I suppose, like anything, there is a good side and a bad side. Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street and the like were all entertaining in some way, even for parents or older kids. Then you have crap like Barney and Lamb Chop and the dreadful and, thankfully, short-lived Telletubbies. More recently, Yo Gabba Gabba has emerged as a tolerable show, if for no other reason than it will give me the occasional flashback, and even Zaboomafoo (or Chris and Martin's Gay Animal Adventure) interests me based on my lifelong desire to be a zoo keeper.
Other than the well-documented three-week Barney phase, Av has spared me from most of the mind-numbing excretion that most kids subject themselves to. She avoids pen-in-the-eye shows like The Wiggles and she only likes the idea of Dora the Explorer, she doesn't actually watch the show. (Can we all agree that Dora doesn't rhyme with 'explorer'? Not in English, not in Spanish. We are sending our kids the wrong message. Also, Diego is not as cool as he is advertised to be. He is an 8-year-old Ricky Martin.)
Lately, though, she has been in to Thomas and Friends. If you aren't familiar with Thomas, God Bless You. If you are, you know that Thomas is a toy train with a face who travels around some weird, 40-year-old pedophile's basement train set playing out dull, outdated scenarios, such as lackluster debates over whether helicopters deliver mail faster than trains.
This is Thomas.
These are his 'Friends' who appear to be more like co-workers with terrifying faces who spend most of the day trying to fuck Thomas over. Again, no conflict is ever greater than 'ooohhh the train cars played a trick on Thomas an now he is late!" Ohhh geeze. Maybe Thomas should get a job leading the commuter rail from Salem to Boston. His lack of punctuality would be spot on.
All of this is inexplicably narrated by George Carlin (RIP), who apparently ate vanilla ice cream, stared at a blank wall and took a handful of downers before going to work because he has about as much expression in his voice as I do when someone asks me the question 'How's the baby?'The episodes are so dull that they only have about enough material to fill eight minutes until they mercifully end with Carlin saying something like 'And Thomas went back to the station and smiled all day.' Great ending.
I think the root of the problem is that this stupid train concept originated in England. Stupid, humorless bores. I mean, who still has a monarchy? People whose TV shows revolve around toys who don't move.
Anyway, I suppose it could be worse. The thing that gets me- that really gets me- is that Thomas memorabilia costs about as much as fine jewelery. A Sesame Street toy, a small one, is like, $6 bucks. A toy airplane, car, ambulance, fire truck, monster truck, race car, tractor, police car, drag racer, Prius etc... are anywhere from 99 cents to $5. A toy Thomas, which is the same size as a Matchbox car, is $11.99. At Walmart! Imagine what it must be at a real toy store?!
Today at art class Av, her crush Vincent and myself played with the dirty YMCA second-hand Thomas train set for like a half hour. I told her we could go get a Thomas. I love her to death, but if she thinks I'm paying $12 for a stupid, ugly-faced train she is insane. Damn Brits. What I did find was a Thomas bubble-blowing set that came with a larger Thomas toy which doubles as a train-whistle blowing bubble wand. Exponentially cooler, $3. The world as a whole is just completely fucked up. That is today's moral.
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