Over-Thinking Children's Television, vol. 2

Anyone who has watched even a single episode of Dora the Explorer can agree that Swiper the fox is a total douche. It isn't enough that he's always stealing things; he has to just casually throw them away, rather than scurrying off with his ill-gotten goods or maybe doing something useful with them. But then he's got this, I don't know, pervasive developmental disorder or something, where if you tell him three times not to rob you, he won't. Maybe it's like a mild avoidant personality disorder. I don't know... what do I look like, Frasier?

There's one episode of Dora that displays a moral ambiguity that I'm not comfortable with. Dora and Boots have a hankerin' for some blueberries, and rather than simply going back to Dora's house, or say, a grocery store, and getting some more blueberries, they decide to go to Blueberry Hill and pick some. Aside from the obvious insecticide-related concerns related to the consumption of unwashed fruit picked from random shrubbery, their scheme has a slight kink: Swiper lives on Blueberry Hill.

Of course, Dora and Boots are all worried that Swiper may come out and swipe "their" blueberries. The whole time, they're all "keep an eye out for that sneaky fox" and "he's always trying to swipe our stuff." I have some news for you two: You're tresspassing. You got the munchies, and suddenly it's okay to go stamping around Swiper's house and steal the berries he has lovingly cultivated all season? Selling those blueberries is the only way Swiper's able to pay his rent. Are you gonna let that klepto crash on your couch after he's been evicted? No, I didn't think so.

Oh, you're the star of the show, Dora, so you get to act on whatever selfish whim you happen to have. Nice. What's next? You and your boanthropic pal Benny gonna go down to the river and set fire to the Grumpy Old Troll's bridge so you can toast marshmallows? He lives under that bridge. Jerks.

No Choppy!

Let's play a game of "What I Should Have Said Versus What I Actually Said." It's a game I just made up, one for which I should probably find a much shorter name. WISHSVWIAS starts with a setup:

The other night I was mincing some garlic in my fancy, expensive Pampered Chef food chopper thingumbob, so I could put it on the scrumptious pizzas I was making. The Pampered Chef food chopper thingumbob looks just like a Slap-Chop but without the annoying headset-wearing white guy attached. When this modern wonder is in operation, it tends to make some noise. I mean, you can use the chopper thingumbob quietly, but only if you want your garlic to be gently caressed by the metal blades instead of, you know, chopped. So about five minutes into my garlic-mincing routine (this includes a break I took to peel some more garlic cloves), the doorbell rings, and standing outside my front door is the mysterious girl who for reasons unknown is living with my two-faced, often belligerent, usually passive-aggressive downstairs neighbor. This girl looks like a mousier version of Darlene from Roseanne, if she dressed like a sad little emo girl and wore glasses.

The next step in the game is to re-enact the conversation that the setup precludes, with What I Should Have Said in nice blue text, and What I Actually Said in orange text. Darlene's text is just plain ol' this color:

<I open the door>

What? It's garlic-chopping season.

Hello.

Umm, yeah, I was trying to work downstairs, and I keep hearing this banging sound...

Are you kidding me? You work from home and you're complaining? Look, it's barely eight o'clock, and I want garlic in my pizza. You gonna take some of your fancy work-from-home money and buy me some pre-minced garlic in a jar? Is it worth that much to you?

Oh, yeah, sorry about that, that was me chopping some garlic for dinner. Sorry about the noise.

Well, umm, it's really loud.

Hey, funny thing about that. My eighteen-month-old daughter is sleeping eight feet away, and she doesn't seem the least bit perturbed by the sound. Maybe you're exaggerating a little, hmm? How 'bout you go back downstairs and do another guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory while I enjoy my delicious garlicky pizza.

All right, sorry about that. I'm done now, so no worries.

mkay, thanks.

Hey, instead of coming up here and bitching you should appreciate the fact that I am in fact settling for coarsely-chopped garlic instead of the finely minced garlic that I really wanted, because mincing would take longer and make more noise, so out of consideration for my crummy neighbors I'm compromising and my pizza experience is diminished as a result!

<darlene goes back downstairs>

I swear, I am waayyy too nice to people. One of these days I'm gonna look social norms in the eye and tell them to drown in a vat of my hot Mexican-food butt-squirts so I can go around being mean and vile to people who tick me off, and then I'll feel bad about it and probably send some handwritten apology notes because I'm really not a mean guy by nature.

Wait, where was I?

Oh yeah. Fear not, Darlene. Taco Bell chopped my vegetables tonight. You and your skinny boyfriend can cut yourselves, and each other, in peace.

Aaaaand the moral of the story is:

Reviewing the "First" Watchmen Review

Yesterday I learned that the so-called first review of the Watchmen movie had hit the web (but really, who's to say that it's really the first one? I bet there's another. Maybe as many as six of them). Of course, being the massive comic book geek that I am, I rushed over to read it. And no, I did not fear spoilers, because I've already read the graphic novel, so I know what happens. But for the record, I did want to stand outside theaters telling everyone how Titanic and The Passion of the Christ were going to end.

For the most part, the Times' review of Watchmen was positive. Go ahead and read it yourself, you'll see. I was glad to know that the more graphic parts of the original work were kept intact, and that despite the over-slick costumes, the characters seemed to be true to themselves. I was a little bothered by the last sentence, though:

But as the first attempt to make a truly post-adolescent comic book movie,
Watchmen is, literally, peerless.

Someone clearly hasn't been paying attention. "First attempt" to make a post-adolescent comic book movie? All right, just off the top of my head, I can name several previous (and successful!) attempts:

• Road to Perdition
• Ghost World
• A History of Violence
• Persepolis
• American Splendor
• From Hell

All of these were based on comic books. That doesn't even count Sin City, 300, V for Vendetta, 30 Days of Night, Stardust, Constantine, or the Hellboy films. Also comic book movies, although their status as "post-adolescent" could be argued. Of course, that argument would be entirely subjective, hinged upon one's own definition of the term. Does "post-adolescent comic book movie" refer to a movie that is an adaptation of a post-adolescent comic, or a post-adolescent movie that happens to be an adaptation of a comic book? And exactly where are we setting the bar for post-adolescence itself?

Anyway, the presumption that "comic books" equals "super heroes" is annoying enough coming from my fellow (North) Americans, but I expected better from an article that was written for a publication in the United Kingdom. People in the UK should know good and bloody well that not all comic books are wedged into the superhero genre. Most of the best "non-cape" comics on both sides of the pond are penned by Brits.

In closing, I want to go see Watchmen really really badly. Good thing I get paid the day it opens.

F My Life

Today I discovered F*** My Life, a site that's kind of similar to One Sentence, which I've blogged about before, except on this one you can use more than one sentence, the stories have to be about horrible things that happened to you to make your life suck, and people cast votes on your stories, either showing sympathy or telling you "You deserved that."

A lot of the stories seem like they are either: obviously made-up, or told by complete imbeciles. It's surprisingly therapeutic to click through the site and tell these people, "You deserved that one." Try it, you'll like it.

I like to imagine the look on the face of (for instance) the fat girl who posted her tale of woe about how her boyfriend told her she was fat just because she asked him seventy-eight times in a twenty-minute period if he thought she was fat, when she revisits FMyLife and sees that 14,297 people think she deserved it, not for being fat, but for being fat and irritating, while only 114 people have read her story and said, "aww, I agree, your life sucks." I think of that face, and it brings a warm smile to my own.