Sunday, August 29, 2010

Say It With Me...

I was reading this thing on Pitchfork (I know, I know). It reminded me how awesome the "Big Me" video was. It was great to see somebody else in on the same stupid, cynical jokes that we were all making with our friends.

Cut to almost 15 (!!!) years later, and enter Dora the Explorer. Isaac loves that chick. Maybe it's the way she's always smiling at him, or maybe it's the monkey, but even at 7 months, Dora can stop the child in his tracks for 15-20 minutes at a time (which, in parenting years is the equivalent of a 3 week backpacking trip through the Italian countryside).

This program, like most children's programs, is based on bright colors, endless repetition, and a screaming protagonist. What sets this particular 22 minutes of child-silencing inanity apart are the anthropomorphic backpack and map. The backpack thinks that all the items s/he holds are "muy delicioso!" and the map has a theme song (the general sentiment of which is that he is the map, he's the map, he's the map), and will ask you to say it with him.

Sound painfully dumb? It is. As I've written before, babies don't know shit. And that extends well into their mid 20s. However, parents around the world have found ways to cope: namely, by shamelessly insulting everything their children hold dear. In one episode, backpack "eats" some other backpacks. Do you have ANY IDEA how many "Cannibal Apocalypse" jokes I made about that? And I'm not the only one doing this:




Even better? Apparently, this has been going on for YEARS.

I remember catching a clip of Sesame Street at some point in college, and thinking "man, Bert and Ernie are gay!" Apparently, our parents were saying that to each other 20 damn years ago. Barney has long been considered a pederast in the darkest chambers of mommy and daddy's hearts. Even before then, parents made snide remarks about the hand up Howdy Doody's ass.

Everything you ever loved as a child was a source of endless hateful, often filthy joking and snickering for your parents.

Awesome.

3 comments:

  1. Everything we love now is a source of endless hateful, often filthy joking and snickering for our parents Dave.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Which is good, because I love my parents.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've been shamelessly insulting everything everyone holds dear for a full 30 years, now. I WAS BORN TO BE A PARENT!!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete