Title Censored for Insensitivity Issues

My original title was going to be a clever play on the similarities between the words “ethics” and “ethnics” but then I went ahead and decided to be racially sensitive. Go figure.

I don’t usually spend my Sundays working on posts for this blog (though it will likely be Monday before I actually get it posted) because Libby isn’t fond of me sitting on the computer while she has to entertain Gabe. But today is a special day and I need a little distracting. Today is special because it comes before tomorrow afternoon.

Chuck. E. Cheese.

Two words and a letter shouldn’t strike such wearying fear into my heart, but they do. I might not be able to sleep tonight in uneager anticipation. It really should be quite hellish.

All I know is this BETTER be the first memory that Gabe can recollect at much later points in his life. Sometime soon he’ll be forming that first sticking memory (I have a few from periods between 18 months to 3 years, but they all just sort of blur together now as I get older—which isn’t saying much, really, since the last 10 years just sort of blur together too), and I’d like to think he’ll form it with a deeply seated appreciation of the trauma his parents went through to give him a special second birthday. If, on the other hand, he DOESN’T remember it, then what the friggin frig was the point of us even having this party in the first place?

Anyway, today I’m going to discuss three, er, internationally themed shows: “Dora the Explorer,” “Toot and Puddle,” and “Ni Hao, Kai-Lan.”

“Dora the Explorer”

Gabe relaxing in the early morning, basking in the glow of Dora's radiance.

In the beginning, when I was just familiarizing myself with these shows, I disliked Dora nearly as much as Diego. However, over the last year, I’ve decided that Dora isn’t all that bad.

Unlike Diego, Dora doesn’t set out with unrealistic pretenses. Her show isn’t pretending to be “science” as conducted in some fantasy-rific Mexican wonderland. Her show is supposed to be “fun” in some fantasy-rific Mexican wonderland, and she does a pretty good job with that.

Though I do have a little trouble with yet another five year old out doing whatever the hell she pleases without any sort of adult supervision. While I agree kids should be raised to be independent (I know part of me can’t wait until Gabe is ready to move on to college), I think five or six might just be a little too earlier for kids to be forging off to battle bridge trolls and face off against snakes and crocodiles and giant spiders in the forest. Call me old fashioned.

Unlike Diego, Dora has some charming characters to it as well. Diego’s characters fall into one of two categories: animals needing rescued, and Diego. Dora has several rather entertaining characters. My personal favorites are Benny the Bull and Swiper the Fox. I like Benny because he reminds me of some big dumb simpleton of a literary character. I just can’t think of which one for some reason. I’ve been racking my brain for five minutes now. I really wanted to say Boo Radley, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the character I had in mind. No, I know who I’m thinking of—Lennie from “Of Mice and Men.” He, he. Lennie. Benny. I’m guessing the similarity in names was intentional. I just now made the connection, though, because, honestly, I don’t spend that much time thinking about the shows Gabe’s watching (in fact, I’m usually trying to do just the opposite to maintain my sanity).

Swiper I find hilarious. He is possibly the greatest villain in history, and I don’t say that lightly. I think he’s the ultimate villain because HE DOES IT JUST TO BE A JERK. Swiper has NOTHING to gain from doing what he does. His only intention from the beginning is to grab something of value from Dora and Boots and throw it into the forest so they’ll have to spend their valuable time looking for it. Plus, he’s very easily foiled, which all ultimate villains should be (though, obviously, the word “ultimate” suggests there should only be one, thus making my use of the word “all” completely confusing—which is only compounded by my observation of said confusion here instead of simply backspacing and changing the original text, which I’m simply refusing to do out of mean-spiritedness, as any ultimate villain would appreciate). All they have to do is say “Swiper no swiping” three times before he reaches whatever he’s trying to steal and Swiper has to say, “Oh, man!” and leave. And he always sounds so sad when he says “Oh, man!” The futility of it all often makes me laugh. And for that, I appreciate Dora.

Plus Gabe loves her. He’s got a thing for, um, non-white girls, let’s say. They always catch his fancy. And he likes Boots—and who can blame him, monkeys are hilarious. Always.

“Toot and Puddle”

Gabe definitely NOT watching "Toot and Puddle." The show wasn't on in the background, but it was on according to the schedule. This is a collapsible house thing that Libby got about a year ago and just found in the closet over the weekend. We buy so much crap for this kid that we don't even know what we have anymore. Sad.

