Hey! Want to be scared? Sure, we all do! And it doesn't take a viewing of the Halloween remake to do it. Why, you can be frightened out of your wits in the comfort of your own home, and bring the kids along for the ride!
Somehow, Biz Markie (he's got what you ne-EEd) was allowed to have a career again. Only this time, he's appearing on children's television. He makes several appearances on Yo Gabba Gabba!, a freakish hybrid of Godzilla, Power Rangers and the Mr. Men books, conceived by the Aquabats.
The setup is this. DJ Lance Rock (think Mr. Rogers in a tracksuit, only more condescending, like he's dealing with the retarded) plays with and feeds his living action figures in a giant cut-out diorama. The figures come to life in the form of people in rubber monster suits, and the camera zooms into the diorama and shows them close-up, taking orders from the good DJ. They stomp around, dance, and shoot each other with lasers. Their costumes are particularly disturbing, with one appearing as a big, nubbed, rounded red cylinder that looks like a dancing dildo. Segments are broken up with retro 80's video game graphics set to hyperactive Japanese anime music. Sometimes Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo shows up to teach the monsters how to draw.
But to describe the show with words does injustice to the sheer terror that will envelop you as you watch this. Some clips are much more disturbing than others. Do you have a party in your tummy?
So. In about twenty years, we can expect the pharmaceutical industry to make record profits, as an entire generation tries to block out the damage incurred during their fragile, warped youth.
Showing posts with label childrens television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label childrens television. Show all posts
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Jakers!
In the process of once again revamping and recasting the ill-fated Goodnight Show, Sprout has imported a new batch of children's shows from the UK.
One of these is Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks. We caught a snippet of this in a hotel in London when we visited a couple years ago, and I knew even then that, as British childrens' television programming, it was destined to wind up on public television here in America eventually when the Teletubbies jumped the shark. And now, that time has come.
Jakers! (an exclamation I must manage to work into my everyday speech more often) is about the now-elderly Piggley Winks, and his tendency to narrate the events of his Irish childhood to his grandkids in neat twenty-minute blocks. He spent his childhood in the company of a cow and a duck, who, much like himself, walked upright and spoke English with an Irish accent.
Okay, so far, so good. But then this anthropomorphic fun takes a turn towards the bizarre.
Piggley's best friend is a cow, Fernando Toro. Fernando is male, but referred to as a cow. His father is a male and a bull, who also stands upright and speaks English. But the Toro family also keeps cows, who act like real cows and moo and walk on four legs!
Piggley's family keeps sheep. The sheep, when out of Piggley's view, speak English and walk upright, living out their own subplots until Piggley arrives on the scene again, at which point they behave like regular sheep again. The sheep's leader, Wiley, is voiced by Mel Brooks, because he was available.
Of course, one good reason an Irish farm family in the 1950's would be keeping sheep would be for meat. So the pigs are likely slaughtering animals just as intelligent as they are, merely because the sheep don't want to reveal that they're really living secret lives of excitement while the pigs are out of sight. If you ask me, the sheep need to think things over a bit.
But my real concern in poor Fernando. While I applaud his liberation from traditional gender roles, I can't help but worry that the guy is seriously messed up as an adult by the whole cannibalism thing his family had going on back in the day. Shemale Fernando, a disappointment to his hypermasculine blacksmith father, is forced to chow down every night on potential members of his own family! How messed up is that?! Does he drink milk? Does he drink it from his mom, his slave-cows, or even himself?!
Piggley as a child was reasonably well-adjusted, and yet now spends his time exaggerating boring anecdotes until his grandkids try to put him in a home. What has become of poor Fernando fifty years out? Is he wearing the leather skins of his victims and carving up hookers in Whitechapel?
Run, Piggley, run!
One of these is Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks. We caught a snippet of this in a hotel in London when we visited a couple years ago, and I knew even then that, as British childrens' television programming, it was destined to wind up on public television here in America eventually when the Teletubbies jumped the shark. And now, that time has come.
Jakers! (an exclamation I must manage to work into my everyday speech more often) is about the now-elderly Piggley Winks, and his tendency to narrate the events of his Irish childhood to his grandkids in neat twenty-minute blocks. He spent his childhood in the company of a cow and a duck, who, much like himself, walked upright and spoke English with an Irish accent.
Okay, so far, so good. But then this anthropomorphic fun takes a turn towards the bizarre.
Piggley's best friend is a cow, Fernando Toro. Fernando is male, but referred to as a cow. His father is a male and a bull, who also stands upright and speaks English. But the Toro family also keeps cows, who act like real cows and moo and walk on four legs!
