Children's Shows You Should Pray You Never See

With political correctness the number one rule, cartoons in today's world feel like fast food;  homogeneous, devoid of any actual conflict and lacking in any intellectual value other than what could be discerned in five minutes or less of talking with a two year old. 

There's one main character with two side kicks. One of the trio either has the ability to create anything or acquire anything.  They must all get from point a to point b.  The other sidekick is more of a writer's crutch, giving necessary background information that the creators want delivered to the kids and move the plot (such as it is) along.  The journey goes through three terrains or conflicts of some sort.  There will be a nemesis who must be stopped.  They will arrive at the end spot.  Everyone will cheer and there will be a party but no cake.   Bleah.  We need a broader array of ideas for entertaining the future of our country than a watered down version of Dungeons and Dragons where there is one main player with two Dungeon Master controlled non player characters, one sporting a bag of holding.

Literature to the rescue!

The following are solely my ideas. If you pitch this to a person in Hollywood and they make a show staring Miley Cyrus and Justin Beiber because it would be cool, you owe me money.  I'll collect when we both meet in the nether regions of the underworld --you for making it a reality, me for thinking of it in the first place. 

10) The Prince:  Narrated by the one who used to be and is again so named, this afternoon educational program would show kids how to use the techniques outlined by Machiavelli to navigate the rough jungle world of playground friendships and the politics of classroom etiquette.

9) They're All Greek to Me:  Classic Greek Myths told from the monsters' point of view.  Of course the society of hydras, gorgons, medusas and sirens would lament the evil persecution of their people by those annoying demigods who were always going around chopping off heads and stealing our treasure.  Each show would end with the monsters eating at least a few "heroes" as part of getting back at the 1%. 

8) Jane Austen Survivor Style:  Post MTV generation teens put in the countryside estate setting of 19th Century England.  Each week, contestants would be voted off the island for non Austenian type mannerisms and behavior, with the winner becoming the owner of said estate. 

7) Upton Sinclair Street:  The Values of Socialism and Vegetarianism all in one place as narrated by a muppet who lives with a family that suffers exploitation.  No word on whether McDonald's would be willing to run commercials during the breaks.  Hey Kids...Happy Meals.

6) Shakespeare in Ponyville:  My Little Ponies...doing Shakespeare. What????  They'd watch it.

5) Canterberry Tales: Because all cartoons are promos for toys, the surplus Strawberry Shortcake dolls et all would be used to enact the pilgrimage to the see the Holy Blissful Martyr's shrine.  The main character would occasionally break the 4th wall to teach the young viewers Olde English.  "Can you say, "WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote..."

4) Hemming's Way:  A Geography show.  The main character Earnest is a boy who travels the world.  He explores the snows of Kilimanjaro, runs with the Bulls in Spain, drinks Maraschino Cherry juice in Venice and visits Great Britain to make friends with the nurses at the local hospital.  The narrator is the same character but as an old man, retired and living in Key West, Florida.  He spends his time fishing for prize marlins.

3) Sun Tzu's Ancient Art:  Five kids come together to learn military strategy and various marital arts. They are called upon in each episode to apply the tenet put forth by the master as they battle the forces of evil.  Agents are currently investigating if this could be color coded, red, blue, gold, green and black and each of the five have special ships that they alone control, one a plane, one a motor bike, one a boat, one a car and one a rocket. They would also be mutated to be half human half insect and each would be named after a famous composer of classical music. Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart and the rebel, Rachmaninoff.   They'd para sail in their spare time, eat pizzas sprinkled with tofu and have wacky not discernible from anywhere accents. 

2)  For the Bible Belt/those who are sad that Veggie tales was taken over by ABC:The Adventures of Noah, Pokemon Master: He caught them all.....twice. Except for those pesky Unicorns.

1) Young Twilight: The stories of Young Edward and Jacob and Bella. 

I'll be waiting for the call from my agent.

p.s. Sorry for the earlier copy with misspellings. I did a spell check but it saved the prior version.

And That's Why They Watch TV

"I don't believe in a no win scenario." --James T. Kirk.
Captain Kirk never was a Mom.  --me. 

My children can tell when I'm in one of these moods, when all screens are evil. I'll announce that I've changed the pass codes to all the televisions and disconnected the Wi-Fi except to my own laptop which has a password none of them know. In my zealous madness, I hide the remotes and batteries separately and have been known to unplug all the machines as well so that there is defense in depth against children getting to vegetate before a TV, computer or video game.


"Outside! or Homework! or Practice!" A choice of three very different hells born of boredom awaits my offspring. The older ones groan and take their pick, usually opting to get the school stuff out of the way, hoping to pacify my need to crack down with dutifulness. It's been known to work. Middles try to extract bargains. These get shot down but it does give them more stall time on starting their assignments.

Mom's dictatorial ruthless outlawing of all things on Cable, DVD's, Wii and DS never lasts long. It would be even shorter lived if those kids paid attention to the ones calling all the shots, the toddlers.

It was a warm winter day, the kind made for bike riding, for discovering the outdoors when there are no bugs and it isn't so unpleasant that you need gloves. Unloading from school, the olders scurried in for snacks but the 2nd, K and younger set pulled out the scooter and the trikes and the bikes and started drawing a road for traffic patterns.

