KJToo

Over the past two years, my young apprentice has been a source of amusement, joy, amazement, wonder and, above all, pride. He has also been a source of frustration, befuddlement, more frustration and, on occasion, disappointment. Not disappointment in him, mind you, but disappointment in myself; in my clear failings as a parent.

I have to believe that every parent experiences moments of fear, denial and confusion when their offspring makes a choice that goes against every tenet of their upbringing. When, as parents, we witness these blatant affronts to our values, the question that echoes endlessly in our thoughts must certainly be, Where did I go so wrong?

And so it is with my young apprentice and his preference for Joe.

Yes, Joe. Not Steve, but Joe.

Where did I go so wrong? Did I not read to him enough in the first twenty-four months? Was I neglecting him in some manner crucial to his development? How can this have happened?

“Boo’s Coos!” he exclaims. “Boo’s Coos Joe!”

“How about Steve?” I ask, hopefully, poised to queue up “What Experiment Does Blue Want to Do?” or “Snack Time”.

“No!” is his reply. “Boo’s Coos Joe!”

So it is Joe that we watch. Joe in his orange shirt. Joe, whose real name isn’t even Joe, but Donovan Patton.1 Joe, who can’t even be bothered to draw in the notebook himself; instead, the clues simply appear in the notebook, then sing about themselves (”I’m scrunched up eyebrows!“).2 Joe, who, at the end of each episode, sings, “Me and you and our friend, Blue” instead of “Me and you and my dog, Blue.”3 Joe, who must, must, must somehow be responsible for the abomination that is Blue’s Room.4 Joe, who isn’t fit to sit down in the thinking chair and think, think, thi-i-ink.

Admittedly, we thirty-something parents are a little protective of our own precious memories, and the idea of our children latching on to some obviously inferior reimagining of our favorite childhood icon (e.g., Transformers Animated, Ruxpin: The Next Generation, any Star Wars film produced after 1983) chills us to the very core. But that does nothing to explain the bias I have with respect to the hosts of Blue’s Clues. The show came along well after I had stopped watching Nickelodeon (apart from SpongeBob Squarepants) and well before my young apprentice started; I had never really watched it prior to becoming a parent, and by the time my progeny arrived Joe had been the host for four years.

Despite the fact that my bias does not spring from the fear that the kids today are trampling all over my beloved childhood, I am biased. Perhaps it is basic human nature: an inherent belief that change is something to be feared and the original will always, always, always be the best.5 I don’t know; I’m neither psychologist nor social anthropologist. I am, I suppose, just a caveman, one who assumes a threatening posture and shrieks loudly whenever he hears Joe sing, “Come on in. What did you say? A clue! A clue!”

Therein lies the uncomfortable truth: there’s simply no logic to my preference for Steve. I feel a surge of hope on those all-too-rare occasions when my young apprentice says, “Boo’s Coos Steve! Geen Steve!” and a few seconds later, there he is: Steve in his green shirt. Steve, who somehow makes finding three blue pawprints a true adventure. Steve, who skidoos into a book or a painting like no one else can. Steve, whose true feelings for shy Miranda6 will forever be unspoken. Steve, who should never go off to college and leave poor Blue with his orange-shirt-wearing7 younger brother.

But all too soon it will be time for so long, and as Steve sings just one more song, I find myself fearing that the next time my young apprentice wants “Boo’s Coos” he will once again demand to see Joe, and the dreaded question will once again spring to mind: Where did I go so wrong?

1. Why the lies, “Joe”? What do you have to hide? [back]
2. More deception. Why do you even bother with the crayon, Joe? The whole thing is a giant farce with you. [back]
3. Because she’s not your dog, Joe! She’ll never be your dog! Blue will always be Steve’s dog, and I’ll bet that just eats away at you, doesn’t it? [back]
4. She talks! Blue talks! From what bizarre alternate reality did the notion that Blue talking would be a good idea originate? Are the strange beings who inhabit this universe also of the opinion that Chilly Willy, Snoopy and Charlie Brown’s teacher should speak coherent English as well? It’s madness! [back]
5. Team Knight Rider? What kind of psychotropic pixie dust do you need to be snorting to believe that could possibly work? [back]
6. Magenta’s owner, played by Shannon Walker Williams [back]
7. Joe also has a purple shirt, as well as a green one, but he is at his most duplicitous and untrustworthy when wearing orange. [back]

Posted April 8, 2008 Comments(15)

Greg Howley wanted to know what shows are filling up my DVR, so I thought I’d spill my digital, MPEG-encoded guts.

