TV

No, it's not what you're thinking... And I don't want to hear any cracks about Bert and Ernie!

Apparently, the newly-released volumes 1 and 2 of classic Sesame Street episodes on DVD, "Sesame Street: Old School," come with warnings declaring them suitable only for adults! This according to the New York Times' blog "The Medium."  You can read the whole post here.

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We don't really watch the PBS show Postcards from Buster too much in my house, but I recently saw something on it that was deeply disturbing. No, I'm not talking about the infamous lesbian couple and their kid episode (Sugartime, which, oddly enough, isn't even in the episode list on PBS's website), which around here is about as controversial as going to the hardware store or something. And at least there are two parents, right? But I digress. So anyhow, I saw something that I found deeply disturbing and profoundly creepy: Buster's dad, Bo Baxter. Or more specifically, his physiognomy. And the ears. Look at the ears!

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At 16 months Alexandra, AKA "The Baby", has been cutting some pretty serious teeth lately, and, likewise, we've all been up later into the night than normal. One recent night when I was Designated Cranky Baby Minder (actually, most of the time she's not cranky, but just won't go to sleep... I think she gets distracted from the teething discomfort by playing) I amused myself by watching Star Trek reruns on cable TV. I'm talking classic Trek: James Tiberius Kirk, Spock, that creepy looking little kid in that one episode who was played by creepy looking Clint Howard. Interestingly, these have recently been re-released with CGI-enhanced special effects on some episodes. I was iffy about the idea when I first heard about it, but after seeing what's been done I think it's pretty nifty. Anyhow, I'm watching Trek, the baby's playing, when suddenly she sees something on the TV, drops what she's doing, and slowly wanders over. She's transfixed with Star Trek. This is not normal for a child her age, is it?

I wondered exactly what the attraction was, until one day the situation was made clear to me by my 4-year-old, who, upon finding an old pop-up birthday card featuring the Enterprise's crew, showed it to me and said "Daddy, are these the Wiggles?"

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To cartoon or not?

I fondly remember E.B. White's classic book Charlotte's Web from my childhood, and of course also remember the animated movie that came out in the '70s. I figured that my son, who's about to turn 4, would love the new live action (as live action as a CG-heavy movie can really be) version that came out a while ago, so I added it to our Netflix queue. Meanwhile, my wife bought the DVD of the old animated version, so we had the opportunity to watch the two films back-to-back. Whoopee. Funny thing is, we only got about halfway through the new version, but we've watched the old animated one about, oh 823 times. What is it about animation that entrances kids so much? The movies are pretty much carbon copies of each other, although one lacks musical numbers. I guess there's just something incredibly appealing about cartoons. Perhaps it's the colors, or the simplification of form and setting that is necessitated by the medium.

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As my older child, now 3, has gained more and more awareness of the world around him, I'm constantly reminded of how many things in popular media are "too scary", which is to say, a lot of things. When they're babies and don't really understand what's going on you can sit around watching House of 1000 Corpses on DVD in the living room and it doesn't really faze them. Not that we ever did that or anything... really. But give it a year or two, and that'll change. The first time I noticed it is when on a visit to the grandparents my dad and I thought it would be a swell idea to watch Master and Commander on the big screen TV. Bad idea. At the first cannonball smashing through the Surprise's gun deck we hear a shriek that's not part of the soundtrack, that of a small child behind us: "TOO SCARY!" Off went the TV. From then on it's been a series of surprises in learning what exactly is too scary. An episode of The Simpsons, for example. Then there was the Three Little Pigs. He insisted on reading that story every night. This was fine for about two days, but eventually he started waking up in the middle of the night terrified of, not unsuprisingly, the Big Bad Wolf. Thus began our love-hate relationship with ol' Big Bad. Screams in the middle of the night would be followed by my wife asking "Did you read him that book again?"

At first I thought that he was being a bit oversensitive, but then when I thought back to what scared me when I was a kid, and how silly these things seem now, then I manage to understand a little more. Things that still exist with me to this day include something my parents were watching that I'm pretty sure at this point—we're going way back into the memory banks here—was an episode of the Avengers. Then there was this movie I saw on the airplane when I was maybe six or seven, and to this day I have no idea why my parents actually paid for the headset and all for me, really, that involved James Coburn and a bunch of commandos flying hang gliders to rescue a kidnapped family. I don't know what freaked me out more; the kidnapping by terrorists or all that orangey-red 70s-movie blood. That movie's stayed with me for thirty years. Amazingly, I ran across it on TV last week, totally by chance. I turned the thing on while I was getting ready for work and there it was, on AMC: Sky Riders with James Coburn, Robert Culp, and a bunch of Greek actors. And it was awful. I was scared by this?

Last story: When I was about 3, my dad and I watched the old 50s Harryhausen giant octopus flick It Came from Beneath the Sea. My mom, of course, being a mom, tried to dissuade us from watching on the grounds that it was, potentially, Too Scary. "No, it's fine" my dad said as we settled down in his easy chair to watch. And indeed we watched the whole thing, including the famous scene of the Golden Gate Bridge being pulled down of the octopus, without incident. Now, fast forward to several months later. We're cruising along in the family Volvo on our way to an outing in San Francisco. This of course involves crossing the Golden Gate Bridge (see above), since we lived in Marin. About mid span my parents here a shriek from the back seat, which (and I'm sure you've already guessed what it was about) went something like "THE OCTOPUS!!! THE OCTOPUS!!! TURN THE CAR AROUND!!! IT'S GOING TO GET US!!!" or something to that effect. Boy was my dad in trouble.