Pleased as I unloaded the baby that they were using their imaginations and exercising and being outdoors, I smiled, filled with the pseudo virtue that comes from being a Mom, catching your kids doing something good, and having had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Inside the house, I started fixing snack. I wouldn't call them in I decided, I didn't want to interrupt the fun. That would be mean.
I fed the baby. I heard a few sounds of happy laughter. Silly laughter. By this point, my mom radar should have registered “check,” but I was still trying to pretend I was offhanded and relaxed, to bask in the coolness of having four kids outside playing, four inside doing homework, and a happy 15 month old working on solid foods.

Thwack! Slurp. It sounded like something was thrown. It sounded like something mushy hit something. More giggles. Thwack! Thwack! Slump. SLump. SLump. "WOW!" "MOMMMMM."

Racing and already knowing I'm too late, my son comes in, his white shirt doing a splendid imitation of a Dalmatian. He is covered, speckled with mud. His two sisters come after him, happy and semi-horrified respectively. They too are caked from the knees down. Squelch. Squelch. Squelch. My van is also spackled with mud balls.

A child is still playing. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" I try to just have volume, not irritation. It isn't very convincing.

"I'm making mud soup. Just like in that book." She explains. She is forking a giant puddle of mud with a large stick, stirring it to make even more.

"You're a mess."

"Oh. Does this mean I have to come inside?"

Three showers, a carwash and four loads of laundry later, exhausted, I handed my daughter the remote. "Dora the Explorer is on, channel 56. The code is 1441."

All Rise, The Honorable Judge IMHO Presiding

Hallmark sentimentality is a hallmark of the season, but sometimes, these movies and specials cross from being harmless sugarplums to being something else. The following five films have been charged with injuring the Christmas spirit specifically mine.

Judge IMHO (In my humble opinion for those who don’t speak text) presides and shall issue rulings on each of the accused.

Nestor the Christmas Donkey: Rudolph had his red nose; so obviously, the Nativity must have done some outreach from an outcast that would be identifiable to kids! Those shepherds and kings are so boring. Solution: Create a stop motion donkey with excessively long ears. Have the other mules make fun of him. Have his mother die keeping him warm. Have him cry repeatedly on screen and a slow tin eared poetic cowboy narrator sing a mournful refrain to move the plot along. One plus: It’s not the little Drummer boy.


Judge IMHO’s Verdict: Guilty for hijacking the Christmas story with a plot line from Bambi and adding the donkey mommy’s soul encouraging Nestor on his journey in a Luke Trust your feelings or Lion King Remember me kind of way. It’s also unwatchable for really bad singing.

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer: In 2000, this goofy spoof of a song morphed into a 45 minute animated Scooby Do type mystery/trial of Santa. Who framed Saint Nick? Cousin Nell. (Oh No! I’ve spoiled the surprise!) A deejay got fired for playing this song 15 times, but his offense was truly light, as Time Warner sees fit to re-air this one joke fruitcake every year. There will be a reckoning.

Judge IMHO’s Verdict: Guilty! Being tacky and stupid isn’t supposed to a crime, but this time, it should be. There was a serious debate about whether forcing the creators of this toon to view Nestor could be considered cruel and unusual. Not if I make the Nestor guys watch Grandma . Ahhh parity of pain induced by bad earworm tunes.

Barbie Nutcracker: We own this one. Consequently, I ponied up to take my daughter to a real version of the ballet. It was a shock to her mind to discover the Sugar Plum Fairy was NOT the primary character and that the Rat King was not turning everyone to stone with his magic staff.

Judge IMHO’s Verdict: Probation. My daughter liked the real thing better, but she still watches it. She still loves it. It survives until the DVD gets scratched and I’m free forever. I’d write more but I’m still picking the pink residue dryer lint out of my brain from the last viewing.

The Arthur Christmas Special: Normally, I’m a big fan of Marc Brown and all of Arthur’s adventures. The subtle humor that sometimes sparkles through has made many an afternoon of folding laundry with my kiddos tolerable, especially as the alternative to Pokémon. But this cartoon’s ecumenical outreach program goes astray when the only proclaimed Christians are portrayed as buffoons. (The Crosswires bring the Frenskies a ham and of course, the Frenskies are Jewish). Every other tradition that happens to coincide with December including the agnostic single mom and son Baxter family gets portrayed as having meaning and depth.

Judge IMHO’s Verdict: Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Granted, it’s a cartoon, but is having people attend Church is so controversial that we can’t show that on public television? Never mind, forget I asked. I suppose showing devout Christians taking their holiday seriously like those of other faith is considered more mythological than Santa Claus.

Prosecutor’s Note: The Arthur special beat out Recess’s “Holiday” episode even though the later had two girls dress as druids to explain the Yuletide season because the former still runs on the air seasonally and is financed by tax dollars but it was a close call. I couldn’t send the later up because that one is so obscure. Trust me. Even now, I’m ever so close to wavering. 4th Grade Girl Druids! My brain hurts.

While resolutely refusing to acknowledge anything remotely religious about the existence of Christmas is itself nothing new, it does wear after a time so I take comfort in knowing, that ours is a powerful true God, or else the world would not be so fearful of acknowledging His story or even acknowledging someone acknowledging.

Hmmm. Maybe I should rescind on poor old Nestor. Donkey souls vs. soulless. I’ll have to think on that.

Tune in next time when Judge IMHO considers the radio during the weeks leading up to Christmas.