My Shows

• The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (Comedy Central) It’s probably not fair to lump these two together, but thanks to the technical foibles of DirecTV and/or Comedy Central, that’s the way I record them. Both are consistently funny, but the big laughs recently have come from The Colbert Report. When a guest remarked that Stephen clearly knew his Sunday school, Colbert quickly shot back, “I teach Sunday school, motherf***er.” The absolute wrongness of the statement had Laura and me nearly doubled over with laughter.
• Top Gear (BBC America) This is a show I wish I’d been watching for the past four (five? nine?) seasons. It’s a car show that you don’t have to be a car guy to like. Part Motor Trend, part Monty Python, part Junkyard Wars, all awesome. The most recent episode I watched featured one of the hosts, Richard Hammond, pitting a Bugatti Veyron against a Eurofighter Typhoon in a two-mile race. While Hammond drove the Bugatti from one end of a runway to the other and back, the fighter pilot took off, climbed a mile vertically, turned around and raced back to the finish line. Hammond described it as “the best race ever”, and it certainly made for entertaining television.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man (Kids’ WB) This just premiered last week, and I like what I see so far. As a Spider-Man fan, it’s good to see old villains like The Enforcers, The Vulture and Electro re-imagined. Some might call it an assault on their precious childhood memories, but The Vulture’s original costume was a cross between Cruella de Ville and Kermit the Frog, Electro had a giant electric starfish on his face, and The Enforcers (Montana, Fancy Dan and Ox) were rodeo hands.1 The first two episodes were very satisfying, and viewers familiar with the wall-crawler will quickly pick up on the fact that nearly everyone Peter Parker knows will ultimately become a villain. Apart from the overtly villainous characters in the hour-long premiere—plus The Kingpin, operating in the shadows and voiced by Keith David, if I’m not mistaken—Pete encounters Norman Osborn (who will eventually become The Green Goblin), Harry Osborn (ditto), Eddie Brock (destined to merge with an alien symbiote and become Venom) and Dr. Curt Connors (who, injecting himself with experimental reptilian goo, is already well on his way to becoming The Lizard).
• Transformers Animated (Cartoon Network) Here’s where I turn hypocrite, because this new version of the Transformers is an assault on my childhood. Optimus Prime is (sometimes) a fire engine! And he has a mouth! You should know how I feel about Optimus Prime having a mouth.2 Ratchet, the Autobots’ medic, has had a personality overhaul from the old comic book days, and in a recent episode, Soundwave, the coolest of the evil Decepticons3 was reduced to a bass-thumping, head-spinning, laser light-show, the kind used by wedding DJs or low rent discothéques. The Autobots hang around with Sari Sumdac, a young girl who has a key imbued with the essence of the Allspark. Sari uses the key to fix the Autobots after they scrap with the Decepticons, or to animate her father’s robotic creations (such as the Dinobots4 and the aforementioned Soundwave, who was built to Megatron’s specifications. Megatron, by the way, exists (for the nonce) only as a severed head, hidden away in Dr. Isaac Sumdac’s laboratory until he can gather his Decepticon minions and build himself a new body. Performed by Corey Burton, the Decepticon leader has the best non-guest star voice in the series.

Laura’s Shows

• Law & Order (NBC) Voted “Most Likely to Put Laura to Sleep”, the original Law & Order is actually quite entertaining (though I do miss Jerry Orbach). Alas, my poor wife can’t seem to make it all the way through an episode of the police/courtroom drama without drifting off into dreamland,5 which usually means that I see at least parts of each episode twice or more. Semi-interesting tidbit/filler: When Fred Thompson announced that he would consider exploring whether or not to announce his intention to possibly make a decision regarding a potential bid for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination, his character, Arthur Branch, disappeared from the show and Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) became the District Attorney. Michael Cutter (Linus Roache) stepped in as Executive Assistant District Attorney (thank you, Wikipedia) and it took me a half dozen episodes to realize that Roache played Bruce Wayne’s father, Thomas Wayne, in Batman Begins.
• Without A Trace (CBS) One of the most depressing shows I’ve ever watched, Without A Trace chronicles an FBI missing persons unit as they attempt to locate, yes, a missing person. They succeed more often than they fail, but when they fail, it’s usually because the missing person is also a dead person.
• CSI (CBS) Oh, dear. I don’t know that this is actually set to record. Excuse me while I correct that so we can get our weekly dose of forensic science and an entirely unrealistic expectation as to what can be done with a computer and some grainy black-and-white surveillance camera footage.
• Monk (USA) The second best detective show on USA (the best is the next bullet item, so just hold your horses) has the absolute worst theme song of any show currently produced for television.6 After eleven and a half years of marriage, Laura’s hatred for Randy Newman songs has leached into me like so much hexavelent chromium into groundwater. Theme song aside, the obsessive-compulsive detective portrayed by Tony Shalhoub is very amusing to watch, but I can’t look at Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) without thinking about the lotion, the basket, and getting the hose again.
• Psych (USA) I probably enjoy this show more than Laura does, but I’m still putting it on her list. The non-stop barrage of (sometimes rather obscure) pop culture references from my childhood is almost as entertaining as the concept of the show: über-observant slacker makes a living as a psychic, helping the police solve all sorts of strange homicides.
• MI-5 (BBC America) While watching Top Gear last week, we saw several advertisements for the new season of MI-5 (né Spooks) on BBC America. Laura thought it looked interesting, so I added it to the list. The season premiere was last night, but we have yet to watch it.