“Toot and Puddle” is a relatively new show. It is a Noggin exclusive. In the last six months, Nickelodeon has released two new shows, and both of them have pigs as their main characters—this one and “Olivia.” I find this mildly disturbing. Pigs are not appealing creatures to base main characters on. Sure, Wilbur was a nice pig, but I can’t imagine trying to follow his daily adventures. It just sounds displeasing to me. Plus, pigs are ugly. They’re all pink and hairless and, well, I know very well how pigs smell. There is no smell like pig smell. Growing up, whenever I would complain about the smell around one of my uncles, he would always say, “Smells like money.” To which I thought, but never said, “You need a new wallet.” I know, not the best comeback. And, to be honest, off and on I’ve tried to come up with better ones for almost twenty years now, but haven’t been able to. So, I’m open to suggestions.

Anyway, pigs are gross, but Nickelodeon is obsessed with them recently for some reason. “Olivia,” I might talk about later, but it’s not AS bad as Toot and Puddle.

I don’t know what irks me about this show, but I really don’t like it a bit. They don’t show it often during the day, but I purposely avoid Noggin whenever it is on. The concept is pretty simple—they are world traveling pigs. OK, that sounds like it should be rather complicated, actually, what with pigs not being natural travelers. That is one problem I have with the show—it’s TOO easy for them to travel. Again, two unsupervised children (and, again, without parents or any adults really to look out for them) can just pick up and travel anywhere in the world they want with almost no notice. They wake up, say, “Let’s visit Egypt,” and then they are on their way.

I think what bothers me the most about it is the cutesy attitude and the little phrases they mutter like “Ab-so-TOOT-ly!” Obscene. Or maybe I just really don’t care for pigs as characters. I don’t know what it is.

Fortunately, Gabe doesn’t really care about them one way or another, so this one is pretty easy to avoid altogether.

“Ni Hao Kai-Lan”

Gabe watching Kai-Lan. Rather, it would be, except they were showing an all-morning marathon of Dora this morning. Really, you could look at the picture for Dora above and his reaction to Kai-Lan would only differ in the character names he repeatedly half mutters through the show.

If I had to pick a favorite show for Gabe, Kai-Lan would definitely be in the top two. And, actually, I’m sort of OK with that.

Kai-Lan is a pretty new show—they only have about fifteen or so episodes of it right now, I think. However, even though they show it about ten times a day between Nick Jr. and Noggin, and I might catch it twice a day if I’m paying attention to the schedule, I haven’t really gotten tired of it yet. The show’s concept is pretty basic—sort of like Chinese Dora, really. Each episode, Kai-Lan and her friends (a tiger, a monkey, and, for some reason, a koala bear that is unhealthily obsessed with panda bears) have some sort of minor adventure (one time they are planning a party, another they are going to a roller rink, so nothing of actual importance like Dora where everything sort of seems like a life or death situation). During the adventure, one of the non-Kai-Lan characters has some sort of melt-down about something trivial, and Kai-Lan, using her astute powers of observation and keen common sense, solves the problem with sage advice like “It’s nice to share,” and the lesson of the day is invariably delivered in song.

Like Dora, along the way, Kai-Lan tries to teach kids a few “handy” Chinese (I have no idea which dialect, of which I think there are MANY) words. How, exactly, knowing how to say “pull” or “red” or “slipper” in Chinese is ever going to help anyone, I don’t know. Still, considering the fact that China pretty much owns the USA thanks to our very responsible spending practices of the last few decades, it’s probably not a terrible idea if ALL children start getting their feet wet in Chinese culture.

In fact, I might encourage Gabe to keep watching this show well into his teens in the hopes that he’ll want to become fluent in the language. It can only improve out odds of surviving when our new Chinese Overlords take control. Besides encouraging my child to develop the language skills that I’m too thick-headed and, let’s face it, lazy to learn myself, I’ve also been boning up on Chinese history for about two decades now by playing the Romance of the Three Kingdoms line of video games. This might not help me bridge any language barriers, but it might give me a few odds and ends of ancient Chinese trivia to break the ice at a Revolution Party. “How about that Guan Yu, eh? Some Tiger General, that one!” And then, obviously, we could delve into Taoist theory from there. I’ll be in like Flynn. Or, if not, Gabe can apologize profusely for me in Mandarin for my obvious lack of any real knowledge of Chinese culture and blame it on me being a “Stupid American.” Either way, it’ll all work out thanks to my forward thinking.

Plus, let’s not forget that Asian girls are hot. So, I figure I’m only doing Gabe a favor by engendering in him a healthy appreciation for the ways of the East. I’m sure he’ll thank me for it some day.

And here's a little video of Gabe playing with an entire roll of scotch tape. We didn't have enough memory to record the entire event, but, eventually, he had the roll completely depleted and its contents wadded into a Gordion knot on his tray. This was mildly amusing, but secretly we were hoping he'd get himself entirely wrapped up in the stuff. That would have been movie gold. It did manage to keep him occupied for about ten minutes, though, while I made dinner. So that was nice.