Piggley's family keeps sheep. The sheep, when out of Piggley's view, speak English and walk upright, living out their own subplots until Piggley arrives on the scene again, at which point they behave like regular sheep again. The sheep's leader, Wiley, is voiced by Mel Brooks, because he was available.
Of course, one good reason an Irish farm family in the 1950's would be keeping sheep would be for meat. So the pigs are likely slaughtering animals just as intelligent as they are, merely because the sheep don't want to reveal that they're really living secret lives of excitement while the pigs are out of sight. If you ask me, the sheep need to think things over a bit.
But my real concern in poor Fernando. While I applaud his liberation from traditional gender roles, I can't help but worry that the guy is seriously messed up as an adult by the whole cannibalism thing his family had going on back in the day. Shemale Fernando, a disappointment to his hypermasculine blacksmith father, is forced to chow down every night on potential members of his own family! How messed up is that?! Does he drink milk? Does he drink it from his mom, his slave-cows, or even himself?!
Piggley as a child was reasonably well-adjusted, and yet now spends his time exaggerating boring anecdotes until his grandkids try to put him in a home. What has become of poor Fernando fifty years out? Is he wearing the leather skins of his victims and carving up hookers in Whitechapel?
Run, Piggley, run!
Saturday, December 9, 2006
The Horrors of the Preschool Music Scene
There was a time when, as a preschooler, you had very limited musical choices. You had Bert & Ernie, or Ozzy Osbourne, depending on the type of household you grew up in. Today's kids have choices that are much, much more frightening than Ozzy.
The kids bands of 2006 are divided into an east coast/west coast rivalry that's based on the network they're affiliated with. Disney has the Wiggles, the Doodlebops, and Dan Zanes. Noggin has Laurie Berkner, who serves as that station's house performer.
Let's explore all of these, and why each is scary.
You all know The Wiggles. Four middle-aged Australian men, apparently rejected from Thunder From Down Under, who now encourage your children to "wiggle" rhythmically. They're accompanied by a pirate with a tickling fetish, a stoned octopus, and a dog whose ever-changing cheap costume seems to be the font of all continuity errors. One of the Wiggles recently retired due to blood pressure problems, but it doesn't matter. As long as the new one wears a yellow shirt, no one will be the wiser.
The Wiggles' Monkees are the Doodlebops. Three twentysomethings in grotesque day-glo plastic costumes and face paint, they're driven around Canada by their white-rapper bus driver who stole his moves from Vanilla Ice. They are all incredibly gay. In the Canadian children's television tradition of You Can't Do That on Television, one of the characters gets water dumped on him in each and every episode. But trust me, you don't want to see each and every episode. Once is enough to understand why Canadians, each and every one, are mentally retarded.
Dan Zanes (and Friends) does not have his own show. Instead, he exists in the five-minute void at the end of each half-hour where commercials would air, if they were allowed during preschool programming. Dan's Friends are a band of hip young retrosexuals who allow him to live out his fantasy of fronting the Talking Heads. Dan's schtick is that he invades a Manhattan townhouse and holds a mini impromptu party for the kids there and then leaves. Locking your doors and not buzzing him in should prevent this.
Ralph, a newcomer to the scene, also has no show of his own. He pops out of a suitcase, flops his long hair around, and sings peppy but banal tunes while his tweenage daughter is forced to wear a "My Dad Rocks" T-shirt next to him. Ralph isn't too convincing as a children's act. It's like he got kicked off a college radio station at the ripe age of 40 and decided kids were the only market that wouldn't see through him. But they do anyway.
I've only seen these guys a couple times, but the Imagination Movers are a group of college-age guys in matching jumpsuits, who think they're much, much more entertaining to families than they actually are. During their videos, the camera pans out to the audience, and it's always half-empty. The few people who are there are visibly bored, not clapping, and sometimes yawning. I haven't seen enough of them to really get what makes them notable except for the jumpsuits, but I think the suits speak for themselves. And the tomatoes from the audience say things best not spoken in front of preschoolers.
Across the dial on Noggin is the Laurie Berkner Band. She may be Noggin's only catch (they lost Dan Zanes to Disney) but they certainly put her to use. Asides from forcing her to sing to puppets on Jack's Big Music Show, they also use her in all of their ads, specials, public events, and ice-capades. Laurie churns out dozens of identical music videos, which feature her, her husband, and their female friend bopping around a world of solid secondary colors. You just know they're having a threesome offscreen, because no couple who hangs out with their female friend that much isn't having sex with her. Laurie invariably wears really tight shirts, but she also invariably wears a bra, because come on, this is preschool.
So now you know. The best, nay, only choice for your children's sanity and well-being is to lock them up, away from all music (preferably in a small closet underneath the stairwell) and board up your windows lest Dan Zanes try to kick through and stage an uncalled-for beach party in your living room.