Kyle’s Shows

• Sesame Street (PBS) Children’s television simply doesn’t get more old school than Sesame Street. The show has certainly changed since I last watched it with any regularity, but I think I miss Kermit the Frog’s fast-breaking news stories from fairy tales and fables the most. The story of why Kermit no longer appears on the show (except in the occasional older bit, such as “Do the Rubber Duck”) is a bit convoluted, but I’m sure if Jim Henson were still around “green frog” (as Elmo used to call him) would still have his Sesame Street press credentials.
• Max and Ruby (Nickelodeon/Noggin) Ruby is a seven-year-old bunny. Max is her younger brother. Where are their parents? Who can say? Grandma shows up from time to time (often for her own birthday party; bunnies must age fast) and there are plenty of Bunny Scouts around, but mostly it’s Max getting in Ruby’s way somehow. This show annoyed me at first, but has really grown on me.
• Blue’s Clues (Nickelodeon/Noggin) We prefer Steve to Joe, thank you very much. Steve actually drew in his handy, dandy notebook, whereas Joe’s notebook is entirely animated. Sometimes, after I’ve found all three paw prints, I sit down in my Thinking Chair and think, think, thiiii-ink…about where to hide Joe’s body. We will not discuss the travesty that is Blue’s Room.
• The Backyardigans (Nickelodeon/Noggin) Quite possibly my favorite of the bunch, The Backyardigans features the adventures of Tyrone, Uniqua, Pablo, Tasha and Austin as they create imaginary worlds in their backyards. Each episode features several songs (showcasing a particular musical style), many of which are very clever and catchy, some of which are earworms, getting into my head for hours (or even days) at a time. “Racing Day” and “Mystery Lifeguard” both fall into this latter category.
• Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! (Nickelodeon/Noggin) Another of my favorites has become one of Kyle’s favorites, too, much to Laura’s dismay. Wubbzy is a frenetic, furry, fun-loving critter (voiced by Grey DeLisle, who also voiced The Wasp in the recent Ultimate Avengers animated movies) who loves his kickety-kickball. Widget (Lara Jill Miller, who played Sam on Gimme A Break!) is Wubbzy’s bunny(like) industrious inventor friend, always building some fantastic machine (”The Sun-Blocker 3000!“) that doesn’t quite work as she expected. Walden (voiced by the incredible Carlos Alazraqui, who plays Deputy Garcia on Reno 911! and was the voice of the Taco Bell chihuahua as well as Rocko on Rocko’s Modern Life) “is their friend, he’s really smart; he knows about science and books and art”. He’s also the most level-headed of the three, though he has been known to cut loose from time to time. The show is Flash-animated and has an artistic style that appeals to me for some reason. I also like the music.
• Wonder Pets! (Nickelodeon/Noggin) If there’s a show I wish Kyle would just suddenly decide to stop liking, it’s Wonder Pets! I’ve already discussed my feelings about the show in some detail, so there’s really no need to get into it now.
• Dora the Explorer and Go, Diego, Go! (Nickelodeon/Noggin) These two get lumped together because they’re cousins and—like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report—the latter is a spin-off of the former. I’m not sure which Latin American country these two precocious youths live in, but they both have an unusual rapport with animals and an amazing satchel: Dora’s backpack is actually a Bag of Holding, while Diego’s Rescue Pack (”¡Al rescate!“) has some sort of polymorph spell cast upon it.

