a while then the show’s producers should just make her a black lesbian duck and stick her in a wheelchair.  Maybe then I’d never have to endure the 8 year old across the street ringing the doorbell to ask “Is Jack heeoo?  Can he pway?”

Strong opinions of the show or not, I was still obliged to watch it yesterday.  Elsie likes it, I began to feel guilty for stealing the couch and the Advil was starting to edge out on the audio terrorism.  The trio of terrarium vermin was out to save a little ladybug from the clutches of a Venus flytrap in the bogs of North Carolina. The insect ignored the heroes’ warnings as it frolicked among the insectivorous fronds and that led Elsie to say,

Uh-oh, that ladybug is going to get eaten…

It should get eaten, I sourly explained to her, That freaking duck tried to warn it and it just wouldn’t listen. That ladybug needs to die now.

For a second I started to feel like I’d expressed an overly Darwinian opinion which my little girl didn’t need to hear.  Then Elsie, so often my greatest mental adversary, proved why she is also the planet’s coolest 5 year old and said,

You know, Daddy…I think you’re probably right.

12 Hours of Unnecessary Journalism

Posted on by Frank
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How will you taste with wasabi?

    8 or 9 or whatever PM  it was dark, so let’s just say later than 7:30) – Onto our patio at the Matahari Terbit for some smoke then into the room for some sleep.  No TV een Ingrish at Matahari.  It’s all in Indonesian. Or Dutch.  Indonesian TV sort of blows for Yanks, can’t understand the news and the all the shows, even soap operas, have actors dressed as Rama or Visnu or Siva performing ancient Hindu stuff and singing in groups of thousands.  In the morning I awoke truly believing I’d sprouted eight extra arms and a blue elephant head.  Had no idea how get out of bed with all these new appendages.

     Breakfast and coffee.  And more coffee.  Coffee is generally fantastic around here.  I had “Harold’s Scrambled Shirred Eggs”.  Pretty much a Denver omelet, scrambled and a unneeded reminder that I don’t like my eggs in any of those forms.  More bacon & butter sandwiches righted my meal course for the morning.  Forget what Elisa had but I think it was good.  No doubt all these breakfast entries have made for thrilling reading.  So let’s turn it blue, for entertainment value – Breakfast was a howl as I threw bottles at the waitress and farted violently while E flashed her tits at children! 

   Slipped in next door at the Bumbu Bali restaurant again to see the green turtles.  There were a couple of bins where little reptiles were just hatching.  That was, um “neato”?  No, it was more than that. It was awe-inspiring to see the birth of these future giants.  They were about the size of silver dollars and all flipping away their tiny flipping parts.  Plain cool.  We picked out two of the most active and had Von Holzen fry them up for a snack.

Tomorrow:  Outbreak!!!

Dumb Ass Children’s Television

Posted on by Frank
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CAUTION: This is an article about children’s television. But as I’m the one who wrote it parents are strongly advised not to let children under the age of 4 enjoy its content…

 

   It’s easy to trash what kids watch on TV. It’s even more natural for non-reproductive adults to rip apart characters created for the entertainment of the little people. As jaded grown-ups, long liberated from the vulgarity of whimsy and goofy delight, so much of what’s produced for children to enjoy cuts against our staled sense decorum.  But when assessing the merits of kids’ programming it really is important to remember that the shows were not designed for us.  We may have forgotten the exhilaration of unfettered expression or the exuberance in silliness but that’s no reason to steer our kids towards our dull state too quickly – they’ll lose their zest for life soon enough.  It’s important we keep our negative traps shut within earshot of kids, especially while they’re watching a show we find stupid or annoying.  It’s bad form to set your cheerless ass next to your child on the sofa and say, “What? Barney again? That Tyrannosissy is such a freakin’ queer…”

 

   You just can’t employ your sterilized sense of mirth when judging a kids’ show.  I was already in my nihilistic, hypercritical 20’s when Barney hit the airwaves.  I fell right in line with the sophisticated, urbane folks who felt the giggling, gay dinosaur was about the dumbest character ever created.  The Jack came along and changed everything.  Barney was an early favorite of his and suddenly the purple pansysaurus wasn’t simply a morning fixture on PBS – we actually owned Barney & Friends DVDs. What are you gonna do? It wasn’t my TV set anymore and I was happy enough knowing there was no way I’d ever let Jack become a cataleptic victim of those mind-numbing fucking Teletubbies.  Barney was harmless. Actually he was helpful as Jack talked about colors and numbers and even sang the “Clean Up” song while picking stuff up around the condo.

 

   And then we’re all at a BBQ where some spastic twin 5 year olds were flailing away at tee-ball, eager to stoke the futile fantasies of their baseball zealot daddy.  Not even two yet, Jack picked up a fat plastic bat, hoisted it over his left shoulder, got into a proper batting stance and asked me to throw him a ball. Which I did and which he hit. Jaws dropped but no one was as stunned as I.  I dig sports but I’m no aging mighta been hell bent on raising a Wheaties model.  Hitting balls and catching them is fun but since organized baseball sucks the joy out of it I hadn’t even gotten around to having a whiffle bat at home. It was shocking to realize who’d actually been sneaking my son some batting lessons…It was Barney. Specifically it was Barney’s creepy, yellow sidekick BJ. That nasal protoceratops midget was a baseball fanatic and Jack had been paying attention. It had me wondering if BJ played hockey too or if Barney had any songs about calculus.

 

   Up to that point we’d been fairly attentive to what was being watched in the family room.  We’d look for overall wholesome themes, with minimal nudity or bloodshed, and we wanted them to be engaging. So there was Bob the Builder, Dora, Diego, Sesame Street and no Teletubbies or those perverse freakin’ Boo-Bahs.  But I started taking note if Jack was getting anything out of the programs. What might seem groovy and interactive to us may have had little impact on him.  I thought Bob or Diego had neat little shows, but Jack didn’t seem to give a crap.

 

   So we removed ourselves a touch from the equation. Our main role was as Brain Police – nothing stupid – and we’d gauge whether to return to certain shows or get more of them by Jack’s response: Was he reacting to anything? Did he sing or dance or try talking back to the characters? Was he really watching?

 

   That last question is very important. Even when sitting still a child’s face can reveal what kind of impact a TV show is having on him. If he/she is sitting up watching with pleasant but shifting expressions then all is cool.  If she’s slouching in the dead leer of a junkie with a fresh armful of smack change the channel or shut the tube off – too much of that will lead to a youth of mediocre report cards brought home by your lazy and irritating spawn.  If he’s frozen in front of the screen with eyelids failing to blink over empty eyes then you might want to start the antipsychotic drugs early before the squeaky bunnies in his head start telling him to kill.

 

   Not every kids’ show needs to be profoundly educational. Some fail simply because they’re trying too hard to be developmentally “correct” and intelligent. A kid needs fun stuff too. We’ve always let Jack have a little SpongeBob – a dose of silly comedy to counterbalance shows like Caillou which teach kids that the appropriate first response to adversity is a whole lot of fucking whining.  But as everything has an effect on little minds with plenty of space to fill just make sure that your kids are getting some decent messages in there.  Remember that next time somebody lets a public door shut in your face – that inconsiderate cocksucker shoulda watched more Barney.