The kids bands of 2006 are divided into an east coast/west coast rivalry that's based on the network they're affiliated with. Disney has the Wiggles, the Doodlebops, and Dan Zanes. Noggin has Laurie Berkner, who serves as that station's house performer.
Let's explore all of these, and why each is scary.
You all know The Wiggles. Four middle-aged Australian men, apparently rejected from Thunder From Down Under, who now encourage your children to "wiggle" rhythmically. They're accompanied by a pirate with a tickling fetish, a stoned octopus, and a dog whose ever-changing cheap costume seems to be the font of all continuity errors. One of the Wiggles recently retired due to blood pressure problems, but it doesn't matter. As long as the new one wears a yellow shirt, no one will be the wiser.
The Wiggles' Monkees are the Doodlebops. Three twentysomethings in grotesque day-glo plastic costumes and face paint, they're driven around Canada by their white-rapper bus driver who stole his moves from Vanilla Ice. They are all incredibly gay. In the Canadian children's television tradition of You Can't Do That on Television, one of the characters gets water dumped on him in each and every episode. But trust me, you don't want to see each and every episode. Once is enough to understand why Canadians, each and every one, are mentally retarded.
Dan Zanes (and Friends) does not have his own show. Instead, he exists in the five-minute void at the end of each half-hour where commercials would air, if they were allowed during preschool programming. Dan's Friends are a band of hip young retrosexuals who allow him to live out his fantasy of fronting the Talking Heads. Dan's schtick is that he invades a Manhattan townhouse and holds a mini impromptu party for the kids there and then leaves. Locking your doors and not buzzing him in should prevent this.
Ralph, a newcomer to the scene, also has no show of his own. He pops out of a suitcase, flops his long hair around, and sings peppy but banal tunes while his tweenage daughter is forced to wear a "My Dad Rocks" T-shirt next to him. Ralph isn't too convincing as a children's act. It's like he got kicked off a college radio station at the ripe age of 40 and decided kids were the only market that wouldn't see through him. But they do anyway.
I've only seen these guys a couple times, but the Imagination Movers are a group of college-age guys in matching jumpsuits, who think they're much, much more entertaining to families than they actually are. During their videos, the camera pans out to the audience, and it's always half-empty. The few people who are there are visibly bored, not clapping, and sometimes yawning. I haven't seen enough of them to really get what makes them notable except for the jumpsuits, but I think the suits speak for themselves. And the tomatoes from the audience say things best not spoken in front of preschoolers.
Across the dial on Noggin is the Laurie Berkner Band. She may be Noggin's only catch (they lost Dan Zanes to Disney) but they certainly put her to use. Asides from forcing her to sing to puppets on Jack's Big Music Show, they also use her in all of their ads, specials, public events, and ice-capades. Laurie churns out dozens of identical music videos, which feature her, her husband, and their female friend bopping around a world of solid secondary colors. You just know they're having a threesome offscreen, because no couple who hangs out with their female friend that much isn't having sex with her. Laurie invariably wears really tight shirts, but she also invariably wears a bra, because come on, this is preschool.
So now you know. The best, nay, only choice for your children's sanity and well-being is to lock them up, away from all music (preferably in a small closet underneath the stairwell) and board up your windows lest Dan Zanes try to kick through and stage an uncalled-for beach party in your living room.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Can we fix it? With the proper building code, we can!
So we're watching Bob the Builder, and I realize that one of the little clay workers Bob hangs with (asides from Token Black Girl, Butch Lesbian, and Anthropomorphic Backhoe) is a scarecrow. Huh. That's freakin' weird.
Given that the whole plot of every episode revolves around Bob building something for free, and the scarecrow screwing things up accidentally before everything works out for the best, I'm trying to decode the hidden Marxist dogma that's surely embedded between every other frame of jerky stop-motion action. After all, it airs on PBS, home of hardcore socialist propaganda like Antiques Roadshow.
Bob represents the worker. Got it. Token Black Girl represents the idealism of the united, colorblind Workforce of the People. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Butch Lesbian is there to exhibit gender equality. Cool. The backhoe can talk because this is a cartoon and if Orko from Masters of the Universe isn't available, someone has to be the comic relief.
The scarecrow? Um... Help me out, people. If I were Bob, merrily building away without charging for my services or obtaining proper building permits, and this thing with a carrot nose and a bag for a head came up and started getting all Jar-Jar on me, what would I do? First, I'd ask if he was union and if not, tell him this is a closed shop. But second, I would run like hell and not turn back, because when undead scarecrows with carrot noses appear at your construction site, it's a good bet you're building on an Indian burial ground and the thing wants your fucking entrails for lunch.