Movies

Most of these were recorded during our free Showtime/The Movie Channel weekend. That I stooped to recording Cyborg 2 should give you an idea about the quality of fare offered on Showtime and The Movie Channel. Suicide Kings and The Prophecy were played back-to-back on IFC during a recent Christopher Walken mini-marathon.

• Suicide Kings
• The Prophecy
• The Man Who Cried
• Employee of the Month
• Cyborg 2
• The Man Who Fell to Earth
• The Descent
• Capote
• The World’s Fastest Indian

More Movies

Fresh from the free Showtime weekend, DirecTV is dishing up another four days of premium channel goodness starting on Thursday, 20 March. This time it’s HBO and CineMAX, and a quick glance at the schedule for Thursday and early Friday reveals several movies that I’d like to see:

• John Adams
• Notes on a Scandal
• The Last King of Scotland
• Fracture
• The Good Shepherd

1. Okay, they still are, but The Vulture and Electro have both gotten a much-needed makeover [back]
2. To paraphrase B.A. Baracus: Prime don’t have no mouth, Hannibal! [back]
3. I should point out that classic Soundwave is cool in robot mode. Alas, he transforms into a boombox from which a number of transforming cassette tapes—including Ravage, Laserbeak and Ratbat, who turn into a panther, a condor and a bat, respectively—are launched. This is decidedly not cool. [back]
4. Okay, a word about the Dinobots: who are these guys supposed to be fooling? They transform from giant robots to giant dinosaurs! Dinosaurs that look like giant robots! Props to Transformers Animated for actually creating a semi-feasible plot around their introduction (as animatronic dino-beasties in a theme park). [back]
5. Sam Waterston’s voice is like warm milk to her, I guess. To me, he sounds forever on the hormonal rollercoaster that is the onset of puberty. [back]
6. Worst theme song ever? Firefly. Oh yeah, I went there. Bring it, browncoats! [back]

Posted March 13, 2008 Comments(9)

Okay, so my DirecTiVo could only store 35 hours worth of programming and my new DirecTV DVR will hold about 100 hours. You know what? It was still a better DVR.

Why?

Oh, I’ll tell you.

1. I could skip to the end of a recorded program with the press of a button, and to the beginning with another button press. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you’ve got a handful of episodes of your kid’s favorite shows, it would be nice not to have to fast-forward or rewind 10 or 20 minutes to start watching them from the beginning the next time. It’s a DVR, not a VCR; I shouldn’t have to rewind to get to the beginning, regardless of where I stopped watching. Oh, and if I accidentally fast-forward too far at the end of Top Gear and miss that last little bit of the show, I’ve got to start over at the beginning and fast-forward through 58 minutes I’ve already watched just to catch the last two minutes. Once the “Do you want to delete this program?” message appears on-screen, I can’t rewind anymore, and that’s just plain frustrating.
2. The DirecTiVo was more responsive in general. The delay between when I push a button on the remote and when I see the desired result on the DirecTV DVR is sometimes measurable in seconds. Ridiculous.
3. Speaking of the remote, the one that came with the DirecTiVo was a thing of beauty. It properly handled my television (including switching inputs) and surround sound system, all without having to switch back and forth between “DirecTV”, “AV1″, “AV2″ and “TV” modes. Yes, I can control my DVD player in AV2 mode, something I couldn’t do with the old remote, but it’s a feature I’d gladly sacrifice for the ability to turn off the television and the surround sound with a single button.
4. Still speaking of the remote, Laura hates the new one. Period. I can see why: the layout just isn’t as simple as the old one, even the DVR controls are counter-intuitive.
5. Anytime I was dealing with a list of channels on the DirecTiVo, I could always jump to the channel I wanted by simply entering it on the number pad. Not so on the DirecTV DVR. When I’m setting up a manual recording and the list of channels pops up, if I press 2-4-9 for Comedy Central, I first get channel 25, then channel 43, then channel 9 thousand-something. Ludicrous! And speaking of manual recording…
6. Daylight Saving Time. I’ve got a one-hour manual record set up for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report Monday through Thursday at 11:00pm. The fact that I have to do this if I don’t want the DVR to record both shows three times in a single day is a testament to the crappiness of the online guide for Comedy Central, but the fact that the DVR decided to start recording at 12:00am instead of 11:00pm after the time change on Sunday (despite the fact that the clock on the damn thing changed and the manual recording entries still show an 11:00pm start time) is just plain stupid. I just had to delete and recreate all four manual entries and I’m still not confident that it’s going to work properly.

Extra recording space be damned. I miss my DirecTiVo.

Posted March 11, 2008 Comments(7)

Check out my official Overlord Badge for The Secret Lair! It’s another fantastic creation from Natalie Metzger, Secretary of Artistic Propaganda. There’s more (and not just from Natalie), but I don’t want to unveil it all at once. You may not be able to make out the details, but that writing implement in my shirt pocket is an official Dungeons & Dragons 30th Anniversary mechanical pencil. Yeah, that’s how I roll.

In other news, my beloved DirecTiVo died over the weekend; one of the tuners decided that its alignment was Chaotic Good and channels above the 200 mark were made of Evil. When we attempted to watch one of these channels on Tuner 2, the response would be anything from a lost signal to a warm reboot.

DirecTV gave me a couple of options: lease one of their branded DVRs or get another DirecTiVo receiver. The former required a two-year commitment to the DirecTV service and a $20 shipping charge, while the latter would cost me $350.00 out of pocket. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of giving up my TiVo service, but every man has his price and mine happens to be right around $350.00.

When I got home from work today, the new receiver was waiting for me. One not-so-quick call to DirecTV customer service1 and I was up and running. The new2 DVR has about three times the capacity the old one did, but I’m already disappointed in the “universal” remote that came with it. Funny how we take little things like the ability to turn off both the television and the audio receiver with a single press of a button for granted.

Now my young apprentice and I are watching Max and Ruby on Noggin and (in theory) Scrubs is recording on the other tuner. Ruby is trying to get yet another damn Bunny Scout merit badge while Dr. Dorian and the rest of the gang at Sacred Heart are undoubtedly involved in some wacky shenaniganery that is (again, in theory) being preserved in all its digital glory for my enjoyment at a later time. Max wants a popsicle, but Ruby is too busy putting splints on dolls to pay attention to her younger brother; I swear, if there’s a Bunny Scout merit badge for being a good elder sibling, Ruby doesn’t have it.

1. Seriously, you’d think these customer service reps would perform these activations so often they could do them with their eyes closed. Yeah, you’d think that. But you’d be wrong, baby. So very, very wrong. [back]
2. Okay, refurbished. [back]

Posted February 6, 2008 Comments(6)

It’s been a couple of weeks and I have (in theory) had a chance to watch many of the shows I was looking forward to in early September.

Doctor Who. I think the season may have wrapped up, but I could be wrong. There are a couple of episodes waiting for me on the TiVo but I haven’t gotten around to watching them yet.

Who Wants to Be a Superhero? Hoo, boy. Five episodes on the TiVo and watching them is feeling more and more like a chore, so I think I’m just going to delete them and move on. The first episode of the second season was way too much like the latter half of the first season for me, so I’m inclined to ditch this turkey.

Eureka continues to be the best show on SciFi. Excellent premise, awesome cast, decent special effects and consistently entertaining scientific blunders make it an enjoyable experience all around.

Torchwood. Yeah. I watched the first episode and it totally failed to grab me, so I didn’t even bother setting up a season pass. Sorry, John Wheelbarrow fans, I’m not joining your ranks anytime soon.

iCarly. I haven’t watched any more of this show. Really.

Journeyman started off with an excellent premiere; maybe a bit slow right at the beginning, but sticking through the entire episode was well worth it. There was a very nice twist in the last third of the show that goes a long way to distancing Journeyman from Quantum Leap, a comparison that everyone (including me) was making in advance of the premiere.

Bionic Woman wasn’t too bad. I’m still a little worried about whether Michelle Ryan has enough presence to carry the show and the first fight sequence felt a bit herky-jerky to me—not to mention way off balance; Sarah (Katee Sackhoff) should have handily kicked Jamie’s (Michelle Ryan) ass up and down those rooftops—but I’ll stick with it a couple more episodes to see what happens.

Moonlight. I haven’t watched the premiere yet, and as of last night there should be a second episode waiting for me. More to come.

Reaper was pretty good. The interplay between Sam (Andrew Airlie) and Sock (Tyler Labine) is a little too Kevin Smith for my taste (it felt an awful lot like Dante and Randall in Clerks) but I did enjoy Ray Wise as the devil and there was a nice Ghostbusters flavor to the final battle with the arsonist whose soul had escaped from Hell.

Heroes. I should really watch this; I don’t know why I’ve been putting it off.

Posted October 5, 2007 Comments(21)