Given that the whole plot of every episode revolves around Bob building something for free, and the scarecrow screwing things up accidentally before everything works out for the best, I'm trying to decode the hidden Marxist dogma that's surely embedded between every other frame of jerky stop-motion action. After all, it airs on PBS, home of hardcore socialist propaganda like Antiques Roadshow.
Bob represents the worker. Got it. Token Black Girl represents the idealism of the united, colorblind Workforce of the People. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Butch Lesbian is there to exhibit gender equality. Cool. The backhoe can talk because this is a cartoon and if Orko from Masters of the Universe isn't available, someone has to be the comic relief.
The scarecrow? Um... Help me out, people. If I were Bob, merrily building away without charging for my services or obtaining proper building permits, and this thing with a carrot nose and a bag for a head came up and started getting all Jar-Jar on me, what would I do? First, I'd ask if he was union and if not, tell him this is a closed shop. But second, I would run like hell and not turn back, because when undead scarecrows with carrot noses appear at your construction site, it's a good bet you're building on an Indian burial ground and the thing wants your fucking entrails for lunch.
Monday, July 24, 2006
The Goodbye Show
So in the past, I've mentioned Melanie, the PBS babysitter character who hosts the network's evening cartoon lineup. Good ol' Mel was an "enchanted babysitter" of some sort, who always overenthused with gusto about whatever obscure British short was on its way, before launching into a terrifying dance about crafts and teaching us bad sign language. She scared me.
Melanie has been absent for several days, and I was finally curious enough to find out why. For the past few weeks her stock had been rising on the network, and she'd even been filming new segments (they recycle heavily), joined by a new freakish puppet named Star. Why would she vanish at the start of a new season of segments?
Mel, as it turns out, starred in a video called "Technical Virgin". Some sources describe it as a spoof PSA, others as a full-blown Melanie-Does-Dallas foray into the world of anal intrigue. Whatever the case (help me, Google, find me the screen caps!) Melanie is no more, and now the cartoons are unhosted. At least, as a by-product, Star the creepy puppet is gone, too. See ya in hell, Star!
I'd always suspected there was something pervy lurking behind Melanie's spastic facade. But then again, children's television is all about the couched metaphor. Yesterday, Noggin was showing the jumping-the-shark episode of Blue's Clues where Blue started becoming a talking puppet and ripping off Elmo's World. A fairy godmother came to Blue, now a puppy teenager, and told her of her "greatest gift" and to find a hole that her key would fit into. When Blue finally found the keyhole (quoth the key, "It's working! I'm turning!") Blue was enveloped in sparkly blue ecstacy and found her voice. She eventually had to return to 2-D, but was told that anytime she put the key into the hole she could come back.
Um, yeah. Melanie's antics have nothing on the font of filth that is post-Steve Blue's Clues.
Melanie has been absent for several days, and I was finally curious enough to find out why. For the past few weeks her stock had been rising on the network, and she'd even been filming new segments (they recycle heavily), joined by a new freakish puppet named Star. Why would she vanish at the start of a new season of segments?
Mel, as it turns out, starred in a video called "Technical Virgin". Some sources describe it as a spoof PSA, others as a full-blown Melanie-Does-Dallas foray into the world of anal intrigue. Whatever the case (help me, Google, find me the screen caps!) Melanie is no more, and now the cartoons are unhosted. At least, as a by-product, Star the creepy puppet is gone, too. See ya in hell, Star!
I'd always suspected there was something pervy lurking behind Melanie's spastic facade. But then again, children's television is all about the couched metaphor. Yesterday, Noggin was showing the jumping-the-shark episode of Blue's Clues where Blue started becoming a talking puppet and ripping off Elmo's World. A fairy godmother came to Blue, now a puppy teenager, and told her of her "greatest gift" and to find a hole that her key would fit into. When Blue finally found the keyhole (quoth the key, "It's working! I'm turning!") Blue was enveloped in sparkly blue ecstacy and found her voice. She eventually had to return to 2-D, but was told that anytime she put the key into the hole she could come back.
Um, yeah. Melanie's antics have nothing on the font of filth that is post-Steve Blue's Clues.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Jumping the Shark
Having a toddler means spending actual discussion time debating the point where Dora the Explorer jumped the shark. Was it when Diego appeared? Or whey they finally got the budget to add two more stock animation poses to her repertoire?
Personally, I think it was the episode where she bought a motorcycle and leaped over the tank of sharks in the Arnold's parking lot.
Personally, I think it was the episode where she bought a motorcycle and leaped over the tank of sharks in the Arnold's parking lot.
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